January 31st, 2004
Castro accuses Bush of plotting to kill him
‘We know that Mr. Bush has committed himself to the mafia … to assassinate me,'’ the Cuban president said, using the term commonly employed here to describe anti-Castro Cuban Americans. Castro’s comments came at the end of a 5 ½ hour speech that began Thursday night and continued into early Friday at the closing of a conference bringing together activists across the region who oppose the Free Trade Area of the Americas. ‘’I can die a natural death or I can die a planned death,'’ Castro said. “It really doesn’t matter to me how I die, but I will surely die fighting.'’
Well, as long as you die soon (and hopefully painfully), I don’t really care which it is…
Castro recently visited Venezuela, perhaps to coordinate the thousands of “advisors” he’s sending to Hugo “Now we have a permanent revolution!” Chavez so that he can better assist him in establishing a Communist state there. He explained how Venezuela could benefit from totalitarianism in a recent speech:
Fidel spoke about how Cuba was able to bring about a dramatic improvement in the living conditions of the people, emphasizing the major break-throughs achieved in the field of education and health.
Here is the reality:
Today, Cuba ranks last in Latin American per capita food consumption - cereals and especially meat and milk consumption are down dramatically - but it has not lost its medical capabilities. Instead, Cuba has reoriented its medical system to the task of earning foreign exchange. To do this, Cuba pioneered “health tourism” through agencies such as Servimed, which markets medical services abroad. Cuba is “the ideal destination for your health,” it boasts, frankly admitting to being “a tourist subsystem.” “But an ordinary Cuban of 63 or 64 years is already feeble, an old man.” For the poor, beaten down by the system and denied basic medical care, the medical system is all “lose.”
An émigré provides an economic analysis: “After 40 years, the economic Standard of Living in Cuba is less than 1% of what it was in the decade of the 50’s.”