It's official, Castro has resigned
- Thread starter Tonington
- Start date
That certainly seemed possible. I guess he has a little more say if he's still alive, as to the countries future.
We don't know the exact state of his present health, but can imagine it isn't all that good.He is doing the right thing by resigning and passing power to someone who can fulfill all the duties of the office & still advise behind the scenes. Amazinf isn't it..outlasting 9 American presidents:smile:
Raul Castro has been running the country for the past 2 years, I don't think there is going to be any significant change.
The US has already announced that they will not be lifting the embargo against Cuba, I suppose the US won't lift these until the country is totally "Castro free"
The US has already announced that they will not be lifting the embargo against Cuba, I suppose the US won't lift these until the country is totally "Castro free"
638 ways to kill Castro
The CIA's outlandish plots to bump off the Cuban dictator would put 007 to shame ... poison pills, toxic cigars and exploding molluscs. Once he even offered to shoot himself, reports Duncan Campbell
* Duncan Campbell
* The Guardian,
* Thursday August 3 2006
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This article appeared in the Guardian on Thursday August 03 2006 on p14 of the G2 comment & features section. It was last updated at 00:09 on August 03 2006.
For nearly half a century, the CIA and Cuban exiles have been trying to devise ways to assassinate Fidel Castro, who is currently laid low in Cuba following an operation for intestinal bleeding. None of the plots, of course, succeeded, but, then, many of them would probably be rejected as too fanciful for a James Bond novel.
Fabian Escalante, who, for a time, had the job of keeping El Commandante alive, has calculated that there have been a total of 638 attempts on Castro's life. That may sound like a staggeringly high figure, but then the CIA were pretty keen on killing him. As Wayne Smith, former head of the US interests section in Havana, pointed out recently, Cuba had the effect on the US that a full moon has on a werewolf. It seems highly likely that if the CIA had had access to a werewolf, it would have tried smuggling it into the Sierra Maestra at some point over the past 40-odd years.
The most spectacular of the plots against Castro will be examined in a Channel 4 documentary entitled 638 Ways to Kill Castro, as well as in a companion book of the same name written by the now-retired Escalante - a man who, while in his post as head of the Cuban secret service, played a personal part in heading off a number of the plots. While the exploding cigar that was intended to blow up in Castro's face is perhaps the best-known of the attempts on his life, others have been equally bizarre.
Knowing his fascination for scuba-diving off the coast of Cuba, the CIA at one time invested in a large volume of Caribbean molluscs. The idea was to find a shell big enough to contain a lethal quantity of explosives, which would then be painted in colours lurid and bright enough to attract Castro's attention when he was underwater. Documents released under the Clinton administration confirm that this plan was considered but, like many others, did not make it far from the drawing-board. Another aborted plot related to Castro's underwater activities was for a diving-suit to be prepared for him that would be infected with a fungus that would cause a chronic and debilitating skin disease.
One of the reasons there have been so many attempts on his life is that he has been in power for so long. Attempts to kill Castro began almost immediately after the 1959 revolution, which brought him to power. In 1961, when Cuban exiles with the backing of the US government tried to overthrow him in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the aim was to assassinate Fidel and Raul Castro and Che Guevara. Two years later, on the day that President Kennedy was assassinated, an agent who had been given a pen-syringe in Paris was sent to kill Castro, but failed.
On one occasion, a former lover was recruited to kill him, according to Peter Moore, producer of the new film. The woman was given poison pills by the CIA, and she hid them in her cold cream jar. But the pills melted and she decided that, all things considered, putting cold cream in Castro's mouth while he slept was a bad idea. According to this woman, Castro had already guessed that she was aiming to kill him and he duly offered her his own pistol. "I can't do it, Fidel," she told him.
No one apparently could. This former lover is far from the only person to have failed to poison Castro: at one point the CIA prepared bacterial poisons to be placed in Castro's hand-kerchief or in his tea and coffee, but nothing came of it. A CIA poison pill had to be abandoned when it failed to disintegrate in water during tests.
The most recent serious assassination attempt that we know of came in 2000 when Castro was due to visit Panama. A plot was hatched to put 200lb (90kg) of high explosives under the podium where he was due to speak. That time, Castro's personal security team carried out their own checks on the scene, and helped to abort the plot. Four men, including Luis Posada, a veteran Cuban exile and former CIA operative, were jailed as a result, but they were later given a pardon and released from jail.
As it happens, Posada is the most dedicated of those who have tried and failed to get rid of the Cuban president. He is currently in jail in El Paso, Texas, in connection with extradition attempts by Venezuela and Cuba to get him to stand trial for allegedly blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976. His case is due to come back before the courts later this month but few imagine that he will be sent to stand trial, and he appears confident that he will be allowed to resume his retirement in Florida, a place where many of the unsuccessful would-be assassins have made their homes.
Not all the attempts on Castro's life have been fancifully complicated: many have been far simpler and owe more to the methods of the mafia who used to hang out in the casinos and hotels of Havana in the 40s and 50s, than they do to James Bond. At one time the CIA even approached underworld figures to try to carry out the killing. One of Castro's old classmates planned to shoot him dead in the street in broad daylight much in the manner of a mafia hit. One would-be sniper at the University of Havana was caught by security men. But the shooters were no more successful than the poisoners and bombers.
Officially, the US has abandoned its attempt to kill its arch-enemy, but Cuban security are not taking any chances. Any gifts sent to the ailing leader as he lies ill this week will be carefully scrutinised, just as they were when those famous exploding cigars were being constructed by the CIA's technical services department in the early 60s. (They never got to him, by the way, those cigars contaminated with botulinum toxin, but they are understood to have been made using his favourite brand. Castro gave up smoking in 1985.)
All these plots inevitably changed the way Castro lived his life. While in his early years in office, he often walked alone in the street, but that practice had to change. Since then doubles have been used, and over the decades Castro has moved between around 20 different addresses in Cuba to make it harder for any potential hitmen to reach him.
Meanwhile, jokes about Castro's apparent indestructibility have become commonplace in Cuba. One, recounted in the New Yorker this week, tells of him being given a present of a Galapagos turtle. Castro declines it after he learns that it is likely to live only 100 years. "That's the problem with pets," he says. "You get attached to them and then they die on you".
The CIA's outlandish plots to bump off the Cuban dictator would put 007 to shame ... poison pills, toxic cigars and exploding molluscs. Once he even offered to shoot himself, reports Duncan Campbell
* Duncan Campbell
* The Guardian,
* Thursday August 3 2006
Contact us
Close
* Report errors or inaccuracies: reader@guardian.co.uk
* Letters for publication should be sent to: letters@guardian.co.uk
* If you need help using the site: userhelp@guardian.co.uk
* Call the main Guardian and Observer switchboard:
+44 (0)20 7278 2332
*
o Advertising guide
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About this article
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This article appeared in the Guardian on Thursday August 03 2006 on p14 of the G2 comment & features section. It was last updated at 00:09 on August 03 2006.
For nearly half a century, the CIA and Cuban exiles have been trying to devise ways to assassinate Fidel Castro, who is currently laid low in Cuba following an operation for intestinal bleeding. None of the plots, of course, succeeded, but, then, many of them would probably be rejected as too fanciful for a James Bond novel.
Fabian Escalante, who, for a time, had the job of keeping El Commandante alive, has calculated that there have been a total of 638 attempts on Castro's life. That may sound like a staggeringly high figure, but then the CIA were pretty keen on killing him. As Wayne Smith, former head of the US interests section in Havana, pointed out recently, Cuba had the effect on the US that a full moon has on a werewolf. It seems highly likely that if the CIA had had access to a werewolf, it would have tried smuggling it into the Sierra Maestra at some point over the past 40-odd years.
The most spectacular of the plots against Castro will be examined in a Channel 4 documentary entitled 638 Ways to Kill Castro, as well as in a companion book of the same name written by the now-retired Escalante - a man who, while in his post as head of the Cuban secret service, played a personal part in heading off a number of the plots. While the exploding cigar that was intended to blow up in Castro's face is perhaps the best-known of the attempts on his life, others have been equally bizarre.
Knowing his fascination for scuba-diving off the coast of Cuba, the CIA at one time invested in a large volume of Caribbean molluscs. The idea was to find a shell big enough to contain a lethal quantity of explosives, which would then be painted in colours lurid and bright enough to attract Castro's attention when he was underwater. Documents released under the Clinton administration confirm that this plan was considered but, like many others, did not make it far from the drawing-board. Another aborted plot related to Castro's underwater activities was for a diving-suit to be prepared for him that would be infected with a fungus that would cause a chronic and debilitating skin disease.
One of the reasons there have been so many attempts on his life is that he has been in power for so long. Attempts to kill Castro began almost immediately after the 1959 revolution, which brought him to power. In 1961, when Cuban exiles with the backing of the US government tried to overthrow him in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the aim was to assassinate Fidel and Raul Castro and Che Guevara. Two years later, on the day that President Kennedy was assassinated, an agent who had been given a pen-syringe in Paris was sent to kill Castro, but failed.
On one occasion, a former lover was recruited to kill him, according to Peter Moore, producer of the new film. The woman was given poison pills by the CIA, and she hid them in her cold cream jar. But the pills melted and she decided that, all things considered, putting cold cream in Castro's mouth while he slept was a bad idea. According to this woman, Castro had already guessed that she was aiming to kill him and he duly offered her his own pistol. "I can't do it, Fidel," she told him.
No one apparently could. This former lover is far from the only person to have failed to poison Castro: at one point the CIA prepared bacterial poisons to be placed in Castro's hand-kerchief or in his tea and coffee, but nothing came of it. A CIA poison pill had to be abandoned when it failed to disintegrate in water during tests.
The most recent serious assassination attempt that we know of came in 2000 when Castro was due to visit Panama. A plot was hatched to put 200lb (90kg) of high explosives under the podium where he was due to speak. That time, Castro's personal security team carried out their own checks on the scene, and helped to abort the plot. Four men, including Luis Posada, a veteran Cuban exile and former CIA operative, were jailed as a result, but they were later given a pardon and released from jail.
As it happens, Posada is the most dedicated of those who have tried and failed to get rid of the Cuban president. He is currently in jail in El Paso, Texas, in connection with extradition attempts by Venezuela and Cuba to get him to stand trial for allegedly blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976. His case is due to come back before the courts later this month but few imagine that he will be sent to stand trial, and he appears confident that he will be allowed to resume his retirement in Florida, a place where many of the unsuccessful would-be assassins have made their homes.
Not all the attempts on Castro's life have been fancifully complicated: many have been far simpler and owe more to the methods of the mafia who used to hang out in the casinos and hotels of Havana in the 40s and 50s, than they do to James Bond. At one time the CIA even approached underworld figures to try to carry out the killing. One of Castro's old classmates planned to shoot him dead in the street in broad daylight much in the manner of a mafia hit. One would-be sniper at the University of Havana was caught by security men. But the shooters were no more successful than the poisoners and bombers.
Officially, the US has abandoned its attempt to kill its arch-enemy, but Cuban security are not taking any chances. Any gifts sent to the ailing leader as he lies ill this week will be carefully scrutinised, just as they were when those famous exploding cigars were being constructed by the CIA's technical services department in the early 60s. (They never got to him, by the way, those cigars contaminated with botulinum toxin, but they are understood to have been made using his favourite brand. Castro gave up smoking in 1985.)
All these plots inevitably changed the way Castro lived his life. While in his early years in office, he often walked alone in the street, but that practice had to change. Since then doubles have been used, and over the decades Castro has moved between around 20 different addresses in Cuba to make it harder for any potential hitmen to reach him.
Meanwhile, jokes about Castro's apparent indestructibility have become commonplace in Cuba. One, recounted in the New Yorker this week, tells of him being given a present of a Galapagos turtle. Castro declines it after he learns that it is likely to live only 100 years. "That's the problem with pets," he says. "You get attached to them and then they die on you".
Pick me! Pick me! Side trip checking out fifties-vintage cars would be a walk through heaven....
Woof!
Walter, is that the smartest thing you can post? One of the most important (whether good or bad) leaders of the last hundred years retires, is almost dead, and all you can do is this?
Man, but you give conservatives a good name (that was my sarcastic voice, by the way).
Back on topic, of course Bush, et. al. are saying there won't be any policy shift, but there are a few things to consider: the Cuban exiles in Florida, who are the main demographic reason for the embargo, are getting older and dying off. The younger Cuban exiles don't really seem to care as much.
Obama as president: he is campaigning on the platform of huge philosophical and doctrinal shifts in foreign policy - if he wins, he just might have the room to erode the embargo.
Not saying he would do anything - just that it's a possibility.
Also, Fidel's brother just released a bunch of dissidents from jail, and has told the U.N. that Cuba will sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Hmmm, interesting.
Pangloss
I would not put Castro anywhere near the word important. A two-bit tinpot dictator is what he is.
He's been in power longer than any Tory dictator. Eisenhower even recognized his government - until Castro got cheeky and nationalized all the revenue generators. Chin up. Leader of the free world has something to say:
http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30200-1305917,00.html?f=rss
Woof!
Last edited:
Fidel's sorry legacy
National Post Published: Wednesday, February 20, 2008
After 49 years of ruling Cuba with an iron fist, 81-year-old Fidel Castro has formally stepped down as president and head of Cuba's armed forces. But there will not be any election to determine his successor. Power in the tropical tyranny is a family matter and Raul Castro, Fidel's 76-year-old brother, will take permanent control of a country he has run for 19 months while Fidel has endured a lengthy illness.
Little has changed during that time -- free speech is still suppressed, democracy is crushed, freedom of the press is forbidden, free enterprise is illegal, fair trails are the stuff of dreams, religious freedom is circumscribed, racism against blacks is rampant -- and there is no prospect for change in the days to come under brother Raul, who stood by Fidel even after their mother, Lina, could not and fled Cuba after their 1959 revolution.
Yet the departure of Fidel presents the opportunity for Stephen Harper's Conservative government to rethink Canada's policy toward Cuba, which is both opportunistic and unworthy of a country that pays great heed to human rights.
When Fidel came to Canada in April, 1959, Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker refused to meet him, but he did not refuse to do business with him. When it was clear Fidel was determined to turn Cuba into a communist dictatorship, and that the United States would impose a trade embargo on it, prime minister Diefenbaker beat the Canadian nationalist drum and used the opportunity to win political points at home by playing on anti-American sentiment while generating opportunities for Canadian businesses. This policy helped save the assets of Canadian banks operating in Cuba -- the assets of U.S. banks, by contrast, were confiscated--and gave Canadian companies the chance to supply Cuba with goods they could no longer buy from the U.S..
Lester Pearson maintained this policy, while his successor, Pierre Trudeau, lent credibility to Cuba's communists through his personal friendship with Fidel. While Canada was trading with Cuba during the early years of his Fidel's regime, however, roughly 500,000 Cubans -- nearly 8% of the total Cuban population--fled the island, more than 77,000 died trying, tens of thousands were unjustly imprisoned and roughly 30,000 were executed by revolutionary firing squads.
Canadian leaders have often defended our Cuba policy saying it constitutes "constructive engagement." Yet little that is constructive has emerged. In 1998, for example, then-prime minister Jean Chretien visited Cuba to make the case for four imprisoned Cuban human rights activists. Mr. Chretien left with a picture of himself with Castro, while the activists continued to languish in jail.
Prime Minister Harper now has the chance to change a historic wrong. No longer should Canada turn a blind eye to the tyranny in Cuba and pretend our policy has been a principled one. Instead, Canadian trade policy should be tied directly to improving human rights and monitoring progress. Moreover, the Canadian government would do the Cuban people a favour by making clear to Canadians that Cuba is, as Theo Caldwell argued in these pages yesterday, an "island prison" -- one they should think twice about visiting.
National Post Published: Wednesday, February 20, 2008
After 49 years of ruling Cuba with an iron fist, 81-year-old Fidel Castro has formally stepped down as president and head of Cuba's armed forces. But there will not be any election to determine his successor. Power in the tropical tyranny is a family matter and Raul Castro, Fidel's 76-year-old brother, will take permanent control of a country he has run for 19 months while Fidel has endured a lengthy illness.
Little has changed during that time -- free speech is still suppressed, democracy is crushed, freedom of the press is forbidden, free enterprise is illegal, fair trails are the stuff of dreams, religious freedom is circumscribed, racism against blacks is rampant -- and there is no prospect for change in the days to come under brother Raul, who stood by Fidel even after their mother, Lina, could not and fled Cuba after their 1959 revolution.
Yet the departure of Fidel presents the opportunity for Stephen Harper's Conservative government to rethink Canada's policy toward Cuba, which is both opportunistic and unworthy of a country that pays great heed to human rights.
When Fidel came to Canada in April, 1959, Conservative prime minister John Diefenbaker refused to meet him, but he did not refuse to do business with him. When it was clear Fidel was determined to turn Cuba into a communist dictatorship, and that the United States would impose a trade embargo on it, prime minister Diefenbaker beat the Canadian nationalist drum and used the opportunity to win political points at home by playing on anti-American sentiment while generating opportunities for Canadian businesses. This policy helped save the assets of Canadian banks operating in Cuba -- the assets of U.S. banks, by contrast, were confiscated--and gave Canadian companies the chance to supply Cuba with goods they could no longer buy from the U.S..
Lester Pearson maintained this policy, while his successor, Pierre Trudeau, lent credibility to Cuba's communists through his personal friendship with Fidel. While Canada was trading with Cuba during the early years of his Fidel's regime, however, roughly 500,000 Cubans -- nearly 8% of the total Cuban population--fled the island, more than 77,000 died trying, tens of thousands were unjustly imprisoned and roughly 30,000 were executed by revolutionary firing squads.
Canadian leaders have often defended our Cuba policy saying it constitutes "constructive engagement." Yet little that is constructive has emerged. In 1998, for example, then-prime minister Jean Chretien visited Cuba to make the case for four imprisoned Cuban human rights activists. Mr. Chretien left with a picture of himself with Castro, while the activists continued to languish in jail.
Prime Minister Harper now has the chance to change a historic wrong. No longer should Canada turn a blind eye to the tyranny in Cuba and pretend our policy has been a principled one. Instead, Canadian trade policy should be tied directly to improving human rights and monitoring progress. Moreover, the Canadian government would do the Cuban people a favour by making clear to Canadians that Cuba is, as Theo Caldwell argued in these pages yesterday, an "island prison" -- one they should think twice about visiting.
Okay ... it took Castro fifty years to do all that bad stuff. How long did it take Dief to destroy the Canadian Aerospace industry? How long did it take Mulroney to trade Canadian industry to the USof A and replace good-paying jobs with futures with American ones without - at Walmart or McDonalds? How long did it take that same ass to realize he'd traded away a revenue, so he designed a tax on ALL Canadians to replace that which he gave away? How long did it take Mike Harris to make poverty and disability a crime in Ontario? How long did it take him to ruin our education, health care and public service sectors? How long did it take our very first Prime Minister (coincidentally, a Tory) to make attempts to give the Canadian Pacific Railway to the United States?
A Hell of a lot less than a half century!
Woof!
A Hell of a lot less than a half century!
Woof!
I've been told when it comes to other issues that no citizen of any country is ever allowed to say 'we had no choice'. So long as they have two legs and a voice, choosing to not fight to overthrow a government is tantamount to choosing to embrace it.
And that's better ... how? Go beyond the propaganda, Walter. Why does Cuba graduate more doctors per capita than any other nation? Why is Cuba's economy so much better than a lot of countries in the free world? There's more to life than money, Walter. Get out and experience it.
Woof!