Hired help might be hard to find nowadays—but not for Fidel Castro. Jack Benny had his Rochester. Louise Jefferson had her Florence.  And Fidel Castro now has his Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s freshly-minted “Cuba Expert.”

Last month Fidel Castro granted Goldberg an extensive “interview.” This week a seemingly conscience-pricked Goldberg cops a plea for the arrant apple-polishing that resulted. Regarding his portrayal of a “benign” and grandfatherly Fidel Castro whom he also called a “great man,” Goldberg rationalizes thusly:

A close reading of the human rights literature suggests to me that the leadership of Cuba is not morally comparable to the leadership of Zimbabwe, Burma, Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, Eritrea, Venezuela.

Well, Mr. Goldberg, perhaps a closer reading might help. To wit:  In his book Against All Hope, Armando Valladares, who suffered 22 years in Castro’s dungeons, forced-labor camps, and torture chambers, then served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, reveals how at one point in 1961, Castro’s Gulag held 350,000 political prisoners. Freedom House estimates that half a million Cubans have passed through Castro’s Gulag. That’s out of a Cuban population at the time of 6.4 million. (more…)

While the MSM reports on Fidel Castro’s 84th birthday today –

Fidel Castro marks his 84th birthday on Friday after a spate of public appearances and apocalyptic warnings of nuclear war and environmental disaster that have catapulted him back onto center stage in Cuba and garnered him headlines outside the Communist-run Caribbean island.

The Cuban public, by and large, has welcomed their Commandante back after four years of seclusion with the warmth and sympathy one might bestow on an ailing, but wise grandfather home after a prolonged hospital stay, but in no position any longer to play head of the household.

– Big Journalism will report on some of the tens of thousands of his countrymen who cannot celebrate birthdays. Seems only fitting.

Upon arriving in Havana Jan of 1959 after an utterly bogus guerrilla war, (The New York Times had breathlessly reported of “thousands dead in single battles!” The official tally compiled by the U.S embassy after two years of “ferocious civil war!” was 184 dead on both sides, half New Orleans’ annual murder tally)–at any rate, upon entering the Cuban capitol, the gallant Che Guevara (beaming and strutting over his appointment as Castro’s chief hangman!) immediately recognized the moat around Havana’s La Cabana fortress as a handy execution pit. At Babi-Yar Hitler’s SS had to dig one. Here Che Guevara and Fidel Castro had one ready-made and so they put their firing squads to work in triple-shifts. (more…)

Last summer the British government banned U.S. radio commentator Michael Savage from setting foot in the UK.  “Fostering extremism and hatred ” was his crime, as explained by Britain’s Home Secretary of the time, Jacqui Smith. “Coming to the U.K. is a privilege,” she elaborated, “and I refuse to extend that privilege to individuals who abuse our standards and values to undermine our way of life. Therefore, I will not hesitate to name and shame those who foster extremist views as I want them to know that they are not welcome here.”

The following month, for a hoopla titled “Cuba 50,” Britain rolled out the red carpet for Che Guevara’s daughter, Aleida. The celebration was billed as “the biggest European celebration in this 50th anniversary year (of Castro’s Stalinist regime).”

This British celebration for a regime that jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s, murdered political prisoners at a higher rate than pre-war Hitler’s, created refugees at a higher rate than the Waffen SS and Gestapo created while conquering and subjugating France, and came closest of anyone to plunging the world into nuclear war—the festival for this regime was held in London’s luxurious Barbican Centre.

( All figures for the above murder, oppression, and war-mongering by the T-shirt idol of  “human-rights” and “peace” demonstrators are provided with full documentation in Exposing the Real Che Guevara, and Fidel Hollywood’s Tyrant.) (more…)