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Fidel Castro, Longtime Dictator of Cuba, Has Died

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So they didn't really say that Cuba made a huge difference and deserved more credit for its actions and that payments were made to support anti communist forces as part of US policy.

No, that's just a figment of mine and the BBC programme maker's minds.

No one has ever argued the Cubans did not make a huge difference. It was the object of US policy to create the conditions which made that possible. Henry Kissinger liked to tell his interlocutor he had a great reputation and then offer to help him live up to it. Many of our diplomats (especially Vernon Walters) worked in that tradition.

No one has ever argued the US did not support anti-communist forces as part of US policy. I posted long ago that we supported Savimbi.
 
Yes, not true at all, on both counts: the Batista dictatorship was not "right-wing" - unless a corrupt unionist populist demagogue is somehow supposed to be "right-wing" - and, as a matter of fact, the pre-Batista and Batista Cuba had the best collection of medical professionals in the Western Hemisphere, spare Canada and US - no thanks to any socialist schemes, thanks to (that, long gone) Cuba having been a haven for professionals of all kinds fleeing the Nazi and Commie oppression.

Many on the left buy into the fantasy that Cubans have excellent healthcare based on propaganda and stupid Michael Moore videos. Government officials and wealthy tourists do get decent healthcare in Cuba, however the rank and file Cubans get horribly rationed and inferior care in poorly maintained and stocked facilities.
 
Where did you go?


My area was east Africa. I was out and about - not in Nairobi much at all - involved in Mombassa and the coast for a while, and then around Lake Victoria and farther south than I was supposed to be, at times.




Agreed. My father was in the British Foreign Office in India (the Raj) and many parts of Africa where he met my mother and where I was born. Fair to say, he had a pretty good insight as did my mother from their two different vantage points of politics and life in Southern and Central Eastern Africa.


That's not counting my life separately in many different African countries.


Pretty interesting life. I view Africa with great affection. Jack was involved there much longer than I was, and covered a wider area. I was there six years.
 
My area was east Africa. I was out and about - not in Nairobi much at all - involved in Mombassa and the coast for a while, and then around Lake Victoria and farther south than I was supposed to be, at times.

Small world, I was born in Western Kenya in the period my father tried setting up for retirement by buying into tobacco farming. He was no farmer, no history of working with the land and he lost huge amounts of money from that failure. We then moved back south and lived in Western Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana and my parents kept links up with the diplomatic community.
 
There is a pattern from the Castroit regime to inflate the percentage of illiterates prior to 1959, by using the illiteracy rate of the 1953 census of 23.6%. Fidel Castro on December 17, 1960, in the CMQ-TV program "Meet the Press" affirmed that “The illiteracy rate in our country is 37.5%.” In the Central Report to the First Congress of the Party in 1975, Fidel said that “on the date of the Moncada (1953), 23.6% of the population over 10 years was illiterate.” In spite of what Fidel said, the document "V Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba in October 1997, referring to the period before 1959 says “a country with more than 40 per cent of illiterates.” Dirty bastards liars.

I'm consistently baffled by those who abuse statistics. Literacy rate improved between 1900 and today? WOW! I didn't think that possible. Medical care has improved since the 60's? That's crazy!
The Castroit regime eventually acknowledge the real number, which indicated that in 1961 from a total of 929,207 identified as illiterates, 707,212 were taught to read and write; 221,995 did not acquire these skills. In 1961 the population over 10 years was 5.15 million, and the number of illiterates 929,207 (Verde Olivo, Havana, August 16, 1968, pp. 40-43). The actual illiteracy rate based on the regime figures was 18 %, the same percentage than in 1958. It is obvious the cooking of the figures by the regime.

On a speech December 22, 1961, Fidel Castro declared Cuba a “territory free of illiteracy.” But the Cuba census of 1970 shows an illiteracy rate of 10.7% for age 15 and over. So much for the eradication of the illiteracy.
 
Small world, I was born in Western Kenya in the period my father tried setting up for retirement by buying into tobacco farming. He was no farmer, no history of working with the land and he lost huge amounts of money from that failure. We then moved back south and lived in Western Zambia, Mozambique and Botswana and my parents kept links up with the diplomatic community.

I love the part where Castro executed the general who led the liberation forces.

Castro was a false liberator


In South Africa, Cuba fought apartheid. In the rest of the continent, Fidel’s best friend was an Ethiopian tyrant.





Perhaps Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, the soldier who actually led Cuba’s troops in the Ogaden (and, later, Angola), could find a moral to the story.
Alas, this hero of Cuba’s African wars died in 1989. Fearing that the popular general could become a political rival, Castro ordered him arrested and tried on trumped-up treason and drug charges — then shot at dawn.





 
I love the part where Castro executed the general who led the liberation forces.

Castro was a false liberator


In South Africa, Cuba fought apartheid. In the rest of the continent, Fidel’s best friend was an Ethiopian tyrant.





Perhaps Gen. Arnaldo Ochoa, the soldier who actually led Cuba’s troops in the Ogaden (and, later, Angola), could find a moral to the story.
Alas, this hero of Cuba’s African wars died in 1989. Fearing that the popular general could become a political rival, Castro ordered him arrested and tried on trumped-up treason and drug charges — then shot at dawn.







Like I have explained to you repeatedly, you are an American and your views will have to comply with group thinking on Cuba. The alternative story is this -

It took almost no time for Bush administration spokesmen and the anti-Castro Cuban exiles in Miami and Washington to air charges of political intrigue, uprisings in the armed forces, and threatened coups d'etat, on the one hand, or the idea of Ochoa and friends being used as a scapegoat for a crime Fidel Castro actually authorized. They would have liked to build a campaign around these new "political prisoners, " but the attitude in the world just now is not ripe for gaining support for international drug traffickers. The ideal would have been to convince the world that these men were really political victims of Castro's Machiavellian designs.
~
If Fidel and Raul Castro considered these men political opponents, the easiest way to dispose of them without arousing public indignation would have been to accuse them of counterrevolutionary activities. There would have been quick popular support for their incarceration or eradication. But the government eschewed this easy way out -- and instead, accused them of crimes that would be most embarrassing for the government on an international level. After years of irately denying that anyone in Cuba was in any way involved in international drug traffic, the last thing Fidel Castro would have invented was that some of his most trusted military and defense aides were doing just that.
 
Like I have explained to you repeatedly, you are an American and your views will have to comply with group thinking on Cuba. The alternative story is this -

Sorry, but that's BS. The drug-dealer charge was perfect for the political elimination of a potential rival.
 
The Castroit regime eventually acknowledge the real number, which indicated that in 1961 from a total of 929,207 identified as illiterates, 707,212 were taught to read and write; 221,995 did not acquire these skills. In 1961 the population over 10 years was 5.15 million, and the number of illiterates 929,207 (Verde Olivo, Havana, August 16, 1968, pp. 40-43). The actual illiteracy rate based on the regime figures was 18 %, the same percentage than in 1958. It is obvious the cooking of the figures by the regime.

On a speech December 22, 1961, Fidel Castro declared Cuba a “territory free of illiteracy.” But the Cuba census of 1970 shows an illiteracy rate of 10.7% for age 15 and over. So much for the eradication of the illiteracy.
UN statistics below reveals that the whole hemisphere has made enormous strides in literacy over the past 40 years without the need “to wage a battle against illiteracy.” This statistics don’t have into consideration the quality of Cuban education, which is loaded with heavy doses of ideology. Literacy rates are no excuse to introduce a totalitarian regime.

TABLE 2 LATIN AMERICAN LITERACY RATES (PERCENT)
LATEST AVAILABLE DATA FOR

Country----------- 1950-53----2000----Pct. Pt increase

Argentina................87b...........97...........11.5
Cuba......................76.............96……………26.3
Chile.......................81............96……………18.5
Costa Rica...............79............96…………...21.5
Paraguay.................68............93…………...36.8
Colombia..................62...........92…………...48.4
Panamá...................72............92……………27.8
Ecuador...................56............92……………64.3
Brazil......................49............85…………..73.5
Dominican Rep..........43............84…………...95.3
El Salvador...............42............79…………...88.1
Guatemala...............30............69……………130.0
Haití.......................11............49……………345.4

SOURCE: UN STATISTICAL YEARBOOK 1957, pp. 600-602; UN STATISTICAL YEARBOOK 2000, pp. 76-82.
a. DATA FOR 1950-53 ARE AGE 10 AND OVER.
b. DATA FOR ARGENTINA 1950-53 IS CURRENT AS 1947 DATA, THE LATEST AVAILABLE, AND REFLECTS
AGES 14 AND OVER.
c. DATA FOR 2000 ARE AGE 15 AND OVER.
 
Here we go again...

Even Castro's most ballyhooed achievements were exaggerated.



". . . Other studies confirm that Cubans generally suffered a loss of living standards. Data from the mid-1950s indicate that per capita consumption of calories in Cuba was 2,730 in the mid-1950s — and 2,357 in 1996. Meanwhile, other countries in the region saw an improvement; for example, Mexico went from 2,420 to 3,137 calories. In other words, Cuba declined about 13 percent, while Mexico gained almost 30 percent.
As for health care and education, Cuba was already near the top of the heap before the revolution. Cuba’s low infant mortality rate is often lauded, but it already led the region on this key measure in 1953-1958, according to data collected by Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a Cuba specialist and professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh. In terms of life expectancy, Cuba was in fourth place in the mid-1950s — and advanced to third in 2005-2007. Literacy was also high — fourth place in 1950s — and Cuba advanced to second place in 2005-2007. . . ."
 
Even Castro's most ballyhooed achievements were exaggerated.



". . . Other studies confirm that Cubans generally suffered a loss of living standards. Data from the mid-1950s indicate that per capita consumption of calories in Cuba was 2,730 in the mid-1950s — and 2,357 in 1996. Meanwhile, other countries in the region saw an improvement; for example, Mexico went from 2,420 to 3,137 calories. In other words, Cuba declined about 13 percent, while Mexico gained almost 30 percent.
As for health care and education, Cuba was already near the top of the heap before the revolution. Cuba’s low infant mortality rate is often lauded, but it already led the region on this key measure in 1953-1958, according to data collected by Carmelo Mesa-Lago, a Cuba specialist and professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh. In terms of life expectancy, Cuba was in fourth place in the mid-1950s — and advanced to third in 2005-2007. Literacy was also high — fourth place in 1950s — and Cuba advanced to second place in 2005-2007. . . ."
UN statistics show that Cuba’s health, education and standard of living levels grew under a democratic-capitalist system during the period 1902–58.

In 1957 Cuba ranked in 13th place worldwide in infant mortality rate; 32nd in life expectancy at birth; 25th in maternal mortality ratio; 26th in physician density per population; 16th in dentists; 14th in midwives; 26 in pharmacists. In the Americas ranked 6th in nurses, and 3rd in hospital beds.

In 2007, under the Castroit regime, Cuba ranked in 34th place worldwide in infant mortality rate; 43rd in live expectancy at birth; ; 68th in maternal mortality ratio; 1st in physician density per population ; xth in dentists; xth in midwives; x in pharmacists. In the Americas ranked xth in nurses, and xrd in hospital beds.
Link: http://www.ascecuba.org/c/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/v22-stusser.pdf

“According to the 1953 Cuba census, out of 4,376,529 inhabitants 10 years of age or older 23.6% were illiterate, a percentage lower than all other Latin American countries except Argentina (13.6%), Chile (19.6%), and Costa Rica (20.6%). Factoring only the population 15 years of age or older, the rate is lowered to 22.1%.” Reference: Alvarez Díaz, José R. “A Study on Cuba.” Cuban Economic Research Project. Coral Gables: University of Miami Press, 1965. pg. 426-427.

Year-- Pop. M-------Over 10 yr-----Illiteracy rate----Over 15 yr---Factored illiteracy rate

1953-----5.83----------4.38------------------23.6------------3.72------------------22.1
1958-----6.63----------4.92------------------18.0------------4.16------------------16.4
1961-----6.9-----------5.15------------------18.0------------4.36------------------16.4
1970-----8.6-----------6.32----------------------------------5.37------------------10.7 (1)

(1) Source: UNESCO Institute of Statistics. Estimated illiteracy and illiterate population aged 15 years and older, July 2002. JUCEPLAN, Censo de Población y Viviendas 1970.
Link: http://www.uis.unesco.org/ev.php?URL_ID=5794&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201

It took only 7 years to reduce the illiteracy rate 5.7% during the Republic, but it took 12 years to reduce it 5.7% under the Castroit regime. Where is the beef?
 
Castro and Human Dignity
Castro and Human Dignity - WSJ

Five or six prisoners would be confined for days in very narrow 6-foot-long cells.

By Mary Anastasia O’Grady
Dec. 4, 2016

BN-RB328_amcol1_IM_20161204085850.jpg

A motorcade carries the ashes of Fidel Castro toward a cemetery in Santiago, Cuba, Dec. 4. Photo: Associated Press

Notwithstanding the celebrations in the streets of Miami, the most widespread reaction among Cubans—at home and abroad—to the demise of Fidel Castro seems to be relief. One of the great narcissists of all time, father of nearly 60 years of national torment, has returned to dust. That alone is consolation.

Castro left a once-prosperous and promising land in dire poverty. But his legacy is far worse than the material ruin of a nation. His insatiable appetite for absolute power was manifest in an obsession with hunting down every last nonconformist, stripping away the human dignity of the population.

This reality is worth revisiting as the world offers retrospectives on Castro’s life, almost always adding that the tyrant gave Cuba great health care. If it were true it could not justify his brutality. And it is not true, as we learned in 2007 when Cuban doctors botched his treatment for diverticulitis and a Spanish specialist had to be flown in to save him. The truth is that the regime doesn’t give a fig about human life.

Castro thrived on a maniacal ambition to possess and dominate the Cuban soul, and nowhere are the consequences more visible than in the country’s sky-high abortion rates. In a Nov. 22 story for the news website CUBANET, independent journalist Eliseo Matos cited an abortion study by Cuban doctors Luisa Álvarez Vásquez and Nelli Salomón Avich. They found that since 1980, one-third of all Cuban pregnancies have been terminated.
Click link above for full article.
Progressives keep praising the so all “achievements” of the Castroit regime. Castro main achievement was the enslavement of the Cuban People. They keep repeating, like parrots, the lies about the “achievements” of the regime in education and health care, hopping like Goebbels that if they tell a lied and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it.
 
Ahead of schedule and under budget........

The US has been trying to assassinate Castro for 57 years.



Trump is elected and he's dead in three weeks.

 
Excerpt from the article "Castro and Human Dignity"

As Mr. Valladares wrote in The Wall Street Journal in May 2000, “Away from all parental supervision for nine months at a time, children there suffer from venereal disease, as well as teenage pregnancy, which inevitably ends in forced abortion.” Another reason for high adolescent abortion rates is that teenage prostitutes now populate the streets of Havana, working for hard currency from tourists.

Abortion is also a key regime tool for “health care.” Any pregnancy considered risky is immediately terminated, a decision made by the state. This drives down infant mortality rates, which Cuba uses to impress the world about its “progress.”

Yet Cuba hasn’t achieved anything special in infant mortality. In a Dec. 1 blog post on the Cato Institute’s HumanProgress website, Marian Tupy pointed out that between 1963 and 2015 infant mortality in Cuba declined by 90% while it declined by 94% in Chile. In Latin America and the Caribbean overall it is down 86%.
It is a well-known fact that totalitarian regimes inflate statistics. Cuba's infant mortality rate is kept low by the regime’s tampering with statistics, by a low birth rate of 12.5 births per 1000 population, and by a staggering abortion rate of 77.7 abortions per 1,000 women (0.78 abortions per each live birth. Data based on official statistics from the Cuban government). Cuba had the lowest birth rate and doubles the abortion rate in Latin America. Cuba's abortion rate was the 3rd highest out of the 60 countries studied. Link: The Incident of Abortion Worldwide (https://www.guttmacher.org/article/2013/11/incidence-abortion-worldwide);
 
Another health parameter linked to infant mortality, is the maternal mortality rate. Cuba’s maternal mortality rate is 33 deaths per 1,000 live births. This health statistic is high despite the fact that Cuba has the lowest birth rate in Latin America. The doctors are supposed to suggest abortion in risky pregnancies and, in some occasions, must perform the interruption without the consent of the couple. Cuban pediatricians constantly falsify figures for the regime. If an infant dies during his first year, the doctors often report he/she was older (infant mortality rate is define by the number of deaths during the first year of life per thousand live births). Otherwise, such lapses could cost him severe penalties and his job. As a matter of fact, the Castroit regime has taken total control of the Cuban people from their cradle to their grave. Link: Demystifying the Cuban Health System: An Insider’s View, Rodolfo J. Stusser, (http://www.ascecuba.org/c/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/v21-stusser.pdf).
 
Before 1902 the island had 26 public hospitals with 4,529 beds for an estimate population of 1.63 million. From 1903 to 1933 10 new hospitals were built with a total of 2,365 beds. By 1933 a total of 36 hospitals with 6892 beds were in service for an estimate population of 3.83 million. From 1933 to 1958, 36 new hospitals were built, for a total of 72, with added 14,248 beds. The total number of beds in the state own hospitals was 21,140, and the assistance was free (Brief Resume of the Hospitals and Numbers of Hospital Beds in Cuba, Journal of the Florida Medical Association, 1977, pp. 554-558; The Growth and decline of the Cuban Republic, 1964, pp. 107, 108).

In 1958 Cuba had 370 medical centers in service (Social Security in Cuba, Mesa Lago and Hernandez, 1964, p. 160; CUBA FACTS Issue 4- April 2004, link: CUBA FACTS) among 72 public hospitals, 28 polyclinics, 140 mutual aid clinics and cooperatives, and 130 private medical institutions that provided an additional 15,000 beds for a total of 36,140 beds for a population of 6.63 million, equivalent to one bed per 183 per inhabitant. Private healthcare facilities covered 40% of the population.
 
The Death of a Dictator: Fidel Castro (1926-2016)
The Death of a Dictator: Fidel Castro (1926-2016) | ncregister.com

NEWS ANALYSIS: Cuba’s strongman brutally persecuted the Church.
Victor Gaetan
Dec. 2, 2016

WASHINGTON — At least three popes prayed for his soul, but Commandante Fidel Castro, the Jesuit-educated dictator who tyrannized Cuba for almost 50 years, resisted their merciful intercessions.

His death at age 90 on Nov. 25 was announced defiantly on Cuban TV by his brother, President Raul Castro, 85.

Nine days of public mourning features mass rallies in Havana and Santiago de Cuba, but no Mass of Christian burial for this baptized Catholic, whose revolution of 1959 targeted the Catholic Church as an enemy.

In fact, churches on the island have been visited by Communist Party bureaucrats and asked to cancel Mass, Eucharistic adoration and any musical programs. (The response has been rightly uncooperative.)

Fidel’s relationship to the Catholic Church was known for its ambiguity. He saw the Church in utterly opportunistic ways, desperate to co-opt its moral authority in the 1990s, after demolishing it for more than 30 years.

To the end, he gave signs of fascination with God, religion and Christianity’s powerful attraction, but his ego seemed unable to confess sin or seek reconciliation.
Click link above for full article.
The Catholic school that Gaetan is referring is “Colegio de Belén” built in 1925, where Castro coursed the high school. In 1939, was built a one story building to house the elementary school “El Niño de Belén where poor children were educated free of charge, and in 1940 was founded the “Escuela Electro Mecánica de Belén” for the training of youngsters as middle-level technicians free of charge.

The property was confiscated by the Castroit regime in 1961and the Jesuits priests expelled. The building was renamed “Instituto Técnico Militar” and used for the formation of command cadres for the Castroit Armed Forces. The elementary school was level and replaced with a training military airport. As can be seeing, the poor children and the working class youngsters were replaced by Castroit loyalist cadres.
 
"Gusanos was the derogatory term used by Castro against the Cuban exile community who fled the island seeking freedom abroad." As a matter of fact, Castro copy it from the Nazi propaganda that used the word “gusano” (worm) against its opponents, as poisonous worms was used against the Jews.
 
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“Democracy pioneer Payá and his assistant, Cepero, were murdered in a fake car accident on a straight road, in full daylight and clear weather.”

fotoautopaya.jpg


Photo of the car where Paya was a passenger, showing a severe collision impact to the back of the car, not consistent with the regime claimed of frontal impact with a tree. To believe that the deaths occurred because the vehicle hit a tree would most likely stem from a belief that the tree was coming from behind at high speed.

Payá was a true hero fighting the good fight, which remained in Cuba and gave up his life in the struggle against the Castroit tyrannical regime.
 
Despite evidence that the merciless Castro machine slayed the flower of Cuban Catholic virtue, the Vatican continued to pray for Fidel Castro’s conversion.
Fidel Castro was excommunicated. The penalty was not removed and he never converted. His ashes supposedly buried at Santa Ifigenia cemetery is illegal, since it is a Catholic cemetery. Because of that, his ashes shall be removed from Santa Ifigenia when democracy returns to Cuba.
 
Castro's 'Accomplishments' in Cuba a Load of Nonsense
Blog | HumanProgress.org

By Marian L. Tupy
December 01, 2016

Justin Trudeau sure as heck stepped in it, hasn't he? Of course, the Canadian prime minister was not alone in praising Fidel Castro's "significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation." Here is a compilation of the usual suspects (CNN, MSNBC, NBC, etc.) fawning over the dead dictator's "legacy." And, since fish stinks from the head down, let's not forget President Obama's lionization of the Castro brothers' "accomplishments" when he visited Havana earlier this year.

Sure, our 44th president acknowledged that Cubans are pathetically poor and lack basic human rights, but then he took the sting out of his condemnation of the Cuban dictatorship by saying that the Cuban government "should be congratulated" for giving each child basic education and every person access to healthcare. I wonder if our president would perform a similar rhetorical summersault when talking about General Augusto Pinochet, whose economic policies have turned the once backward Chile into Latin America's richest country in one generation.
Click link above for full article.
In all nations with high emigration rates longevity rates skew high. This occurs because the birth is recorded but the death gets recorded in the nation migrated to. So it seems like fewer people die. A nation with high longevity but with high emigration has little to boast about with regards to longevity figures. During the last 57 years, 2.7 million Cubans have emigrated/born abroad. The actual island population is 11.2 million. The 2.7 million represent 24% of the population in the island and 19.5% of the total population, a high emigration rate. This is one of the reasons of the high life expectancy.
 
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