Fidel Castro is Dead at 90. Here's What You Won't See on the News!

By Rich Kozlovich

The BBC reports Fidel Castro, Cuba's leader of revolution, dies at 90, but the BBC and MSNBC have a lot in common.  They're reporting leaves much out.

Here's the coverage of comments the BBC and the Telegraph published from world figures:

• Latin American leaders have been quick to pay tribute. Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto said Castro was a "great friend" of Mexico.
• Ecuador's President Salvador Sanchez Ceren he was an "eternal companion" - "he was "a great one".
• Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro said "revolutionaries of the world must follow his legacy".
• Mikhail Gorbachev said: "Fidel stood up and strengthened his country during the harshest American blockade, when there was colossal pressure on him".
• "The leader of the French Communist Party, Pierre Laurent, who told French TV that the dictator had “liberated his people in 1959, at a time when the island was in some ways the brothel and the casino of rich Americans. Then he faced American imperialism… He was one of the leaders of the movement of human emancipation in the 20th century. The revolution he led took place at the time of decolonisation and was part of this movement to restore the sovereignty of peoples. That is what will remain in history.”
• President of India, Pranab Mukherjee - Heartfelt condolences on sad demise of Cuba's revolutionary leader, former President & friend of India, Fidel Castro
• In Britain, former London mayor Ken Livingstone said Mr Castro was an "absolute giant of the 20th century", and blamed the US for the restrictions on civil liberties under his leadership. 

The theme throughout the articles carries a patina promoting "greatness" about Castro saying:

Yet, despite the constant threat of a US invasion as well as the long-standing economic embargo on the island, Castro managed to maintain a communist revolution in a nation just 90 miles (145km) off the coast of Florida.

The Telegraph has many of the same problems the BBC has saying"

Transforming Cuba from a playground for rich Americans into a symbol of resistance to Washington, Castro outlasted nine U.S. presidents in power. 

They followed with comments by Cuba citizens saying things like: 

• "That's not what I was expecting. One always thought that he would last forever. It doesn't seem true."
• "It's a tragedy"...."We all grew up with him. I feel really hurt by the news that we just heard."
• "very upset". "Whatever you want to say, he is public figure that the whole world respected and loved."
• "the guide for our people." "There will be no one else like him. We will feel his physical absence," she said.

The implication being that he was wonderful and beloved by his people.  I keep wondering why so many tens of thousands have risked their lives to leave if Cuba it's so wonderful under Castro.   What's really disturbing is how so many prominent Americans adored Castro and his psychopathic killer Che Guevara.  I keep wondering why:

"in 1986, Cuba's suicide rate reached twenty-four per thousand -- making it double Latin America's average, making it triple Cuba's pre-Castro rate, making Cuban women the most suicidal in the world, and making suicide the primary cause of death for Cubans aged 15-48. At that point, the Cuban government ceased publishing the statistics on the self-slaughter. The figures became state secrets.  The implications horrified even the Castroites."

As Humberto Fontova reports: 

"And you know how Castro/Che groupies all love to gasp: "Oh Gosh! Gees Whiz! Isn't it exciting how Castro has defied ten U.S. Presidents!..Oh he is just so dreamy!" ...and if you think I exaggerate here's some fully documented quotes:''

• "Fidel let's the gun drop to the ground, slaps his thigh and stands erect. He is like a mighty penis coming to life!" (Abbie Hoffman) 
• "You are the first and greatest hero to appear in the world since the second world war! It's as if the ghost of Cortez had appeared in our century riding Zapata's white horse!" (Norman Mailer)
• "One of the most charming men I've ever met!....Castro is personally overpowering. It's much more than charisma. Castro remains one of the few truly electric personalities in a world where his peers seem dull!" (Former Robert Kennedy press Secretary and Democratic campaign operative, Frank Mankiewics.)
• As Fidel spoke I could feel a peculiar sensation in his presence. I'ts as if I am meeting with a new force of nature! Here is a man so filled with energy he is almost a different species! Power radiates from him!" (Filmmaker Saul Landau)
• UN declared Fidel Castro a "World Hero of Solidarity." The reasons cited for the award were: "Fidel Castro embodies virtues and values worth emulation by all of us." The award came only after "extensive consultation among representatives of the General Assembly's member countries," explained current UN General Assembly President and former Sandinista foreign minister, Miguel D'Escoto.
• " Viva Fidel!" bellowed Rev. Jesse Jackson during his speech at the University of Havana in June 1984, while trailing a 300 person entourage that included Rev. Jeremiah Wright. "Viva Che Guevara!" he yelled again with fists raised high. "Long Live our cry of freedom"!

And this for a government that's absolutely racist, and from a couple of morally defective race hustlers.  But they're not alone in the black "leadership".

• “Rep. Marcia Fudge returned from a five-day Congressional Black Caucus trip to Cuba… organized by Black Caucus Chair Barbara Lee of California, who said she organized it to explore lifting the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Fidel Castro met with Lee, along with Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush and California Rep. Laura Richardson…[proclaiming] "He is really a very intelligent, a very engaging, entertaining guy, actually," Fudge said of the Cuban leader, who told childhood stories about his exploits with brother, Fidel, during a meeting that stretched into dinner.”’ I guess it really isn’t about civil rights for blacks after all. However, I think it might be a worthwhile effort to explore what they really are all about.   Are there any less clueless than that crowd of race hustlers. Here's what would have happened to them in Cuba if they pulled the crap in Cuba they pull here.   Black Civil Rights Activist Murdered by Castro Regime, and there's more here regarding Castro's murderous racism.

Well - here's the real story.

When it comes to telling the truth about Castro, Che, Cuba - how they came to power and what they did when they got it - the main stream media, academia and it's textbooks are telling a story totally opposite of what actually happened. 

The first thing we need to understand is Castro came to power due to collusion between the media and the State Department according to Arthur Gardner and Earl Smith two "U.S. ambassadors to Cuba who warned about Castro’s covert Communism and lost their jobs", testified under oath to that conspiracy. 

The NYT, which is now claiming to transform itself was a major part of that conspiracy.   Gardner stated under oath: 

"I feel it very strongly, that the State Department was influenced, first, by those stories by (the New York Times') Herbert Matthews, and soon (support for Castro) became kind of a fetish with them." Smith further testified: "The State Department played a large part in bringing Castro to power. The press, and other Government agencies (CIA), members of Congress are also responsible..”

Matthews wrote in the New York Times:

"Fidel Castro has strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice," wrote Matthews on the front pages of the New York Times in Feb. 1957, "and the need to restore Cuba's Constitution....this amounts to a new deal for Cuba, radical, democratic and therefore anti-Communist." "Fidel Castro is not only NOT a Communist," the New York Times star Latin American analyst wrote again two years later, " he's decidedly ANTI--communist."

That was a lie and they all knew it was a lie, just as they knew Walter Duranty - another treasonous flack at the New York Times - was lying about the millions of staving Russians under Stalin. He won the Pulitzer Prize for his reporting and everyone, and I mean everyone, in journalism knew it was all a lie. 

Make no mistake about this - Che Guevara noted in his dairies, "A foreign reporter -- preferably American -- was much more valuable to us at that time (1957) than any military victory. Much more valuable than rural recruits for our guerrilla force, were American media recruits to export our propaganda."

It's bad enough the press lied so egregiously, they also participated in destroying the reputations of those who worked to expose the truth.  Fontova writes:  

"But as Diaz-Lanz warned, when outing Communists, their denial is only half the story. The truth-teller must also be slandered, smeared, defamed, and his character assassinated -- as surely as the hundreds of men and boys then being physically assassinated by Che Guevara's firing squads. Not to worry...the U.S. media of the time was eminently worthy of the task." 

 And that corruption continues today!  We see this even at 60 Minutes.

• Barbara Walters: "Castro's personal magnetism is still powerful, his presence is still commanding. Cuba has very high literacy, and Castro has brought great health care to his country." And here she notes: "Castro has brought very high literacy and great health-care to his country. His personal magnetism is powerful, his presence is commanding."
• Diane Sawyer was so overcome in Fidel Castro's presence [during a dinner party at Mort Zuckerman's Manhattan pad] that she rushed up, broke into that toothy smile of hers, wrapped her arms around Castro and smooched him warmly on the cheek.
• Eleanor Clift -To be a poor child in Cuba might be better than being a poor child in Miami.
• Andrea Mitchell: "Castro is old-fashioned, courtly -- even paternal...a thoroughly fascinating figure."
• CNN's former Havana Bureau chief Lucia Newman (nowadays with Al  Jazeera): n Cuba we will be given total freedom to do what we want and to work without any censorship" [italics mine] ... No dubious campaign spending here [in Cuba]. No mud slinging -- a system President [italics mine] Castro boasts is the most democratic and cleanest in the world!

They toasted a man who had funded the Black Panther party to blow up the Statue of Liberty". Plotted to (stopped by the FBI) set off a "dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT" the day after Thanksgiving at Macy's, Gimbel's, Bloomingdale's and Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal.  Just Macy's gets 50,000 shoppers that one day!"

They're applauding a man who wanted to incinerate thousands of shoppers, mostly women and children.  Worse yet, he begged his Russian handlers to launch a nuclear strike at the U.S., while hiding with the Russians in their bomb shelters.  The murderous madman they applauded was at the same time Journalism's Worst Enemy in the World.

How did Cubans live under Batista? 

"The standard of living of Cubans then was higher than that in any other Latin American nation.  Caloric consumption was as high as in any other Latin American nation in the western hemisphere except America and Canada, and it was much higher in protein than in most other Latin American nations.  Cuban infant mortality under Batista was lower than in France or Italy.  Batista set up mobile health units for rural areas. 

He mandated compulsory industrial insurance for workers and enacted minimum-wage and eight-hour-workday laws." 

"Cubans also owned more radios and televisions per capita than any other people in Latin America, and there were many independent radio and television stations Cubans could turn to for news and entertainment.  There were also a number of independent newspapers and magazines, many of which were critical of the Batista government. Can you imagine Castro allowing this?

Fidel Castro was a leftwing monster murdering more political prisoners in his first three years in power than did Hitler in his first six and jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than did Stalin.

Fidel Castro entered Havana on January 8, 1959, to wild acclaim from all quarters. Most Cubans were jubilant; Castro was promising an end to the corrupt governments that had plagued Cuba since independence.

Far from any Communism, Castro was promising a revolution "as green as Cuba's palm trees!" with national elections in three months. Private property would be secure, a free press guaranteed, friendly relations with the U.S. were essential……

Yet within three months of his entry into Havana, Castro's firing squads had murdered an estimated 600-1,100 men and boys, and Cuba's jails held ten times the number of political prisoners as under Fulgencio Batista, who Castro overthrew with claims to "liberating" Cuba…….

As with so much else regarding pre-Castro Cuba, major misconceptions abound in this editorial. To wit: in the 1950's the average farm-wage in "near-feudal" Cuba was higher than in France, Belgium, Denmark, or West Germany. According to the Geneva-based International Labor Organization, the average daily wage for an agricultural worker in Cuba in 1958 was $3. The average daily wage in France at the time was $2.73; in Belgium $2.70; in Denmark $2.74; in West Germany $2.73; and in the U.S. $4.06.

Also, far from huge latifundia dominating the agricultural landscape, the average Cuban farm in 1958 was actually smaller than the average farm in the U.S.: 140 acres in Cuba vs. 195 acres in the U.S. In 1958 Cuba, a nation of 6.2 million people, had 159,958 farms -- 11,000 of which were tobacco farms. Only 34 percent of the Cuban population was rural……. To Read More…..

Dan Mitchell outlines "The Economic Misery of Cuban Communism" @ International Liberty.  As for Che Guevara?  

"The one genuine accomplishment in Che Guevara's life was the mass-murder of defenseless men and boys. Under his own gun dozens died. Under his orders thousands crumpled. At everything else Che Guevara failed abysmally, even comically.

Retired CIA officers revealed to this writer how Fidel Castro himself, via the Bolivian Communist party, constantly fed the CIA info on Che's whereabouts in Bolivia. "Not even an aspirin," instructed Cuba's Maximum Leader to his Bolivian comrades, meaning that Bolivia's Communists were not to assist Che in any way - "not even with an aspirin," if Che complained of a headache."

 At his end, after ordering his foolish followers in Bolivia to fight to the last man, he deserted them and surrendered with an un-fired .45 whimpering - "Don't shoot! I'm worth more to you alive than dead!"  More here: Che Guevara at the Bay of Pigs

Well, here's "My Take" - Now that Castro is dead - the world is a better place to live.