US Presidential Elections: Bernie Sanders Praised Fidel Castro, But So Did Obama - by Eric Levitz

Bernie Sanders has a 100 percent rating from the American Civil Liberties Union. His support for individual political rights is so unwavering he has called for the enfranchisement of all of America’s incarcerated citizens. His belief in freedom of expression is so unyielding he has scolded progressive college students for shutting down the speeches of far-right speakers. “To me, it’s a sign of intellectual weakness,” the Vermont senator said in 2017. “If you can’t ask Ann Coulter, in a polite way, questions which expose the weakness of her arguments, if all you can do is boo or shut her down or prevent her from coming, what does that tell the world?”

One can reasonably critique Sanders’s remarks in political terms. Given the Cuban-American vote in Florida — and/or the devout anti-communist boomer bloc across the nation — the senator might have been wise to put more emphasis on his condemnation of the Cuban government’s authoritarianism and less on the unfairness of how the regime’s legitimate achievements have been elided.

But as a substantive matter, the notion that Sanders’s acknowledgement of the Castro regime’s accomplishments betrays his secret sympathy for authoritarian communism is absurd. It is a fact that Cuba has one of the highest-performing education systems in Latin America, while its medical system has enabled its people to enjoy life expectancy and infant mortality rates similar to those of U.S. residents despite the island’s relative poverty. Meanwhile, with regard to Sanders’s remarks from the 1980s, the claim that Castro’s early social programs mitigated popular opposition to his government is endorsed by many historians of the region.

If offering an (accurately) positive assessment of any aspect of an authoritarian communist regime’s record is tantamount to endorsing its form of rule, then Barack Obama is an authoritarian communist:

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Cuba: Adios Caudillo: Fidel Castro Dies at 90 - by James Bloodworth

Castro and Mandela celebrate S. Africa's overthrow of Apartheid

According to Castro’s own estimates, at one point there were as many as 15,000 political prisoners in Cuba. One of the darkest periods of the repression occurred in 1963 when Castro approved “Operation P,” named because of a black “P” (for pimps, prostitutes, pederasts) emblazoned on the uniforms of those arrested. The operation saw Castro’s newly formed secret police sweep through Havana targeting homosexuals, religious believers, and “deviants”—often no more than men with long hair and blue jeans. Those rounded up were placed in UMAPs (Military Units to Help Production), a euphemism for concentration camps, and forced to do hard labor. According to the poet Armando Valladares, imprisoned by Castro in 1960, “there have been few examples of repression of homosexuals in history as virulent as in Cuba.”

In the ’70s Castro institutionalized his regime along Soviet lines and cultural Stalinism reached its high point, culminating in what the Cuban writer Ambrosio Fornet called the “Quinquenio Gris” (the Gray Five-Year Period), from 1971 to 1976. The Cuban joke that best sums up the period goes like this: In the Cuban family the mother is the nation; the father the comrade; the child the future. One night the child starts crying and wakes up his older brother, who in turn wakes up his father saying, “Comrade, the future is covered with shit.”

In 1989 Cuba was rocked by scandal, this time involving allegations that one of the country’s most celebrated generals and “heroes of the revolution” was corrupt and involved in the lucrative drugs trade. The accusations directed at Arnaldo Ochoa by the Castro brothers were followed by the general’s hasty trial, public confession, and execution by firing squad. According to Roberto Ortega, a former colonel of the Cuban armed forces who defected in 2003, Ochoa was executed because of his popularity with the troops and support for Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalizing reforms in the Soviet Union. When Che Guevara himself became disillusioned with Sovietization in the mid-1960s, he was encouraged by Castro to leave Cuba in order to ferment guerrilla war in Africa and then Latin America, where he died soon after. Guevara was a zealous and fanatical Communist; but he was never a party man. Despite subsequently admonishing Cuban children to “be like Che,” Castro was undoubtedly glad to be rid of a potential rival.

From the earliest days of the revolution western celebrities and intellectuals paid homage to Castro. Jack Nicholson (“Castro is a humanist”), Oliver Stone (“Castro is very selfless and moral, one of the world’s wisest men”), and the supermodels Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss (Castro is “an inspiration to everyone”) were just some of those who lavished praise on the dictator. “I just spent an hour and a half talking with your president, Fidel Castro,” a star-struck Campbell told a press conference in the Hotel National in 1994. “But he told me there was nothing to be afraid of because he already knew a lot about us from reading the press.” As the high-ranking Cuban intelligence defector Delfin Fernandez would later disclose, the information did not come from the media. “My job was to bug their hotel rooms with both cameras and listening devices,” Delfin noted.

Admirers of the revolution often resembled the fellow travelers Arthur Koestler described as peeping toms, peering through a hole in the wall at history while not having to experience it themselves. The novelist Gabriel García Márquez, a personal friend of Castro, once told The New York Times that he personally could never live under the Cuban system. “I would miss too many things. I couldn’t live with the lack of information. I am a voracious reader of newspapers and magazines from around the world.” For Cubans those privations were apparently acceptable.

Fidel Castro relinquished the presidency in 2008, handing power to his brother Raúl after a period of illness. Since then he has gradually disappeared from public life, occasionally penning a column for the state newspaper, Granma.

Long after the heroism and mystique of the revolution has faded, Fidel Castro will likely be remembered for his role in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when civilization came as close as it has yet come to nuclear Armageddon. During that 13-day trilateral confrontation, while the world watched the stand-off on black and white television sets, behind the scenes Castro was furiously writing to his Soviet counterpart Nikita Khrushchev demanding that the Ukrainian press the button and incinerate us all by launching a first nuclear strike on the United States. “However hard and terrible the solution might be, there is no other,” wrote Castro. Thankfully Stalin’s former henchman, who by his own admission was “up to his elbows” in blood, chose not to heed Castro’s advice.

Read more: Adios Caudillo: Fidel Castro Finally Dies at 90 - The Daily Beast

Venezuela: Hugo Chávez's revelation: Fighting cancer after surgery in Cuba - by Frances Robles

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez acknowledged Thursday night that a cancerous tumor caused his three-week hospital stay in Cuba — his first public admission that the illness that has kept him away so long is serious.

He revealed the diagnosis in a 15-minute evening speech, his first since falling ill 21 days ago. He stood thinner and stone-faced at a lectern, dressed in a long-sleeve black shirt with a red T-shirt underneath. From the start of his address, it was obvious that the normally jovial leader was about to reveal something bleak.

Chávez said he had not been feeling well for weeks but made the serious mistake of ignoring his health and the symptoms. It was Fidel Castro who, during a meeting on June 8, noticed that his friend was unwell, Chávez said.

For more: President Hugo Chávez's revelation: Fighting cancer after surgery in Cuba - Venezuela - MiamiHerald.com

Straitstimes: Fidel Castro: "Obama cant fix capitalism"

For the complete report from the Straitstimes click on this link

Fidel Castro: "Obama cant fix capitalism"

Former president Fidel Castro said on Sunday US President Barack Obama and all his men will not be able to put US capitalism back together again, as Mr Obama prods Congress to pass a massive stimulus plan for the ailing US economy. 'Obama (White House chief of staff Rahm) Emanuel and all the brilliant politicians and economists they've brought together won't suffice to resolve the growing problems of the US capitalist society,' Mr Castro said in an article published in official media. 'All the other countries will have to pay for the colossal waste of money (of the US) and guarantee, first and foremost in this increasingly polluted planet, American jobs and the profits of the country's big multinationals,' Castro wrote. It was Mr Castro's fifth article on Mr Obama in less than two weeks. His tone has become increasingly critical of the new US leader.

BBC NEWS: End of Castro's half century in power - by Michael Voss

Castro - a political icon resigns

For the complete report from the BBC click on this link

End of Castro's half century in power - by Michael Voss

The news that Fidel Castro is stepping down as president after almost 50 years in power came in the middle of the night, through the online edition of the official Communist party newspaper Granma.

Under the headline "Message from the Commander in Chief", the 81-year-old revolutionary leader wrote: "I will not aspire to nor accept - I repeat, I will not aspire to nor accept - the post of President of the Council of State and Commander in Chief." This effectively marks the end of an era. Mr Castro has ruled this Caribbean island since the revolution in 1959. Most Cubans have known no other leader or system, with more than 70% of the population born after the revolution.

Mr Castro pursued an egalitarian society, with free health-care and education. Mr Castro handed temporary power to his brother Raul a year-and-a-half ago after undergoing emergency surgery. A year-and-a-half later and Raul Castro appears to be firmly in control. But in a keynote speech last year Raul Castro told the nation that "structural and conceptual" changes were needed to get the island's faltering economy back on its feet. All of this has raised widespread expectations that major economic changes at least are on the way. In recent months Raul Castro has initiated a wide-sweeping internal debate over what changes people want to see.

Andrew Johnston from Leeds in the UK writes: "Castro led a regime that successfully looked after the basic needs of its people for 50 years, and he did it in the face of an American embargo. When one looks at the sorry state of the other countries in 'America's back-yard' one can only salute a man who was able to look after his own in defiance of the world's greatest military super-power. One of the last towering giants of politics will be lamented in this age of clown Prime Ministers and buffoon Presidents".