Castro: "I can speak in a loud voice if I want" and play baseball!
Yesterday, Castro began a number of meetings with delegates from the Non Aligned (Nations) Movement, which is meeting in Havana this weekend.
"He is more alive than ever...he walks, he sings and he is even ready to play baseball," Hugo Chavez told journalists after a private meeting with pajama-clad convalescent Castro at an undisclosed location after an intestinal operation he underwent in July. "He looks better every time," said Chavez, who has often visited the ailing 80-year-old.
"He was wearing a wine-colored robe and matching pajamas, and fortunately, it was the Fidel of always. Slimmer, true, but not as much as he had appeared to be in recent photos. 'I lost 41 pounds -- he reminded me -- but I'm gaining my weight back. Already almost half of what I lost.' (...) He was just as lucid and sharp as ever. The same confidential tone of conspirator that the listener must decipher, the same mysterious gestures or gesticulative accentuation of a given verbal discovery, an order once in a while to his collaborators in a voice that was quite loud, to show that he might return to oratory at any moment.
'You see,' he emphasized. 'I can speak in a very loud voice if I want to.'"
(Excerpt from an article by Argentine writer and journalist Miguel Bonasso for an Argentine newspaper Pagina 12)
Castro also met yesterday for an hour with Kofi Annan. Until this morning details of the conversation have not been made public.
However, a Cuban publication, Rebellious Youth, said that Castro gave Annan a book excerpt that details the life of Fidel from 100 hours of interviews between the Cuban leader and the French journalist Ignacio Ramonet.
"To Kofi Annan, our infinite recognition," reads the dedication from Castro to the Secretary General of the UN.
The big question is whether Castro will make a surprise visit at the NAM summit, which ends on Saturday and whether he is able to speak -- in a loud enough voice.
It looks like Castro will be taking back the reins of power soon enough to the ultimate disappointment of the exile Cuban groups, which have held US politics captive for decades.
The 44-year-old embargo on tourist and business travel to Cuba is reminiscent of the German regulations in war torn Casablanca that so tormented Ingrid Bergman and Claude Raines. You need a U.S. Government issued exit document to get on the plane to Havana.
Officially, Americans are free to travel to Cuba, but they can't spend money there, which practically amounts to a travel ban. The end result is an absurd situation in which Americans can visit a hostile dictatorial country, if they are invited guests, but not if they pay for the trip themselves.
A conservative Reagan Supreme Court upheld the ban with a narrow 5-4 decision. The decision was defended on the grounds of the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act, a provision that can only be invoked in a time of "war or national emergency."
The emergency in question was declared at the time of the Korean War back in 1950. The Reagan administration argued in 1984 that the continuing struggle with the Soviet Union and national security needs had to override the rights of citizens to travel.
Hello? It's 22 years later. The world is a different place today.
Washington's Cuba policy remains frozen in a land that time forgot. The Cold War is over. The Soviet Union has gone kaput. Cuba is nearly bankrupt and ceases to be a threat to anybody. Che Guevara was slain by CIA operatives nearly forty years ago in Bolivia.
Even conservatives such as William F. Buckley oppose the embargo and the latest polls of Cuban exiles show that 40% question the wisdom of continuing the embargo.
Meanwhile, two million tourists flock to Cuba from Italy, Spain, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Germany, France and other countries around the world. Tourism revenues exceeding two billion dollars have surpassed sugar exports as Cuba's largest industry.
Practically, the travel ban is a pathetic joke.
More than twenty thousand Americans travel to Cuba without permission every year. They sneak in through Canada or Mexico or the Cayman Islands. Cuba Tours in Havana says that 50 percent of its packages are sold to Americans and at least 75 percent are arranged from any one of a dozen Web sites.
You can call hotels in Cuba and make reservations. You can call Cubana Airlines in Toronto and make reservations on flights. One person who was convicted under the law is a diehard Texas fisherman who advertised fishing trips to Havana, convinced that in a democracy the government can't tell you where to fish. He paid a small fine and went to jail for a short time. Havana harbor is filled with American yachts and power boats filled with retired cost-conscious Americans looking for good fishing, cheap two dollar rum, low dock fees, and beautiful $10 hookers.
The most egregious aspect of this policy is that it is motivated by domestic political considerations - "The Castro Card" involving a few hundred thousand Cuban expatriates in the swing states of Florida and New Jersey. Meanwhile, the right to travel for 300 million people is held hostage to appease their narrow political concerns.
Only three countries support the US embargo of Cuba: Israel, Marshall Islands, and Palau. What are we afraid of? Are Americans going to be brainwashed and turn into Marxist revolutionaries?
"It's not the business of my own country to tell me where I can travel. It's an anomaly. It's beneath the dignity of a great and good country," said Sen. Patrick Leahy.