OF THE
TIMES
In September 1973, Fidel Castro was the first and only foreign leader to visit the southern liberation area of Vietnam when the war was ongoing, bringing a great encouragement to Vietnamese soldiers and people and a promise to help realise President Ho Chi Minh's wish to build a more prosperous country. This showed the special sentiments of him and Cuban people towards Vietnam and its national liberation.Angola:
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Also in his first visit to Vietnam, Fidel Castro presented Vietnam with five important socio-economic works: Thang Loi Hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam-Cuba Hospital in Quang Binh, Xuan Mai Road, Ba Vi cow breeding farm, and a Luong My chicken factory.
He also gifted Vietnam cow and chicken breed, along with more than 6 million USD for buying modern production equipment. At the same time, Cuba also sent experts to Vietnam to join the construction of Ho Chi Minh Trail and train more than 1,000 Vietnamese university students and post-graduates. Cuba also supported Vietnam in joining the United Nations.
Castro sent tens of thousands of troops when oil-giant Angola became embroiled in a proxy war between the United States and Russia who were vying for Cold War supremacy.Palestine:
Having gained independence from Portuguese colonial rule in 1975, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) government faced a civil war against the rival National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).
Castro supported the MPLA, which was fighting US- and apartheid-backed UNITA.
While Cuba provided troops, the Soviet Union was responsible for military hardware.
By the time the war ended Angola owed Moscow $5-billion, but nothing to Cuba. Castro believed "revolution was not something you paid for," said Roque.
It culminated in the 1988 Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, in southern Angola, an epic confrontation that sounded the death knell for South Africa's apartheid regime and indirectly led to the independence of Namibia.
More than 42 percent of healthcare workers in Angola are Cubans, many of whom decided to stay on after the war.
Elsewhere in the region, South African state security, intelligence officers still go for training in Cuba, according to Roque.
Palestinian flags were flown at half-mast in honor of the Cuban revolutionary leader Sunday. Across the Palestinian resistance spectrum, the late Cuban leader and revolutionary Fidel Castro left a mark on the development of the struggle against decades of Israeli colonialism and occupation and so several Palestinian groups took the time to express their gratitude for Cuban solidarity throughout the years.
Under the leadership of Fidel, "Cuba stood with the Palestinian people and their liberation movement in all facets of international struggle, building a revolutionary alliance for collective movement against imperialism, colonialism and its particular manifestation in Palestine, Zionism," the statement posted on the PFLP website Saturday said.
Diplomatic ties between Cuba and Palestine began in the same year that Fidel became prime minister in 1959 following the Cuban Revolution when Raul Castro and Che Guevara visited the Gaza Strip.
Fidel invited late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat to Cuba eight times, where the Cuban leader "always welcomed (Arafat) like he was a head of state," Palestinian officials told Al-Jazeera.
Fidel broke diplomatic relations with Israel in 1973 and has repeatedly called Zionism a form of fascism and racial discrimination. In 2014 he said that Israel was committing a "Palestinian Holocaust" in his reaction to the brutal Israeli 50-day war on occupied Gaza that year.
As for the feckless prat on the SOTT team who's unable to restrain themselves from flashing images of Hollywood's favourite kitten-torturer and child-murderer Che Guevara at any and every opportunity - are you partaking in some sort of dirty protest? Or were you just badly potty trained? Either way, i imagine at some level you're probably aware that you're making everyone connected with you stink too.