from the AP…
Fidel Castro, ailing and 81, announced Tuesday he was resigning as Cuba’s president, ending a half-century of autocratic rule which made him a communist icon and a relentless opponent of U.S. policy around the globe.
“My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath,” Castro wrote in a letter published Tuesday in the online edition of the Communist Party daily Granma. But “it would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer.”
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
Start the clock now. What’s the over under on a corporate takeover of that Island. Here I’ll put it at 9 months, and I’ll bet the under.
Sorry my friend, but I can’t join you in posting odds on such a sad, likely event.
Castro’s Cuba has been a beacon for millions in this western hemisphere for 59 years. Few countries can boast a leader so loved and revered by his own people as Castro’s Cuba. Few countries in history can boast the progress made for its people, as Castro’s Cuba.
The target of relentless assassination attempts, invasion, and economic embargo has shown again and again what can be possible in the face of enormous odds.
Here in this country, we have been so heavily propagandized over Cuba, one is hard-pressed to acknowledge that we are talking about a tiny island with only a few million people. What exactly are Bush and Co., and the Miami Cubans, so afraid of? If Cuba is so bad, why can’t we go there and see it for ourselves? Why are they in terror of us seeing Castro’s Cuba for ourselves? We are certainly welcome over there.
Anyway, if spk is right, now is the time to go see for yourself what one alternative society actually looks like. Anyone who does so who has listened to the propaganda and lies told uniformly on this side of the water will be surprised at least, and likely enchanted, by the reality.
For me, the Cuba question comes down to, in this world may a people be allowed to choose a different way of being, a progressive way of being, a non-greedy, non-materialistic basis for their own society? Or in this world, are we free only to choose Bush-brand oligarchic capitalism, at threat of annihilation, repression, marginalization? If so, why?
Bush and Co. like deomocracy if it keeps them and their ilk in power. When it does not, they react ballistically, and refuse to accept the result. Witness Palestine. Cuba stands as an example of a place where the people’s choice, with the people’s backing, has stood firm in the face of relentless aggression for 59 years, bringing incredible gains to the people. Those gains started with ridding the island of the so-called Miami Cubans, that group of leeches that had preyed on the backs of the Cuban people for so long.
Perhaps that’s the fear of Cuba in a nutshell: The leeches plaguing us here don’t want us to get any ideas.
Cuba is just the greatest place. They produce so many things. Like ah, ah, well I can’t think of any at the moment. Oh ya, cigars !
…and we produce what anymore? Oh yeah, Cruise Missiles and disaster capitalism. That is an overstatement, but you should check yourself if you want to talk about our wonderful economy.
And music, dance, art, film, ideas, sugar, rum, coffee, medicines, health care, healthy babies, beautiful unspoiled beaches, clean seas, olive green fatigues and revolution… and oh those cigars…
But hey, screw Cuba, the U.S. is the greatest place, because we produce so many things, like … cars? (Oops, that’s Japan). Uhh, corn? (GMO corn that is.) Uhh, beef cows? (I mean, corn fed downer mad cows.) Uhh, computers? Cellphones? Teevees? Boomboxes? Toys? Packaged foods? Furniture? Clothes? Pet food? (Oops, that’s China.) Honey? (No, that’s the bees Brian.)
Wait, there is one thing the U.S. leads the world in producing. Can anyone guess what it is?
Every time I hear anything about Cuba on the nightly news, I wait (in vain) for the anchor to finish dishing out his prepared pablum, pause for about 5 seconds while staring into the camera, and then ask, “Does anyone but me find it strange that the U.S. keeps a military base and prison on Castro’s island?”
Hey Anon 3:39, you get the prize, you posted the answer before I even posted the question!
If it’s so bad here why don’t you move away.
“If its so bad here why don;t you move away.”
Well gosh anon, because that wouldn’t solve much would it?
And if I did, what would you do? Who would cook your food/grow your food/serve you drinks/fix your car/paint your house/etc.etc.?
No, all in all, I’d rather stay, work on booting all the leeches out and make it better here. What say, you ready to step up and help?
Welcome to logical fallacy land comment #8. It’s not about how bad it is here. It’s about the continual propaganda used by our government to portray Cuba as somehow evil thus enabling the longest economic embargo ever attempted. It really is quit remarkable that Cuba has been able to adapt to this economic thuggery by the worlds largest super power.
#10
you know how Cuba has adapted?
by allowing European/Chinese/Japanese/Canadian development and a rather heady flourishing of prostitution.
Cuba has an excellent free educational system, but no jobs.
Cuba is a training ground for incredible musicians, but they can’t make a living.
And health care? Just ask Michael Moore.
I rather doubt there’s more prostitution now than there was under Batista.
#5 – you forgot the best of Cuba – It produces jerks, like the one I married!***Viva la Cuba! I’m marrying a Mexican next time.
#12-
you may be right.
i only know a few.
i’ll ask them…
EA says: “Cuba has an excellent free educational system, but no jobs. Cuba is a training ground for incredible musicians, but they can’t make a living. And health care? Just ask Michael Moore.”
EA: What is the unemployment rate in Cuba?
I’m guessing its the same as the homeless rate, i.e. 0. Everyone has a home and a job in Cuba. Didn’t you know that? Home, job and health care, along with food and education, are among the basic human rights Castro has delivered to every Cuban.
Same re musicians. Did you not know that in Cuba, being a musician is a respectable job? Being a musician is not a “moonlighting” position as it is here. (True, Cuban superstars like Silvio Rodriguez do not make gazunkles of money and live in Neverland-style compounds like our pop stars here. But forgive me for suggesting that the body of work of a Silvio Rodriguez might be worth twenty Michael Jacksons. Its a question worth asking: Does our system bring to prominence the best that our society creates?)
Re health care, I saw Sicko, it made the Cuban system look pretty good. Is that what you are trying to say? It seems like you are implying Michael Moore thinks Cuban style universal guaranteed health care is a bad thing. If so, that would be at odds with the facts he explicated in Sicko, including the markedly better public health statistics enjoyed by Cubans over us. (And the stunning gap in public health statistics enjoyed by Cubans over their more comparable counterparts in Central America and the Caribbean.)
If Cuba is so great to its citizens, why do so many risk their lives to leave on rafts in the middle of the night? Why were so many Cuban Americans in Miami dancing in the streets when Castro announced he was stepping down?
Here is the text of Fidel’s letter of resignation:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/02/19/castro.letter/?iref=mpstoryview
#15
according to the CIA the unemployment rate in Cuba is 1.9% (2007 est.)
#15
according to the CIA the unemployment rate in Cuba is 1.9% (2007 est.)
Actually I love Michael Jackson
And the Afro-Cuban All Stars
And Irakere
And Arturo Sandoval
etc…
I don’t know what I mean to say about the Cuban health care system
I hope never to get sick either in USA or Cuba
This could be the beginning of WWIII.