Hard to believe that the old tyrant has finally died. I will write more about Castro later on but just want to record my initial reactions.
As bored readers of this blog might note, I have written quite a bit about Castro and Cuba. Much of my career at the State Department involved dealing with the Castroites at the UN, in South and Central America, and even in Asia. At the OAS, I spent much of my time on various efforts by certain Latin countries to get Cuba readmitted to the organization. In addition to my work, many of my dearest friends came from Cuba, and I often felt like an honorary Cuban. I visited Free Cuba (Guantanamo) twice while I was at SouthCom, and lived for nearly three years in Miami, a city made magical and wonderful by the Cuban migration.
The global left will fall all over themselves in tributes to this hideous mass murdering monster. We will hear nonsense about how he defeated illiteracy, brought medical care to the masses, established income equality, defeated imperialism, outlived his enemies, and on and on and on. None of those is true except for his living a long life--thanks, that is, to the Spanish doctors who saved him from the tender incompetent mercies of the vaunted Castroite medical system.
Cuba, yes, was a dictatorship in 1959, when Castro took over. The country never successfully established a stable, honest, democratic political system. Cuba in 1959, however, was far, far from being the shabby hell that the left and popular media have portrayed. It was a country with a highly educated and entrepreneurial middle class, full of doctors, lawyers, writers, artists, engineers, businessmen, etc., and was a haven for political and economic refugees from Europe. Cuba was a net importer of migrants; Cuba had a standard of living higher than much of Europe and higher than any other Latin American country. In sum, Cuba had a promising future ahead of it, a future wiped out by nearly sixty years of brutal Castroite dictatorship.
I hope, please God, that our inept President Obama will restrain himself and not go to the funeral or send the Veep, the SecState or anybody else. We owe at least that much to the millions of victims of Castro, and to the brave men we abandoned on Playa Giron.
¡Socialismo o Muerte! Socialism or Death! That was Castro's tiresome slogan for decades. Under his rule, however, that did not prove a choice. The Cuban people got both socialism and death, and now so has Fidel Castro, RIH (Rot in Hell.)
More to follow.
Quite liberal friends of mine just visited Cuba. They were, I think, taken aback by the oppressive atmosphere and poverty. They said that they would never go back. Perhaps we should send Bernie and his acolytes there to educate them on the inevitable results of this dangerous ideology?
ReplyDeleteIn my short and inglorious diplomatic career, I ran into people who wore their little Mao buttons while in college and studied the little red book, but a tour in China made them bigger anti-Communists than our esteemed host and myself put together. The uncle for whom I was named helped defeat Hitler in Europe; an uncle-in-law hit conscription age just in time to be put into the Nationalist Chinese army and stop the Communists at Jinmen (Quemoy). I honor their memories for the services they rendered unto civilization both East and West.
DeleteIt is disgusting that the American Left has idolized Fidel Castro so long. I understand a lot of Miamians are saying it's too bad his decease didn't happen a lot earlier. Let's hope his system, which looted one of Latin America's better economies after 1959 and received the equivalent of five Marshall Plans from the Soviets yet remained poor follows its architect shortly.
The only good Red is a dead one. At long last, Castro has become a good Red. Cuba Libre!
ReplyDeleteMost people seem to have no idea of the damage done to the Cuban people by that evil man.
ReplyDeleteSnap, he should have been stopped early but the pass was dropped.
ReplyDeleteContrary to our desires, I'm quite sure Obama will go to Cuba to pay his respects to one of the few that he admired; being a monster was just icing on the cake, that I'm sure gave Obama a thrill.
ReplyDeleteNow if only we could think of a way to keep him there forevermore! (Or at least until it's his turn to go to Hell.)
Actual, here's the real cause of death. Fidel got into a tiff with his brother Raul and tried to flee. He fell off his raft, and such a large cloud of dead fish and crabs arose around him that he was suffocated.
ReplyDeleteNot dead enough.
ReplyDeleteI met some Cubans in Miami that were imprisoned after being captured in Angola by the South Africans. I grew up there and have the accent and they recognized it immediately - they said they were better treated in an apartheid South African military prison than in Cuba....
Diplomad: I hope, please God, that our inept President Obama will restrain himself and not go to the funeral or send the Veep, the SecState or anybody else.
ReplyDeleteI disagree. Barack, Hillary, Bernie, and every socialist in our government should make the pilgrimage to Cuba to mourn that successful Communist (Socialist) dictator. Put them on record. Let us see their tears over the loss of one of their own.
Then, explain the misery, violence, and oppression which they mourn.
Explain the Communist/Socialist plan:
(1) Take control
(2) Make people do the correct things, large, small, and micro.
(3) Explain all failures as due to not enough: agreement, communication, taxes, detail, enforcement, prisons, executions.
(4) Achieve Utopia, however may decades it takes.
OOur communists love Castro for implementing the plan, except for (4). (4) was unfortunately limited by Castro's human lifespan. But, give them 10 or 20 lifespans and surely Utopia will arrive. Like Castro, our communists will work tirelessly for the cause, while supported by a grateful state, in the style which rightly belongs to the wise and rightous.
I think I'm with Andrew on this one.
DeleteAdditional steps:
Delete(3a) Liquidate or jail counter-revolutionists, dissidents and slackers
(3b) Seize control of productive businesses and utilities, 'for the people'
(3c) Centralize more control to key revolutionaries
(3d) Ensure the key revolutionaries have enough resources to adequately govern the people, including assistants, land, money, and military power
(3e) Evaluate progress: if Utopia is achieved, go to step (4), otherwise go to back to step (2).
Like Ted Kennedy, Fidel is now a good communist.
ReplyDeleteHeadline you will never see: Cuba's wealthiest Communist dies.
ReplyDeleteGreetings from Downunder.
ReplyDeleteMy wife and I visited Cuba about 10 years ago. We wanted to see it before Cuba and the US eventually made up and the Americans put the place back together again.
However, we doubted even you guys would be able to resurrect the place. It was reminiscent of post war Berlin.
Poverty, shortages, hard scrabble and dilapidation were our lasting memories. Much much worse than anything we saw in former Eastern Bloc countries or Russia.
Any Western leader who wrings his hands over Castro's death must be a Communist symphasiser and/or a bloody fool.
Let's not forget that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Castro urged Khrushchev to launch the missiles.
ReplyDeleteBan Ki-Moon, UN Secretary-General on Castro's death: "He was a strong voice for social justice...". Fidel Castro, archetype and hero of the Social Justice Warriors (SJWs) according to the top man in the UN. Just confirms what we already think about SJWs and the UN and their relationship to freedom and support of it.
ReplyDeleteThis will probably resonate well with people from Florida:
ReplyDeleteFidel Castro dies and goes to Heaven.
“No way,” says St. Peter. “You’re not getting in, not after all that you did.”
At this Castro shrugs. “Hay no problema,” he replies and goes down, down, down, all the way to Hell. There he’s greeted by The Devil like an old friend and, before long, the two of them are having a great time together.
Suddenly, Castro cries out: “Oh,no! I left my bags at the Gates of Heaven.”
“Don’t worry,” says The Devil. “I’ll send a couple of demons to fetch them for you.”
Arriving at the Gates of Heaven, the two demons cannot see any sign of either St. Peter, who’s on his lunch break, or the bags. So they decide to climb the gates, in the hope of finding the bags but, while doing so, are seen by a couple of angels.
“Oh no,” says one of the angels. “Castro’s not yet been in Hell for two hours, and already we’re getting refugees.”
Phil B
No doubt they will be establishing safe spaces at the State Department for when all the Castro acolytes return from the 4-day holiday.
ReplyDeleteWe should not forget Kendall Meyers and his wife.
And over at DoD, Ana Montes
For any football fans, or even non-fans, check out this column from the Miami Herald about Colin Kaepernick's unsurprising praise for Castro's Cuba:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.miamiherald.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/armando-salguero/article117033883.html
I once knew a Cuban-American guy who was both a good Roman Catholic and a liberal democrat. However, had the devil appeared with a stench of sulphur and promised him a ringside seat where the demons are working over Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, he would have signed on the dotted line, I suspect.
ReplyDeleteTheir may be official mourning in Havana, but I note there's rejoicing in Miami.
Castro's stooge has been in our white house for nearly a decade!
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'm just astonished at the brazen stupidity of all this in the media. Next up: paeans to the 'Great Jong Un'.
Here's hoping 'the recount' doesn't trigger a civil war here. After nearly a month to settle in with the results, recount-shenanigans aren't going to be accepted by those who voted for the winning side.
It's a good time to be stocking up on guns and ammunition, imo.
- reader #1482
OK...not wanting to commit Threadnomancy, but I'm hoping the above average IQs on this blog can look at this scenario and shoot it down:
DeleteWisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsy initiate a hand recount...something all 3 States have admitted will be impossible to accomplish with a few weeks. The Electoral College meets on the 19th and since those 3 States do not have certified elections they have no voting Electors. This brings Trump below 270, sending the contest to the Congress. Massive Media pressure is put on RINOs and establishment Republicans to side with "the majority" and renounce Trump; perhaps setting up a Clinton/Pence Administration (Pence spending 4 years banished to the VP Residence). Of course if the Republican Congress does choose Trump, then we have The Left and their Media sycophants creating a delegitimizing campaign against Trump as a "Selected, not Elected" POTUS.
This morning I went through some twitter posts and then the Drudge page, and so far, in the wake of Castro's death, no mention of the havoc Cuba wreaked on Latin America with the export of its miserable left revolutionary ideas. I'm hoping the Diplomad will write about that for us.
ReplyDeleteI wrote about that here: http://www.thediplomad.com/2011/05/on-cuba-and-latin-america-at-least.html
DeleteIronic that this arch enemy of free enterprise croaked on Black Friday, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteFifty four years ago, on Black Friday, 1962, the Butcher of Biran nearly beat the jihado-marxist rats to 911 in Manhattan.
As revenge for being denied the thrill of launching the missiles at America, don fido plotted to detonate five hundred pounds of high explosive in Macy's and Gimbel's on Black Friday, 'to kill as many Americans as possible and shove a dagger thru the heart of America.'
Mr. Hoover's FBI was early on to the plot and thwarted it.
Perhaps the marxstream media, who today mourns the passing of its 'folk hero' fidel, might care to comment on that?
The fact the medianiks consider this lingering and now dead cancer called castro a 'folk hero' is all the reason one needs to shut off the marxstream media forever.