"Genocidal"? Chill out a little, Fidel. From Bloomberg, Nov. 19:

Cuba's President Fidel Castro has described as "cowardly" remarks that Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero directed at Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during last week's Ibero-American summit in Chile.

Castro, 81, issued a statement recently to side with Chavez, his closest ally, who was told to "shut up" at the summit by Spanish King Juan Carlos I after the Venezuelan leader called Spain's former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar Lopez a fascist. Zapatero also defended Aznar from Chavez's attack, telling him that his predecessor was elected democratically.

The exchange was "an unambiguous display of the genocidal ways and methods of the empire, its accomplices and the anesthetized victims of the Third World," Castro wrote in an e- mailed "reflection," entitled "The Ideological Waterloo."