NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #18/NN_1992_18.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/5978

Text File | 1992-08-21 | 7.3 KB | 154 lines

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Path: sparky!uunet!gatech!ukma!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!daemon
From: [e-mail] (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: CUBANS: End the Embargo
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Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 02:26:06 GMT
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[Christopher Hitchens writes in the Nation:]

In her excellent new book, _Cubans: Voices of Change_, Lynn Geldof
conducts a series of illuminating conversation with Cubans on the
island, in Miami and elsewhere, and with those who have made a study
of the revolution.

No single conclusion or strategy emerges from the book except on the
matter of the embargo. In that case it is very clear that what we need
is not a tighter embargo but no embargo at all.  Wayne Smith, the
former head of mission at the U.S. Interest Section in Havana, puts it
well when he tells Geldof:

    Cuba has the same effect on American administrations that the full
    moon has on werewolves: they just lose their rationality at the
    mention Castro or Cuba.

There used to be, Smith reminds us, three Administration conditions
for "normalizing" or "thawing" relations with Havana. Cuban soldiers
had to begin to leave Africa, political prisoners had to be released
and there had to be a reduction in Soviet-Cuban ties.

Well, the Cubans have indeed left Angola (having earned warm thanks
for defeating the South Africans at the battle of Cui'to Cuananvale
and thus speeding the liberation of the region from apartheid [see
below --HB]). The number of long-term political prisoners is now in
the single figures.  And there is only the most notional sense of
"Soviet-Cuban" relations.

But the response of Bush and Baker is still No Dice. They and their
class cannot forgive the impudence of the Cubans in expropriating
American property and in outliving imperial warning to cease and
desist. This leaves millions of Cubans, including many of those
interviewed by Geldor, stuck between the vindictiveness of Washington
and the increasingly theatrical dogmatism of the autumnal patriarch
himself.

******************************************************************
Excerpted from _The Nation_, Christopher Hitchens' _Minority Report_
column, June 8, 1992 issue.
******************************************************************
Reprinted with permission - granted by The Nation magazine/The Nation
Company, Inc.  Copyright 1992
******************************************************************

[Footnote regarding South Africa's wonderful work in Southen Africa:

  THE SCENE IN Africa is worse still.  To mention only one small
  element of a growing catastrophe, a study of the U.N. Economic
  Commission for Africa estimates that "South Africa's military
  aggression and destabilization of its neighbors cost the region $10
  billion in 1988 and over $60 billion and *1.5* *million* *lives* in
  the first nine years of this decade.  Such figures are considered
  too insignificant to merit notice in the Newspaper of Record, which
  avoided the matter.

******************************************************************
[Noam Chomksy, in _The Victors [Part II]_ see chomsky.views on
PeaceNet or use GET command (see below) with CHOMSKY VICTORS2]
******************************************************************

Subscriptions to _The Nation_ -- published since 1865 and the oldest
weekly magazine in America --  are $32 per year (47 issues):
The Nation // Dept MAP // 72 Fifth Ave. // New York, NY 10011
Or a half-year subscription (24 issues) is $22.

Regular contributors include Alexander Cockburn, Katha Pollitt,
Christopher Hitchens, Molly Ivins, Gore Vidal, Calvin Trillin, and
Kirpatrick Sale. See also _Why I Am Not Running for President_ by
Gloria Steinem in a recent issue.

You can also send for a sample issue --$2.00 I believe (certainly no
more than the $2.25 cover price) -- if you're considering that, why
not email me at [e-mail] -- the Nation recently got a
PeaceNet account and *begun* using it but as they're not yet fully
fluent in even setting up their teminal type correctly, I'd rather not
give out their email address publicly at this time.

So, send me your inquiries (e.g. more about the Nation or cost of a
sample issue) and I'll forward them by email right to the Nation.  We
are trying to convince the Nation (as well as other publications like
_Z_), to convince them to get more online is what's at issue.  That
would mean more of their articles would be distributed online for the
UseNet readership.

The Nation also features regular book reviews and Departments on film,
music, theater, etc. [Last year Margot Kidder (yes, "Loise Lane")
wrote about her opposition to the Gulf "war" and what she got for
taking her courageous stand in _Confessions of Bagdad Betty_]

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Use GET with POST-WAR TEACH-IN which gives the following footnote for
the U.N. study.
##################################################################
Noam Chomsky in Z magazine's Post-Wr Teach-In (or "What We Say Goes"):

    In one of the more serious efforts to address some of the
    questions, Timothy Garton Ash asserts in the @u<New York Review>
    that while sanctions were possible in dealing with South Africa or
    Communist East Europe, Saddam Hussein is different.  That
    concludes the argument.  We now understand why it was proper to
    pursue "quiet diplomacy" while our South African friends caused
    over $60 billion in damage and 1.5 million deaths from 1980 to
    1988 in the neighboring states -- putting aside South Africa and
    Namibia, and the preceding decade.  They are basically decent
    folk, like us and the Communist tyrants.  Why?  No answer is
    offered here, but a partial one is suggested by Nelson Mandela,
    who condemns the hypocrisy and prejudice of the highly selective
    response to the crimes of the "brown-skinned" Iraqis.  The same
    thought comes to mind when the @u<New York Times> assures us that
    "the world" is united against Saddam Hussein, the most hated man
    in "the world" -- the world, that is, minus its darker
    faces.@note{Ash, "The Gulf in Europe," @u<NYRB>, March 7, 1991.
    "Inter-Agency Task Force, Africa Recovery Program/Economic
    Commission, @u<South African Destabilization: the Economic Cost of
    Frontline Resistance to Apartheid>, NY, UN, 1989, 13, cited by
    Merle Bowen, @u<Fletcher Forum>, Winter 1991.  Mandela, AP,
    @u<NYT>, Nov. 8, 1990.  Editorials, @u<NYT>, Feb. 23, 27, 1991.}

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