Fidel Castro and other failed leaders

"A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past," said Fidel Castro (1926-2016) the failed leader of the 1959 Cuban Revolution.
It's surprising Castro lived to be 90 years old, given how many millions of people were planning for his early death and seeing the celebrations as a result of his ultimate demise on November 26, 2016.

Fidel Castro (1925-2016)

Regardless of how vilified Fidel Castro was after the Cuban Revolution failed, the fact is, he died in the leadership role he took by force. It was an armed revolt conducted by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement and its allies, against the authoritarian government of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista. The revolution began in July 1953. It continued sporadically until the rebels finally ousted Batista on 1 January 1959, replacing the government with a revolutionary socialist state. The 26th of July Movement later reformed along communist lines, becoming the Communist Party in October 1965.

Fidel Castro outlived his life expectancy causing decades of economic hardships on the Cubans living in the island nation just 90 miles from Key West, Florida. He was the example of leadership without a plan for implementation.  In fact, a study of Fidel Castro's leadership style shows how dangerous one man's unchecked control is, especially when no one was allowed to live who opposed him.

Other failed leaders, to name a few were Russia's Joseph Stalin who purged his enemies and Adolf Hitler who murdered his opponents.  

In today's current events, Syria's evil President Bashar al-Assad and Russia's Vladimir Putin are a few who come to mind as failed leaders. Obviously, Putin is too egotistical to admit his leadership is "failed". Maybe his unhealthy alliance with the American businessman Donald Trump will turn things around for Putin. Shudder at the thought of being friends with a former KGB agent, in the days when Putin was adept at attempting to co-opt American spies by stealing their intelligence, while in Europe.

One man's leadership can destroy nations. For example, Cambodia's now dead former leader Pol Pot (1925-1998), led a genocidal movement. Pot was an evil communist leader who led the Khmer Rouge terror movement in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. During that time, about 1.5 million Cambodians out of a total population of 7 to 8 million died of starvation, execution, disease or overwork. Some estimates place the death toll even higher. One detention center, S-21, was so notorious that only seven of the roughly 20,000 people imprisoned there are known to have survived. The Khmer Rouge, in their attempt to socially engineer a classless peasant society, took particular aim at intellectuals, city residents, ethnic Vietnamese, civil servants and religious leaders. An invading Vietnamese army deposed the Khmer Rouge in 1979, and, despite years of guerrilla warfare, they never took power again. Pol Pot died in 1998 without ever being brought to justice.

Sadly, there are dozens of examples of how one man, or a determined, and ambitious leader, someone who rules without morals or principles can bring entire civilizations to the brink of disaster. Like Fidel Castro predicted in his quote about "revolution", these leaders force the difference between the past and the future.

In my opinion, our American Democracy appears to be on the brink of a similar "revolution", one brought about by deceitful "false news", a campaign of fear and slander against all opposition. Donald Trump sucked his support for his 2016 election from the right wing extremists who want to make America "white" again.

In fact, rich Donald Trump has lived the mirror opposite life of the humble Fidel Castro. Yet, they have shared an insatiable ambition to control and have power over others, regardless of how they could obtain their goals.

I suspect Donald Trump's leadership will be a failed effort to bring about a social revolution in the United States; but if he lives as long as Fidel Castro, he only has 20 years left to do it. Moreover, when it's time for the ultimate and natural demise of Donald Trump, as will inevitably happen, (Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Hitler and Stalin) there will be dancing in the streets in cities throughout the world, just like the joyous Cubans are doing in Florida's "little Havana's", today.

Vladimir Putin surely studying Hitler communication -Russia's propaganda war

To bolster Vladimir Putin’s cult of personality, the Kremlin cultivates washed-up Western movie stars.  (This would be Saturday Night Live humor if it weren't so scary.)

After reading this article published in The Week May 15, 2015, it seems like the comparison between two of modern history's evil leaders are being reincarnated by Vladimir Putin. Adolf Hitler's relentless take over of other countries because he could, seems analogous to Putins' take over of the Crimea and his moves into the Ukraine. Of course, Joseph Stalin was the Russian leader responsible for opposing Winston Churchill and creating the 20th century's Cold War.  

Putin certainly seems intent on reliving the legacy of both.

Perhaps, Vladimir Putin's bedtime reading includes 20th century history because he's clearly intent on using already tried strategies to affirm his ambitious leadership. In fact, it's a fair assumption to consider how Putin is evaluating how Hitler succeeded and where he failed. Likewise with Stalin. And Putin intends to fix what both of them did wrong and to get it right. Why? Because Putin has become delusional, corrupted by his own power. In "The Week" report, it appears Putin's strategy is heavily dependent on a propaganda war to garner domestic support.

Vladimir Putin’s government is engaged in a global Orwellian campaign to sow confusion and undermine the West.

Since it annexed Crimea a year ago, Russia has launched an all-out disinformation campaign on multiple fronts. State-run international news channels and websites such as RT and Sputnik give a pro-Kremlin slant to real news stories, and spread outright lies and outlandish conspiracy theories. State agencies and private firms employ platoons of bloggers who scour Western and Russian news sites for articles about Russia or Ukraine and swamp them with pro-Kremlin comments. Russian agencies have set up news websites in several East European languages. The order to create this propaganda campaign, on which the Kremlin spends an estimated $600 million a year, came straight from the top: President Vladimir Putin said in 2012 that Russia would develop “a matrix of tools and methods to reach foreign policy goals without the use of arms but by exerting information and other levers of influence.” The propaganda is surprisingly successful in sowing confusion. “Journalists are taught to report both sides,” said Rick Stengel, former managing editor of Time and now a U.S. undersecretary of state. “When the Kremlin says there are no Russian soldiers in Crimea, they have to repeat it. How do you combat someone who just makes stuff up?”

What tools does the Kremlin use?

One primary tool is the television network RT, which was called Russia Today until authorities renamed it to obscure the Russian connection. RT has cable and satellite channels in English—including RT America, which potentially reaches 85 million viewers. It covers current events in the U.S., focusing on police brutality, protests, and poverty, but it also produces wacky segments investigating whether, for example, the CIA created Ebola. Few Americans watch RT, and one of its anchors quit after publicly disavowing the “lies” that she and others were ordered to tell about the conflict in Ukraine. But the web version, RT.com, does have reach. It became the first news channel to rack up 1 billion views on YouTube. In the past year, the main theme has been the supposed rise of neo-Nazi groups and fascism in Ukraine—making pro-Russian separatists the good guys.

How are stories faked?

StopFake, a Ukrainian myth-busting site run by journalism students, has documented hundreds of fake photos spread by Russian news sites and social media. Peter Pomerantsev, aleading authority on Russian propaganda efforts, says that stories alleging that Ukrainian fascist gangs, trained by NATO, had murdered children were popping up all over these sites in early 2014, when Russia was taking over Crimea and fomenting unrest in eastern Ukraine. StopFake traced the photos back to their original sources and found that some were from past Ukrainian conflicts, some were from crime scenes in other countries, and some were actually stills from movies. The group also discovered that Russian news shows were using actors to play weeping or wounded victims and tell tales of Ukrainian government brutality. Russians call this maskirovka, or masquerade—an information war to accompany actual war.

What about East European sites?

Dozens of pro-Russian news sites have cropped up in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria. Fluently written in the local languages, the sites carry the same kinds of faked photos and articles about supposed Ukrainian fascism as well as skillfully argued analyses extolling Russia’s benevolent intentions. Czech counterintelligence has flagged one of the sites, Aeronet.cz, as “a source of dangerous pro-Russian propaganda.”  Earlier this year, when a NATO convoy passed through Czech territory, several of these Czech sites reported that the local population was outraged by the incursion of “foreign” troops. In fact, the convoy was greeted with Czech throngs waving U.S. flags.

What do the Kremlin’s bloggers do?
Russia has a 24-hour “troll factory” in St. Petersburg, where hundreds of employees work in 12-hour shifts writing pro-Putin comments on Western and Russian news articles, fabricating their own news stories, creating and posting satirical videos, and posting tweets and Facebook updates from fake profiles. “They bombard the websites of CNN and the BBC,” says one former employee, Marat Burkhard. One day’s assignment, he said, was to assert that NATO troops had been embedded with Ukrainian forces all along. Another was to call President Obama an uncultured “monkey” for chewing gum during his January visit to India. “You work in the Ministry of Truth, which is the Ministry of Lies, and everyone kind of believes in this truth,” says Burkhard. “It’s Orwell.”

What’s the ultimate goal?

To give the Kremlin plausible deniability of its aggressive activities, and create sympathy for Russia in the old Soviet bloc. In eastern Ukraine, Pomerantsev says, Russian media managed “to create a parallel reality where ‘fascists’ have taken power in Kiev, ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine are in mortal danger, and the CIA is waging a war against Moscow.” 

Russia recently launched a similar campaign in former Soviet republic Estonia, which has a large ethnic Russian population. 

In March, Russian-language television in Estonia broadcast a faked clip purporting to show Estonian government support for Nazism—a clear attempt to foment another pro-Russian uprising. “This is a new idea of war,” Pomerantsev says. “This is information-psychological war with endless subversion.”

Putin’s movie star pals

To bolster Vladimir Putin’s cult of personality, the Kremlin cultivates washed-up Western movie stars. Action hero Steven Seagal, for example, is a personal friend of the Russian leader. Both men have black belts in martial arts, and palling around with Seagal helps bolster Putin’s ultramacho image. 

“He is one of the greatest world leaders, if not the greatest world leader, alive today,” Seagal has said of Putin. On a boxing tour of Russia last year, actor Mickey Rourke wore a Putin T-shirt and said Putin was “a real good regular guy.” Another Putin admirer, French actor Gérard Depardieu, even accepted Russian citizenship as a way of avoiding French taxes. He has praised the Russians’ “powerful temperament,” adding, “One must be very strong to be Russian.”

THE WEEK
May 15, 2015

Putin must be stopped! Millions of displaced Syrians and Ukraine being smothered while Putin harbors Snowden and Yanukovych

Russian people are sadly  familiar with personal sacrifice caused by, governmental oppression and corruption. 

Regardless of their difficult history, the Russian people are not as naturally aggressive as their ruthless leaders. There's a historic disconnect between the Russian people and their political leaders. This schism has existed since the days of the Czars. What's different now, in the 21st century world order, is how the power hungry Putin, an ambitious disciple of the famous dictator Joseph Stalin, is putting the world in a dangerously delicate defensive position. Putin has permitted the genocide of millions of Syrians while the country's murderer President Assad is allowed to remain in power. Now, Putin is successfully putting pressure on the Ukraine to abandon western affiliations and, instead, become the equivalent of a Russian state. Western nations are on the defensive because, frankly, no nation on earth has the intestinal fortitude to risk a war with Russia. Past aggression against Russia has produced absolutely horrific outcomes, as in Napoleon's and Hitler's lost campaigns.  

Frankly, when President Obama caved to public pressure by not taking aggressive action against Syrian genocide of Christian rebels by poison gas, he opened the door for Putin to arrogantly ignore any threats of retaliation for Russia's support of President Assad.  

As Russia's exhausting Sochi Olympic games are over, Putin has no imminent public relations campaign to oversee. Of course, he has about a billion dollars in Olympic bills to pay for the cost of the games. But, it's only money. Putin is on a power trip and obviously sees President Obama as too weakened by US partisan politics to respond to his own over grown Stalin-like ambitions.

All of which is to say - an increasingly dangerous world is evolving while Putin forces his power hand on Syria, the Ukraine and beyond to who knows where? 

Meanwhile, the information age traitor Edward Snowden is being held like a house cat in Russia, like a trophy Putin can point to, like the Super Bowl ring he stole away from New England Patriot's owner Robert Kraft.

Putin must be stopped.  Stealing Super Bowl rings, harboring traitors and now supporting heinous military campaigns in Syria and the Ukraine-Crimea, cannot be permitted to continue.  

Sadly, I doubt any nation has the intestinal fortitude to stop Putin.
If there's such a thing as reincarnation, the world certainly needs another Sir Winston Churchill as soon as possible.  

It would be nothing short of miraculous if a savior against Putin arose from within his own nation. Surely, the Russian people cannot continue to endure another political leader who continues to support the oppression they've experienced in the past.