Fidel Castro steps down

[Gawain of Orkeny]

It seems that Castro has stepped down and handed power over to his brother Raul. I dont have a link yet. I believe its following surgery on his intestines.

[Reverend Joe]

I'll wait for a link to comment.

By the way, welcome back. What prompted you to return, anyway?

[Divinus Arma]

NO WAY.


GAWAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The man. The myth. The legend.


(oh and the Cuba thingee should be neato too )

Edit: Article http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,206483,00.html

[Redleg]

Yep good old Fidel has taken a temporary leave from Presidential duties to recover from sugery to the intestines - brought on by stress of visiting and speaking in Argentia and Cuba.


Rather a short news blip in the media now..

[Gawain of Orkeny]

Here we go

Castro relinquishes power to brother
Updated 7/31/2006 10:41 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Subscribe to stories like this



Cuban President, Fidel Castro, left, and the Minister of Defense Raul Castro, attend a Cuban Parliament session in the Palace of Conventions in Havana.



BIO BOX

NAME: Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz

TITLE: President of the Council of State and Council of Ministers, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, Commander in Chief of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces. World's longest-ruling head of government, and leader of one of the world's last five communist states.

BIRTHDATE: Officially born Aug. 13, 1926, in Cuba's Oriente province, although some say he was born a year later.

EDUCATION: Attended Roman Catholic schools and the University of Havana, where he received law and social science degrees.

BEFORE THE REVOLUTION: Castro launched his revolutionary fight with a July 26, 1953 attack on a military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago. He was arrested and freed under an amnesty. He traveled to Mexico to form a rebel army, and returned to Cuba with his followers aboard a small yacht. Most were killed or captured, but Castro and a small group escaped into the eastern mountains to establish a rebel stronghold and seized power when dictator Fulgencio Batista fled New Year's Day 1959.

AFTER THE REVOLUTION'S TRIUMPH: Castro emerged as head of the new government and quickly gained nearly absolute power. All American businesses were eventually expropriated and Cuba was declared a socialist state in April 1961, on the eve of the disastrous U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion. The United States cut all trade with Cuba as the island allied with the Soviet Union, leading to the October 1962 missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. For three decades, Cuba was a Soviet ally and remained alienated from the United States after Eastern communism collapsed.

FAMILY: Married Mirta Diaz-Balart in 1948 and their son, Fidel Felix Castro Diaz-Balart, was born in 1949. The couple divorced in 1955. Although Castro never confirmed that he remarried, he reportedly wed former schoolteacher Dalia Soto del Valle, with whom he has five sons. He reportedly had several other children out of wedlock.

QUOTE: "Homeland or death! Socialism or death! We shall overcome!"





HAVANA (AP) — Fidel Castro temporarily relinquished his presidential powers to his brother Raul on Monday night and told Cubans he underwent surgery.
The Cuban leader said he had suffered gastrointestinal bleeding, apparently due to stress from recent public appearances in Argentina and Cuba, according to the letter read live on television by his secretary, Carlos Valenciaga.

ON DEADLINE : Post a comment, read the latest on Castro

"The operation obligates me to undertake several weeks of rest," the letter read, adding that extreme stress "had provoked in me a sharp intestinal crisis with sustained bleeding that obligated me to undergo a complicated surgical procedure."

Castro said he was temporarily relinquishing the presidency to his younger brother and successor Raul, the defense minister, but said the move was of "a provisional character." There was no immediate appearance or statement by Raul Castro.

The elder Castro asked that celebrations scheduled for his 80th birthday on Aug. 13 be postponed until Dec. 2, the 50th anniversary of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces.

Castro said he would also temporarily relinquish his duties as first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba to Raul, who turned 75 in June and who has been taking on a more public profile in recent weeks.

In power since the triumph of the Cuban revolution on Jan. 1, 1959, Castro has been the world's longest-ruling head of government. Only Britain's Queen Elizabeth, crowned in 1952, has been head of state longer.

The "maximum leader's" ironclad rule has ensured Cuba remains among the world's five remaining communist countries. The others are all in Asia: China, Vietnam, Laos and North Korea.

Over nearly five decades, hundreds of thousands of Cubans have fled Castro's rule, many of them settling just across the Florida Straits in Miami.

Castro rose to power after an armed revolution he led drove out then-President Fulgencio Batista.

The United States was the first country to recognize Castro, but his radical economic reforms and rapid trials of Batista supporters quickly unsettled U.S. leaders.

Washington eventually slapped a trade embargo on the island and severed diplomatic ties. Castro seized American property and businesses and turned to the Soviet Union for military and economic assistance.

On April 16, 1961, Castro declared his revolution to be socialist. The following day, he humiliated the United States by capturing more than 1,100 exile soldiers in the Bay of Pigs invasion.

The world neared nuclear conflict on Oct. 22, 1962, when President John F. Kennedy announced there were Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. After a tense week of diplomacy, Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev removed them.

Meanwhile, Cuban revolutionaries opened 10,000 new schools, erased illiteracy, and built a universal health care system. Castro backed revolutionary movements in Latin America and Africa.

But former liberties were whittled away as labor unions lost the right to strike, independent newspapers were shut down and religious institutions were harassed.

When social pressures increased, Castro provided a safety valve.

In 1980, people desperate to leave the island poured into foreign embassies and the Cuban leader let 125,000 countrymen flee to Florida by boat through Mariel port, west of Havana.

When economic crisis sparked rioting in Havana in 1994, Castro opened Cuba's borders again, and an estimated 30,000 people took to the sea in rafts.

With Cuba's economy in a tailspin after the loss of Soviet aid, Castro was forced to open up to foreign capitalists and allow limited private enterprise.

But when the economy began recovering in the late 1990s, Castro reasserted control and stifled private business.

Castro continually resisted U.S. demands for multiparty elections and an open economy despite American laws tightening the embargo in 1992 and 1996.

He characterized a U.S. plan for American aid in a post-Castro era as a thinly disguised attempt at regime change and insisted his socialist system would survive long after his death.

Fidel Castro Ruz was born in eastern Cuba, where his Spanish immigrant father ran a prosperous plantation. His official birthday is Aug. 13, 1926, although some say he was born a year later.

Talk of Castro's mortality was long taboo on the island, but that ended June 23, 2001, when he fainted during a speech in the sun. Although Castro quickly returned to the stage, many Cubans understood for the first time that their leader would one day die.

Castro shattered a kneecap and broke an arm when he fell after a speech on Oct. 20, 2004, but typically laughed off rumors about his health, most recently a 2005 report that he had Parkinson's disease.

"They have tried to kill me off so many times," Castro said in a November 2005 speech about the Parkinson's report, adding he felt "better than ever."

But the Cuban president also said he would not insist on remaining in power if he ever became too sick to lead: "I'll call the (Communist) Party and tell them I don't feel I'm in condition ... that please, someone take over the command."

Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Posted 7/31/2006 9:47 PM ET

LINK

[GoreBag]

I thought Castro had gone to Yale.

[Zalmoxis]

You know, Raul could just as well take advantage of this to seize control of the country. Not likely because the two are brothers, but still.

[Spetulhu]

You know, Raul could just as well take advantage of this to seize control of the country. Not likely because the two are brothers, but still.

Raul is nowhere as charismatic as his brother. He couldn't keep it together without Fidel's approval.

[Ronin]

it´s just temporary so I won´t break out the bubly just yet....

but hey...maybe the doctor finds it in his heart to be a hero and rids the cuban people of that asshole.

[Dâriûsh]

Shame. I just thought old Fidel Stalin had passed the cigar for good.

[Don Corleone]

From what the AP has had to say about his brother Raul, the USA and the rest of the world ought to start donating blood to help brother Fidel back to health. Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

This is the guy who orchestrated sending Cuban troops to Angloa and Ethiopia. He's the one that brokered the missile deal with the Soviets back in 1962, and he recently said in an interview that if the USA wants to have any sort of non-hostile relations with Cuba, they should do it while Fidel is still in power (implying that once he gets in charge, all hell will break loose).

Interestingly enough, he's also the one that's experimented with market reform... through the military oddly enough. Apparently he's enamored of the Chinese model. Most people don't know it, but many of the larger Chinese companies, such as Huawei, are actually owned not by the Chinese government itself, but by the People's Liberation Army dirctly, through holding companies.

If he's Wen Jiabao's best buddy, the USA better watch out next time China does some sabre rattling towards Taiwan, or we'll wake up to find a gaggle of Silkworms parked 60 miles off our coast.

[Devastatin Dave]

Well, I hope that the Left's favorite dictator (Hugo being # 1) feels better. I wish him the best. I'll toil in a sugar cane field for 18 hours with a lit Cuban cigar shoved up my ass in honor of him this Saturday.

[Geezer57]

I was in Havana at the end of 1959/start of 1960 visiting relatives - all of eleven years old. Watching Looney Tunes cartoons one Saturday morning when Fidel broke in with a 6-8 hour rant - I've hated him ever since.

[DukeofSerbia]

I watched CNN this evening and they always put in the front how Cubans in Miami celebrate what happend to Castro. They even believe that he is dead!

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Fidel and Raul will both have to check out before that beautiful island can shrug off its shackles and seek prosperity. Tourism would mushroom, cigar sales would mushroom, foreign investment would mushroom, Cuban culture would be a pop culture rage, and MLB would, within only a few years, have to incorporate at least 1 -- maybe two -- new franchises. I'm certain Habana could support one, but less sure about Santiago.

[econ21]

If he's Wen Jiabao's best buddy, the USA better watch out next time China does some sabre rattling towards Taiwan, or we'll wake up to find a gaggle of Silkworms parked 60 miles off our coast.

If he's Wen Jiabao's best buddy, maybe he'll learn something. China probably provides the best model for a transition from a command economy for a communist party that is not ready to cede political control (it's also working out pretty well for the ordinary Chinese people). I also suspect that integration into the world economy will ultimately open them up to the world of ideas and lead to a wider liberalisation, as it is doing in China.

Let the Cubans (and the Chinese, for that matter) get rich and then they won't be so interested in parking Silkworms off the US coast. I suspect you have to be as economically and intellectually impoverished as North Korea to get off on the idea of lobbing a few missiles at your fat cat neighbours.

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

Castro steps down, Gawain returns.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Castro steps down, Gawain returns.

[Devastatin Dave]

Castro steps down, Gawain returns.

Hmmmmmm....

[Ronin]

Castro steps down, Gawain returns.

and balance is restored to the force!