Castro's take on Obama

Castro calls Obama speech "formula for hunger"

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Monday called Democrat Barack Obama the candidate most advanced on social issues running for U.S. president but said his speech on Cuba last week was a "formula for hunger."

In one of his periodic newspaper columns published in Communist Party newspaper Granma, Castro said he had "no personal rancor" toward Obama, but "if I defended him I would do a huge favor for his adversaries."

Obama, speaking before an influential Cuban-American group in Miami, said Cuba deprived its people of civil liberties and free elections, and vowed to maintain, with modifications, a 46-year-old U.S. trade embargo against the island.

Obama has called for lifting restrictions on travel to Cuba and the amount of money people in the United States can send to relatives in Cuba.

"Obama's speech can translate into a formula of hunger for the nation (Cuba), the remittances like alms and the visits to Cuba as propaganda for consumerism and the unsustainable lifestyle that he sustains.

"How is the very grave problem of the food crisis going to be confronted? Grains must be distributed among human beings, domestic animals and fish, which year by year are smaller and more scarce in the over-exploited seas," Castro said. "It's not easy to produce meat from gas and oil."

"Obama overestimates the possibilities of technology in the struggle against climate change, although he is more conscious than (President George W.) Bush of the risks and the little time available," he said.

Obama "without doubt is, from the social and human point, the most advanced candidate" running for the U.S. presidency, Castro said. But he accused him of reviving the Monroe Doctrine, which stated in 1823 the United States would not permit European countries to further colonize or interfere in the Americas.

Last week, Castro blasted Bush and Republican presidential candidate John McCain in a newspaper column for their criticisms of the Cuban government. McCain, he said, showed why he finished near the bottom of his class in college.

Castro, 81 and not fully recovered from intestinal surgery in July 2006, took power in a 1959 revolution but stepped aside in February and was succeeded as president by his younger brother Raul Castro. He is still head of the Communist Party and said to be involved in governing.

Original article posted here.

Barack Obama speaks to rabid Kennedy killing Florida Cubans and sells out Hugo Chavez as a dangerous, anti-American demagogue.

Looks like someone has overstayed their welcome

Cuba demands US gives back Guantanamo Bay

CUBA has demanded the US return Guantanamo Bay to the island nation and denounced the "war on terror" prison, where six detainees could face the death penalty.

Cuba's Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque claimed today that suspects held in the US naval base in the southeastern tip of Cuba have been subjected to torture and face unfair legal treatment.

Cuba rejects "the violation of human rights, unjust incarceration of prisoners held there without charges, and their appearance in courts without guarantees and in which they are convicted in advance,'' he told reporters.

He did not directly refer to the case of six detainees facing charges that carry the death penalty.

"We demand again the closure of the indecent Guantanamo prison, the return of the territory illegally occupied to our fatherland,'' Perez Roque said.

The United States, which has occupied Guantanamo for more than 100 years, signed in 1934 a lease agreement with the Cuban government that could not be altered without agreement by both countries.

Since 1960, a year after it came to power, Fidel Castro's communist government has refused the annual lease payment of 5000 dollars from the United States.

The US Defence Department announced Monday that military prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against six Al-Qaeda detainees on murder and conspiracy charges in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Original article posted here.

Our History of Crushng Revolutionaries: Killing Che Guevarra in Bolivia

Castro coming out from the cold

Castro challenges Bush for area hearts and minds

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Fidel Castro on Sunday scoffed at Bush administration efforts to ease social problems in Latin America, boasting his poor country could run circles around the United States in health and education aid.

"Bush will discover that the empire's political and economic system can't compete in the area of vital services such as education and health with Cuba, assaulted and blockaded for almost 50 years," Castro wrote in an editorial published by the official newspaper Rebel Youth.

"Everyone knows the U.S. specialty in the area of education is to steal brains," Castro charged, citing an International Labor Organization report that 47 percent of foreign-born students that complete a Ph.D. in the United States stay on there.

A Cuban literacy program is being used by millions throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, Castro said.

The 80-year-old Cuban leader has taken to writing opinion pieces as he recovers from a series of intestinal surgeries over the last year.

Castro's brother and defense minister, Raul Castro, 76, has been temporarily running the government.

The Bush administration hosted 150 Latin American and 90 U.S. organizations this week to discuss U.S. social work in Latin America and promote corporate efforts in the region.

The White House Conference on the Americas was attended by Bush, his wife, Laura, and five Cabinet members as part of an effort to counter Venezuela's and Cuba's growing use of education and health programs to win hearts and minds in South America.

Communist Castro and socialist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez are challenging U.S. influence with their own integration plan that combines Venezuela's oil wealth and Cuba's human capital to offer preferential oil deals and massive social programs to other countries.

Castro on Sunday ridiculed the current four-month tour of the region by the U.S. hospital ship Comfort.

"You can't carry out medical programs by episodes," he said, comparing the ship's coming weeklong stop in Haiti with the hundreds of Cuban doctors working for nearly a decade there alongside Haitians trained in Cuba.

Bush highlighted a Panama-based center that has upgraded the skills of 100 Central American doctors and plans to establish a nursing school, among other projects, during his opening speech at the Conference of the Americas.

Castro countered on Sunday with the Cuban-run eye clinics in the region that have operated on 700,000 of the region's poor.

"Our country has dozens of thousands of Latin American and Caribbean students studying medicine in an absolutely free program," Castro said.

"We are cooperating with Venezuela to train more than 20,000 youth there as doctors," he added.

Original article posted here.

Castro may be old as dust, but still smart as hell

Castro charges CIA more murderous than ever


HAVANA (Reuters) - Convalescing Cuban President Fidel Castro charged on Sunday the release of classified CIA documents detailing past abuses was a smoke screen behind which the Bush administration hoped to hide even worse methods.

"I think that this action could be an attempt ... to make people believe that these methods belong to another era and are no longer used," Castro wrote in an editorial published by the communist country's official media.

"Everything described in the documents is still being done, only in a more brutal manner around the entire planet, including an increasing number of illegal actions in the very United States."

The CIA declassified on Tuesday hundreds of pages of long-secret records that detailed some of the agency's worst illegal abuses during about 25 years of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying and kidnapping.

The documents are known in the CIA as the "Family Jewels" and some describe the agency's efforts to persuade Johnny Roselli, believed to be a mobster, to help plot the assassination of Castro.

"Sunday is a good day to read what appears to be science fiction," Castro began his three-page editorial, titled "The Killing Machine."

He went on to quote extensively from material covering the attempt on his life, as well as a New York Times analysis of all the documents.

Cuba charges that Castro has been the target of hundreds of assassination attempts. The Cuban leader has said numerous times that President George W. Bush has ordered him killed.

Castro also reiterated in detail his long-held belief that U.S. President John F. Kennedy, assassinated in 1963, was the victim of a plot involving elements of the CIA and militant anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

Castro, a master sharp-shooter with a telescopic rifle, insists Lee Harvey Oswald could not have been the only shooter in Dallas.

"You loose the target after every shot even if it is not moving and have to find it again in fractions of a second," he said.

Castro has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July last year, when he handed over power temporarily to his younger brother, Raul.

But the 80-year-old revolutionary has returned to public life since March by writing occasional articles, called "Reflections of the Commander in Chief." He has been writing more frequently in recent weeks, fueling speculation that his health is improving.

Original article posted here.

Castro off his deathbed, still ready to put up a fight (but this time wouldn't be as isolated as before)

Castro says Cuba will defend itself against U.S.

By Todd Benson

HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba will continue to build up its defenses against the United States and Cubans should be prepared to make more sacrifices to remain independent, Cuban leader Fidel Castro said in an editorial published on Monday.

In his commentary in the ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma, the first time in a series of such articles that he has turned his attention directly to Cuban affairs, Castro called on Cubans to safeguard the island's socialist system against Havana's long-time ideological foe the United States.

Castro, 80, has not been seen in public since undergoing emergency intestinal surgery in July last year, when he handed over power temporarily to his younger brother, Raul.

But he has returned to public life since March by writing occasional articles, called "Reflections of the Commander in Chief," opining on everything from ethanol production in the United States to the Iraq war.

In Monday's article, which took up the entire front page of Granma and was called a "Reflection and Manifesto for the Cuban People," Castro denounced five decades of U.S. policy of isolation toward Cuba and accused U.S. President George W. Bush of wanting to invade Cuba.

The convalescing leader, who took power in 1959 and launched a leftist revolution on the Caribbean island, warned Bush that Cuba was prepared to do what it takes to defend itself from a foreign threat.

"Cuba will continue to develop and improve the fighting abilities of its people, including our modest but active and efficient defensive weapons industry, which multiplies our ability to confront the invaders wherever they are, and whatever weapons they possess," Castro wrote.

"We shall continue acquiring the necessary materials and the pertinent firepower," he added, without providing details.

Castro quoted 19th century Cuban independence hero Jose Marti as saying that freedom carries a high cost, and added that "In spite of everything, we will keep on growing as necessary and as possible."

Pictures and film of Castro have been released during his long absence from public life.

Castro looked healthier in a pre-taped interview shown on Cuban television on June 5. He has also received three foreign leaders in recent weeks, including his close ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, fueling speculation that his health is improving.

Original article posted here.

Fidel still standing. Still making sense vis a vis Bush. (But weazl doesn't endorse Cuba)

Ideas cannot be killed

I am not the first person whose death George Bush has anticipated, nor will I be the last.

Fidel Castro

A few days ago, while analysing the expenses involved in the construction of three submarines of the Astute series, I said that with this money "75,000 doctors could be trained to look after 150 million people, assuming that the cost of training a doctor would be one-third of what it costs in the United States." Now, along the lines of the same calculations, I wonder: how many doctors could be graduated with the one hundred billion dollars that Bush gets his hands on in just one year to keep on sowing grief in Iraqi and American homes. Answer: 999,990 doctors who could look after 2 billion people who today do not receive any medical care.

More than 600,000 people have lost their lives in Iraq and more than 2 million have been forced to emigrate since the American invasion began. In the United States, around 50 million people do not have medical insurance. The blind market laws govern how this vital service is provided, and prices make it inaccessible for many, even in the developed countries. Medical services feed into the gross domestic product of the United States, but they do not generate conscience for those providing them nor peace of mind for those who receive them.

The countries with less development and more diseases have the least number of medical doctors: one for every 5,000, 10,000, 15,000, 20,000 or more people. When new sexually transmitted diseases appear such as Aids, which in merely 20 years has killed millions of persons - while tens of millions are afflicted, among them many mothers and children, although palliative measures now exist - the price of medications per patient could add up to 5,000, 10,000 or up to 15,000 dollars each year. These are fantasy figures for the great majority of Third World countries where the few public hospitals are overflowing with the ill who die piled up like animals under the scourge of a sudden epidemic.

To reflect on these realities could help us to better understand the tragedy. It is not a matter of commercial advertising that costs so much money and technology. Add up the starvation afflicting hundreds of millions of human beings; add to that the idea of transforming food into fuels; look for a symbol and the answer will be George Bush.

When he was recently asked by an important personality about his Cuba policy, his answer was this: "I am a hard-line president and I am just waiting for Castro's demise." The wishes of such a powerful gentleman are no privilege. I am not the first nor will I be the last that Bush has ordered to be killed; nor one of those people who he intends to go on killing individually or en masse.

"Ideas cannot be killed," Sarría emphatically said. Sarría was the black lieutenant, a patrol leader in Batista's army who arrested us, after the attempt to seize the Moncada Garrison, while three of us slept in a small mountain hut, exhausted by the effort of breaking through the siege. The soldiers, fuelled by hatred and adrenalin, were aiming their weapons at me even before they had identified who I was. "Ideas cannot be killed," the black lieutenant kept on repeating, practically automatically and in a hushed voice.

I dedicate those excellent words to you, Mr Bush.

Original article posted here.