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Today's Must Read
Victory! Only 47 years after the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro has toppled from power. Or resigned to hand power to his brother. In any case, he's gone.
You can read his resignation letter here. In it, the relic of the Cold War looks forward to the future:
Fortunately, our Revolution can still count on cadres from the old guard and others who were very young in the early stages of the process. Some were very young, almost children, when they joined the fight on the mountains and later they have given glory to the country with their heroic performance and their internationalist missions. They have the authority and the experience to guarantee the replacement. There is also the intermediate generation which learned together with us the basics of the complex and almost unattainable art of organizing and leading a revolution.The path will always be difficult and require from everyone’s intelligent effort. I distrust the seemingly easy path of apologetics or its antithesis the self-flagellation. We should always be prepared for the worst variable. The principle of being as prudent in success as steady in adversity cannot be forgotten. The adversary to be defeated is extremely strong; however, we have been able to keep it at bay for half a century.
On the adversary's side of things, the scramble begins. President Bush has chimed in with his hope that Castro's move will usher in a new era. And it's a prime opportunity for primary candidate jockeying -- already the calls are coming for the candidates to outline a new approach to Cuba.
while this is good news, it is significantly blunted by the fact that the man in charge of the U.S. response to it is G.W. Bush. anticipate the worst possible reaction that will ensure Cuba not wanting anything to do with America for the next 50 years.
February 19, 2008 10:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
How come Barak Obama's supporters in Houston fly a Cuban flag with a picture of Communist Che Guevara imposed on it. See http://www.littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=28915&only&rss.
February 19, 2008 10:31 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's because Obama is a Radical Communist Muslim.
February 19, 2008 10:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I heard he also eats aborted fetuses.
February 19, 2008 11:49 AM | Reply | Permalink
I've heard it stated numerous times that Castro's reign is proof that communism fails. I wonder if things would have been different if the United States had not ensured that this struggling country was isolated from the rest of the world for fifty years... and made several attempts at assassinating Castro.
I guess we sure showed him, didn't we...
February 19, 2008 12:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Viva Fidel! Viva la Revolucion! Abajo el capitalismos! Abajo el imperialismos! Abajo el puerco Bush!
February 19, 2008 3:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
johnnydoughey:
Bingo!
We have no way of knowing what Cuba would have been like if not for 48 years of US threats and US conducted, armed, funded, and directed terrorism, assassination attempts, and the crushing of the Cuban Civilian population by embargo, blockade and economic terrorism. There can be no doubt there would have been far greater liberty of the Cuban people if it were not for the actions and threats of the US.
Most Americans do not know that Castro did not start out as a Communist. In fact he initially imprisoned many communists. The communist party in Cuba had been infiltrated, corrupted and co-opted by Batista (the brutal US puppet dictator) and was part of his power structure.
Only after Castro rejected the US offer to be it’s replacement puppet and the attacks on Castro began did he seek help from the only source available (Russia).
I highly recommend reading "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions since World War II" by former Intel William Blum (State Dept.)
The history of the past half century of US foreign policy, mostly hidden from the American public through propaganda and control of the media, has been the overthrow of freely elected democracies replacing them with tyrannies (Iran, Guatemala, Chile etc.) OR the crushing of liberation and democracy movements as well as movements just wanting the basics of human rights. Until 1990 this was under the fabricated pretense of a threat from communism (used by big money and corporations for 3/4ths of a century), now it is “false flag” and fabricated threats from terrorism. Only the pretense has changed.
Castro was indeed the liberator and savior of the Cuban people who were eating dirt and had been enslaved by US agribusiness and other corporate tyranny through puppet dictators. The cities and resorts were ruled by US organized crime and the countryside was stolen and ruled by US corporate agribusiness (excuse me I repeat myself). The de facto freedom and standard of living of all but the formerly wealthy was dramatically improved as a result of the Cuban revolution. Many of what is referred to as the Miami mafia are those enriched by and enabled the ongoing Batista-US tyranny (and now also their progeny).
Imagine the tyranny that Bush and the rest of the secret government would have inflicted on us if the US was proportionally under the same level of threat as Cuba has been. If you look at what even non-existent fabricated threats have done to our individual security and freedoms, it would be difficult to imagine what kind of evil tyranny we would be living under if had experienced the ongoing attacks and existential threats that the US has inflicted on Cuba for over half a century.
Despite the suffering, hardship and poverty that ongoing US crimes have inflicted on the people of Cuba they have access to more health care, education and other necessities of life than many Americans.
I, for one, am very worried about what will now become of the Cuban people. I hope it is nothing like what has happened to the people of Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Mexico, Columbia, Indonesia, Nepal, Philippines, Myanmar, East Timor, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. etc.
Will we stand by and let it happen again? Enough!
Peace,
JK
PS: No insult intended to Castro, but check out this photo (#1) and tell me it isn’t a scary resemblance. (http://www.boston.com/news/specials/world/castro/gallery/castro)
February 19, 2008 4:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Che Vive!
February 19, 2008 5:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Che schmay!
As for Cuba after Castro: Who cares? Cuba is a poverty-stricken, backward little island in the Caribbean laden with a creaky failure of an economic system. Briefly, in the late 1970s, when Cuban troops ranged triumphantly in the boondocks of Africa, the country hit its anti-imperialist high-water mark. But life as the throwaway handmaiden of the Soviet Union ended with that particular workers’ paradise, and since then, the samba drums have thumped a sleepier beat. About the only positives for Cuba: The music is great, there is no lack of recipes for black bean combos, and it’s charmingly filled with ancient American cars.
Castro is here, Castro is gone. Yawn! There have been a lot of changes since 1959. And few of them have enhanced Cuba’s relevance.
February 19, 2008 6:42 PM | Reply | Permalink