Tema: Report: Castro says Cuban model doesn't work

Report: Castro says cuban model doesn't work
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100908/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_cuba_fidel_castro

fidel castro told a visiting american journalist that cuba's communist economic model doesn't work, a rare comment on domestic affairs from a man who has conspicuously steered clear of local issues since stepping down four years ago.

the fact that things are not working efficiently on this cash-strapped caribbean island is hardly news. Fidel's brother raul, the country's president, has said the same thing repeatedly. But the blunt assessment by the father of cuba's 1959 revolution is sure to raise eyebrows.

jeffrey goldberg, a national correspondent for the atlantic magazine, asked if cuba's economic system was still worth exporting to other countries, and castro replied: "the cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore" goldberg wrote wednesday in a post on his atlantic blog.

he said castro made the comment casually over lunch following a long talk about the middle east, and did not elaborate. The cuban government had no immediate comment on goldberg's account.

since stepping down from power in 2006, the ex-president has focused almost entirely on international affairs and said very little about cuba and its politics, perhaps to limit the perception he is stepping on his brother's toes.

goldberg, who traveled to cuba at castro's invitation last week to discuss a recent atlantic article he wrote about iran's nuclear program, also reported on tuesday that castro questioned his own actions during the 1962 cuban missile crisis, including his recommendation to soviet leaders that they use nuclear weapons against the united states.

even after the fall of the soviet union, cuba has clung to its communist system.
the state controls well over 90 percent of the economy, paying workers salaries of about $20 a month in return for free health care and education, and nearly free transportation and housing. At least a portion of every citizen's food needs are sold to them through ration books at heavily subsidized prices.

president raul castro and others have instituted a series of limited economic reforms, and have warned cubans that they need to start working harder and expecting less from the government. But the president has also made it clear he has no desire to depart from cuba's socialist system or embrace capitalism.

fidel castro stepped down temporarily in july 2006 due to a serious illness that nearly killed him.

he resigned permanently two years later, but remains head of the communist party. After staying almost entirely out of the spotlight for four years, he re-emerged in july and now speaks frequently about international affairs. He has been warning for weeks of the threat of a nuclear war over iran.

castro's interview with goldberg is the only one he has given to an american journalist since he left office.

How is possible that still are some who are sympathetic to the Tyrannosaurus Rex? Don’t let this psychopath liar fool you, he has no conscience.

Castro during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 12, 1962, the closest the world had ever come to nuclear war, wrote in his cable to Khrushchev in October 26, 1962, “that would be the moment to eliminate such danger forever through tan act of clear legitimate defense, however harsh and terrible the solution would be, for there is no other… the Soviet Union must never allow the circumstances in which the imperialists could launch the first nuclear strike against it.”

Khrushchev response in October 30, 1962, “In your cable of October 27 you proposed that we be the first to launch a nuclear strike against the territory of the enemy. You, of course, realize where that would have led. Rather than a simple strike, it would have been the start of a thermonuclear world war.”


Castro, in his deep hatred against the United States, did not hesitate in asking for the launch of a nuclear strike without given a damn that such action sealed the annihilation of the Cuban people and a large part of humanity. Castro deserves everything that's coming to him.

Julia Sweig, a Cuba expert at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations who accompanied Goldberg on the trip, confirmed the Cuban leader's comment, which he made at a private lunch last week.

She told The Associated Press she took the remark to be in line with Raul Castro's call for gradual but widespread reform.

"It sounded consistent with the general consensus in the country now, up to and including his brother's position," Sweig said.

Link: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/09/10/world/main6853855.shtml

Why if asked by the Cuban model he responds by referring to another model?

So, when he says Cuban model he means the capitalist system, and when he says we are concerned he means the U.S.

And how it is that not even one of the Castroites was able to understand the "true meaning" of the words of the tyrant, before he made this "clarification"?

He reversed his previous statement. A lapse, a slip? It happened to him what almost never happened before, he is already old. His rectification is incoherent and it does nothing more than confirm what the journalists interpreted.

How many Cubans in the past 51 years have suffered unspeakable misery for saying the same thing Fidel Castro just said? Cubans are willing to risk their lives sailing in makeshift rafts in order to escape from Dr. Castro island paradise. He has expended Cuba’s resources exporting revolution around the world. The only ones who believe this consummate liar are brainwashed sympathizers and die-hard progressives. Who the cap fits let them wear it.

Fidel Castro has ruined the island. His selfish desire to dominate the Cuban people, has not allow them to prosper and fulfill their potential. The daily struggle that most Cubans have to go through just to live their daily lives is unbelievable. Tourists go to Cuba and relax in the hotels, enjoy the beaches and eat the good food. These are things that the average Cuban can’t afford. Instead of releasing the grip over the people and allow their entrepreneurial abilities to create new ideas and value for others, Castro prefer to keep them under his control, unable to sustain themselves, and hold on to power.

Castros regime has been a complete and absolute failure. The rest of the leadership no longer believe in the regime, they are just puppets obeying order from the Castro brothers. They keep the regime alive by use of force and repression, but the day of reckoning is upon them, the regime is coming apart at the seams.

Fidel Castro was wrong all along. Fidel's experiment with Marxist-Leninist political economy has been a total failure. His model doest work if you want your nation to be a third world dirt poor dictatorship, like Castro turned his country into.

The aging and egotistical Fidel Castro makes this statement without any recriminination after 51 years of living the good life. But of course those who have said that before him, have been shot, or thrown into a jail or have to leave the island.

Fidel Castro, the inspiration and maximum leader of the progressives, has exposed the real truth to the world that the communist economy system doesn’t work. He can’t unscramble a broken egg.

What Fidel Castro is after? For people to feel sorry for him? Only those who are easily deceived would fall for that. He was, he is and he will die a brutal dictator, who never allow any type of opposition to his absolute power, and has fail miserable with the implementation of his archaic economic policies.

If Fidel Castro really believes that communism is the best system of government for the Cuban people, why he never has allows any other communist candidates to run against him? Why not let the people decide for themselves? The answer is because his insatiable drive for power and prominence, by his belief that his grip on power justify abusing it. Castro in his depraved mind thinks that he knows what is best for the island and will get rid, for whatever means, of those who dare to oppose his Machiavellian tactics.

Protest marchers beaten detained
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/11/02/1903584/protest-marchers-beaten-detained.html
Cuban authorities cracked down on a march Sunday to pray at the tomb of a dissident whose death became a rallying cry for human rights activists.


BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com
Posted on Tuesday, 11.02.10

Cuban security agents beat and detained about 40 dissidents after the mother of the late political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo and her supporters prayed at his tomb, activists reported Monday.

The mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, said she was repeatedly hit on the head, thrown to the ground and gagged with a smelly rag that left her breathless as she shouted anti-government slogans.

Security officers also kicked several handcuffed young men during the incident Sunday, added Marlon Martorell, a dissident who took part in the protest.

Tamayo and most of the 40 others detained were released later Sunday or early Monday but some remained unaccounted for Monday afternoon, including one of Tamayo's sons, Martorell reported.

The detentions appeared to be one of the harshest crackdowns yet on supporters of Tamayo, whose son's death in February after a lengthy hunger strike became a rallying cry for dissidents in Cuba and abroad.

Tamayo and Martorell said about 40 supporters joined the regular Sunday march from her home in the eastern town of Banes to Mass at a local Catholic church and to the cemetery where her son is buried.

The mother said groups of government supporters harassed them on the way from church to the cemetery, and one man ``authorized by the state security'' threw rocks at the marchers, hitting at least three.

Martorell also reported that a ``security agent in civilian clothes'' shouted epithets and threw rocks at the marchers. Some of the marchers threw rocks back, he said by phone from Banes, but kept walking toward the cemetery.

Scores of police and state security officers ringed the cemetery by the time the marchers had finished praying at Zapata's tomb, Tamayo and Martorell said. ``They attacked when I set foot outside the gates to the cemetery,'' Tamayo told the Miami-based Cuban Democratic Directorate. ``They threw me to the ground and dealt blows and kicks to all the brothers.''

Martorell said agents carried out the crackdown ``with a lot of violence, with beatings for all.''

Tamayo, who is Afro-Cuban, said she was forced into a police vehicle and as she shouted ``Down with Fidel!'' one officer shouted at her, ``Shut up, you lousy black.'' She was then gagged with a rag smelling of gasoline that nearly asphyxiated her, the mother added.

Police threw the protesters into two waiting buses, Martorell said, and he later heard Tamayo shouting ``Down with Fidel'' and ``Zapata Lives!'' while they were held in a Banes lockup.

``Once again, there's proof that they are a bunch of murderers,'' Tamayo added. ``Let them kill me, but I will die with honor, dignity and valor.''
The Miami-based group Cuba Independent and Democratic reported Monday that one of its members in Banes, Daniel Mesa, suffered an injury to his hand during the detentions.

The cell phones of Tamayo and those of several other supporters involved in the incident appeared to have been blocked Sunday afternoon and much of Monday.

State Security agents initially blocked Tamayo's marches to the church and cemetery, sometimes with mass detentions like Sunday's. But they had been allowing the protests since mid-August, when Catholic church officials intervened on her behalf.

Church officials told Tamayo last month that she and her immediate family had government permission to leave for the United States, but she replied that she would not leave unless she was allowed to take her son's remains.

While the news media was reporting the latest "reforms" being implemented by Raul Castro, Reina Luisa Tamayo and 40 other dissidents were getting brutally beaten in the town of Banes, Holguin (Oriente) province. They were being stoned and rounded up like cattle.Banes was the birthplace of Fulgencio Batista, located about 20 miles north from the small town of Biran. Fidel Castro birthplace.

Fidel's experiment with Marxist-Leninist political economy has been a total failure. Cuba was one of the most prosperous countries in Latin America before 1959. Under the Castroism the island economy has been ruined beyond recognition, transforming it into a third world country.

Cuba sugar production was 1.3 million tons in 2009, the worst harvest in 105 years. In the decade of the 1950s Cuba exported an average of 5.0 million tons a year, supplying 35% of the world's export market. Who would have imagined that the world's largest exporter of sugar would have to resort to external supplies to meet its needs?

The regime currently imports about 84% of the food stuffs. Who would have imagined that Cuba would become an importer of food, even importing sugar, of all things, from the United States, of all places?

Food shortages are a function of an inefficient collectivized agricultural system resulting from Castro regime unwillingness to liberalize Cuba's economy, gross incompetence and criminal negligence.

What the regime is after are loans and lines of credit guaranteed by the US. These credits and loans will not be paid and the US taxpayers will be the ones to pick up the debt, as it happens at the present time with the taxpayers of other countries.The regime owns $31 billion to the Paris Club (EU countries), $22 billion to the countries of the old socialist campus, $15 billion to Venezuela and another $12 billion to other countries, for a staggering debt of $80 billion.

US sales to Cuba in 2008 reach $801 million. Import totaled $14.25 billion. The United States government’s embargo has had little effect on the Cuban economy, since this only represents 5.62% of the regime commerce with the rest of the world. Without the embargo the debt with the US could be similar to the debt of 31 billion with the EU countries.

The regime problems are not the result of the embargo; they are due to the corruption and ineffectiveness of a military dictatorship that is against private property and free enterprise. These and no others are the real reasons of the problems.

Cuba's "bailout", by obtaining US-backed credit lines would replace the Soviet subsidy that they no longer receives and add to the Venezuela subsidy, delaying instead of acceleratingthe transition of the Cuban people towards democracy, guaranteeing additional decades of oppression and misery. Castro brothers’ tyranny looks forward to the day when the military apparatus and the massive repressive security service will be maintained at the expense of the United States government.

How is possible that still are some who are sympathetic to the Fidel Castro? Don’t let this psychopath liar fool you, he has no conscience.
Castro during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 12, 1962, the closest the world had ever come to nuclear war, wrote in his cable to Khrushchev in October 26, 1962, “that would be the moment to eliminate such danger forever through tan act of clear legitimate defense, however harsh and terrible the solution would be, for there is no other… the Soviet Union must never allow the circumstances in which the imperialists could launch the first nuclear strike against it.”

Khrushchev response in October 30, 1962, “In your cable of October 27 you proposed that we be the first to launch a nuclear strike against the territory of the enemy. You, of course, realize where that would have led. Rather than a simple strike, it would have been the start of a thermonuclear world war.”

Castro, in his deep hatred against the United States, did not hesitate in asking for the launch of a nuclear strike without given a damn that such action sealed the annihilation of the Cuban people and a large part of humanity. Castro deserves everything that's coming to him.

Cuba in 1958, with a population of 6.6 million inhabitants had 6.3 million head of cattle. In 2009, according to data by Cuba’s National Statistics Office (ONE), with a population of 11.3 million, the number of cattle had been reduced to 3.89 million heads. These figures don’t need explanation, they speak for themselves.

Weekend at Fidel's
Jeffrey Goldberg is not the first American journalist to cuddle up to Castro.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499604575512352291352646.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Mary Anastasia O'Grady
September 27, 2010

At most marine parks in the world the animals provide the entertainment. But at the Havana aquarium last month, Fidel Castro had a couple of humans eating out of his hand and clapping like trained seals.

I refer here to the Atlantic Monthly's Jeffrey Goldberg, who traveled recently to Cuba at Castro's invitation with his friend Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Goldberg has posted a two-part report from his lengthy conversations with the dictator online for the magazine. One part includes details of a day at the aquarium, where Mr. Goldberg, accompanied by Ms. Sweig, seems to have experienced more than one "thrill going up [his] leg" in the presence of Fidel.

The reporter "hope[s] to be publishing a more comprehensive article about the subject in a forthcoming print edition of the Atlantic." I'm guessing that anyone who actually knows something about Castro's Cuba is not the target audience.

Castro again has an urgent need to put a smiley face on his dictatorship. The economy is in dire straits. Food is scarce, electricity is a rarity, and soap and toilet paper are luxuries. Cuba produces almost nothing and this makes it difficult to get hard currency—aka real money—which in turn makes it tough to buy from abroad. Lending sources have dried up.

If the regime is to stay in power, it needs a new source of income to pay the secret police and keep the masses in rice. The best bet is the American tourist, last seen circa 1950 exploiting the locals, according to revolutionary lore, but now needed by the regime. It wants the U.S. travel ban lifted. To prevail, Castro needs to counteract rumors that he is a dictator. Solution: a makeover in the Atlantic. In Mr. Goldberg, he no doubt recognized the perfect candidate for the job.

Fidel's step one was to tell Mr. Goldberg that he is outraged by anti-Semitism. "I don't think that anyone has been slandered more than the Jews," the old man proclaims to his guests. And by the way, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad should "stop picking on the Jews." When Mr. Goldberg asks whether Castro will tell the Iranian himself, Castro says, "I am saying this so you can communicate it." Translation: This should be the headline of your piece so that the American people will recognize my benevolence. Mr. Goldberg complied.

We are supposed to conclude that Cuba is no longer a threat to global stability and that Fidel is a reformed tyrant. But how believable is a guy whose revolution all but wiped out Cuba's tiny Jewish community of 15,000, and who spent the past 50 years supporting the terrorism of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Syria, Libya and Iran? And how does Castro explain Venezuela, where Cuban intelligence agents run things, Iran is an ally and anti-Semitism has been state policy in recent years? Mr. Goldberg doesn't go there with Fidel.

It also is passing strange that we hear nothing from Mr. Goldberg about poor Alan Gross. Mr. Gross, a U.S. government contractor and a Jew, has been languishing in a Cuban prison since December. His crime: distributing computers to a handful of Cuban Jews who want to establish contact with the diaspora. Is that any way to show love for the Jewish people?

It never seems to cross Mr. Goldberg's mind that he is being used in a manner Communists first learned at Lenin's knee. Or perhaps he is happy to be useful. In a follow-up post he explains that since Fidel is not as bad as Pol Pot, Cubans should stop complaining. And to demonstrate further how little he knows about the plight of the Cuban people, he says that the "release" of political prisoners "is currently being negotiated." Wrong. Some have been exiled; some others may receive conditional parole meaning that they can be returned to prison at any time if the regime disapproves of their activities.

Mr. Goldberg is peddling his Castro interviews as serious journalism. But while he was "curious" to get a "glimpse of the great man," he was ill-prepared for the job. Presumably he knew this, which is why he allowed Ms. Sweig to lead him around Havana by the nose.

This set him up for failure because Ms. Sweig—an academic with easy access to the island while critics are banned—is a trusted friend of the dictatorship. "Fidel greeted Julia warmly; they have known each other for more than twenty years," Mr. Goldberg reports.

When Castro declares that the Cuban model no longer works, Mr. Goldberg turns to Ms. Sweig, as if there is something profound to be grasped. He is not saying "the ideas of the Revolution" have failed, she explains, but only that the state "has much too big a role" in the economy. Right, except that the state-owned economy is the idea of the revolution.

It is hardly surprising, then, that what we get from this interview is warmed-over Barbara Walters, another whose heart went pitter patter when she got close to the Cuban despot. This encounter also produced nothing of substance.

Write to O'Grady@wsj.com

After Jeffrey Goldberg published his interview with Fidel Castro the best reaction he could get from those who have detail information about Cuba is a laugh. His flattering of this brutal tyrant making him looks like a lovely old man upset even the non-so easily offended.

Mary O'Grady is not one of those fools that are carried away by warm confessions. The reason is that she is very perceptive and well informed about Cuba. While others are allured by the siren call of a brutal dictator, she will call him on it and embarrass him.

Fidel Castro supported with propaganda, money, weapons and Cuban soldiers those who opposed the State of Israel. He is a megalomaniac obsessed with grandiose actions and power, who want to be taken seriously by the world.

To the progressive Jews who support Fidel Castro, their “new” friend, I ask how they feel about his anti-Semitic statement in his June 2010 “reflections":

The hatred felt by the state of Israel against the Palestinians is such that they would not hesitate to send the 1 ½ million men, women and children of that country to the crematoria where millions of Jews of all ages were exterminated by the Nazis” Castro said. “It would seem that the Fuehrer's swastika is today Israel's banner, he said, referencing Adolf Hitler

You know, maybe I sound like a broken record, but if Goldberg were not a Jew but some Spanish Socialist, or some French intellectual like Sartre, or some Canadian Trudeau type, let alone some "Latin" Che lover, I would both understand his Fidel thing better and feel less offended. A Jew really should know better and act accordingly. I mean, anything even remotely close to shilling for Castro, Inc. is profoundly disreputable, for anybody, but for a Jew it's also demeaning (which it would not be for, say, Santana, who never had an exalted position to fall from, but rather the opposite). Goldberg, as a Jew, should be above this sort of disgraceful self-soiling. Again, it's not that he owes Cuba, but that he owes himself and his own people.