Fidel Castro, the long-time Cuban communist dictator whose policies left the island nation impoverished for decades, died Friday. He was 90.
His death was announced by Cuban state television, according to The Associated Press.
1959: Following the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro arrives triumphant in Havana. https://t.co/CSBSwxZCgK pic.twitter.com/5YqMgy5oXD
— NYT Archives (@NYTArchives) November 26, 2016
Fidel Castro survived at least eight assassination plots by the CIA https://t.co/X3TueXq3ur pic.twitter.com/pIw6WZansM
— Bloomberg (@business) November 26, 2016
Vile mass murdering bastard. Read “Against All Hope - A Memoir of Life in Castro's Gulag” by Armando Valladares. This short review does not begin to describe the horror.
ReplyDelete"Against All Hope" is Armando Valladares' account of the near-quarter century he spent in Fidel Castro's Soviet-style gulags. Valladares was arrested shortly after Fidel's revolution, simply for not placing a Marxist slogan on his office desk, that would have required him to deny his Savior, Jesus Christ. Several days after this refusal, his house was stormed in the middle of the night, and he was hauled off to prison in Havana, with his mother promised that he would be returned shortly thereafter. Valladares didn't see her in freedom until 22 torturous and terror-filled years later.
The greatest thing Armando Valladares has done for the free world is to shatter the myth (CNN and Jimmy Carter, not withstanding) that Fidel Castro's Cuba is a semi-free place, persecuting only a handful of capitalists and subversives. Valladares tells story after story of hundreds (among tens of thousands of others) of prisoners he knew personally, who were tortured, maimed, starved, and executed. Scores of these prisoners Valladares came to know were not upper class or "white" but poor "campesinos" (and many black Cubans), many of whom once fought for Fidel Castro and Che Guevarra's Revolution... only to have that Machine of Death turn and kill them as well.
After nearly 400 pages of death and terror at the hands of Fidel Castro and his minions, I found myself wanting to just close the book and forget the rest. But then, I realized that's what the United Nations (ah, what a noble-sounding title that is) and the Western elitist Left has been doing for years with Castro... ignoring his terrorism. Ultimately, I was glad I finished the book, because even though Valladares does not put some lame happy spin on the story, he is at least freed (22 years of his life stolen), and now he can openly speak the truth of his Savior, to Fidel's power.
http://tinyurl.com/j3rpm8v
I don't (in my heart) blame Castro for the years of misery in Cuba. I blame the stupid right wing Batistite assholes in Miami and the co-dependent Republican party assholes who ended up propping up his (Castro's) gummint for all these years through sanctions et al.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a little boy, I fantasized about being a Castro type revolutionary. I think that's normal and healthy. If it weren't for Allen Dulles and company haha, maybe that fantasy would have had a happy ending.
Oh Well.
This is the moment that generations of American war hawks have been waiting for, and I seriously doubt we will have to wait long before war drums start to beat for a humane liberation of the Cuban people by the incoming Trump harpies. Chaos and death do not begin to describe the outcome that is all but assured for those who will not allow Cuba to find it's own path after the Castro brothers.
ReplyDeleteI remember when Castro came to power and how he was a festering thorn that dug into the psyche of the Pentagon for decades, and now the Pentagon will have it's pound of flesh. Unfortunately the generals in their haste for payback will overlook the fact that Cuban's have their own individual pride in their familial territory
A quote from the first Rambo movie comes to mind, "Nothing is over".