Category: reason

Upon the death of long-time Cuban dictator (retired) Fidel Castro, democratically elected and brutal tyrants alike have come together to offer heartfelt tributes of the deceased.

Though President-elect Donald Trump has in the past praised vicious repression deployed by socialist dictators in Iraq and China, Trump’s minimalist take on Twitter (Fidel Castro is dead!) and subsequent statement where he referred to Castro as a “brutal dictator” were welcome diversions from other political leaders’ statements which have run the gamut between mealy-mouthed defenses of Castro’s “complicated” legacy to slavish praise of his health care and pro-literacy initiatives.

Here are five of the worst reactions from international polticial leaders to Castro’s death.

5. Ireland’s President Michael Higgins

Higgins—nominally the head of state, though in Ireland’s parliamentary system, the role is largely ceremonial— said in a statement:

Having survived some 600 attempts on his life, Fidel Castro, known to his peers in Cuba as ‘El Comandante’, became one of the longest serving Heads of State in the world, guiding the country through a remarkable process of social and political change, advocating a development path that was unique and determinedly independent.

First, as an authoritarian dictator (by definition, such people don’t have “peers”), Higgins’ praise of the length of Castro’s reign is spectacularly dumb, as his claim that a country which relied on the financial largess of the Soviet Union and later Venezuela (until the economic collapse of both socialist countries) was ever “determinedly independent.”

Other jaw-droppers in Higgins’ statement include “inequality and poverty are much less pronounced in Cuba than in surrounding nations” and that Castro would be remembered as a “giant among world leaders” who provided “freedom for his people.”

One could argue that inequality is “less pronounced” in Cuba than in other Latin American countries, but only because the whole country is impoverished. However, even the “less inequality” defense goes out the window when you factor in lavish lifestyles enjoyed by high-ranking Communist Party officials (such as Castro himself) compared to the rest of the long-suffering population forbidden to leave the country.

4. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker

In a statement that reads like it was produced by a bot employed by a crumbling bureaucracy, the president of the European Union’s executive body wrote:

With the death of Fidel Castro, the world has lost a man who was a hero for many. He changed the course of his country and his influence reached far beyond. Fidel Castro remains one of the revolutionary figures of the 20th century. His legacy will be judged by history.

3. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei

The religious tyrant who rules over one of the worst human rights-offending countries on Earth tweeted his fond memories of shooting the breeze with another dictator who brutalized his own people.

I extensively talked with #FidelCastro in person, it is his personality to believe and rely on people. 5/27/92 http://pic.twitter.com/CtumcSgDEj

— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) November 26, 2016

2. United Kingdom’s Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn

The U.K.’s opposition party leader conceded Castro had “flaws”—though he wouldn’t name them—but insisted in a statement that Castro was a “champion of social justice.”

This must be news to the gays who were herded into labor camps following Castro’s revolution, the poets and musicians imprisoned for “counter-revolutionary” expression, the exploited workers (who in the cruelest of ironies, are forbidden from unionizing), the innumerable Cubans who died trying to escape the “socialist paradise,” and those who remain but are forbidden from accessing the outside world through the internet.

1. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau

Everyone’s favorite woke boyfriend released a statement calling Castro a “remarkable leader” who “served his people for almost half a century” as the country’s “longest serving president”—a feat less impressive when you factor in the fact that Castro’s one-party government never held a free election.

Trudeau conceded Castro was a “controversial figure,” and then inexplicably decided to speak for both Castro’s “supporters and detractors,” who he says “recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for ‘el Comandante’.”

Read more Reason coverage of Cuba and Castro here.

When most people think of hydroponics, marijuana and tomatoes come to mind. But there’s more to hydroponics. And—wouldn’t you know it—the “more” involves more regulations.

The USDA is currently considering whether hydroponic crops should be eligible to earn the USDA organic seal. They’ve been eligible to earn that status since 2002. But that could change thanks to a USDA-appointed “Organic Hydroponic and Aquaponic Task Force” that’s making recommendations on the issue. Baylen Linnekin thinks the government should stay out of the matter altogether.

View this article.

Former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has died at the age of 90, according to Cuban state media (more or less the only kind in the communist country). Castro stepped down from power in 2008, placing his younger brother, the now 85-year-old Raul, in charge.

The hagiographies on their way in the wake of his death will be similar to the ones that came when he stepped down from power. The most common refrains will be about Castro “giving” the Cuban people healthcare and education.

Michael Moynihan explained why those refrains don’t work back in 2008:

What all of these pols and pundits lazily presume is that if the state of Cuban health care and education have markedly improved on Castro’s watch, surely the situation was dire during the final years of the Batista dictatorship.

Well, not exactly. In 1959 Cuba had 128.6 doctors and dentists per 100,000 inhabitants, placing it 22nd globally—that is, ahead of France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Finland. In infant mortality tables, Cuba ranked one of the best in the world, with 5.8 deaths per 100,000 babies, compared to 9.5 per 100,000 in the United States. In 1958 Cuba’s adult literacy rate was 80 percent, higher than that of its colonial grandfather in Spain, and the country possessed one of the most highly-regarded university systems in the Western hemisphere.

Cuba improved, as have most countries, on some of these indices in the years since the revolution. As reason Contributing Editor Glenn Garvin points out, “countries like Costa Rica, Panama, and Brazil have posted equal gains in literacy during the same time period without resorting to totalitarian governments.”

In his lifetime, Castro saw Marxist-Leninism fall on every continent in which it was introduced. He even lived long enough to see China’s communists largely give up on communism. In the end, he could look to North Korea for what, after tens of millions of deaths around the world, the 20th century project of communism amounted to. Cubans may have to wait for Raul to die as well before they can see communism fall in their own country.

Read more Reason on Cuba, and read about Castro’s reflections on the universe and the “unimaignable” here.

Television critic Glenn Garvin used to eagerly await the annual crop of Christmas movies and TV shows. Who can resist watching dull little Bedford Falls transformed into the glorious, neon-lit hookers-and-pawnshops urban landscape of Pottersville in It’s A Wonderful Life? Whether it was yuletide zombies, ill-mannered Norwegians, or a jolly Santa Claus blasting Satan in the butt with a cannon, he was endlessly enchanted.

But those days have passed. Today’s children being the overprotected little snowflake dorks they are, Christmas shows for them are nightmarish descents into robotic multicultural tedium that make Garvin long for the bony embrace of the best Ghost of Christmas Future ever in Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol.

Amazon Prime has appointed itself the Official Network of Christmas Lobotomization this year, releasing three heinous little shows that parents can prop their kids (or, possibly, tie them down) in front of as they join the Black Friday throngs overrunning shopping malls. Garvin explains more.

View this article.

Some 1.2 billion people do not have access to electricity, according to the International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2016 report. About 2.7 billion still cook and heat their dwellings with wood, crop residues, and dung. In its main scenario for the trajectory of global energy consumption, the IEA projects that in 2040, half a billion people will still lack access to electricity and 1.8 billion will still be cooking and heating by burning biomass. In its new report, Energy for Human Development, the eco-modernist Breakthrough Institute make the case that ending energy poverty for hundreds of millions of poor people should be prioritized over efforts to mitigate future climate change. They correctly argue that “it is untenable morally and practically to insist that global climate change targets be balanced upon the backs of the poorest people on earth.”

View this article.

California hasn’t come close to resolving its pension crisis yet, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

Steven Greenhut writes:

There’s bad news coming down the pike for California municipalities following several days of board meetings for the nation’s largest state-based pension fund. Although no action has been taken, it’s clear the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, or CalPERS, might again lower its expected rate of returns on investments. That means cities and other member agencies would have to pay more to make up the shortfall.

A key moment, buried amid nearly 13 hours of recorded meetings, came when CalPERS’ Chief Investment Officer Ted Eliopoulos played a short interview video with Wall Street experts, including famed investor Warren Buffett, opining on the expected investment returns in coming years. One investment guru thought a 4 percent or 5 percent rate of return would be the objective. Buffett pointed to very slow growth in the economy.

Eliopoulos used a diagram showing a 30-year decline in interest rates, even as discount rates used by pension funds remained steady. CalPERS currently calculates its pension liabilities based on an expected return rate of 7.5 percent. Based on the data provided by CalPERS staff, it’s clear the agency would need to ramp up its risk taking to have any chance to continually meet such goals. In the past year, CalPERS’ return rate was 0.6 percent.

View this article.

Much of the mainstream media seems pretty motivated to normalize the alt-right. Why?

David Harsanyi writes:

Why does the March for Life, a rally that attracts tens of thousands of anti-abortion Americans to Washington, D.C., every year get less prominent media coverage than a fringe neo-Nazi gathering? Because institutional media and white nationalists have formed a politically convenient symbiotic relationship.

For Jew-hating racists, the attention means they can playact as a viable and popular movement with pull in Washington. In return, many in the media get to confirm their own biases and treat white supremacy as if it were the secret ingredient to Republican success.

Meanwhile, this obsessive coverage of the alt-right not only helps mainstream a small movement but it’s also exactly what the bigots need and want to grow.

View this article.

Gale Griffin and Wendell Harvey spent two and a half months in an Arkansas jail after drug field tests falsely showed that baking soda they had in the truck they were driving was cocaine. The couple were eventually freed after a public defender insisted on an actual lab test. But they say their truck was damaged when they got it back from law enforcement, and they say the arrest cost them their security clearance, which means they can no longer do their job, which was transport explosives for the federal government.

When Thanksgiving became a national holiday back in 1863, it was a repudiation of the French aristocracy, says food historian Rachel Laudan. Europe’s haute cuisine, contemporaries believed, “ruined the individual, the household, and the nation.” Thus, this “simple meal…became a national celebration embracing all citizens,” Laudan wrote in a 2013 Boston Globe essay.

Contemporary novelist and cookbook author Sarah Josepha Hale designed the standard Thanksgiving mean as an affirmation of our (small ‘r’) republican virtues. Turkey was cheap to procure, pumpkin pie was easy to make, and cranberry sauce was a simple take on the fancy toppings typical in a French court.

The meaning of Thanksgiving has changed over the years—thanks in part to Julia Child’s successful effort to democratize French cuisine—but even today, “nobody suggests adding truffles to your turkey,” Laudan says.

Nick Gillespie interviewed Laudan about the meaning of Thanksgiving and other aspects of culinary history, drawing on her fascinating, 2013 book, Cuisine & Empire.

Click below to listen to that conversation—or subscribe to our podcast at iTunes.

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