Fidel Castro

Although some members of Congess were cautious about the significance of Fidel Castro's resignation this morning, Congressman Jose Serrano of the Bronx thinks that the U.S. should engage with his brother, Raul, who is now in power.  read more »

Who knew supermodel Naomi Campbell, a relatively new contributing editor at British GQ, would land the Latin-America beat? For her first interview, Ms. Campbell sat down with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez—but that, it now seems, was just the beginning.

Next up: a meeting with Fidel Castro, the increasingly reclusive aging leader of Cuba, which is in the works, according to WWD. (She’s already met the bearded bad boy, back in the 90s.) While she waits to firm up the details on that particular têt-à-têt, Ms. Campbell is working on securing a chitchat with Argentina’s newly elected female president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

Considering rumors that the British-born phone-flinging fashionista began a love affair with Mr. Chavez following their meeting, her M.O., the fashion paper suggests, could be to help realize the politico’s vision for a united South America. All this comes, too, at a time when U.S. relations are becoming increasingly strained with Argentina.  read more »

Supermodel Naomi Campbell, British GQ’s new contributing editor, kicked things off at the magazine by interviewing Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. In the four-page interview, Mr. Chavez talks about his fears that President George W. Bush wants to kill him, his dream to unite South America by 2020 and how the world is currently watching America’s decline.

Ms. Campbell does manage to keep the interview—which will appear in the February issue, on newsstands this Thursday—upbeat overall, reports WWD. Among other things, Ms. Campbell’s introduction reveals Mr. Chavez’s love for singing. “If he wasn’t the president, he’d be a very successful Latin singer,” writes Ms. Campbell, who calls the South American politico a “rebel angel,” later adding that of all the world’s leaders, Mr. Chavez thinks Fidel Castro is the most stylish. “[H]is uniform is impeccable … and his beard is elegant,” he says.

Here is a slightly random interview with O. Aldon James, Jr. the whimsical and colorful president of the National Arts Club. He hosted a book party last night in Gramercy for Herman Badillo which was attended by Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg plugged Badillo’s book, One Nation, One Standard, which talks about having high educational standards, and criticizes social promotion, an educational policy Bloomberg ended.

That inspirational talk about standards and efficiency was enough to convince Aldon that Bloomberg should be president. In fact, Aldon said, he'd rather hang out with Bloomberg than any of the candidates running for office.

Barack Obama did get an honorable mention from Aldon because, like Bill Clinton, they’re all Leos. And as Aldon put it, “Leos make wonderful leaders. Fidel Castro is a Leo.”

(Bloomberg is an Aquarius. And, in the spirit of full disclosure, the author of this post is a Leo.)

On Monday night in Havana, Fidel Castro reportedly lay in a hospital bed, recovering from abdominal  read more »

Addressing the issue of why liberals don't speak up about Israel, Kevin Drum, the Political Animal, justifies silence by saying the issues are "complex" and because "posts that display any sense of sympathy for the Palestinians run the risk of provoking a shitstorm of accusations of anti-semitism."

Drum should be applauded for his candor; it's important to understand why writers obey taboos. But his admission underlines the fact that the pro-Israel lobby is the loose coalition of journalists, thinktankers, outspoken professors, Hill staffers and lobbyists that Walt and Mearsheimer said it is. I don't think the professors went far enough; I think the lobby functions in social ways. My reading of Drum is that he is saying that he may feel sympathy but he's afraid to express it because he'll catch a lot of flak from his friends, somebody who he doesn't wish to offend. Living in Washington, Drum surely knows and hangs out with people who will take offense. The same reason Harvard professors who sympathized with Palestinians pulled their heads down after Larry Summers accused them of antisemitism: they were alienating colleagues down the hall. Those liberals justified their silence, Well I don't really understand the mess over there... Years ago the great Mike Kinsley wrote that his real fear of sticking his neck out on Israel issues wasn't the lobbyists, he was worried what his old friend Marty Peretz would say. Just as I worry what my mother will say, what my editor will say.

It's as if America depended for information about Fidel Castro from media companies based in Miami. These are all real forces, and not to be mocked or diminished. But because these issues are so important in the "war on terror", and because the Palestinians are suffering such collective punishment, a handful of Americans have chosen to overcome these concerns, and even accept the antisemitic labelling, in order to express their true response. Scott McConnell, Norman Finkelstein, John Mearsheimer, Henry Siegman, Stephen Walt, the Presbyterian Church—have walked through the doorway marked "sympathy for the Palestinians" and, yes, suffered great abuse, but lived. Isn't this what brave journalists (and even liberal ones) are also supposed to do?

Just how powerful is The New York Times?  read more »

Just how powerful is The New York Times?  read more »

Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution , by Alma Guillermoprieto.  read more »

Long declared to be mere footnotes to history, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara are riding high in the A  read more »

All over Havana, touts want you to buy black-market cigars at a fraction of the government price, an  read more »

Cast Away for Christmas! Ready or not, here they come: The Christmas movies are upon  read more »

In the last two weeks, Mayor Giuliani has been like a train station in which several lines of argume  read more »

Of late, we have been treated to a continuous spouting and fuming emanating from the general directi  read more »

Some winter days are so bleak I feel as if I am the groundhog's shadow willing itself to be visible.  read more »

HAVANA–To be in Cuba during the uproar over the plight of Élian González is to understand exactl  read more »

"From Qaddafi to Castro, the celebrities Barbara Walters has interviewed throughout her career are a  read more »