Former Cuban president Fidel Castro yesterday accused US President Barack Obama of speaking “gibberish” in his recent address to the UN and called NATO’s actions in Libya a “monstrous crime,” in his first opinion column since early July.
Castro, 85, has been mostly out of sight the past few months, which, combined with the absence of his usual steady flow of columns, had prompted rumors his health was worsening.
He wrote he was involved in work that occupied all his time and therefore he had not been writing what he calls his “reflections.” However, he said he wanted to comment on the UN General Assembly in New York and in particular Obama’s speech last week.
The reflection was published on the Cuban government Web site www.cubadebate.cu.
Castro was his vintage self in his latest piece, blasting Obama and the US, his ideological foes and favorite rhetorical targets, for what he views as bellicose and hypocritical behavior. He called Obama the “yankee president.”
Castro, who led Cuba for 49 years before health and age forced him to cede power to younger brother Raul Castro in 2008, quoted extensively from Obama’s General Assembly speech, inserting paragraphs of his opinions of the US leader’s words.
“In spite of the shameful monopoly of the mass information media and the fascist methods of the United States and its allies to confuse and deceive world opinion, the resistance of the people grows, and that can be appreciated in the debates being produced in the United Nations,” he wrote.
Castro called into question many points in Obama’s speech, accusing him of misrepresenting the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan, US policy on Israel and Palestine and the uprisings this year in several Arab nations.
“Who understands this gibberish of the President of the United States in front of the General Assembly?” he asked.
He said the General Assembly presented political difficulties for many countries trying to decide the positions they should take on numerous issues.
“For example, what position to adopt about the genocide of NATO in Libya?” Castro wrote. “Does anyone wish it recorded that under their direction, the government of their country supported the monstrous crimes by the United States and its NATO allies?”
Castro did not describe the project that had taken him away from his column writing, but his allies Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales said recently he was working on something to do with agriculture.
He promised another column on the UN General Assembly would be forthcoming.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS