Fidel Castro died yesterday, on my late sister's 71st birthday. He dominated the second half of the 20th century, and my entire adult life, as a world figure.

A bright shining light in this, the most bizarre of the 16 presidential elections I have voted in (there is nothing as an even distant second-place, not Tricky Dick, not Teflon Ronnie, not Junior Bush, nada), is the presence of Iceland's Pirate Party and their articulate leader Birgitta Jonsdottir. Watch Amy Goodman's interview with her from beginning to end: