Foreign Policy Magazine "Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez among worst dictators ..

As dictators go, neither Cuba's Raúl Castro nor Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez measure up to Castro's brother Fidel, according to Foreign Policy magazine.

Castro ranked 21st and Chávez 17th in a list of the world's 23 worst tyrants published by the magazine. Fidel ranked 15th in a similar list published in 2007 by Parade magazine.

A separate Foreign Policy article ranked Cuba 76th out of 177 countries based on national stability, sandwiched between Guatemala at 75 and Venezuela at 77.

The magazine described the younger Castro as ``afflicted with intellectual astigmatism'' and ``pitifully unaware that the revolution he leads is obsolete, an abysmal failure, and totally irrelevant to the aspirations of the Cuban people.''

``He blames the failure of the revolution on foreign conspiracies -- which he then uses to justify even more brutal clampdowns,'' added the magazine, based in Washington and published by Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC.

Parade's 2007 list noted that Fidel Castro's ``decades-long refusal to pass on the mantle of leadership has been his way of saying that two generations of Cubans have come and gone without a single person being worthy of leading the country . . . except his own brother.''

The dictators were ranked by George B.N. Ayittey of Ghana, president of the Washington-based Free Africa Foundation, ``based on ignoble qualities of perfidy, cultural betrayal, and economic devastation.''

First was Kim Jong-Il of North Korea, followed by Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Thirteen of the 23 rule African countries, and several others rule nations in Central Asia that once formed part of the Soviet Union. The list also includes the leaders of China, Iran and Myanmar.

In a separate ``Failed States Index,'' based on 12 measurements such as refugee flows, economics, human rights violations and security threats, Cuba ranked 76th out of 177 countries.

Cuba got its worst marks on the measurements of human flight, deligitimization of the state, human rights, security apparatus, factionalized elites and external intervention.

Haiti ranked 12th, Colombia 41st, Bolivia 51st, Nicaragua 66th and Ecuador 69th.