let's see now, we installed batista, an inept, completely corrupt tyrant, so the mafia and the sugar companies could have the run of the place.

batista gets overthrown by castro & co., with the support of the cuban people (revolutions can't succeed, without the support of at least a fair chunk of the populace), and we immediately slap an embargo on the country.

instead of causing the population to rebel against castro, it caused them to rally around him, and aim their ire towards, um, well, uh.................us! go figure, those ungrateful bastards!

instead of dealing with castro (after all, he is only 90 miles away), we let the russians cozy up to him, nearly resulting in wwIII (cuban missile crisis, anyone?). ah, i remember it well, though i was but a young sprout.

actually, i remember it well, because i was sitting on ground zero: cherry point mcas, nc, jump off point for the 1st marine division. good times, good times................

of course, let's not forget the ill-fated, ill-conceived attempt, by the cia (can you say "bay of pigs" boys and girls? i knew that you could.), to overthrow castro, along with their multiple efforts to assasinate him. definitely going to win you friends there!

as well, we opened the flood gates, for every scum bag castro could find in a jail cell (mariel boat lift, anyone?), because we had a policy of letting any cuban, no matter how much of a lowlife, in the country, if they could make it to shore. talk about your uncontrolled immigration!

our continued embargo not only totally alienated the cuban population, it gave every other country in the world carte blanche to go in and avail themselves of the market: a canadian friend of mine is getting ready to spend two weeks on the beach in cuba, because she can.

had we not insisted on continuing the embargo, castro and his ilk most likely would have died a quick death. instead, we gave the cuban people a reason to keep him in power: to thumb their collective noses at us.

no, instead of doing the intelligent thing, and ending the embargo, our gov't has been held hostage, for 47 years, by a small group of very loud, former thugs, from cuba.

yeah, that was real bright of us, wasn't it?

darn, i nearly forgot, we have gotten one thing out of it: gitmo! infinite detention, without due process, for all!

 "systematically murdering every visionary and patriot in the country.  I'll spare you the list, for it is a long one filled with thinkers and doers, doctors and intellectuals, men and women of courage and compassion who loved their country".

You have been brainwashed Aaron.

Don't you in fact worked for the Cuban government?  Not much credibility there.  :)

The assertions of some of the ultra leftists who visit this site are rather delusional, as if Castro was some kind of hero preventing capitalism from consuming Cuba.  As if he were a man of real strength and not the two bit murdering thug who stole the island out from under the people of Cuba by systematically murdering every visionary and patriot in the country.  I'll spare you the list, for it is a long one filled with thinkers and doers, doctors and intellectuals, men and women of courage and compassion who loved their country.

There won't be any invasion of Cuba, even by the Bush administration, that's a fantasy, a fantasy out of the 1950s.  Please try joining us here in the 21st-century.  Now if Cuba had oil, it might be a different story, but that is not the case.  So please give the left-wing rhetoric a rest will you.

It'll probably take another decade, but Cuba will finally make its way into the modern world, a world where the Cuban people will be free to speak, associate, travel, earn a living and lead their lives the way they see fit, and not be dictated to by some bullying punk tyrant who has maintained his authority at the end of the barrel of a gun.

Maybe like JFK did at the Bay of Pigs.

I don't see how this can be happening in that miracle healthcare system of the Worker's Paradise.

How many Cubans have died or risked death fleeing the island and trying to get a better life? For 40 years?

And how many of those people are trying to get back?

Jondee, it must have been the free elections that kept Castro in power all of these years. Or the free press. Or due process.

So we embargo the island - what does that have to do with political prisoners? what does that have to do with not having a free election in 40 years with a vibrant opposition? freedom of travel? Or correspondence with those outside the island.

The repression also reaches to the relatives of the dissidents and independent journalists, to those who not only it is commited to them to leave his jobs, but also its training centers.

In a report by Nueva Prensa, Rivero's wife Blanca Reyes said her husband was accused of working on behalf of James Cason, who heads the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, which is similar to an embassy.

Two government infiltrators who pretended to be journalists corroborated stories of Rivero's meetings with Cason.

Well there's a novel idea. Government infiltrators posing as journalists. Did you read that?

"These people are working for the American government, which maintains an economic embargo against Cuba with the only goal of hurting the 11 million people on the island," Hernandez said. "Obviously, they are mercenaries for the U.S. government."

As for whether the United States funnels money to dissident groups on the island, Mike Anton, spokesman for the National Security Council, said it does as part of a "pro-democracy outreach in Cuba." Anton did not specify how much money has been donated to these groups, but Hernandez placed that number at around $20 million.

Pro democracy outreach.

Do you actually believe that Cuba is the ONLY country in which this happens? LOL

 ( So I submit that my description is completely accurate, by any fair assessment made by fair-minded people.)

To say the aftermath of his death will be interesting is to understate; to say we could completely f*ck it up FOR them is to understand.

I've always been a bit amused by Cubans who see their island country as a nation equivalent to nations like Russia and China.  In fact it is just an island, little different than the other large islands in the Caribbean, like Jamaica and Hispaniola.  It is the largest, but just an island nonetheless.  The reason that Cuba is still a fascist dictatorship under Castro, is that it simply just isn't that important, economically or politically.  The only people who really care about Cuba, for the most part, are Cubans.  

The people and governments of South America and North America are little concerned with the problems of this island.  It's just not important enough to bother with, just is Haiti and the Dominican Republic are not important enough to bother with.  If Cuba did have a serious natural resource base, which they do not, the United States would have made a point of ousting Castro from power years ago.  In the 1960s the US could have invaded the island and destroyed the Cuban military within a matter of months, today the US military could overcome the Cuban Defense forces within a matter of weeks.  Unfortunately for the Cuban people there isn't anything there of value, beyond real estate, for the US or anyone else to be interested in.  This is why the Cuban people remain in bondage, and make no mistake everyone on that island is in bondage.  In a very real sense the whole island is one big prison.  The conditions there may be good for some, though if you look at pictures of people from Cuba, notice how emaciated their arms and legs are, this is from a lack of protein.  But even if everyone were eating well and had everything their hearts desired, without freedom, the freedom to do what you want, be what you want, go where you want, you're still in prison.

It's hard to believe that any liberal or left-leaning person, which I am according to some, would for one moment entertain supporting a dictatorship which oppresses its people, kills its people, inprisons its people, without any of the basic protections those of us in democracies take for granted.

I must conclude that those who support Castro, on this blog and out in the world, are either paid propagandists for the Castro regime, or people who are obviously tragically misinformed.  People who let their political views reshape what their eyes see, and there ears here, and there hearts feel.

The people of Cuba are crying out for freedom, but no one is listening, no one is interested, at least beyond furthering their own political agenda.  The children who are growing up in Cuba, may have passable medical care, and just barely enough to eat, and they may get an education.  But when they reach adulthood, there is nothing for them, no place to go, nothing to do, no future.  The best they can hope for is an agricultural job, working in the fields, or working for the state, not making enough money to even have a place to live and buy food.  No matter what their position, other than being a confidant of Fidel, individuals in Cuba are not allowed to choose what they do with their life.  Something that is almost unimaginable even for people who live in some of the worst most depressed economic areas of the globe.

Anyone here remember the Cuban revolution, I don't, because I hadn't been born yet.  But it's my understanding that this revolution, like almost every other popular revolution was intended to free the people from tyrannical control and ultimately improve their lives.  I submit that people want to take care of themselves and their own as best they can without interference from anyone.  Nobody wants to live their lives for the state, other than politicians and people who wish to go into service voluntarily.  

It seems that some here would make the argument that it's OK to live your life being controlled and told what to do by a government.  Here in the free world, we called that institutionalized thinking, the kind of behavior that usually demonstrated by convicts, mental patients and the survivors of horrific trauma.  Here in the land of freedom, the state only inflicts its control over you either as punishment or for your own good if you can't take care of yourself.  Castro would have everyone believe that only he is capable of taking care of people, and he's doing it for their own good.  I hate dictators, I want to overthrow them wherever I find them, doesn't that make me a revolutionary?

I can't even imagine what it would be like to have people from my local government directing my life, the very thought is terrifying.  Imagine people in a position to be able to use force on you, like the police, coming to your house and say you're going to be a dairy worker, who gets up in the morning at 2 a.m., and takes care of the cows until the afternoon, then you're going to work as an automotive mechanic until the early evening, then it's eat and off to bed, and tomorrow you get to wake up and do the same thing, endlessly.  But at least you have the satisfaction of knowing, your sacrifice has helped the state.  Please!

Now I did something like that in my life once, but I have to say that those things didn't really appeal to me, so I moved on to other things, things that I thought would be more satisfying and lucrative, things that would allow me to expand my life, education was a part of this.  But when I got my education, I had a lot of people telling me what I should do what I should study and what would give me a career in the current economy.  Thankfully I didn't listen to any of them, and I figured out what I wanted to do with my life.  I can only imagine how unhappy and unsatisfied I would feel if I had been forced to go into a career, simply because it was what society needed, and I was convenient to fill that position.

You know what screw that? The last time anyone told me what to do, that was my parents.  Once I became of age, no one ever told me what to do again, and that means that I am responsible for my life, and at least I can look on my life and say I did what I thought was right for myself, because it's my life and no one else's.  Even if my decisions lead to my doom, I'll take that any day over having someone else lead me like a child through my life until at the end I get to look back and think about what could have been, what should have been. People in that position live their life on their knees, that's the reason revolutions happen in the first place, to free people of that kind of control. So in the larger view, the Cuban revolution is not only a monumental failure, a monumental fascist failure :-), in its failure it in fact achieved the very antithesis, the opposite of what the people who mounted the revolution intended, and that was a better life for the people of the island.    

What a toughguy you are! I'm impressed. But just a few questions:

Never been stopped by a cop?

Never been told to wait in line?

Ever been through airport security?

Never been told to pull up to the next window?

Idealistic claptrap. How old ARE you? 14?

People are telling you what to do on an HOURLY basis in this land, despite your self-proclaimed independence.

Then they are just beating off with their opinions just like Frist.

aaron, slado, jim, it seems you are being intentionally ignorant. surprised? nah, it's typical.

the single worst thing the u.s. did, after castro tossed batista out like the trash he was, was place an embargo on cuba. stupid, beyond all comparison. possibly the worst foreign policy decision we ever made, in the americas.

it instantly gave castro credibility, and a convenient target for the people's ire. they were already ticked off at us, for supporting batista, so we went and legitimized castro. yeah, real smart work there.

castro was able to point to the embargo, when complaints were registered about the cuban's standard of living.

most of the cubans who initially fled, in 1959, were batista cronies. sorry, i've got no sympathy for them or their families, they were just as much thugs as batista and castro.

is cuba a democracy under castro? not that i'm aware of. of course, it wasn't under batista either, it was essentially fascist. you know, the corporate thing and all. in truth, dictatorships tend to start looking alike after a while, the only difference is who's benefiting.

as far as the lack of freedom under castro, again, what difference does it make who's shooting you, you're still dead.

oddly, for smart guys, marx & hegel neglected to take into account that most basic of human traits: greed.

Anyone interested in helping ease the worst aspects of the embargo (shortages of medical supplies) are urged to go to this website:

DISARM/Cuban Medical Project