Fidel's Birthday Is Today

89 Years Old!!!

          Fidel Castro turns 89-years-old today. He was born on August 13th, 1926, in Biran, Cuba. His father Angel was a multi-millionaire rancher/land owner. Although his critics claim otherwise, every Castro insider -- including journalist Carlos Franqui, his one-time close ally and future enemy -- registers the fact that Fidel had no interest in money but fostered a genuine concern for poor people. Otherwise his critics, including many would-be assassins, have gotten some things right about him. 89? Wow!! That's a remarkable number for anybody. Especially him! Among his accomplishments is a notable listing in the Guinness Book of World Records for having survived the most assassination attempts. One famous British documentary -- "638 Ways To Kill Fidel Castro" -- induced the Guinness researchers to diligently study the old revolutionary's history and they, too, were startled at the documented numbers. Moreover, Fidel's would-be assassins were among the best in history -- the CIA, the Mafia, and a vast number of Cuban exiles such as the legendary Luis Posada Carriles, who is today one of the heralded citizens of Miami eagerly waiting to celebrate the death of Fidel Castro who, after all, is mortal. In fact, rich and powerful anti-Castro elements in Miami have rented out the football stadium at Florida International University to host one of their major "Fidel Is Dead" celebrations. It is also known that CNN and other U. S. television networks have already rented out space at the most famed restaurants in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood to make sure that they can give the world live coverage of the "Fidel Is Dead" delirium. One of the Wikipedia summaries about the myriad of assassination attempts against Fidel quote his own candid summation: "If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal." 

         In the entire history of the United States Senate, it could be substantially argued that Frank Church was the most decent and the most patriotic person to ever serve in that august body. He represented Idaho, America, and democracy in the Senate from 1957 till 1981. That's Mr. Church on the right in the above photo. On the left is Henry Kissinger, the "regime change" adviser to Richard Nixon and other right-wing Republican leaders. In this photo, Kissinger's dour mood is understandable. At long last he had met his match -- Senator Church. As a true American patriot, Senator Church was appalled when he learned about "Operation Mongoose," which was the code name for CIA assassination attempts against Fidel Castro, whose revolution in Cuba in 1959 had ousted the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship. Senator Church created a committee to investigate. He quickly confirmed 8 failed CIA attempts to kill Fidel Castro. One of them involved a young female beauty named Marita Lorenz who had been recruited by the CIA to bring poison pills into Fidel's hotel room in a cold cream jar. Marita, the CIA determined, was one of the young female starlets that flocked to Havana in 1959 to have sex with Fidel. The other seven attempts uncovered by Senator Church were similarly fanciful and unsuccessful. In 1975 Senator Church, ashamed by his data, chaired a "Senate Committee To Study Governmental Operations With Respect To Intelligence." Senator Church and his staff, in researching the "Operation Mongoose" attempts to murder Fidel Castro, also uncovered successful CIA-involved assassinations against people like Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader in the Congo; and Salvador Allende, the first democratically elected leader in Chile. Senator Church believed such assassinations, and the multiple but failed attempts to kill Fidel Castro, insulted democracy and the U. S. government. Because of Senator Church, today it is actually against the law for the U. S. government to be involved in the murder of leaders in other countries.

       Senator Frank Church had the decency and the guts, as shown in the photo above, to stringently point out to Henry Kissinger and others that the U. S. government should not be in the business of murdering foreign leaders in countries like Cuba, the Congo, and Chile where "rich Americans might have access to rake in fruit, oil, and other profits." Senator Church, who died in 1984, deserves the most credit for pointing out the undemocratic evils of such things as..."Operation Mongoose."

         This 1959 photo shows the aforementioned Marita Lorenz, the German girl who disembarked from a ship determined to connect with Fidel Castro, newly famed for his Cuban Revolution that shocked the world by overthrowing the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship. Fidel was receptive to Marita. He circumvented his soul-mate Celia Sanchez and provided Marita a suite in the Hotel Hilton. She got pregnant. Blacked out one day, the baby was aborted. She flew to New York for treatment. The CIA contacted her. Books, newspapers, magazines, and documentaries have chronicled her versions of her affair with Fidel. She was one of many, including Hollywood starlets, but she is the only one known to have been solicited to kill Fidel. She tells all about it in the Discovery Channel documentary series "CIA Declassified: Marita and Fidel." Regarding the above photo, she said, "He was 33, with sparkling eyes. And that was it. I was lost in love." She says her pregnancy ended when she was dazed or blacked out. While in New York the CIA contacted her and told her Fidel had personally ordered the abortion. She says, "I didn't believe it but they did a good job of brainwashing me. They said, 'we want you to take him out.'" She said she went to Miami where famed anti-Castro/CIA operative Frank Sturgis gave her poison pills and instructed her to drop one in Fidel's drink. She went to Havana, back to the Hotel Hilton. She says she had the chance but ended up just stashing the pills in her cold cream jar...luckily, I guess, for Fidel Castro!!

Marita Lorenz, now 75, still relishes her association with Fidel Castro.

Marita Lorentz is glad she didn't use the CIA pills to poison Fidel.

Since 1960, she has often toasted Fidel while blasting the CIA and Frank Sturgis.

           This is a Frank Sturgis montage courtesy of Eugen/Wikipedia. He was typical of the many CIA operatives, Mafia thugs, and Cuban exiles famed as would-be Castro assassins. His real name was Angelo Fiorini; he attended Virginia Tech; he died in Miami at age 69 in 1993. Yes, he is known as Marita Lorenz's CIA handler. He was also one of the five convicted Watergate burglars in 1972, the scandal that ended President Richard Nixon's political career. But Sturgis...err, Fiorini...is even better known for his association with Lee Harvey Oswald and his alleged participation in the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. To say the least, Fidel Castro's fiercest enemies since the 1950s have been paid a lot of tax dollars over a lot of decades. That's possibly why, today Marita Lorenz toasts Fidel Castro and cringes over her infamous CIA involvement; and why, in 1963, President Kennedy famously screamed at his top aides, "If I could I would blow the CIA to smithereens!" Fidel Castro, turning 89 today, has out-lived, perhaps by out-smarting, most of his would-be assassins, but not all. The most famous, Mr. Carriles, is still a heralded citizen of Miami. The saga of Fidel Castro's long life, and then his long legacy, will always say even more about the United States than about Cuba. The U. S., after all, is the world's superpower and most famed democracy; Cuba, after all, is an island...the biggest in the Caribbean, but still an island.

The young Fidel Castro.

A slightly older Fidel Castro.

        This is Fidel Castro on the front-lines at the Bay of Pigs in April of 1961. The CIA had famously assured President John Kennedy that Fidel would race to his getaway airplane the moment he heard bombs falling on Camp Colombia on the edge of Havana. Fidel was in Celia Sanchez'z 11th Street apartment when he heard those bombs falling. Unlike Batista, he didn't have a getaway airplane standing by. Instead, he raced to the south-central coast of the island where he guessed correctly the ground assault would take place at the Bay of Pigs near the colonial city of Trinidad. The CIA-inspired attack, like the CIA-inspired "Operation Mongoose" assassination attempts, merely served to enhance the Castro legend and the upcoming Castro legacy.

 Today -- August 13th, 2015 -- Fidel Castro celebrated his 89th birthday.
And by the way..........

        .........today, on his 89th birthday, Fidel Castro got word that his favorite American president, Jimmy Carter, had been diagnosed with cancer that has spread from his liver to other parts of his body. Mr. Carter was born on October 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia. He was President from 1977 till 1981. He is considered by many to be the most decent human being ever to serve as President of the United States.

       This photo from 2002 shows Fidel Castro and Jimmy Carter at a baseball game in Cuba. Before, during, and after his presidency, Jimmy Carter tried his best to end the U. S. embargo against Cuba. He did manage to create so-called "Interests Sections" in the two capitals. The U. S. embargo against Cuba began in 1962, the year after embassies in the two capitals were closed. But the now 89-year-old Fidel Castro and the now 90-year-old Jimmy Carter have lived long enough to see the Cuban flag raised at its new embassy in Washington, back on July 20, and to see the U. S. flag raised at its new embassy in Havana tomorrow -- Friday, August 14th. However, it is not likely that either man will live to see the end of the U. S. embargo against Cuba although polls show the entire world, including a strong majority of Cuban-Americans, strongly want it to end. The embargo has been kept in place for all these decades by two generations of powerful anti-Castro zealots in Miami colluding with the necessary number of right-wingers in the U. S. Congress. Jimmy Carter: "The U. S. democracy is too precious to endlessly allow a few benefactors to punish millions of people in a smaller country. The embargo's effect on the worldwide image of American is horrendous, and deservedly so." Fidel Castro: "Even when he tells me I am totally wrong, which he is never hesitant to do, I know Jimmy Carter to be the most honest and most honorable American I have known."

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