Fidel Castro

Expectations in Miami and Washington had been that once Fidel Castro disappeared from the scene, the Revolution would crumble. But that, of course, has not been the case. Six months after Fidel passed the baton to Raul, there has been no sign whatever of unrest. The Cuban people have accepted the transition with calm maturity - indicating a higher level of support for the Revolution than the exiles in Miami or the Bush administration had thought possible. Indeed, a recent Gallup poll conducted in Cuba indicated that 49 percent of the Cuban people supported Fidel Castro.

The Orioles won't be the only American cultural export playing in Cuba this weekend. Jimmy Buffett, Bonnie Raitt and James Taylor will sing tonight at a concert at Havana's Karl Marx Theater.If they can do that, and if the pope can visit Cuba, as he did last year, why can't the Orioles play an exhibition game in Havana against a team of Cuban all-stars?Cuban exiles and Cuban-Americans are protesting the Orioles' visit, saying it's wrong for a major-league team to play in a dictatorship with a long record of human rights abuses and other atrocities.

COL. Hugo Chavez launched a coup that failed in 1992 and came back to win election as president of Venezuela last December. His breathless moves since have caused critics to ask whether he was turning himself into a dictator.The resignation of the Supreme Court last Tuesday suggested this has already happened. The effective abolition of the congress by the new constitutional assembly, on Wednesday, confirmed it.President Chavez could not have managed this without allies: the people. He is democratically ending 41 years of discredited democracy.

SOME OF US remember pictures of bodies on a beach at the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Some of us never forgot the missiles of October 1962 and John F. Kennedy's death-mask visage on the television, bracing us for the end of the world.In Cuba, they remember midnight knocks on the door and mass executions. These do not vanish from the mind. Nor have government purges, nor the crushing of civil liberties after Fidel Castro came out of the hills and began to write his terrible history.But all of us of a certain age, in some corner of our minds, calculate how long ago it was and marvel at the passage of time.

WHEN THE first batter from Cuba's all-star team steps to the plate tomorrow at Camden Yards, thousands of baseball fans in the stadium and watching on television will be treated to a unique example of sports diplomacy -- and a new inning in the long and acrimonious history of United States-Cuban relations.On the level playing field of the baseball diamond, there will be no hint of decades of U.S. efforts to invade Cuba, to assassinate Fidel Castro and to overthrow his government. There will be no evidence of Cuba's long-past practice of supporting revolution against U.S.-backed governments in the Third World.

MIAMI -- Sometimes, Vivian Ruiz closes her eyes and suddenly is transported back to her childhood. She sees the streets where she grew up in Cuba, her old school, her friends. The images are so clear, as if days have passed instead of years."I remember everything," she said yesterday, pushing aside her plate while sitting at a corner table at Sergio's restaurant in Miami.Ruiz glanced across the room toward a television screen and was reminded again why she left.The Orioles' exhibition game against a Cuban all-star team wasn't drawing much interest from the sparse lunchtime crowd, but Ruiz's emotions were stirred as Fidel Castro was shown in the stands at Havana's Estadio Latinoamericano.

Ticket policy sounds familiarIt is with some amusement that I heard some commentators complain about Fidel Castro's policy of distributing tickets to the Orioles-Cuba exhibition game by invitation only, thus depriving the average Cuban baseball fan of attending the game. Apparently, those who were offended by the policy are laboring under the misapprehension that tickets are distributed in a more democratic manner here in Baltimore.Anyone who has had the good fortune to attend an Opening Day, All-Star or playoff game at Camden Yards will tell you that the assemblage at such events is disproportionately composed of the Washington "Chablis and suspenders" crowd.

HAVANA -- It's a sprawling nation the size of Pennsylvania, yet Fidel Castro has often run Cuba like a little country estate, taking charge of every detail, picking out new tractors, even deciding which sugar mill gets a new truck.Now, though, the power that Castro has wielded for four decades is quietly slipping through his hands.It can be felt in the awakening that's turning a rigid socialist society into a land of individuals. It can be seen in the former Castro loyalists who are filling churches or embracing capitalism.

If the Orioles are serious about turning around this car wreck of a season, there's only one man for the job.Hint: He'd be the ultimate no-nonsense manager. Another hint: He's a huge baseball fan who routinely caps off the night at Havana's Palacio Nacional by clicking on ESPN.Final hint: His national team plays the O's Monday night at Camden Yards.Right, we're talking the Hall of Fame dictator, Cuba's Maximum Leader himself: Fidel Castro.The benefits of having Fidel Castro as your manager are obvious.

LAST WEEKEND, Senate minority leader Tom Daschle spent seven hours talking to Fidel Castro in Havana. U.S. Chamber of Commerce president Thomas Donohue spent three days there last month. In June, low-level State Department and Coast Guard officials met with their Cuban counterparts to discuss the potential for collaboration on drug interdiction operations. More and more officials, it seems, are pursuing a dialogue with Castro's government.But not the White House. Fearful of a right-wing attack at the first sign that Washington might engage in diplomatic discussions over its long-standing differences with Castro, the Clinton administration has rejected all high-level talks with the Cuban government.

Franken's lead in Minn. Senate race grows ST. PAUL, Minn.: Democrat Al Franken increased his small lead over Republican Norm Coleman on Tuesday in the protracted dispute over Minnesota's Senate race, but it remains unclear when the five-month legal battle will end. A state court ordered more than 300 absentee ballots that had previously been excluded to be counted Tuesday, and the results increased Franken's lead from 225 votes to 312. Lawyers representing Coleman,...

At some point in this presidential campaign, we may have a real debate on foreign policy differences between the parties. That hasn't yet happened. The candidates have sparred about experience. They have clashed on Iraq. But they're still dancing around the most central question: How do you balance force and diplomacy when trying to keep America safe? Nothing illustrates the need for clarity more than the jousting over whether America should talk directly to the likes of Ra?l Castro or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Fidel Castro is stepping down? As Dorothy Parker said upon hearing of the death of President Calvin Coolidge, how can you tell? The bearded one lost most of his relevancy for us "yanquis" long ago. He once loomed large in the lives of baby boomers as we crouched under our desks in "duck-and-cover" drills, terrified of his nuclear-tipped Russian missiles. To today's youths, Mr. Castro is so last century. Even in Miami and Havana, the response to Mr. Castro's retirement is reported to be remarkably ho-hum.

ATLANTA -- Fidel Castro has had a powerful ally in his half-century of brutal rule: the U.S. government. The antiquated U.S. policy of complete isolation has done more to help Mr. Castro maintain his ruthless tyranny than any of his police-state tactics - brutally quashing dissent, ruining (or murdering) potential rivals, and occasionally allowing criminals and troublemakers to flee. Mr. Castro blamed the U.S. embargo for every misery visited upon Cuban citizens, from fuel shortages to food rationing to dwindling medical supplies.

MEXICO CITY -- When Fidel Castro and his band of bearded rebels entered Havana just after New Year's Day 1959, Dwight Eisenhower was president of the United States, and few people questioned U.S. hegemony in Latin America. Castro declared himself a Communist, and nearly every government in the region joined the U.S. in condemning his regime. Two generations and nine American presidents later, Castro is finally stepping down as Cuba's leader - widely admired, even if his policies are not widely emulated.

WASHINGTON -- What the CIA couldn't do with exploding seashells, poison cigars and chemicals to make his beard fall off, Fidel Castro has done alone. He removed himself from a world stage that he seemed to dominate for nearly 50 years. So compelling was this 6-foot-3-inch, Jesuit-trained former lawyer that he inspired and drove revolutionary movements across Central America and Africa. He twisted American policymakers into such awkward knots that the United States has maintained severe economic sanctions against Cuba, and at the same time a naval station on the island's southeastern tip, housing the most notorious alleged terrorists in captivity at Guantanamo Bay. "He survived paramilitary invasions, assassination attempts, trade embargoes, travel bans, diplomatic isolation.

Fidel Castro has made official what seemed inevitable since he disappeared from the spotlight 18 months ago following surgery. His resignation as president of Cuba is the end of an era, but it should also mark the beginning of a new relationship between Cuba and the U.S. This transition of power in Cuba comes with more of a whimper and not the bang with which Mr. Castro led the revolution nearly half a century ago that transformed his country from an...

WASHINGTON -- Fidel Castro, the revolutionary leader who brought communism to the Western Hemisphere, vexing U.S. policymakers for nearly a half- century, resigned yesterday as president of Cuba. "My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath," Castro, 81, wrote in a message published in the Communist Party daily Granma. But he said his failing health would not permit him to continue as Cuba's supreme leader: "It would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer."

HAVANA -- As Cubans went to the polls yesterday, the ballot boxes, campaign posters and other trappings of democracy that are hauled out every Election Day were all in place. But there was something else that had not been present for many years - some degree of suspense. As in the elections five years ago, and the ones five years before that, there was little doubt about who would win. The 614 candidates for Cuba's National Assembly of People's Power were all running unopposed. For the first time since most Cubans won the right to cast ballots for parliament in 1993, however, there was some uncertainty about who would fill top leadership posts, which the new assembly will play a role in resolving.

Fidel Castro, who's been ill and out of sight recently, reappeared this weekend after Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez called him the "father of all revolutionaries." Mr. Castro said he was touched. But he should really thank an uncompromising Washington government, administration after administration, for maintaining his reputation 18 years after the Cold War ended. If the U.S. had ever embraced him, he'd be just another tinhorn dictator. - Newsday (New York) Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. helped broker a deal over the weekend that might help prevent a recession - Mr. Paulson and the Treasury Department coaxed a consortium of Wall Street banks to patch up a broken piece of the debt market.