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Topic: Fidel Castro "Resigns" Return to archive Page: 1 2
19th February 2008 09:33 AM
gimmekeef Fidel Castro resigns Cuban presidency

By Anita Snow, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Despite many attempts, Castro resisted all efforts to topple him from power



HAVANA - An ailing Fidel Castro resigned as Cuba's president Tuesday after nearly a half-century in power, saying he will not accept a new term when the new parliament meets Sunday.

"I will not aspire to nor accept - I repeat, I will not aspire to nor accept - the post of President of the Council of State and Commander in Chief," read a letter signed by Castro published early Tuesday in the online edition of the Communist Party daily Granma.

The announcement effectively ends the rule of the 81-year-old Castro after almost 50 years, positioning his 76-year-old brother Raul for permanent succession to the presidency. Fidel Castro temporarily ceded his powers to his brother on July 31, 2006, when he announced that he had undergone intestinal surgery.

Since then, the elder Castro has not been seen in public, appearing only sporadically in official photographs and videotapes and publishing dense essays about mostly international themes as his younger brother has consolidated his rule.

A new National Assembly was elected in January, and will meet for the first time Sunday to pick the governing Council of State, including the presidency that Fidel Castro has held for decades. There had been wide speculation about whether he would continue in that role.

"My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath. That's all I can offer," Castro wrote. But, he continued, "it would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer. This I say devoid of all drama."


Castro said Cuban officials had wanted him to remain in power after his surgery. "It was an uncomfortable situation for me vis-a-vis an adversary that had done everything possible to get rid of me, and I felt reluctant to comply," he said in a reference to the U.S..

Castro rose to power on New Year's Day 1959 and reshaped Cuba into a communist state 144 kilometres from U.S. shores. The fiery guerrilla leader survived assassination attempts, a CIA-backed invasion and a missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. Ten U.S. administrations tried to topple him, most famously in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.

"The adversary to be defeated is extremely strong," Castro wrote Tuesday, referring to the United States. "However, we have been able to keep it at bay for half a century."

His ironclad rule ensured Cuba remained communist long after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe.

Monarchs excepted, Castro was the world's longest ruling head of state.

Raul Castro had long been his brother's designated successor. The longtime defense minister had been in his brother's rebel movements since 1953 and spent decades as No. 2 in Cuba's power structure.

The United States, bent on ensuring neither brother is in power, built a detailed plan in 2005 for American assistance to ensure a democratic transition on the island of 11.2 million people after Fidel Castro's death. But Cuban officials insisted there would be no transition, saying the island's socialist political and economic systems would outlive Castro.

Castro's supporters admired his ability to provide a high level of health care and education for citizens while remaining fully independent of the United States. His detractors called him a dictator whose totalitarian government systematically denied individual freedoms and civil liberties such as speech, movement and assembly.

The United States was the first country to recognize Castro after his guerrilla movement drove out then-President Fulgencio Batista in 1959. But the two countries soon clashed over Castro's increasingly radical path. Castro seized American property and businesses and invited Soviet aid.

On April 16, 1961, Castro declared his revolution to be socialist. A day later, he defeated the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion.

The United States squeezed Cuba's economy and the CIA plotted to kill Castro. Undaunted, the Cuban president supplied troops and support to revolutionaries in Africa and Latin America.

Hostility over Cuba reached its peak on Oct. 22, 1962, when President Kennedy announced there were Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. After a tense week of diplomacy, Soviet Premier Nikita S. Krushchev pulled out the weapons.

With the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, Castro eventually made peace with many governments that once shunned him. Pope John Paul II visited the island in January 1998.

The loss of Soviet aid plunged Cuba into financial crisis, but the economy slowly recovered in the late 1990s with a tourism boom.

Castro later reasserted control over the economy, stifling the limited free enterprise tolerated during more difficult times.

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.

He attended Roman Catholic schools and the University of Havana, where he received law and social science degrees.

Castro launched his revolutionary battle as a young man, organizing an unsuccessful July 26, 1953 attack on a military barracks in the eastern city of Santiago.

Later freed under a pardon, Castro went to Mexico and organized a rebel army that returned to Cuba and rallied support in the Sierra Maestra mountains. His rebels took power when Batista was forced to flee.

Entering Havana triumphantly, Castro declared: "Power does not interest me, and I will not take it."









19th February 2008 09:54 AM
Joey

< --- I am now so excited that i am typing this with me penis .


Me too Lil' Fella ( Lil' Fijikins )


Me too .................


J'Lo'kins ! ™
19th February 2008 10:32 AM
Paranoid_Android I am so glad i have been to Castro's Cuba...in spite of the problems there...the Cuban on the island are the warmest, friendliest, and generous folks i have ever met on the planet.

Cuba is in my top 3 destinations on Earth...


Oh, and btw...for a country that we have an embargo with...Coke, DelMonte, Marlboro, and Ronzoni...sure are making $$$$ there big time!!!
19th February 2008 10:55 AM
steel driving hammer
19th February 2008 11:49 AM
the good Good. Now the fucker just needs to die.
19th February 2008 02:14 PM
texile that would have been big news back in the day...
now, it's pretty ho-hum.
19th February 2008 02:29 PM
Joey " .. that would have been big news back in the day...
now, it's pretty ho-hum. "


19th February 2008 06:41 PM
Jaxx if power passes to his brother, how much can things really change? realistically, i'm thinking more of the same will be in order. unless of course the proles rise up for a new revolution.
19th February 2008 07:23 PM
glencar I think we should start sending them old Dynasty episodes. Then they'll revolt!
19th February 2008 07:38 PM
mojoman so he's going to run as a dependent?
19th February 2008 07:46 PM
robpop
20th February 2008 03:26 AM
TampabayStone
quote:
robpop wrote:



Hyman Roth
A great Jew!

I see you've come accross some nice GFII pics.

Photobucket
20th February 2008 08:41 PM
robpop
quote:
TampabayStone wrote:

Hyman Roth
A great Jew!

I see you've come accross some nice GFII pics.

Photobucket



I and II are probably the best movies ever. If you disagree tonight you will sleep with the fishes.

20th February 2008 09:15 PM
Ten Thousand Motels Is Castro jewish?
20th February 2008 09:19 PM
robpop
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:
Is Castro jewish?



I don't think so. Has there ever been a Commie Jew?
20th February 2008 09:24 PM
Ten Thousand Motels
quote:
robpop wrote:
I don't think so. Has there ever been a Commie Jew?



Sure. Lev Bronstien a.k.a. Trotsky.

20th February 2008 09:27 PM
robpop
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:


Sure. Lev Bronstien a.k.a. Trotsky.





Ahhh! Good pick up.
21st February 2008 03:01 AM
TampabayStone
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:


Sure. Lev Bronstien a.k.a. Trotsky.





Brrr. that's cold....

Photobucket
21st February 2008 03:05 AM
TampabayStone
quote:
robpop wrote:


I and II are probably the best movies ever. If you disagree tonight you will sleep with the fishes.





My your son be a masculant one..



Punctuation ok for you Mainy (worst accents in the history of the US, followed closely by Mass)

Photobucket

Viva Tampy!
21st February 2008 07:00 AM
Ten Thousand Motels
quote:
TampabayStone wrote:
Punctuation ok for you Mainy (worst accents in the history of the US, followed closely by Mass)



You mean like this shit????

21st February 2008 07:50 AM
Gazza
quote:
robpop wrote:


I don't think so. Has there ever been a Commie Jew?



Loads

Trotsky
Rosa Luxemburg

Karl Marx came from a Jewish family. His father converted to Christianity, as he couldnt practice law as a Jew.

Several prominent figures in East European culture and science in the last century have been Jewish. Whether they were 'commies' depends on how widespread your definition of the term is, I suppose.
21st February 2008 04:15 PM
TampabayStone
quote:
Ten Thousand Motels wrote:


You mean like this shit????





I have know idea where that dude is from.
21st February 2008 04:19 PM
Joey
quote:
glencar wrote:
I think we should start sending them old Dynasty episodes. Then they'll revolt!




Funny !!!!!!!


That is what my little friends and myself running around the plains of Nebraska playing stickball during the early 1970's call postin'


You are friggin POSTIN' .


Joe Sea ... Scroll Cakes !
21st February 2008 05:01 PM
glencar Let it snow, bro!
23rd February 2008 12:39 PM
Ten Thousand Motels
quote:
glencar wrote:
Let it snow, bro!



NO. Let it melt.
23rd February 2008 01:29 PM
mojoman has he been hanging out with bono?
24th February 2008 11:00 AM
TampabayStone
quote:
Jaxx wrote:
if power passes to his brother, how much can things really change? realistically, i'm thinking more of the same will be in order. unless of course the proles rise up for a new revolution.



I think there will be change, maybe slowly, but it will come. Bro did not point a nuke at us. That was unforgivable and I don't see how people are blind to that fact. I see the embargo being lifted sooner than later and when we get over there and start spending our $$ like the rest of the world a change has gotta come.
25th February 2008 12:54 AM
BONOISLOVE
quote:
mojoman wrote:
has he been hanging out with bono?



YES!!!!!!!!!: I HAVE A BONER!!!!!!!!!!!!!
26th February 2008 10:41 AM
EELPIE
quote:
BONOISLOVE wrote:


YES!!!!!!!!!: I HAVE A BONER!!!!!!!!!!!!!



BONOISLOVE?

28th February 2008 12:26 AM
Sioux Yeah, I guess this is not the news it would have been at one time. But Fidel rose to power when I was 6/7 years old. I can't even remember a Cuba without him. Strange feeling....
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