Last week he was dead, this week he had a stroke; the rumors keep pouring in.
The reason for the latest round of rumors is that
Castro was last seen in public in March, during the visit to Cuba of Pope Benedict XVI. Since June, he has not written his opinion columns, called “Reflections.” He did not send any message or congratulation to Chávez for his recent election victory.
Which means that the regime forgot to get Fidel’s amanuenses on the job.
Fidel’s physical condition is almost besides the point; as I’ve been saying for years, what’s important is what the Communist regime decides to leak out.
For now, it all amounts to a lot of rumors. Keep the champagne in the fridge for now.
UPDATE,
the Diplomad on Castro and the Nazis: Makes Perfect Sense
Let me repeat some things I have said before to show that no contradiction exists between Castro being a Communist, and Castro dealing with post-WWII Nazis. The Castro brothers inherited a virulent strain of anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism common among certain educated elites in Latin America. A legacy of Spain and old-time Spanish Catholicism, it started as hatred and resentment for upstart Protestant England, and in Latin America morphed into hatred and resentment for upstart “Protestant” USA.
The brothers got a double dose of the virus. Their father was a Spanish-born veteran of the War of 1898 who stayed on in Cuba. We can imagine family conversations when the topic turned to the USA. This household environment combined with that era’s Spanish Jesuit schooling would have turned just about anybody anti-American. As I have noted before, Communism in Latin America is a natural complement to a pre-existing intellectual and emotional strain of anti-Americanism, anti-Protestantism, and anti-capitalism. Once the brothers assumed power, it is not at all surprising that they would throw in with the Soviets; Raul was in all likelihood a KGB informant since the early 1950s.
There can be no doubt that had Nazi Germany been around in the 1950s as the world’s preeminent anti-capitalist, anti-democracy, and anti-USA power, Fidel, Raul, and the racist gangster Che (Note: read what he had to say about Mexicans) would have hitched their wagons to the Hitler train.
There is no real conflict between Communism and Nazism except, of course, of which one takes power. They are both phenomena of the left; both believe in the state over the individual; in the state-control of the economy; and in crushing religion and other independent sources of power and potential rivalry to the state. They do not believe in rule of law, tolerance of diversity, and protection of dissent. The biggest difference is that the Communists were much more successful at bamboozling the “educated elites” and used much smoother words to try to disguise their evil natures. The Nazis were always too bombastic, “in your face,” and made little effort to hide their true aims. All that stylistic and cosmetic nonsense aside, Fidel, Raul, Che, Kim-il Sung, Stalin, etc, would have been perfectly happy to be Nazis and to espouse their anti-capitalist, anti-democracy, anti-religion, and anti-individual line. There should be nothing surprising in the Castros’ efforts to reach out to Nazis to help carry on their mad war against the Cuban people and the United States.
