Castro's Latest Victim: Himself

[mobuto]

By VLADIMIRO ROCA

Published: March 22, 2004


HAVANA — As we mark one year since the brutal government crackdown on the peaceful opposition in Cuba, my mind goes back to the morning of March 18, 2003. I was at a meeting of dissident leaders; we were discussing the hostile tone of the previous day's "Mesa Redonda," a political TV talk show that the government uses to convey its point of view to the population.

"It is surprising that after yesterday's `Mesa Redonda' we are still able to meet today," one of my colleagues said. Little did we know that this comment would be a prophecy — within hours the arrests began around the country. In the end, more than 75 of my brothers and sisters were behind bars, with sentences of up to 28 years. I was spared, perhaps because I had been free for less than a year after spending more than four years in prison on charges of sedition.

The government, apparently concluding that the American invasion of Iraq would distract international scrutiny from its actions, had decided to destroy a growing opposition movement. That movement had been energized by the Varela Project, a petition calling for a referendum on democratic change that was presented to the National Assembly in 2002 with the signatures of more than 10,000 registered voters.

--snip--

In addition, many European intellectuals and political groups who had sympathized with the regime — including the Nobel laureates José Saramago and Dario Fo, the filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, the Socialist International and the Communist Party of Italy — joined the condemnation. Many European embassies in Havana have begun to welcome Cuban dissidents to celebrate national days.

--continued--

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/22/opinion/22ROCA.html

[RichM]

1. This is the NY Times OpEd page. This is the same newspaper that:

- instigated & supported the Clinton witch-hunts
- failed to notice that the election of 2000 was stolen
- made virtually no effort to hammer home the links of Enron to the Bush administration, accepting the idiotic idea that "it's a business scandal, not a political scandal"
- doesn't consider it a big problem that there's no WMD in Iraq
- has quietly accepted Bush's appointing his own investigation panel to look at "pre-war intelligence flaws," requiring them to report only AFTER the Nov. election
- didn't notice that Reagan was destroying half of Central America in the 1980's
- never seems to find Israel committing any atrocities
- was cheering for the coup against Chavez in Venezuela in April '02.
etc etc

The fact that they publish something negative about Castro is not exactly a surprise, nor is it meaningful. I'd take it more seriously the day they publish something about what Cuba was like under Batista - complete with the statement that the US supported Batista. Included should be a comparison of how health care and literacy were before 1959, and how they subsequently developed.

[fla nocount]

2. You mean the same rag that let's Pom-Pom Friedman

take a crap in the middle of the page everyday?

It also ignores the fact that if Castro's fast-ball had just a bit ass he would have played for the Red Sox and been our national hero.

[mobuto]

4. I wasn't aware that Tom Friedman

had written anything on Cuba. But my memory is imperfect and I will look.

[mobuto]

3. The Times prints everything

The Times OP/ED page publishes opinions from a wide variety of opinions, some of which we may agree with, others which we don't. Just today, right below the OP/ED I posted, there was another which offered what I consider to be a very legitimate criticism of a portion of the Administration's Cuba policy.

So please, rather than shooting the messenger, why don't you try to address the subject of the article. I found it very interesting.

[RichM]

5. The Times doesn't print everything.

It only prints what's "fit to print," and their definition of what's fit to print, is news that's acceptable to centers of power. That one factor accounts for ALL the serious problems in coverage I pointed to above.

In 1965, the Times had reporters in Indonesia during the overthrow of Sukarno. In a period of a few months, over a half million people were killed by the Suharto forces - backed by the US. The Times didn't even mention it until it was all over, and then, only obliquely, and with gleeful satisfaction.

In the 80's, the Times was wholly complicit with the Reaganites' vicious destruction of Nicaragua & El Salvador. Today, they're wholly complicit in Bush's destruction of Iraq.

The Times serves power. It's a corrupt institution. Aside from Herbert & Krugman, the paper isn't fit to wrap fish in.

[AP]

6. It's practically an endorsement telling us Castro is doing what's wrong

for American business profits (eg, AT&T, Chiquita, and Flordida sugar barons) and what's right for the people of Cuba.

The New York Times has NEVER been right on any issue implicating neoliberalism, foreign policy and American business.

I challenge anyone to find and example of the Times telling the truth about anything that ever happened in a country where an American company thought it wasn't making as much money as it deserved to make.

However, FWIW, it should be emphasized that this is an opinion piece by the founder of a project to change Cuba from withing through a referendum process on the state of that referendum project. It's like a "don't forget about us" piece. It's sort of saying, the US sucks, but let's not forget that Castro sucks too, even though Bush is sort of redefining what it means to suck in a way that might let Castro off the hook for his suckiness.

[9215]

7. Idiots don't know history

I will always remember one thing. Castro was an arch-enemy of the Cuban Mafia. Castro was their enemy because he kicked their drug dealing, prostitution peddling sleazy asses out of Cuba and, for a time that little nation, wrought havok on the criminal elements that, in many ways, rule the world through illegal trading of one sort or another.

Read McCoy's "Politics of Heroin: CIA complicity in the Global Drug Trade"

Call it Communism, or Socialism or whatever ism you want. All I know is that we don't really know what is going on in Cuba except what the enemies of Castro care to tell us. He fought the bastards and somehow I cannot imagine him being as bad as he is portrayed. He was forced to restrict freedoms in Cuba for many of the same reasons, only with more reason, than Bushboy claims we need to curtail rights in the US: we are being attacked by terrorists. Well, in Castro's case that could never be more true. The relentless hostility toward him is bizarre.

What would happen if we just let that little country determine its own destiny? Why the duplicitous double standard with Cuba and China? One answer, PROFIT. Why not put the same pressure on Burma with its Halliburton business as usual while it is run by a dictator: one answer--PROFIT.

Cuba is a sacrificial lamb, a good example that needs to be squelched. A country that defied the Global corporatists.

THAT IS CUBA'S GREATEST SIN.

Why the outpouring of concern in Cuba when Fidel stumbled at the podium? It was spontaneous.

Fuck the idiots that don't know history.