Fidel: past mistakes & advice to Ahmadinejad

Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic reports a meeting with Fidel Castro in which Fidel made some extraordinary statements about the failure of Cuba’s economic model and his own past mistakes, including his position at the time of the missile crisis in 1962. He has not renounced his revolutionary principles. Goldberg writes: ‘When I asked him, over lunch, to answer what I’ve come to think of as the Christopher Hitchens question – has your illness caused you to change your mind about the existence of God? – he answered, “Sorry, I’m still a dialectical materialist.” ‘ However, he admits that Cuba’s economic model doesn’t work. He also had some very pointed things to say about Iran’s Ahmadinejad who he says should stop slandering the Jews, while his advice to Israel is to give up its nuclear arsenal. The links can be found on my other blog, Michael’s Digest.

Iran surrounded

Needlenose says “if you’re wondering why the Ayatollahs are acting a touch, um… cagey about their military plans, then perhaps this handy pictogram of the region with countries where the U.S. has military bases (or has been granted overflight rights by a friendly regime) might help clear things up.

iransurrounded.jpg

News junkie

If you’re a news junkie and you’re working at home and so you listen to the news at intervals during the day, you can sometimes see it evolving, from the moment a fresh item first arrives until it’s been properly incorporated into the ideological agenda. This happened last Monday with a press conference by Iran’s President Ahmadinejad, except that they couldn’t quite cope… Read more