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July 2, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The hallmark of a person

Abe Novick: Up, up, and aliya

July 1, 2009

Rabbi Avi Shafran: The Road Taken

The Kosher Gourmet by Marialisa Calta: Get into the holiday spirit with these Star-Spangled desserts

June 30, 2009

Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg: What makes a great parent?

Caroline B. Glick: Ideologue-in-Chief

June 29, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Beware of 'Caveat Emptor'

Steven Emerson: ACLU pushing for more money for Hamas

June 26, 2009

Rabbi Yoni Posnick: Learn the secret to a healthy marriage from a scriptural villain

Caroline B. Glick: Barack Obama vs. International Law

June 25, 2009

Rabbi Shimon Apisdorf: The Absurd Power of Truth

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 24, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Advancement of technology is a wake-up call for humanity

The Kosher Gourmet by Andrea Weigl: Summer on a stick: Making frozen treats can be easy, creative and fun

June 23, 2009

Martin M. Bodek: 'On Surnames': And so, We Begin

Caroline B. Glick: The Obama Effect

June 22, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Working for a corrupt firm

N. Richard Greenfield : Where are American Jews?

June 19, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Emotion v. intellect

Caroline B. Glick: Israel's rare opportunity

June 18, 2009

Jonathan Rosenblum: Sometimes it is more essential to define the nature of evil than good

Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkle's strip: Everything's Relative

June 17, 2009

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Language of Confusion

The Kosher Gourmet by Linda Gassenheimer: Nothing pleases Dad more than a thick, juicy onion-smothered steak. Add home-Baked Potato Chips and …

June 16, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Career v. Careersism

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's losing streak and Israel

Richard Z. Chesnoff: ‘Palestinians’: Never Missing an Opportunity …

June 15, 2009

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu: How Judea and Samaria can become 'Palestine'

Daniel Pipes: Where Netanyahu's speech failed

June 12, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Some big thoughts about not acting so big

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's High Commissioner

June 11, 2009

Victor Davis Hanson: Our historically challenged President

Mitch Albom: Beware the True Believers

Lewis Grossberger: What we learn from the new Hitler photos

June 10, 2009

Mort Zuckerman: What Obama and his advisors won't -- or refuse to -- grasp about Israel and the Muslim world

The Kosher Gourmet by Steve Petusevsky Lotsa pasta: Tips, techniques and (amazing) taste

June 9, 2009

Anne Bayefsky: Obama's stunning offense to Israel and the Jewish people

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: America's first Muslim president?

June 8, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Merchant must take responsibility for careless shopper?

Mark Steyn: A superpower that feeds on mediocrity cannot survive for long on leftovers from the past

Richard Z. Chesnoff: How do you say 'kumbaya' in Arabic?

June 5, 2009

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: In quest of spirituality

Caroline B. Glick: Obama's Arabian dreams

Charles Krauthammer: The Settlements Myth

June 4, 2009

Paul Greenberg: The War Comes to Little Rock

The Kosher Gourmet by Judy Hevrdejs: Splash it on! Tap your inner jazz musician and improvise when stirring up a vinaigrette

June 3, 2009

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q. Should terrible teacher be exposed?

Jonathan Rosenblum: The Israel Lobby: Missing in Action

June 2, 2009

Dennis Prager: The Speech President Obama Won't Dare Give in Egypt

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Pressure on Israel raises war risk

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Jan. 18, 2007 / 28 Teves, 5767

Castro shuffling in place

By Bob Tyrrell


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In these last months of Fidel Castro's moribundity, there is delicious irony in the film clip of him that is repeatedly shown on cable television. Wearing a clownishly incongruous jogging suit, the fabled maestro of revolution and progress is filmed shuffling metronomically, gray and feeble, blank-faced and apparently going no place. Maybe he is on a treadmill that we cannot see. Maybe he is merely picking up his tired feet and putting them back down with no forward motion. Possibly this whole idiotic scene is a fabrication created by our CIA. Well, if so, it is a job well done. There is poetry here.


The cadaverish dictator shuffling in place is a perfect metaphoric rendering of Castro's Cuba over these many decades. He took his country from prosperity and a place at the head of Latin America in material terms to the bottom. In practically every material measure his country is a slum. In terms of freedom it is one vast jail. Had he, when he came to power after the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista's seven-year dictatorship, made good on his promise to return Cuba to the democratic condition in which it had existed in the 1940s, his country today would most likely be the richest and freest country south of our borders, and possibly Castro would be in the pink and deserving of the accolades now paid him by the American left's rich and fatuous.


According to reports in the Spanish newspaper El Pais, Castro and "his entourage" rejected the conventional medical approach to his intestinal disorder. Instead they opted for a surgical procedure that is to medicine what Castro's socialism is to economics, to wit, brute stupidity. Consequently, after the botched operation his body filled with feces and infection — again a poetic touch.


I hope Armando Valladares has been following Castro's suffering. Valladares chronicled his decades of unjustified imprisonment along with thousands of others in Castro's vile prisons. Filth and pain were major features of these hoosegows, as you can judge for yourself in reading Valladares's book, "Against All Hope." Feces and infection were administered to Castro's prisoners by his jailers. They probably still are. Castro still jails any kind of dissenter and probably takes as much pleasure in their torture as did Saddam Hussein. Though recently there has not been much to put a smile on the old monster's mug.


Surely, Castro must still get a kick out of the idiotic laudations American lefties erupt in after leaving his presence. After Steven Spielberg dined with him in 2002, Spielberg enthused that he had just spent "the eight most important hours of my life." Probably they had two desserts. After a three-hour visit in 1998, Jack Nicholson pronounced Castro a "genius. We spoke about everything" — which I guess makes Nicholson a genius, too. And remember when the filmmaker Saul Landau complimented Castro for having "brought a greater equality in terms of wealth distribution (to Cuba) than I guess any country in the world today"? There is nothing like widespread poverty to boost a country's equality index.


Yet I do not think that Castro should take much consolation in such foolish statements from such foolish people. Praising dictators has been a weakness of celebrities for years. If Castro thinks the laudations of nitwits will assure him a lofty place in history, may I refer him to an earlier dictator similarly praised by nitwits and similarly ruinous to his country, Benito Mussolini?


Mussolini and his bully boys were an inspiration to celebrities, at least throughout the 1920s and early 1930s. The liberals at The New Republic thought him an exemplary forward-looker. Before Mussolini's star began to dim, Cole Porter had this lovely couplet written into his sunny song "You're the Tops!": "You're the tops, you're Mrs. Sweeny/You're the tops, you're Mussolini!"


Now, of course, Mussolini is recognized as a scoundrel and a fool. Surely, when historians review Castro's career and recognize that he took over a prosperous country and laid it low with the Marxist-Leninist moonshine, Castro will be remembered as a fool, too. Yet he will be remembered as something more than a scoundrel. He and his bully boys murdered hundreds of thousands. They tortured, exploited and stole. Then Castro filled with feces and infection.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

JWR contributor Bob Tyrrell is editor in chief of The American Spectator. Comment by clicking here.

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