From a Brit that wraps it up nicely

Offered without comment.

Castro: Last days of a monster
By ANN LESLIE, Daily Mail 08:29am 5th August 2006

The BBC's Guardianistas been fawning over an ailing Castro all week. But the truth is he's a megalomaniac who's run a corrupt, brutal and inefficient state that will collapse into criminality when he dies

When a young royal oaf like Prince Harry wears a Che Guevara T-shirt, you can safely assume that His Royal Highness knows zilch about the murderous, economically incompetent, but undeniably pretty, Argentine-born Cuban icon.

Che, for the brainless, is just another must-have fashion item. He knows no better — but others do.

When the news came in this week that Cuba's dictator, the ailing 79-year-old Fidel Castro, had 'temporarily' handed the reins of 47 years of uninterrupted power to his younger brother Raul, 75, I felt faintly disgusted by the hero-worshipping remarks uttered here about the possibly dying Fidel.

Castro, we were told, "will be remembered as one of the towering figures of the last half-century".

In Cuba itself, you'll hear other descriptions of this 'towering figure', who has executed trade unionists, and imprisons dissidents and journalists for up to 28 years.

I've worked in that beautiful, benighted island and talked, secretly, with its bored and bitter youth who dream of escape to America, a mere 90 miles away, and who scornfully describe Fidel as el viejo loco (the mad old man). Catch up with the rest of the story [here].