Monopoly Capitalist Fidel and his Nation of Serfs

The Miami Herald is a newspaper with more sympathy for Fidel Castro than they dare demonstrate. But the above link does show some perspective, as a gofer for the tyrant tells about the one-man show going on 90 miles south of Key West.

After sharing info about the vicious dictator's expensive tastes, Delfin Fernandez has a few tidbits about the darling of the left's politics and obsessions, including burning his underwear after use. And the 300 foreign cars [as the worker's paradise has no indigenous auto industry]the Castro family owns in a country where an auto is a luxury.

'The initial idea of Fidel was good. Batista was an assassin,'' Fern?ndez said. ``What happened was, the course he took with the revolution was wrong. It has dissolved into this unstoppable, insatiable corruption without limits, a vast lie. The people are in misery. Cuba's people have been enslaved as cheap labor for foreign businessmen.''

Fern?ndez said Cuba's leader always travels around Havana in a six- or seven-car motorcade led by three nearly identical black Mercedes-Benz 560s. The Castro brothers have as many as 300 cars for them, their families, their bodyguards, Fern?ndez said.

Fidel Castro turns 80 this year, and he has become obsessed with his health, Fern?ndez said. The Castro brothers each have their own clinics and their own doctors in Havana's Council of State Building and in the Cimeq Hospital. Last year, Fidel Castro built a multimillion-dollar clinic a few yards from his front door, on the grounds of his Havana estate, Fern?ndez said he learned from his island contacts. .

''So that if Castro has a heart attack or he dies, the only people who will know about it will be his family, the guards working at the time, and Ra?l,'' Fern?ndez said. ``Fidel never cedes control, and will never cede power.''

You often hear the delusional left prate concerning the Cuban health and education programs. So the country does have healthy, literate serfs and good baseball teams. Fernandez tells how one foreign minister tried to open up the closed-system and met with house-arrest after being canned forthright. Fernandez himself defected in 1999 and became a bodyguard to the stars. He describes Fidel as the darling of Spain.

The Spanish media have embraced him, writing dozens of articles about his life as a Castro insider and bodyguard. He was also a consultant on an investigative book, Conexi?n Habana, by Spanish authors. Fern?ndez said there's a black market trade in sensitive videos of Spanish businessmen -- videos made by Cuban agents.''Fidel is an avid consumer of those materials,'' he said.

Sounds like Kim Jung Il, another fan of sex films. And like any mafia capo keeping incriminating materials on his clients. Fidel himself is a self-absorbed "apres moi le deluge" sort of guy. After all, what has posterity done for him?

Fern?ndez paints Ra?l Castro, who runs Cuba's armed forces and by extention much of its economy, as more practical and family oriented than his older brother, an analysis echoed by {CIA author]Latell in his book After Fidel. ''Ra?l likes the money -- he has a transition plan,'' Fern?ndez said. ``Fidel doesn't. I think Ra?l would want to lead an economic transformation, and ultimately find a way to retire peacefully with his family with all the money he has stolen from the Cuban people over the years and taken out of the country.'' Fern?ndez said he carried suitcases with cash out of Cuba for the Castro brothers.

Now we can understand what the bloated buffoon in Venezuela is hankering after when he calls the Castro Regime his model. And Evo Morales in Bolivia and other aspiring elected caudillos make one realize that Democracy is both a precious gift and a gift that produces the wrong "lider" from time to time [Hitler back in '33 with a democratic mechanism, the Enabling Act].

It's time for another younger Barbara Walters to go to Cuba to fawn over this doddering health addict.