MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY: CASTRO MADE A FOOL OF JEFF GOLDBERG
Weekend at Fidel’s http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703499604575512352291352646.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
ALSO READ HUMBERTO FONTOVA :
HUMBERTO FONTOVA: CASTROITE TERRORISTS AS “LATIN AMERICAN EXPERTS”…..YOU MUST READ THIS http://bigpeace.com/hfontova/2010/09/25/latin-america-expert-or-castro-agent/
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.
Associated Press
Castro speaks to Cuban lawmakers in Havana for the first time in four years, Saturday Aug. 7.
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.
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