The other day I was asking, Is Jeffrey Goldberg fluent in Spanish?
Well, it looks like Fidel Castro doesn’t think Jeffrey is,
Castro: I Meant That ‘Capitalist System’ Doesn’t Work
Fidel Castro said Friday his recent comment that communist-led Cuba’s economic model does not work was badly understood and that what he really meant was that capitalism does not work.
Castro, speaking at the University of Havana, said his words had been misinterpreted by his interviewer, U.S. journalist Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic Monthly magazine, who quoted a U.S. analyst saying they indicated Castro now supports a smaller state role in the island’s Soviet-style economy.
Goldberg wrote in a blog on Wednesday that he asked Castro, 84, if Cuba’s model was still worth exporting to other countries.
“The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,” Castro told him.
Castro confirmed that he said those words “without bitterness or concern.” But, he said, “the reality is that my response means exactly the opposite.”
“My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn’t work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious.”
And Fidel also says that Jeffrey – who even told Fidel that “At a certain point it seemed logical for you to recommend that the Soviets bomb the U.S.” and makes you wander what kind of American would even think that? – also misunderstood what Castro said about the Cuban missile crisis,
Goldberg, who interviewed Castro two weeks ago in Havana, wrote in a Tuesday blog that Castro had criticized Iran for anti-Semitism and renounced his own actions during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis when he urged the Soviet Union to launch nuclear weapons on the United States.
“After I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn’t worth it at all,” Castro told Goldberg of his recommendation to the Soviets.
Castro said Goldberg did not understand the irony in his comments and that had the U.S. threatened to invade Cuba, he would have recommended a nuclear strike to prevent it.
Poor Jeffrey has still to figure out that the tough thing about being a tool is he’s being played by a murderous Communist dictator with half a century of experience in playing fools like him, no matter how you “interpret” it.
Hat tip: ryukyu
