'Like I told Raul...'

Pope Francis pontificates to a captive audience in Rome;

Pope Francis said "many powerful people don't want peace because they live off war". He was talking to children from Rome's primary schools on Monday at a special audience organised by the Factory for Peace ("Fabbrica della pace") Foundation in the Nervi Room. Behind any war there is always the arms industry, he said. "This is serious. Some powerful people make their living with the production of arms and sell them to one country for them to use against another country ... It's the industry of death, the greed that harms us all, the desire to have more money." The Pope went on: "The economic system orbits around money and not men, women ... So war is waged in order to defend money.

We hope that Francis has ordered the new book by Juan Reinaldo Sanchez, The Double Life of Fidel Castro: My 17 Years as Personal Bodyguard to El Lider Maximo, a former bodyguard (and prisoner of) Fidel Castro. According to which, from the review in The Daily Beast by William O'Connor;

Over the years, Fidel built a vacation complex on the two islands [Cayo Piedro] making up the cayo, and it is also where he keeps his secret yacht. One of the few people consistently invited to the vacation spot was Nobel Prize-winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Which isn't the only luxury Fidel allows himself;

Sanchez points to one instance in which a Canadian company offered to build a sporting facility of Fidel’s choice for the country. Instead of having something built for his people, “the Commandante asked them to construct an indoor basketball court for his sole use.” Sanchez also believes that a Forbes article that listed Castro’s fortune at around $900 million islikely to be close to accurate.

One absurd detail shared in the book is that each member of his family has his or her own cow. This is because, Sanchez writes, “the acidity and creaminess of fresh milk varies from one cow to another.” So, milk is bottled and numbered based on each Castro family member’s cow.

Part of Castro's love for money is sated by drug running. Which has been known to be a non-peaceable industry. Not to mention all those Cuban soldiers he's sent to Africa  and South America over the decades.

Wonder if any of that came up in his recent confab with Fidel's brother.