Free Republic

In hundreds of schools, hospitals and public buildings, Cubans signed a "solemn oath" on Monday to defend the revolution following the death of communist leader Fidel Castro. Instead of leaving messages in books of condolence, Cubans were invited to endorse the "concept of the revolution" defined by Castro in a speech in 2000, six years before illness forced him to hand power to his brother, Raul. "We will keep fighting for these ideas. We swear!" says the oath to which Cubans signed their names, three days after Castro died at age 90.

The Polish Pope’s former spokesman said the late Fidel Castro “wanted to know everything there was to know about John Paul II”"Fidel Castro kept me talking for six hours. He was fascinated by John Paul II and although he was jealous of his inner life, I sensed he wanted to delve deeper… I told him he was a lucky man because the Pope prayed for him every day. For once he was silent.” On the occasion of Wojtyla’s visit to Cuba in January 1998, the role of Joaquín Navarro-Valls, John Paul II’s spokesman, went far beyond his official duties as...

And moments later, in a Dolphins locker room filled with celebration, that was Alonso proudly putting on a headband that replicated the Cuban flag and meeting with his Cuban exile father and other family members to enjoy his enormously productive day. In the other locker room? The San Francisco 49ers were dealt their 10th consecutive loss. And Kaepernick, their starting quarterback, wore a Malcolm X T-shirt to his news conference, then claimed I took him out of context after an exchange we had last week about Fidel Castro.

The verbal niceties showered upon Fidel Castro since his death have been disgusting, to say the least. President Obama offered a milquetoast response to Castro. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went a step further and praised the murderous tyrant following his death, calling him a “remarkable leader.” Mark Levin, on his radio show Monday night, had a much different tone: “This is a horrific, evil, demonic human being. A genocidal maniac. In a small country, killing tens of thousands of people, torturing, imprisoning, and breaking up families. People trying to flee his island nation murdered on the high seas …...

New York Times Pentagon correspondent Helene Cooper said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press that the American people see Castro as a "satanic demon" but that President Obama's statement accurately reflected what the world thinks. Cooper said Obama's statement expressed the "ambivalence" the rest of the world feels about Castro. The Times scribe praised Castro's role in taking down apartheid in South Africa, a regime she noted that the U.S. was propping up. "What President Obama's statement reflects is that nobody in the rest of the world sort of agrees with you," Cooper told her fellow MTP guests.

Obama and Raul Castro. Disgusting We first ran this piece about 8 months ago, when Obama took his “historic” trip to Cuba. Needless to say, my family’s pretty happy to hear that Fidel Castro, the mass-murdering tyrant who stole so much from them, is dead. Herman suggested I re-post the piece today. My wife is Cuban. If we’re getting technical, she’s Cuban-Italian, but the point is that her father was a Cuban gentleman who - until the Castro brothers took over - owned a hospital in Havana.

Alternate realities I hope you’re already aware that Fidel Castro was an evil, despotic mass murderer. Because you’d never know it from reading the media’s post-mortem tributes to this tyrannical monster since his death on Saturday. A man of the people, they tell us. A true revolutionary. The man who gave hope to his people, who now teeter on the edge of despair with their hero gone. Yeah. Tell that to the millions he brutalized, imprisoned and murdered. Tell it to those who lost their lives trying desperately to get to the United States in rickety boats because even being...

Fidel Castro, like his psychopathic patsy Ernesto Guevara Lynch, was a man who relished terrorizing civilians-in Cuba, the United States, throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, and even in Sub-Saharan Africa-even if it meant the immolation of millions in a nuclear holocaust. Unlike Che-who in addition to being a sadist and mass murderer was a complete and utter failure-Castro was able to watch his experiment unfold on his 11 million guinea pigs over the course of half a century. He lived to see a million and a half Cubans flee the tropical gulag he had created, including his sister and...

Click the link and sing away. He looks so cool in his Hillary blue sunglasses, doesn't he? This is an updated project from 2006 when things looked bleak for him a decade ago.

A commentator on MSNBC referred to him as “a polarizing figure.” Indeed. At one pole we find folks blinded by their love for socialism, and at the other, those of us believing in fundamental human rights. Fidel Castro, the dictator of Cuba for more than half a century, is dead. The New York Times called him a “fiery apostle of revolution who brought the Cold War to the Western Hemisphere in 1959 and then defied the United States for nearly half a century as Cuba’s maximum leader.” Maximum leader? A euphemism at time of death is one thing, but a...

The Cuban government must move toward enacting greater freedoms for its people and giving Americans something in return if it wants to keep warmer U.S. relations initiated by President Barack Obama, top aides to President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday. The comments by Trump advisers Kellyanne Conway and Reince Priebus followed the death of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Castro’s younger brother, 85-year-old Raul Castro, took control in 2006, and later negotiated with Obama to restore diplomatic relations. Priebus, Trump’s incoming chief of staff, said Trump would “absolutely” reverse Obama’s opening to Cuba unless there is “some movement” from the Cuban...

Castro, who died Friday night at 90, made a personal fortune offering safe haven to drug traffickers, bedded a bevy of women over the decades, and once threatened his own brother, Raul, with execution when the brother lapsed into alcoholism in the ’90s... Amazingly, most Cubans had no idea how, or even where, their secretive strongman actually lived. Even his first and second wives were kept out of the public eye — as was their leader’s two-timing. Castro cheated on his first wife, the upper-middle-class Mirta Diaz-Balart, with Natalia Revuelta. “With her green eyes, her perfect face and her natural...

On receiving the sad news of the death of your dear brother, His Excellency Mister Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz, former president of the State Council and of the Government of the Republic of Cuba, I express my sentiments of sorrow to Your Excellency and other family members of the deceased dignitary, as well as to the people of this beloved nation. At the same time, I offer prayers to the Lord for his rest and I entrust the whole Cuban people to the maternal intercession of our Lady of the Charity of El Cobre, patroness of that country. Francisco, PP....

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) slammed Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Saturday for his praise of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Trudeau caught flak on social media after expressing "deep sorrow" for Castro, whom he called a "remarkable leader." Cruz and Rubio, who are of Cuban descent, released their own statements ripping the deceased leader. “Is this a real statement or a parody? Because if this is a real statement from the PM of Canada it is shameful & embarrassing,” Rubio tweeted, linking to Trudeau's statement on Castro's death. “Disgraceful," Cruz tweeted of Trudeau's remarks. "Why...

It was bound to happen sooner or later. Ever since his election as Canada’s prime minister last October, Justin Trudeau has revelled in global tributes, raves and swoons. He’s the Disney prince with the trippy dance moves, the groovy Haida tattoo and the gender-balanced cabinet. He’s the last best hope for globalization, the star attraction at the Pride Parades, the hero of the Paris Climate Summit, the guy everyone wants a selfie with. Trudeau made himself synonymous with Canada. He made Canada cool again. It was fun while it lasted. By the early hours of Saturday morning, Havana time, Trudeau...

full title............Former Cuban castaway Elian Gonzalez recalls his connection with Fidel Castro: 'Fidel was everyone's friend'.................................. Tweet email Elian Gonzalez — the Cuban boy who was found floating off the coast of Florida in 1999, sparking an international custody dispute — recalled his friendship with former president Fidel Castro, who died Friday at age 90. Gonzalez, 22, spoke to Cuban state media in Spanish on Saturday, reflecting on his experiences with Castro. He recalled the leader attending his sixth-grade graduation — when Castro told an audience about their friendship. "At first, it was an extraordinary honor, but also a heavy...

On November 8th, Fidel was doing very poorly and was sounded disoriented. However, he was aware of the election in America between his friends, The Clintons, and the patriotic American-Donald Trump. El Comandante assumed that globalizing socialist was destined to become the next US president. And so he laid down with a happy smile on his face and went to sleep. The nursing staff took over and monitored his vital signs. His family went to the other room to watch the news of the US election. When the Castro sons realized that Donald Trump had won in America they threw...

"CASTRO HELD ME CAPTIVE" That was the tongue-in-cheek headline over my story that ran in the Boston Herald 30 years ago. I was in Cuba with a bunch of other reporters covering Jesse Jackson's visit to Cuba and Central America in June 1984. Jackson back then was considered a surprise, but serious, candidate for the Democrat Party nomination for president.

“The dictator of Cuba has died!!!!!FINALY!!!!” So starts the trumpeter Arturo Sandoval’s much-shared Facebook post, written in the early morning hours after Fidel Castro’s death was announced. “I'm happy that they'll cremate him, at least his bones will not contaminate the ground,” punctuated Sandoval, summing what thousands of Cuban exiles felt. Sandoval never minced words when he spoke about Castro and his dictatorship. His struggles as a musician and a husband where chronicled in the made-for-TV movie For Love or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story (with Andy Garcia playing the role of the trumpet virtuoso), including Dizzy Gillespie’s “discovery” of...

President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday greeted the news that Fidel Castro had died by denouncing Cuba’s longtime leader as a “brutal dictator” with a legacy of bloodshed. Trump, who vowed to help the island nation’s people achieve freedom and prosperity, did not explicitly repeat campaign-trail promises to roll back President Obama’s historic outreach to the island nation. The entrepreneur’s reaction could scarcely have been more different than the sitting commander in chief’s response. Obama declared that now was the time to “extend a hand of friendship to the Cuban people” and largely sanitized deep Cold War-era criticisms of Castro’s record...