I'm sure you can see my tongue planted firmly in my cheek when you read that headline and that must have been the case when the writer wrote this editorial.
Here are the opening salvos from the editorial:
We suspect that there are – even now – plans afoot to kill a Fidel Castro who is now ailing and who has now lived for some eight decades.
While we freely admit that we harbour this suspicion; we know it for a fact that there have been numerous plots against this man’s life and against the great revolution he and the Cuban people made in Cuba.
It is against this backdrop that we note that "Cuba’s parliament has said that a 47-year-old plot to assassinate Fidel Castro still reflects the reality of US policy toward the island.
We also exult with National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcon when he says that: "God willing, [Castro] will live to see the regime change in the United States that has begun" - evidently referring to the US presidential elections.
And quite frankly, we also agree with Alarcon when he says: "That country has to change, because its people deserve something better, something more decent. What the CIA recognises is not old history. It is present-day reality and the facts show it."
The world today knows – and yet again – what it has either suspected or known for a long time; that the United States of America did conspire to kill Fidel Castro and abort the great revolution he and the Cuban people were making in their country.
It surely cannot come as a surprise that former mercenary, Fidel Castro, would have a threat on his life by the CIA in the United States of America back in 1961. Castro himself was a threat to the life of Cuba's former president and strongman, Fulgencio Batista, was he not?
In fact it was not until 1976 when then US president, Gerald Ford, signed an executive order forbidding assassination, so it is quite possible that more stories about planned assassinations of Castro and other world leaders will be released as more CIA documents are declassified.
The Bahama Journal seems to be very sympathetic to the Fidel Castro and his regime, or maybe it's the anti-US sentiment of one of their editorial writers showing through again?
In any event, before we get carried away in Castro worship, we should consider the story of a Cuban journalist, Normando Hernandez Gonzalez.
Here's a brief excerpt of an article from Bloomberg News:
Hernandez Gonzalez was arrested on March 18, 2003, during a crackdown that netted 75 journalists and other alleged dissidents. After brief trials, most of which reportedly lasted less than a day, they were sentenced to prison terms of as long as 25 years. According to human-rights organizations monitoring the situation, 59 of the 75 remain in prison.
At the time of his arrest, Hernandez Gonzalez was the head of the Camaguey College of Independent Journalists. ``It was a group established by Normando,'' says his mother, who now lives in Miami. ``The headquarters was at my house, in Camaguey. They are all in jail now.''
The group's 10 writers, of whom Hernandez Gonzalez was the youngest, were charged with violating Article 91 of the Cuban Criminal Code for writing stories that tracked government abuses and mismanagement by social-service agencies, according to a report by the PEN American Center, a watchdog group that publicizes human-rights violations against writers around the world.
Click here for the full story at Bloomberg News.
For people that live in The Bahamas, where we still live in relative freedom compared to many other countries, particularly Cuba, to be so concerned about and supportive of Castro and his Revolution leaves me cold.
Caricature courtesy of Cox & Forkum.
Thanks to Child of the Revolution for the link to the Bloomberg article.
