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- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
- Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!daemon
- From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
- Subject: CUBA: Brilliance and Consistency of Washington Party Line
- Message-ID: <1992Aug22.234249.1416@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
- Followup-To: alt.activism.d
- Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
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- Nntp-Posting-Host: pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
- Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 23:42:49 GMT
- Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Lines: 170
-
- The logic of the response to Reed is brilliant here:
-
- *>Reed: The United States has said that it will not buy any steel
- *>that is manufactured with an ounce of Cuban nickel by European and
- *>Candian companies. Cuba has the second largest nickel reserves in
- *>the world. Another case is that of the pediatric heart center,
- *>which has been importing equipment from a Swedish firm for years.
- *>But it has just been prevented from importing a piece of equipment
- *>for the children's hospital because it has small filtering membrane
- *>patented in the United States. With the blockade, anything that is
- *>sold to Cuba that has passed through U.S. hands or been
- *>manufactured with U.S. technology cannot be imported by Cuba.
- *>Economically, the challenge is to change the oil economy. You can
- *>take almost everything else away, but you've got to have the oil.
- *
- *
- *If the beaurocrats of Cuban propaganda are so worried with the poor
- *children from the Hospital all she has to do is go on her candle-lit
- *tv broadcasts and say.
- *
- * "Mr. Castro, the people are suffering great at the expense of
- *proving that your theory of maintaining a socialist system without
- *popular support must come at any cost. We ask you for the benefit of
-
- In other words, is the U.S. makes Cuban infants suffer becuase Castro
- isn't doing what the U.S. wants, the infants suffering is clearly
- Castro's fault. By similar reason apologists for U.S. terror
- expalained patiently that since the long-supported and armed dictator
- and ex-pal of George Bush, Saddam Hussein, *could* have and didn't do
- what Washington dictated, despite warnings of mass-slaughter (rather
- than diplomacy and santions) by Washington if Saddam didn't, it
- follows then that the moral responsibility for the 250,000 Iraqis
- slaughtered outright or killed indirectly by Washington's violence
- falls only on the ex-U.S.-backed dictator's shoulders. The analogy end
- here; Saddam is an example of the vicious thugs supported by
- Washington who, like El Salvador, Guatemala, and other "allies"
- slaugher their own people, while Cuba represents an unacceptable
- departure, for Washington, from those wonderful "death squad
- democracy" models which the U.S. has maintained over decades in that
- condition.
-
- But typical logic employed by the apologists for U.S. terror is more
- revealing:
-
- *If the beaurocrats of Cuban propaganda are so worried with the poor
- *children from the Hospital all she has to do is go on her candle-lit
- *tv broadcasts and say.
- *
- * "Mr. Castro, the people are suffering great at the expense of
- *proving that your theory of maintaining a socialist system without
- *popular support must come at any cost. We ask you for the benefit of
-
- In other words, the "theory" of the Cuban experiment brings about
- terrorism and economic strangulation from the regional Superpower,
- which in turn brings about suffering for the Cuban people. Clearly,
- it's the fault of the Cuban "theory," not Washington, who has been
- destroying since Guatemala in 1954 and before any successful examples
- of independent development to benefit the population, just to make
- sure that there are no counter-examples to the Doctrine that IMF- and
- U.S.- imposed economic regimes to benefit rich investors and
- corporations while the population lives in misery -- is the "only
- way"; and it's true; the "North American Enforcer" ensures that it is
- indeed the "only way" to avoid either outright invasion, or economic
- strangulation, or a "proxy" army for the U.S. [as internal memos admit
- the contras were], or other means available to the Superpower.
-
- As far as the human rights situation in Cuba, the hypocrisy of the
- Washington party line goes beyond their ceaseless support for regimes
- partaking in slaughter on a scale next to which Cuba's repression
- would need to be viewed under a microscope; they are well aware that
- the threat perceived by the Cuban government and Cubans (those with
- access to human rights reports for example) of having Castro be
- replaced by a regime like Guatemala, or El Salvador, or Honduras (or
- indeed a Brazil, per my documentation earlier of the death-squad style
- assassination of street children, as many as one per day, by the
- security forces, and a poverty and starvation at levels making East
- Europe look like paradise), strengthen the arguments for a state of
- siege, violations against civil rights, and so on; much to
- Washington's delight, who can use these realities for propaganda
- purposes in its continued war against the Cuban people and infants.
-
- Meanwhile, hide their heads in the sand though they might, the
- *documented reality* is brilliantly clear for the model proposed by
- the U.S. to replace Cuba, the countries where without any evil
- "leftists" or "Marxists" in power the Washington World Order has been
- imposed unchallenged.
-
- Here where Washington has had its way, as documented by all the major
- human rights and international development organizations, the level of
- human rigts abuses under on-the-books "demoracy", *and* in terms of
- the living conditions the govenrment mainstains for the population in
- terms of food, housing, education, health care, is not better, in
- fact, is *worse* than in Cuba.
-
- Now major totalitarians and major abusers of human rights like
- Reagan/Bush and their death-squad "Democracies" might agree with the
- relatively minor totalitarians and minor abusers of human rights like
- Castro that these are the only two alternatives, the U.S.-styled
- "Democracies" or Cuba, but the principled critics of Washington's
- policies have not suffered this "confusion," and do not merely prefer
- minor Castroite repression to Wholesale U.S.-styled repression and
- slaughter but rather recognize that a decent U.S. policy which instead
- of blocking health-care devices for infants, ends the embargo and
- through cooperation and incentives *in the context* of the elimination
- of the threat of the imposition of another U.S.-style
- peasant-slaughering and peasant-starving "democracy" in Cuba would
- promote a democratic opening in Cuba. Of course, that anything remotely
- along these lines will come out of Washington is next to
- inconceivable, so long as the institutions underlying the policy
- guidlines which have marked U.S. policy towards the region for decades
- do not change; that is precisely the point.
-
- Needless to say, the principled left critics of Washington's policies
- do not advocate withholding infant-care technology from the likes of
- Guatemala (putting aside the issue of the government's intentions of
- providing such for its citizens), although they insist that U.S.
- military aid, training in domestic repression (including torture) and
- other assistance to the "cliques of assassins masquerading as an army"
- in the U.S.-style "demoracies" be withdrawn.
-
- It is not merely the critics of U.S. policy you are consistent here;
- Washington, too, is consistent, in its willingness to torture the
- Guatemalan and Honduran and other people with repression, murder, and
- starvation to the extent necessary to prevent land-reform, the right
- to unionize, or other protections of human and civil rights and
- democracy, etc, from interfering with inverstor/business interests;
- and similarly Washington is willing to torture the Cuban people by
- making the conditions of life more painful because Washington would
- like a U.S.-styled "democracy" in Cuba, not minor repression coupled
- with development policies which, aiding the Cuban population, are
- therefore harmful to the special instersts of the corporate class
- represented by those who hold (and have always held) power in
- Washington.
-
- Of course such indicators as infant mortality in Cuba still put to
- shame the best of what the "death-squad democracies" or even the less
- vicious "business profits before food for peasants democracies" have
- been able to achieve (or that of Non-while Americans, for that
- matter), but the cumulative toll the superpower enforcer can create on
- the small island is over time, very considerable indeed.
-
-
- Files of interest in this connection:
-
- OXFAM HONDURAS Oxfam's Bulletin on "Why Farmers Go Hungry"
- AI_REPT ELSALV Amnesty:So-called `death-squads' are run by army!
- LAT-AMER HMNRTS90 A comparison of HR reports ; surprizing results
- FSLN ACHIEVE Documented: achievements of the Nica. revolution
-
- [Direct quotes from human rights and international development reports
- and fully footnoted references]
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