“The Cuban model doesn’t ever work for us anymore”, admits Fidel Castro
“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore”, admitted Fidel Castro to Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for the Atlantic Monthly magazine who interviewed the leader and asked if Cuba's model -- Soviet-style communism -- was still worth exporting to other countries.
The comment appeared to reflect Castro's agreement, which he also expressed in a column for Cuban media in April, with his younger brother President Raul Castro, who has initiated modest reforms to stimulate Cuba's troubled economy.
Goldberg said Julia Sweig, a Cuba expert at the Council on Foreign Relations think tank in Washington who accompanied him to Havana, believed Castro's words reflected an acknowledgment that “the state has too big a role in the economic life of the country.”
Such sentiment would help President Castro, who took over from his brother in 2008, against those members of the ruling Communist Party who oppose his attempts to loosen the state's hand, Sweig told Goldberg.
Goldberg wrote in a blog that Castro summoned him to Havana to discuss his recent article about the likelihood of conflict between Israel and Iran, with possible US involvement, over Iran's growing nuclear capabilities.
He said Castro criticized Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for anti-Semitism and denying the Holocaust.
Castro, since emerging in July from four years of seclusion following intestinal surgery, has become an anti-nuclear weapon crusader expressing concern about the future of the world.
He fears that if the United States and Israel try to enforce international sanctions against Iran for its nuclear activities, nuclear war will break out.
Castro also criticized his own actions during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when he urged the Soviet Union to launch nuclear weapons against the United States, telling Goldberg “it wasn't worth it at all.”
During their visit, Goldberg and Sweig went with Castro, at his invitation, to see a dolphin show at Cuba's National Aquarium in Havana.
They were accompanied by local Jewish leader Adela Dworin, who Castro kissed in front of the cameras in a possible message to Iranian leaders, Goldberg said in his Wednesday blog.
Goldberg described Castro as physically frail, but energetic and mentally acute.
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Might that be that Castro is appealing to the Jewish Lobby in the US congress in order to get some leverage both at home and abroad?
After so many years of non democratic gvt., suffering poverty, people jailed just for thinking different, corruption and all we know Cuban people deserve that those leaders face the justice and pay for their “mistakes”.
Now Huguito, Evito and all their followers must start thinking (if they have brain enough) about the “progresist way” as they called the way that they have chosen to destroy their countries, including Cristinita, and don´t wait 51 years more to reach the same conclusion …..too late for a lot of people !!!
In this moment Huguito have his country falling down at the worst level in it history, Evito is following him very close, so think about……that´s want you want for your country?
R.I.P. Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia & fans
And praise the remarkable effort that Fidel is putting today in order to avoid a next war in Irán which probably will devastate the world as we know it.
He has been writing in Granma from a month on it, this appealing of the article is an attempt to call more attention on the dangerous issue, as the increasing risks are almost silenced in the mass media.
Now he is trying to change the people's mind through this “articles” calling for peace ...!!! Just, allow me make a big laugh ..... LOL !!!
To me, that is enough to call it a day with Castro as it puts the Iranian leader between a rock and a hard place, as he is always sticking his neck out to earn accolades from Castro and other latin american leaders, .
www.miamiherald.com/2010/09/11/1818794/comments-were-misinterpreted-fidel.html
History is history, Castro knows history and he said exactly what Jeffrey and Julia reported him as saying. I have absolutely no doubts about that.
When and intelligent and learned person, as Castro purports to be, is confronted with an equally intelligent and learned interlocutor as Jeffrey is, he knows that he cannot jettison history in the name of some ideology or religion. He knows he cannot lie to himself or else he´ll be seen as a cheater himself. Intelligence does not cheat, intelligence is a light.
Intelligent, learned persons get a feeling like vomiting when they see mentally-challenged morons like Ahmadinejad denying the holocaust and spreading hate agaisnt the jews, only for being ethnic jews.
I am sorry for Castro, some of us really thought he had seen the light but it may have been momentary lapse of reason.
Later news, of course, proves that he has moved on from being demented to senile dementia.
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