Our new communications minister, General Surprise (or rather, General Disappointment), went to visit Cuba, to escape the sordid media coverage he is getting back home. He wants South Africa and Cuba to share technology expertise. This warranted a little rant on ITWeb: Cuba veneration survives Poison Ivy.

Foreign Policy Blog (which also has a very amusing photograph) notes this priceless quotation, attributed to Fidel Castro in a 1959 interview with CBS’s Edward Murrow:

I’m not thinking to cut my beard, because I’m accustomed to my beard and my beard means many things to my country. When we have fulfilled our promise of good government I will cut my beard.

You said it, oh, bearded one. You said it.

Fidel Castro, the dictator and oppressor-in-chief of communist Cuba, has resigned as president. At last!

For some years now, pundits have been speculating whether Fidel Castro really is still alive. A case in point is the Wall Street Journal’s resident funny man, James Taranto. Despite clear indications to the contrary, Taranto speculated in August 2006 that his condition might improve to such an extent that doctors may soon be able to pronounce him dead. The following January, he noted a headline that began, “Castro Reportedly in Grave…”, and bemoaned the fact that the next word was “Condition”. He wished the adjective were a noun.

I share Taranto’s disdain for Castro. Having overthrown the corrupt Fulgencio Batista almost 50 years ago with promises of liberation, he instead murdered hundreds of opponents, jailed thousands more, and established an oppressive, communist tyranny. The pretence of a glorious revolution for freedom and democracy didn’t last long. However, the cult of El Lider Maximo, as he became known, took on heroic proportions. First, the Bay of Pigs betrayal was spun into a glorious victory by Cuba over the evil Americans. Not long afterwards, the legendary stand-off between him, as proxy for Nikita Kruschev, and John F Kennedy cemented Castro’s reputation, and the secret deal that ended the Cuban missile crisis cemented his political survival and longevity.

Surprisingly, Cuban communism survived — but only just — the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, the real Cuba, described by people other than leftist propagandists led by the nose by state minders, remained rather less romantic than the fantasies of useful idiots would have it. Still, Cuba remains an icon of hope for people who love 1950s automobilia, or pine for the glory days of Soviet anti-capitalism. People like Thabo Mbeki, for example. Apparently, we have a lot to learn from Cuba. I’d agree. We can learn how not to run a country, or an economy, for example.

Here’s hoping Cuba rouses itself from its torpor and shakes off the bonds of Castro’s mind-numbing personality cult. Here’s hoping they reject the regency he has installed, in the person of his brother, Raúl Castro. Here’s hoping that when they do, they also renounce the destructive communist idealism of which El Lider Maximo was one of the last hold-outs. Here’s to the fall of Fidel Castro.

Update: Corrected an error, introduced by careless editing, which made the last sentence of the second paragraph refer to the wrong antecedent.

As if he doesn’t have enough trouble because he demonstratively (and provocatively) refuses to bow to the orthodoxy of wearing a stars-and-stripes lapel pin — suggesting some who do are hypocrites — a TV image of the interior of a volunteer Obama campaign office in Houston, Texas, threw up a new reason to be wary of this fellow.

Yep, that’s a Cuban flag, with an image of Marxist revolutionary, fraud and murderous thug, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, superimposed on it. Obama called the flag “inappropriate”, but clearly some of his supporters are the kind of people that go in for romanticising such icons of often-militant opposition to the free world. NewsBusters has a good roundup of analysis, noting that Obama himself didn’t hang the flag, and that the image is a symptom of little more than juvenile radicalism. Still, the association should worry the rest of his supporters.

Meanwhile, the best headline on the subject is from Ed Driscoll’s blog: Sixties Radical Chic, Frozen In Amber.

President Thabo Mbeki marked the anniversary of Che Guevara’s death by paying homage to the communist revolutionary. The man who was instrumental in establishing a brutal dictatorship in Cuba, he called dedicated to the true liberation of each people and the genuine independence of all countries. The man who lied about his credentials to work as a doctor, he says worked to emancipate the working people from the scourges of poverty, hunger and underdevelopment. Guevara’s attacks on the genuine independence of other countries by fomenting communist revolution, he calls modest efforts of assistance. The man in charge of hundreds of extrajudicial executions he calls one of the great human beings of the age. And when the Bolivians took offence and shot the murderous bastard, Mbeki calls it assassination.

Despising a communist and a murderer doesn’t necessarily mean his enemies were saints. They most certainly were not. But despising his enemies likewise doesn’t mean Guevara deserves blind reverence. In fact, even a modest amount of knowledge of his life and work would counsel against hagiography.

Assuming that Mbeki is no longer a dyed-in-the-wool communist who hails tyrants as heroes and murderers as liberators, and assuming that Mbeki remains the well-read intellectual he always was, one can only conclude that this was a cold, calculated attempt to win over the left wing of his party. Which raises the question: is there no level to which Mbeki won’t stoop for the sake of cheap political demagoguery?

St. Michael Moore got all upset with CNN for daring to question some of the numbers and omissions in SiCKO, his latest “documentary” (his word, not mine) on the US health care system. The film includes, for example, a wonder-filled PR job on the blessings of the Cuban socialised system. I’ve posted before on the inaccuracy of that particular bit of “journalism”. CNN apparently did the same, questioning for example why Moore cherry-picked statistics from different reports (rather than using comparable data) and how it came about that he’s inconsistent about certain data in his film and on his website.

Now Moore is huffy and full of bluster - a scary, Deaniac sight if ever there was one. It’s hilarious, I know, but he actually presumes to lecture CNN on what it means to be a “good journalist”. It appears journalists who just try to uncover and report the facts, are critical of propaganda, or tell both sides of the story just aren’t being “honest”. Not to mention that CNN has always been so nice to him, and now this! The megalomania of the man is staggering. Mind you, he does know how to tap anti-market, anti-war and other populist left-wing tropes in his films to make millions from his gullible audience. And as he blithely admits in his angry rant at CNN, if he stands to make lots of money from someone, he’s going to say what they like to hear. What a journalist!

A good (albeit rather badly written) overview of the substance of the fight can be found here and here. CNN reportedly issued a statement in response to Moore’s tirade, responding point by point. Also see Dr Gupta’s blog post.

Bella Thomas went to Cuba, and returned wondering why so many Western visitors continue to romanticise a place that, for ordinary people, remains synonymous with privation and tyranny. Did they - like Michael Moore - go only where their official guides took them, and speak to locals only in front of the regime’s minders?

Her portrayal in Prospect is pleasantly prolix, but poignant, perceptive and perspicuous.