{"id":283140,"date":"2016-12-07T12:17:51","date_gmt":"2016-12-07T11:17:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-werewolves-who-hated-castro\/"},"modified":"2016-12-07T12:17:51","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T11:17:51","slug":"the-werewolves-who-hated-castro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-werewolves-who-hated-castro\/","title":{"rendered":"The Werewolves Who Hated Castro"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The Little Havana celebrations of Fidel Castro\u2019s death last month had a touch of mean-spirited delusion since perhaps Castro\u2019s greatest achievement was defying American power and living to die of old age, observes Greg Maybury.<\/p>\n<p>By Greg Maybury<\/p>\n<p>Considering the deluge of bitterness and pique oozing from many in the U.S. political establishment in response to the death recently of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.globalresearch.ca\/fidel-castro-ruz-his-legacy-will-live-forever\/5559030?utm_campaign=magnet&amp;utm_source=article_page&amp;utm_medium=related_articles\">Cuba\u2019s former leader Fidel Castro<\/a>, even some folks with more than a passing knowledge of key world events and history in general, might\u2019ve been left wondering what all the fuss was about. Castro \u2014 a man as reviled as he was revered \u2014 led that country\u2019s 1959 revolution, one of the most portentous tipping points in the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cold_War\">Cold War<\/a>, if not in modern history.<\/p>\n<p>The following might serve at the outset to give such people an idea as to why his passing provoked such a bilious response from Washington. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cubamisinformed.com\/uploads\/2\/5\/4\/7\/254734\/cuba_for_the_misinformed_book_info.pdf\">As Wayne Smith<\/a>, a former U.S. diplomat and ambassador to Cuba in the early years of Castro\u2019s reign under President Dwight Eisenhower (Smith was later President Jimmy Carter\u2019s Cuban representative), once memorably opined, \u201cCuba seems to have the same effect on US administrations as the full moon has on werewolves.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_21874\" style=\"width: 310px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion_American_aircraft_sortie.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion_American_aircraft_sortie-300x235.jpg\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-21874\" alt=\"U.S. warplanes flying over the combat area during the Bay of Pigs invasion.\" width=\"300\" height=\"235\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion_American_aircraft_sortie-300x235.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion_American_aircraft_sortie-160x126.jpg 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion_American_aircraft_sortie.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-21874\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion_American_aircraft_sortie-300x235.jpg\" alt=\"U.S. warplanes flying over the combat area during the Bay of Pigs invasion.\" width=\"300\" height=\"235\" srcset=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion_American_aircraft_sortie-300x235.jpg 300w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion_American_aircraft_sortie-160x126.jpg 160w, https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion_American_aircraft_sortie.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\"\/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">U.S. warplanes flying over the combat area during the Bay of Pigs invasion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Now Smith might\u2019ve said this almost three decades ago, but as the reaction to the Cuban leader\u2019s death indicated, this reality persists, despite the recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com.au\/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjHnsCmzM3QAhVFn5QKHTtLCLYQFggcMAA&amp;url=https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States--Cuban_Thaw&amp;usg=AFQjCNGrQiA9qkQ6sSLxQSXbA_iFcxrFVQ&amp;sig2=Jg6Qw96lQFbwQnzMQHW5rg\">thaw in official relations<\/a> initiated by President Obama. To be sure, there\u2019s rarely been a shortage of countries that could lay claim to having this transformative effect on the collective psyche of U.S. political establishment, Iran being a prime example.<\/p>\n<p>But it is Cuba that stands out as an exemplar, and so much of that has to do with Castro himself. Put simply, among the iconic revolutionary\u2019s many talents was an unerring ability to get up Uncle Sam\u2019s nose, and get away with it so often for so long. Suffice to say, since they seem to have inherited the same basic instincts as their forebears, the bulk of present-day Washington\u2019s \u201cWerewolves\u201d must\u2019ve been privately \u201chowling at the moon\u201d as it were at the&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2016\/12\/07\/the-werewolves-who-hated-castro\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Little Havana celebrations of Fidel Castro\u2019s death last month had a touch of mean-spirited delusion since perhaps Castro\u2019s greatest achievement was defying American power and living to die of old age, observes Greg Maybury. By Greg Maybury Considering the deluge of bitterness and pique oozing from many in the U.S. political establishment in response [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-283140","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283140\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}