There has been an interesting series of articles / interviews with Fidel Castro, by Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic. Among other thoughts: Ahmadinejad needs to mellow out, and Cuba's communist model has failed.
My favorite part of Goldberg's interview experience – a glimpse of banal humanity behind the old dictator:
"Do you like dolphins?" Fidel asked me.
"I like dolphins a lot," I said.
I've always had a deep fascination for the "repentant dictator." Perhaps this grew out of my time in Chile, and the weirdly dysfunctional relationship that the people of that country had with their erstwhile savior and/or tormentor, Pinochet. Yesterday, I blog-mentioned Chun Doo-hwan, who was dictator of South Korea in the 1980's. What would it be like to talk to him, now, about what Korea is like, now? I would be fascinated.