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“It Is Not Enough to Condemn Trump’s Racism; The nation’s ideals are under attack, and it is up to all of us to defend them. (Democrat and media darling Ilhan Omar, New York Times, July 25.)

“N**ger!” taunted my Castroite jailers between tortures,” recalled the world’s longest suffering black political prisoner Eusebio Peñalver, to this writer. “'We pulled you down from the trees and cut off your tail!' laughed my Castroite torturers. For months I was naked in a 6 x 4 foot cell. That’s four feet high, so you couldn’t stand. But I felt a great freedom inside myself. I refused to commit spiritual suicide.”

Eusebio Peñalver’s jailing (without trial, unlike Mandela whose trial was open to the public and attended by multitudes of international observers, most of them hostile to the South African regime) and torture at the hands of the Castro regime stretched to 29 years, surpassing Nelson Mandela’s record in time behind bars and probably quintupling the horrors suffered by Mandela during this period.

“Viva Fidel! Viva Che!” (Two-time candidate for the Democrat presidential nomination Jesse Jackson, bellowing while arm in arm with Fidel Castro himself in 1984.)

"Fidel Castro is very shy and sensitive, I frankly like him and regard him as a friend." (Democrat presidential candidate, Presidential Medal of Freedom winner, and “Conscience of the Democrat party,” George McGovern.)

“Fidel Castro first and foremost is and always has been a committed egalitarian. He wanted a system that provided the basic needs to all Cuba, has superb systems of health care and universal education…We greeted each other as old friends.” (Former President of the United States and official "Elder Statesman” of the Democrat Party, Jimmy Carter.)

Now here’s Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio: “I also think it’s well known that there’s some good things that happened (in Cuba) -- for example, in health care.”

“The Toast of Manhattan!” crowed Time magazine in January of 1996. “The Hottest Ticket in Manhattan!” also read a Newsweek story that week. Both articles referred to the social swirl and acclaim that engulfed Fidel Castro upon his visit to New York by the very Manhattan media and business luminaries who barely escaped incineration at his hand. The occasion was UN’s fiftieth anniversary celebration, but the Castromania almost recaptured the hysteria for Simon and Garfunkel’s 1981 reunion in Central Park.

First on the Stalinist dictator’s itinerary was a luncheon at the Council on Foreign Relations. After holding court there for a rapt David Rockefeller, along with Robert McNamara, Dwayne Andreas, and Random House’s Harold Evans, Castro flashed over to Mort Zuckerman’s Fifth Avenue pad, where a throng of Beltway glitterati, including Mike Wallace, Peter Jennings, Tina Brown, Bernard Shaw, and Barbara Walters, all jostled for photo-ops and stood in line for the warmongering mass-murderer's autograph.

Diane Sawyer was so overcome in the mass-murderer’s presence that she rushed up, broke into a toothy smile, wrapped her arms around Fidel Castro, and smooched him warmly on the cheek.

"You people are the cream of the crop!" beamed the mass-murderer to the rapt and smiling throng he’d coming within a hair of incinerating and now surrounded him.

"Hear, hear!" chirped the delighted guests while tinkling their wine glasses in appreciation and glee. But many more were left panting, because according to the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council Fidel Castro had gotten over 250 dinner invitations from Manhattan celebrities and power-brokers.

The jailer and torturer of the longest suffering black political prisoners in modern history was bear-hugged by Charles Rangel.

The jailer and torturer of the most female political prisoners in the modern history of the western hemisphere was hugged and smooched by feminist Diane Sawyer.

The jailer and torturer of the most journalists in the modern history of the Western hemisphere found everyone from Dan Rather to Mike Wallace to Tina Brown lining up for his autograph.

The jailer and torturer who abolished private property within his Stalinist fiefdom found David Rockefeller and Mort Zuckerman crowding around him for a handshake.

The Communist dictator who abolished capitalism under penalty of firing squad and torture chamber was honored in the board room of the Wall Street Journal with a VIP luncheon.

Everything above—however outrageous it may seem--is meticulously documented here.

“God Bless you, Fidel!” boomed Pastor Calvin Butts of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church while introducing Castro on another New York visit four years later. The People’s Weekly World described Castro’s visit as such: “The audience which included New York Democratic representatives Charles Rangel enthusiastically greeted the Communist leader with a ten minute standing ovation. Chants of ‘FIDEL!-FIDEL! VIVA-FIDEL!’ resounded from the rafters.”

Then with Congresswoman Maxine Waters looking on in rapture, a beaming Charlie Rangel waddled up to the podium beside the terrorist (and racist) Castro and engulfed him in a mighty bear hug. Castro had to catch his breath, but he smiled and returned the rotund senator’s passionate abrazo.

The mass-murderer who craved to nuke New York was not only the man to see but the one to be seen with by New York’s elite.

Above I used the term “genuinely smitten.” Perhaps you think I succumbed to hyperbole, to cheap rhetoric?

Fine, then you amigos, study these pictures and decide for yourselves.

Fortunately for Manhattan’s elite, on Nov. 17, 1962, an FBI man they love to hate, J. Edgar Hoover, foiled a Castroite plan to incinerate and entomb thousands of them. Cuban agents had targeted Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdales, and Manhattan’s Grand Central Station with a dozen incendiary devices and 500 kilos of TNT. The operation was set for detonation the following week, on the day after Thanksgiving,

Castro and Che planned their Manhattan holocaust just weeks after Nikita Khrushchev foiled their plans for an even bigger massacre during the Cuban Missile Crisis. “If the missiles had remained,” Che Guevara confided to The London Daily Worker the following month, “we would have used them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York City.”