theguardian: Fidel Castro Attacks Idiocy and Ignorance!

Fidel Castro has lambasted the Republican presidential race as the greatest competition of "idiocy and ignorance" the world has ever seen, and also criticized the news media and foreign governments for seizing on the death of a Cuban prisoner to demand greater respect for human rights. Castro's comments came in a long opinion piece carried by official media two days after a Republican debate in Florida presented mostly hardline stances on what to do about the Communist-run island. Cuba has become an important issue as the candidates court Florida's influential Cuban-American community in an effort to win the biggest electoral prize so far in the primary season. Castro said he had assumed the candidates would try to outdo each other on the issue of Cuba, but nonetheless he was appalled by the level of debate. "The selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is, and I mean this seriously, the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been," he wrote. Castro disputed accounts of the death of Wilman Villar Mendoza, a 31-year-old prisoner, saying he had not been a dissident and had not been on a 50-day hunger strike, as human rights and opposition groups claimed. The retired leader said Villar had been a common criminal sent to prison for domestic violence, and he had received the best medical attention possible.