By the fall of 1962, President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, had spent the better part of a year orchestrating a massive and multifaceted campaign aimed at toppling Cuban dictator Fidel Castro from power.
Tag Archives: Fidel Castro
Diego Maradona visits Fidel Castro in Cuba
Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona has paid a visit to retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Official Cuban media have published a photograph of a smiling Maradona shaking hands with Castro, who is wearing a sporty blue jacket.
Communist Party newspaper Granma said Monday that it was an “animated and fruitful exchange between two old friends.”
The two have known each other since Maradona first visited the island in 1986.
The soccer great also lived for several years in Cuba, where he came in 2000 for treatment for substance abuse.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/ydk_ojSEmik/
Fidel Castro Pens North Korea Column, Reaffirms Alliance With Cuba While Warning Of Nuclear Consequences
By The Huffington Post News Editors
HAVANA — Retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro published his first column in nearly nine months on Friday, urging both friends and foes to use restraint amid tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
In the brief piece published in Communist Party daily Granma and other official media, Castro warned of the impact that nuclear war could unleash in Asia and beyond. He said Havana has always been and will continue to be an ally to North Korea, but gently admonished it to consider the well-being of humankind.
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Source: FULL ARTICLE at Huffington Post
Fidel Castro says North Korea is an ally but urges restraint in new column
Retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro has published his first column in nearly nine months, urging restraint on the Korean Peninsula.
In the brief piece, Castro writes of the wider impact that a nuclear war could unleash in Asia and beyond.
He says Havana has always been and will continue to be an ally to North Korea, but asks it to consider the interests of its friends.
And he says if war breaks out, it will result in images that paint President Barack Obama as “the most sinister figure in U.S. history.”
Castro last published one of his “Reflections” in June 2012. In October he said he stopped writing them because they were occupying space in state-run media that was needed for other purposes.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
The Cuban Revolution Gets A Video Game Based On 1950s Battles
By The Huffington Post News Editors
HAVANA — Fight your way through mangrove swamps shoulder-to-shoulder with bearded guerrillas clad in the olive green of Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Your mission: Topple 1950s Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Out to foil you are helmeted Batista soldiers and police in mustard-yellow uniforms who pop out from behind trees and fire from trucks and farmhouses. You pick them off with a vintage Colt .45 or Springfield rifle in classic first-person-shooter style. If you’re hit three times, it’s revolution over.
Leftist Prayers For A Red Pope Dashed
Tuesday night’s NBC News story, “America’s Hopes for a New Pope,” was typical of how the liberal media tried to force the Roman Catholic Church further to the left. The tone of the coverage was that the Catholic Church, in picking a new pope, had to make peace with “diversity”—liberals, feminists, and homosexuals demanding state recognition of “gay marriage” in the United States.
With the selection of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, the liberals have lost out. He opposes abortion, euthanasia, and homosexuality. A Catholic insider tells me, “Looks like we might have ourselves a relatively conservative new pope. He appears to be opposed to liberation theology and doesn’t approach ‘social justice’ from the political end.” The latter means that while he is an advocate of helping the poor, he doesn’t believe this should be done through state socialist schemes.
Liberal and “progressive” websites are already attacking the first Latin American pope as someone who may have a “dark past” and be linked to the Argentine military during the “dirty war” against the communists. The accusations, which have now been picked up by the Associated Press, show the bitterness of the left, as their hopes were dashed of a “Red Pope.”
Mark Engler, a leftist writer, had promoted another candidate, Brazilian Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, as having “significant progressive bona fides” and noted that he was “a personal friend of former Brazilian president and Worker’s Party leader Lula da Silva.” The Worker’s Party is a Marxist political organization in Brazil, and Lula was a personal friend of Fidel Castro as well. Critics say that Hummes “supported communist strikes” and allowed Lula “to make political speeches during his Masses.” In 1990, after the demise of the old Soviet Union, Lula facilitated the holding of a conference in São Paolo, Brazil, bringing together the communist and leftist parties and guerilla movements of the continent, which came to be known as the São Paulo Forum. Lula’s successor, Dilma Rousseff, the current Brazilian President, is a former communist guerrilla leader.
“Hummes would open the door for the revival of social justice ministry in the Catholic Church,” Engler had written. Of course, “social justice” is already a theme of many of the U.S. Catholic Bishops, who have funded liberal projects with parishioners’ money through the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) for decades, enraging conservative Catholics in the process. It was a CCHD project that helped train Barack Obama as a community organizer on the streets of Chicago. These schemes are ways to attain political power, and they have paid off well for Obama and his associates but not for the poor people they were supposedly intended to help.
In a 2005 story, “Champion of Workers and the Poor,” The Washington Post noted that Hummes had emerged as “a critic of the U.S.-backed free-market policies that were adopted in much of Latin America.” In other words, he helped pave the way for leaders such as Marxist Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who clutched a crucifix …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism
Fidel Castro laments loss of 'best friend,' Chavez
Retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro has broken nearly a week of silence since the death of friend and ally Hugo Chavez, calling the late Venezuelan president Cuba‘s “best friend.”
Castro says in an editorial published in Communist Party newspaper Granma that Chavez’s delicate health was well known, but news of his passing March 5 nonetheless came as a shock.
The 86-year-old Castro has all but ceased penning his once-regular columns known as “Reflections.”
Last October he explained that he decided to do so because they were taking up valuable space in state media that was needed for other purposes.
His column on Chavez was carried Monday in Granma and other official newspapers.
Hugo Chavez: Faithful To Death
Editor’s note: A version of this article first appeared at American Spectator.
There’s an old joke from the Cold War. It went like this: Hardline East German communist Walter Ulbricht (who erected the Berlin Wall) died and went to hell. There, the devil gave him a choice between the socialist sector and the capitalist sector. Devoted to the end, Ulbricht stuck to the faith, saying: “I’ll go to the socialist sector.” “Good choice,” averred the devil. “Over in the capitalist sector, they’re getting the full hellfire treatment. But in the socialist sector, they’ve run out of coal.”
Say what you want of Hugo Chavez, of his tactics, of his beliefs, and (as many are doing) of perhaps where he might be right now. But this much is certain: he stuck to the faith.
Many of us were downright amazed when Chavez, in his late 50s and desperately ill from cancer, opted to go to Cuba for treatment. It was a surefire death sentence. Only the most hopelessly devoted communist would be so naïve. Loaded with vast wealth he stole from his people, Chavez effectively chose acupuncture over the 21st-century healthcare widely available anywhere in the West.
And yet, the Venezuelan dictator clung to his religion. He went to Havana.
Chavez apparently gained some measure of comfort near the aging breast of his dying, beloved Fidel. He had so much in common with Castro, admiring the totalitarian’s unparalleled, unprecedented seizure of power and resources, all in the name of redistribution and “social justice.” Like Fidel, he pilfered enough riches from the ostracized affluent class to make himself one of the world’s wealthiest leaders. As he did, he churned the propaganda, blaming his nation’s every ill on his predecessors and on the alleged criminality of the very same rich—as Fidel has done, as the left generally has done.
A few years back, my wife and I were in Washington meeting with an old friend from grad-school days, a native of Venezuela named Daria. When we introduced her to another acquaintance, she remarked with a sad smile, “I’m from Venezuela. We’re communist now.”
In Chavez’s partial defense—and this isn’t saying much—he never achieved the scales of collectivism and depths of depravity of Fidel Castro, or of the world’s really bad communists. Venezuela didn’t become Cuba or the Soviet Union. Needless to say, Hugo Chavez was no Joe Stalin—even as, remarkably, he died on the 60th anniversary of Stalin’s death.
Nonetheless, like any man of the left, he had his enemy groups, and he used them to full advantage. Some of these assorted villains were flagged in a curious Washington Post obituary which headlined Chavez as a “passionate” albeit “polarizing” figure. What earned him even this slight compliment from the Post? Who knows? The same article noted that Chavez referred to the Catholic Church hierarchy as “devils in vestments.” But perhaps the Post was impressed less with Chavez’s opprobrium for the Catholic Church than his encomiums for Barack Obama.
Of course, Chavez was a big fan of Obama. He made …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Western Journalism
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez dead, VP says
President Hugo Chavez, the fiery populist who declared a socialist revolution in Venezuela, crusaded against U.S. influence and championed a leftist revival across Latin America, died Tuesday at age 58 after a nearly two-year bout with cancer.
Vice President Nicolas Maduro, surrounded by other government officials, announced the death in a national television broadcast. He said Chavez died at 4:25 p.m. local time.
During more than 14 years in office, Chavez routinely challenged the status quo at home and internationally. He polarized Venezuelans with his confrontational and domineering style, yet was also a masterful communicator and strategist who tapped into Venezuelan nationalism to win broad support, particularly among the poor.
Chavez repeatedly proved himself a political survivor. As an army paratroop commander, he led a failed coup in 1992, then was pardoned and elected president in 1998. He survived a coup against his own presidency in 2002 and won re-election two more times.
The burly president electrified crowds with his booming voice, often wearing the bright red of his United Socialist Party of Venezuela or the fatigues and red beret of his army days. Before his struggle with cancer, he appeared on television almost daily, talking for hours at a time and often breaking into song of philosophical discourse.
Chavez used his country’s vast oil wealth to launch social programs that include state-run food markets, new public housing, free health clinics and education programs. Poverty declined during Chavez’s presidency amid a historic boom in oil earnings, but critics said he failed to use the windfall of hundreds of billions of dollars to develop the country’s economy.
Inflation soared and the homicide rate rose to among the highest in the world.
Chavez underwent surgery in Cuba in June 2011 to remove what he said was a baseball-size tumor from his pelvic region, and the cancer returned repeatedly over the next 18 months despite more surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. He kept secret key details of his illness, including the type of cancer and the precise location of the tumors.
“El Comandante,” as he was known, stayed in touch with the Venezuelan people during his treatment via Twitter and phone calls broadcast on television, but even those messages dropped off as his health deteriorated.
Two months after his last re-election in October, Chavez returned to Cuba again for cancer surgery, blowing a kiss to his country as he boarded the plane. He was never seen again in public.
After a 10-week absence marked by opposition protests over the lack of information about the president’s health and growing unease among the president’s “Chavista” supporters, the government released photographs of Chavez on Feb. 15 and three days later announced that the president had returned to Venezuela to be treated at a military hospital in Caracas.
Throughout his presidency, Chavez said he hoped to fulfill Bolivar’s unrealized dream of uniting South America.
He was also inspired by Cuban leader Fidel Castro and took on the aging revolutionary’s role as Washington’s chief antagonist in the Western Hemisphere after Castro relinquished the presidency to his brother Raul in 2006.
Supporters …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Fidel Castro describes aches and pains of aging
Retired Cuban leader Fidel Castro complains of a bad knee, weak eyesight and difficulty adjusting to changes in light in a lengthy interview published in island newspapers.
The 86-year-old praises election officials for building a new entrance to his polling place, meaning he doesn’t have to climb stairs.
Castro also speaks of the health of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a close ally who is battling cancer in Havana.
He says that in his struggle to refashion the South American nation on socialist principles, Chavez “neglected his health.”
Castro stepped aside as president in 2008, handing power to his younger brother Raul. He spoke with local reporters Feb. 3 when he voted in national election, and the transcript was published Tuesday.
Fidel Castro: Venezuela's Chavez 'much better'
Cuba‘s Fidel Castro says Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is getting “much better” after undergoing a fourth cancer operation in December.
Castro says he gets daily updates on Chavez’s condition. He adds that it has been a tough struggle for the Venezuelan leader, but says Chavez is improving.
Chavez has not been seen or heard from publicly since his Dec. 11 surgery in Cuba. Officials have not disclosed details of his cancer other than to say it was in the pelvic region.
Castro spoke with Cuban state media Sunday when he appeared at a Havana polling station to cast his vote in parliamentary elections. His comments were published Monday in Communist Party newspaper Granma.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Fidel Castro Surfaces for Cuban Election
By Rob Quinn 
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
Daring skyscraper climber eyes iconic Havana hotel
The daredevil climber nicknamed “Spider-Man” is famous for scaling the world’s tallest skyscrapers without a safety line.
Now Alain Robert is tackling a slightly less imposing edifice with plenty of symbolism.
The 50-year-old Frenchman is in Cuba to conquer the 27-story former Hilton, which was taken over after the 1959 Cuban Revolution and redubbed the “Habana Libre,” or “Free Havana.”
Fidel Castro set up his personal offices here soon after his triumphant march into the capital.
Robert tells the AP in an exclusive interview that the hotel has “great meaning” for him for its symbolism.
The Habana Libre is dwarfed by others Robert has summited like the Empire State Building. But at 413 feet (126 meters), a fall would still be deadly.
Robert plans to make his attempt Monday.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
Cuba Finally Gets Faster Internet …In One Direction
By Rob Quinn 
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Newser – Home
Obama Use Of Children As Props Mirrors Hitler, Stalin
On Wednesday Barack Obama used children as props in order to attempt to pull on the heartstrings of the public, snookering them into supporting his proposals for gun bans and a national database of all gun owners. Supposedly the message in the photo-op is that no matter how egregious the attack on the rights of the people, as long as it is done “for the children” any act of government tyranny is justified.
Regarding Obama’s disgraceful use of children in a debate about guns, it is to be noted that notorious dictators such as Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Chairman Mao, and Fidel Castro all used children as props. And each first registered all gun owners prior to a systematic program of gun confiscation, leading to the Holocaust that killed 7 million Jews and 5 million political dissidents, and to the scourge Stalin conducted in the Soviet Union that resulted in the murders of 27 million Russians. Chairman Mao’s rampage in China after his Communist takeover of the country resulted in the cold blooded murders of upwards of 60 million Chinese.
Progressives have often denounced comparing Obama to Hitler and Stalin. But the comparisons are stark and obvious, not only in his use of children as propaganda tools but attempting to make law by executive order.
Executive orders were originally intended to enable presidents to issue directives within the executive branch of government alone. The president, according to the Constitution, is the chief officer of the executive branch and thus is empowered to set policy and issue directives regarding the various agencies of the executive branch.
Executive orders have no authority outside the executive branch of government. Thus, any directive issued by Obama in the form of executive orders that are aimed at creating law in areas Congress refused to do so, or to order citizens to engage in certain activity, such as the horrendous executive order issued Wednesday to make doctors, in essence, spies for the federal government with regard to guns in the homes of their patients.
Read More at examiner.com . By Anthony Martin.
Credits: Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images