Fidel Answers Obama

Fiercely Defends Revolution
{Tuesday, March 29th, 2016}

    No less a revolutionary legend than Fidel Castro himself has replied to U. S. President Barack Obama's historic 3-day visit to Cuba last week. Not surprisingly, Fidel was not very appreciative. His 1,500-word summary of the visit was best defined by his word "syrupy" and it got increasingly more critical. While Obama did not see Fidel in Cuba last week, the word from both Obama confidants and confidants of Fidel's wife Dalia reveal that in 2017, as ex-president, Obama "really hopes" to visit Fidel in his Havana home.

       Since his near-fatal intestinal illness in July of 2006, many Fidel-watchers are amazed that he is still alive in 2016. But recent visitors who have spent time with him -- from Pope Francis to French President Francois Hollande -- have confirmed that Fidel is both "remarkably healthy" and "still mentally sharp." Such confirmation was recently offered by {above} the Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. 

       This photo, taken this week by his son Alex, shows Fidel at his writing station in the living room of his Havana home where he wrote this week's 1,500-word assessment of President Obama's visit to Cuba. In recent years, Fidel has written countless "Reflections" columns that originate in Cuba's main newspaper, Granma, and then garner international headlines, as his comments about Obama are doing this week. Most of Fidel's reflections have concerned such topics as the environment and food production. But the new headlines reveal that Fidel, still a newshound as he approaches his 90th birthday, closely followed Obama's every moves and words in Cuba on Cuban television as well as his international favorites such as the BBC and Aljazeera America and he reportedly likes the CBS station in Miami. In his sharp critique of Obama's visit, Fidel dissected line-by-line Obama's historic and televised speech to the Cuban people.

       Obama's 50-minute speech to the Cuban people, from the splendid setting of the Grand Theater in Havana as shown above, was the highlight of his visit and it was televised live all over Cuba. In the speech, Obama said, "It is time, now, for us to leave the past behind." In his almost line-by-line reply, Fidel's reaction to that Obama sentence was: "I imagine that any one of us ran the risk of having a heart attack on hearing these words from the President of the United States." {Fidel doubts the U. S. can "leave the past."}.

      Actually, it is known that Fidel Castro admires Barack Obama. He has read and studied Obama's biographical books, as indicated by the photo above. However, he believes that "right-wing hardliners in Miami and Congress dictate America's Cuban vengeance and imperialism, with little or no hindrance from U. S. citizens." Is his essay Monday on Obama's visit, Fidel reviewed such things as the U. S. embargo against Cuba, the Bay of Pigs attack in 1961, and the 1976 bombing of a Cuban civilian airplane "by exiles who have refuge in Miami." Fidel does not blame Obama for "any of those things" but he blames "criminals in Miami and in Congress but also the American people who have allowed them to thrive within their democracy."

        Fidel devoted a portion of his reply to Obama's visit by toasting revolutionaries that were willing to "fight to the death" for Cuba's "independence and sovereignty." In his Monday essay, he specifically referenced famed Cuban independence fighters "Jose Marti, Antonio Maceo and Maximo Gomez." In his latest essay that he entitled "Brother Obama," Fidel wrote: "We do not need the empire to give us any presents. My modest suggestion is that he reflects and doesn't try to develop theories about Cuban politics."

       Fidel's essay made clear that he watched on television President Obama's camaraderie with his brother, Cuban President Raul Castro, such as when Obama and Raul were watching the baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and a Cuban national team. While Fidel acknowledged Obama's efforts to "build irreversible momentum" in U.S.-Cuban relations that even Republicans in Congress and a future White House will have "trouble reversing," he seemed to chide his younger brother Raul's "cozying up too much" with Obama. Fidel's definitive line that is getting the most international play -- "We don't need the empire to give us presents" -- appears to be aimed more at his brother Raul than at President Obama.

       Still sharp of mind and still in possession of a very sharp pencil, Fidel Castro remains the staunchest defender of his Cuban Revolution. In his essay about Obama's visit, he wrote these words: "No one should pretend that the people of this noble and selfless country will renounce its glory and its rights. We are capable of providing the food and material wealth that we need with only the work and intelligence of our people."

     Fidel Castro is no longer the young rebel that hooked up with anti-Batista guerrilla leader Celia Sanchez in the Sierra Maestra Mountains {above} to create the combination/duo that won the Cuban Revolution.

      And Fidel Castro is no longer the dashing young rebel that, after winning the revolution, stirred the hearts of Hollywood starlets like Maureen O'Hara, which famously irked the much more pragmatic Celia.

      Approaching 90, Fidel has some vigor similar to that above when a video camera in the Sierra Maestra in 1958, while he was busy still fighting a supposedly far superior Batista army, videotaped him saying..."it is impossible to break down a revolutionary movement and guerrilla force that is supported by the people."

And in that epic rebel video, Fidel had some other thoughts.

He believed he was "inspired by a just cause."

      More importantly, Celia Sanchez -- the doctor's daughter who was the most important player in the Cuban Revolution -- believed that defeating the U.S.-backed Batista-Mafia dictatorship was "a just cause." The image above is taken from a documentary produced in January of 2016 by Mundo Latina Studies to highlight the 36th anniversary of Celia Sanchez's death from cancer at age 59 on January 11, 1980. You can watch that documentary on YouTube to get a comprehension of why Celia was the Cuban Revolution's most important player...as a guerrilla fighter, as the main procurer of rebels and supplies, and as the prime decision-maker, with Fidel's full blessing, during the Revolutionary War and later in Revolutionary Cuba. From the 1950s till today, Celia Sanchez also coined the most significant quotation related to Revolutionary Cuba: "The Batistianos will never regain control of Cuba as long as I live or as long as Fidel lives."

       With Fidel still alive, therefore so is the all-time most important quotation regarding Revolutionary Cuba, the quotation first coined by the greatest Cuban, Celia Sanchez, way back in April of 1959.

    Celia Sanchez's most modest quotation is the one above: "We rebels get far too much credit for winning the revolution. Our enemies deserve most of the credit, for being greedy cowards and idiots." Ouch!!

Is she still on the look-out for Fidel Castro's enemies??
And speaking of great women:

    Meet Ginger Kathrens. She is an award-winning film-maker with epic wildlife gems for the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, National Geographic, the BBC and PBS. Ginger loves people...and animals. Chris Bury, a reporter for Aljazeera America, spotlighted Ginger on Joie Chen's America Tonight program last night. Ginger is the world's greatest defender of the wild horses in Wyoming and Montana. She wants them to be free and wild...forever. Cattle ranchers and the Bureau of Land Management are fighting Ginger. The BLM is rounding up the wild horses and selling them, supposedly to buyers who will treat them humanely. But Ginger has proven that many of the magnificent animals are sold only to be slaughtered for their meat, and she has tracked the buyers as well as the slaughtering places in Mexico and border towns in Texas. Ginger has saved many of the wild horses from that fate, but she has also, of course, lost some battles.

      Ginger Kathrens has brilliantly documented the life of the wild stallion Cloud ever since she first saw him running free over 16 years ago. She has created The Cloud Foundation that has made him famous.

       This image is from the award-winning PBS documentary entitled "Cloud: Wild Stallion of the Rockies" by the great Ginger Kathrens. She has also written three books about her favorite wild-and-free horse.

Ginger Kathrens keeps close tabs on Cloud's colts.

       This is Ginger Kathrens on her Rocky Mountain ranch. She is riding Trace, one of her beloved Wild Horse mustangs. I think that a lady who fights to preserve something precious is herself precious.

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