Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro on Thursday derided US steps toward improving relations with the communist island, saying the US wants Cuba to act like a slave willing to “accept again the whip and the yoke.”
The 82-year-old Castro, writing in a column published on the Internet, said “the adversary should never be under the illusion that Cuba will surrender.”
US President Barack Obama has said he wants to recast US-Cuban relations that have been hostile for 50 years, but insists on maintaining a US trade embargo imposed against the island since 1962 to use as leverage for Cuban change.
He recently eliminated travel restrictions for Cuban Americans and called on Cuba to release political prisoners and improve human rights to get more concessions from Washington.
But Fidel Castro and his younger brother, President Raul Castro, view US conditions as infringing on Cuban sovereignty, or worse.
“The collision between the great power of the North and the Cuban revolution was inevitable. The heroic resistance of the people of our small country was underestimated,” Castro wrote. “Today they are willing to forgive us if we will resign ourselves to returning to the fold as slaves that, after knowing freedom, will accept again the whip and the yoke.”
Both Castros have expressed a willingness to talk with the US, and informal, low-level talks have already begun in Washington.
But they publicly insist that Cuba does not have to make concessions to move the diplomatic process forward.
In Thursday’s column, Castro said a wary Cuba was carefully studying Obama to determine his true intentions.
“We are not arsonists as some imagine, but nor are we idiots easily fooled by those who believe the only things important in the world are the laws of the market and the capitalist system of production,” he said. “There still exist those who have the illusion that people can be manipulated like puppets.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing