Abu Wabu

UPDATED
Via Ace
Chairman Ted will be pleased: An internal CNN memo coaches its anchors with mealy-mouthed apologist talking points about one of the most murderous thugs and prolific purveyors of human misery of the last half-century:

From: Flexner, Allison
Sent: Tuesday, February 19, 2008 7:46 AM
To: *CNN Superdesk (TBS)
Cc: Neill, Morgan; Darlington, Shasta
Subject: Castro guidance

Some points on Castro – for adding to our anchor reads/reporting:

* Please say in our reporting that Castro stepped down in a letter he wrote to Granma (the communist party daily), as opposed to in a letter attributed to Fidel Castro. We have no reason to doubt he wrote his resignation letter, he has penned numerous articles over the past year and a half.

* Please note Fidel did bring social reforms to Cuba – namely free education and universal health care, and racial integration. in addition to being criticized for oppressing human rights and freedom of speech.

* Also the Cuban government blames a lot of Cuba’s economic problems on the US embargo, and while that has caused some difficulties, (far less so than the collapse of the Soviet Union) the bulk of Cuba’s economic problems are due to Cuba’s failed economic polices. Some analysts would say the US embargo was a benefit to Castro politically – something to blame problems on, by what the Cubans call “the imperialist,” meddling in their affairs.

* While despised by some, he is seen as a revolutionary hero, especially with leftist in Latin America, for standing up to the United States.

Any questions, please call the international desk.

Allison

Oh, sure, he calls himself a communist leader, but a spade is a fucking spade; he has been a model communist leader: a mass murderer and a monstrous fascist dictator. He was a proxie in the Western Hemisphere for the Soviet Union, allowing their missiles to be aimed at North America from Cuban soil and fomenting communist insurgencies in Central and South America. His America-hating fans like to point out that he has outlasted ten U.S. Presidents; they don't like to acknowledge that he accomplished this so-called feat by imprisoning and/or murdering his opponents and critics and denying Cubans elections or even a constitution.

You know, like Bush, Cheney and Rove have done in Amerikkka.

Karol at Alarming News on Castro:

Every hipster doofus in a Che shirt promotes his murderous, totalitarian legacy.

UPDATE
Power Line:

The 49 years of Castro's rule was insufficient for Flexner to pick up the connection between "free" goods and a slave state, or the primitive state of Cuban health care. Flexner seems to have missed the CNN story on Castro's destination of choice for his own medical treatment. It's difficult to find reliable data on the state of racial relations in Cuba, and Flexner cites none, but she apparently also missed Eldridge Cleaver's comments on the state of race in Cuba after his sojourn there as a fugitive:

The white racist Cuban dictatorship is more insidious and dangerous for black people than is the white racist regime of South Africa, because no black person has illusions about the intentions of the Afrikaners, but many black people consider Fidel Castro to be a right-on white brother. Nothing could be further from the truth.