http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/07/31/D8J7CVG81.html

hopefully, once he's dead, the US will lift it's embargo on cuban sugar, and we can get of of this damn HFCS.

hate to double post, but a friend who works at the miami herald just sent me an email saying they're getting reports that he's dead. No official confirmation yet, though. This happens every time he gets surgery, but seems to be a lot more of it this time.

he dies every year

yep. But maybe this time, he'll stay dead. And then we put up with 5 years of his insane alcoholic little brother.

This isn't widely known, but this operation is to remove his organs and put a robot inside his skin so that he can ALWAYS run Cuba.

Can't the US just lift the embargo anyway?

I've said that he is already anamatronic, and that he's been dead for years. Hence, he will never truly die.

of course they CAN, but they're real pricks about it.

I really doubt that anyone outside of Miami has strong feelings about the Cuba embargo. Those crazy Cuban Americans need to learn to chill out.

A wee article about Cuba I remember reading, if you're interested:

Diary: How to live to a hundred and twenty, Fidel-style
Columnists
John Harris
Monday 31st July 2006

Cubans may still be denied such trifles as free elections, but they have perfect teeth, and there seems to be only one obese person in the whole of Havana, writes John Harris

It's Tuesday, and I am sweating my way around the suburbs of Havana. Along with a cameraman and producer-cum-director, I'm here to author a film for Newsnight about the wonders of Fidel Castro's medical system. Cubans may still be denied such trifles as free elections, but they have perfect teeth, and in the whole city, there seems to be only one obese person.

So, we visit surgeries and clinics, and Havana's cutting-edge biotechnology campus, where "Frankenstein" machines - made up of 20-year-old hardware, mixed up with ad hoc modern components - whirr away, playing their part in the development of a mind-boggling array of vaccines and drugs. Among them are three anti-cancer treatments which are so trailblazing that the US authorities have decided to make an exception to the economic embargo and allow the American firm CancerVax to sign a multimillion-dollar contract.

A very different innovation is the 120 Club, a nationwide association open to anyone who fancies notching up six score years. Fidel turns 80 in a couple of weeks; his personal physician has recently claimed that he will set the country an example by making it to 140. For ordinary Cubans, there is only one problem: if you were born before 1955, state-subsidised cigarettes can be part of your weekly rations, working out at roughly one US cent for 20. When I meet the vice-president of the 120 Club, the question has to be asked: how do absurdly cut-price fags square with the national obsession with preventive medicine? His reply demonstrates a very Cuban logic. "My advice is this - get the cigarettes, but don't smoke them."

Lennon's capitalist philosophy

One of Havana's newest and most popular tourist attractions is Lennon Park, built around a statue of the ex-Beatle and opened in 2000 by Castro, who claimed that he "shared Lennon's dreams completely". Really? Aside from a brief run of fairly useless protest songs, Lennon lived his life as an unapologetic capitalist - proof that, despite its eternal fondness for radical chic, the music business is a case study in the kind of free-market economics at which Fidel would presumably blanch. Take, for example, a choice moment from the Beatles' first US press conference in February 1964. "Will you sing for us?" begged one journalist. "No," Lennon barked back. "We need money first."

Absolutism is back

When I last came here in 1998, the authorities' frostiness towards private enterprise was beginning to show signs of a thaw. Now, buoyed by money from China and Venezuela, they have swung back towards old-school absolutism: no new joint ventures with foreign companies have been agreed in the past year, and even getting a licence for a small restaurant is very difficult, apparently. As far as the Communist Party is concerned, even small business people are always in danger of turning into ethical monsters.

Tommyrot, I'm saying. Two years ago, exiled from the capital by the prohibitive price of even a small flat, my girlfriend and I bought a house in Hay-on-Wye. It came with its own shop, now an outlet selling cookbooks and kitchenware. On the occasions when I put in a few hours, the obligation to 1) talk to strangers and 2) secure money that might otherwise go to Tesco suggest progressive values in excelsis - as happened the other week, when a couple from Birmingham came in. Given what was on the shop stereo, he joined me in a long conversation about the recent death of Syd Barrett; and she bought a wooden spoon. This is surely the kind of heart-warming stuff that members of the Fabian Society call "social capital".

Cameroonian rocket

One last thing. Just before I left for Cuba, I took part in a brief radio debate about David Cameron's very sensible plan to put a rocket under the UK's democracy by opening the selection of the Tories' next London mayoral candidate to a US-style open primary. A participatory website is obviously in order - so, pilfering an old bit of William Hague wordplay, myself and a few friends have already registered a nice domain name: londontorynightmayor.co.uk

http://www.newstatesman.com/200607310016

I had Ariel Sharon in my 2005 dead pool, and that still hasn't happened.

I forget that this guy is still alive.

He's basically vegetative. I've never really understood why medicine makes these advances, to keep these people 'alive'. What's the point?

http://www.time.com/time/world/printout ... 28,00.html

Castro Is Reported to Have Cancer
U.S. intelligence reports now say the Cuban leader's condition appears terminal, government officials tell TIME
By SALLY B. DONNELLY AND TIMOTHY J. BURGER/WASHINGTON
Ever since President Fidel Castro was sidelined for what was said to be abdominal surgery last July, Cuban officials have maintained that the country's leader will return to his post. ''We will again have him leading the revolution,'' said Foreign Minister Felipe P?rez Roque just two days ago, speaking at an outdoor rally to protest the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, according to the Communist Party daily newspaper Granma.

But U.S. officials tell TIME that many in the U.S. government are now convinced that Castro, 80, has terminal cancer and will never return to power. "Certainly we have heard this, that this guy has terminal cancer," said one U.S. official.

Of course, such intelligence reports could be wrong, and one official cautioned that definitive proof is nearly impossible for the U.S. to come by. Yet the fact that the Cuban government removed Castro from the public stage before his death could suggest that Castro and his would-be successors were aware of a terminal condition and wanted to gauge public reaction to his absence. "They got to see how people would react," says one U.S. official. "They have had a chance to see how things might work without out him functioning day-to-day."

The U.S. government has been preparing for Castro's departure for half a century. That doesn't mean that things will change much. Fidel's brother Raul, 75, has been acting president since Fidel went into the hospital and has given no indication that he will change the policies of the isolated Communist government that has tormented the U.S. since taking power in 1959. Though he has until recently kept a very low profile, Raul Castro — not Fidel — was feted as the host of the non-aligned nations' summit on Sept. 15. Then Raul called a high profile meeting of the country's local, provincial and national leadership at what he called "this historic moment in our country's history." In another sign of his increasing prominence, two weeks ago Raul delivered his first televised national speech at the close of a trade union federation congress.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070116/ap_ ... uba_castro

Castro reportedly in grave condition

10 minutes ago

MADRID, Spain - Ailing Cuban leader
Fidel Castro is in "very grave" condition after three failed operations and complications from an intestinal infection, a Spanish newspaper said Tuesday.
ADVERTISEMENT

The newspaper El Pais cited two unnamed sources from the Gregorio Maranon hospital in the Spanish capital of Madrid. The facility employs surgeon Jose Luis Garcia Sabrido, who flew to Cuba in December to treat the 80-year-old Castro.

In a report published on its Web site, El Pais said: "A grave infection in the large intestine, at least three failed operations and various complications have left the Cuban dictator, Fidel Castro, laid up with a very grave prognosis."

Cuba has released little information on Castro's condition since he temporarily ceded power in July to his brother, Defense Minister Raul Castro, until he could recover from emergency intestinal surgery, prompting much speculation and rumor in the country and around the world.

El Pais' report, which could not immediately be confirmed, was a rare detailed description from a major media outlet about Castro's condition.

The U.S. government had speculated that Castro could suffer from cancer — a supposition denied by Sabrido. Some U.S. doctors believed Castro was suffering from diverticular disease, which can cause bleeding in the lower intestine, especially in people over 60. In severe cases, emergency surgery may be required.

That idea was supported by El Pais, which reported that its sources said Castro had suffered a bout of the disease.

"In the summer, the Cuban leader bled abundantly in the intestine," El Pais reported. "This adversity led him to the operating table, according to the medical sources. His condition, moreover, was aggravated because the infection spread and caused peritonitis, the inflammation of the membrane that covers the digestive organs."

El Pais said that in December, when Garcia Sabrido visited, Castro had an abdominal wound that was leaking more than a pint of fluids a day, causing "'a severe loss of nutrients." The Cuban leader was being fed intravenously, the report said.

A statement attributed to Castro was released on New Year's Eve saying his recovery was "far from being a lost battle."

Cuban officials told visiting U.S. lawmakers last month that Castro does not have cancer or a terminal illness and will eventually return to public life, although it was not clear whether he would return to the same kind of absolute control as before.

Should we place bets on what celebs will be at his funeral

Rage Against The Machine will reunite for this party!

That would be fucking awesome.