Michigan Republican Thad McCotter was once quoted as saying… ‘You are being asked to choose between bread and freedom … the American people have chosen freedom’.
That’s as may be. Stephen Kinzer in The Guardian poses the same equation for Cuba and its neighbours…. Caribbean communism v capitalism.
Cubans may not denounce their regime and demand a different one. Some who do so find themselves under 24-hour surveillance, are assaulted by gangs of neighbours organised by communist authorities, and run the risk of prison. In Central American countries, by contrast, laws guarantee every citizen the right to free speech. Dissidents in Guatemala, for example, are never arrested or prosecuted for their statements. The system works differently there: they are simply shot.
Before you dismiss this quote as coming from anti-Castro Cubans:
“Throughout the island the firing squads didn’t stop the killing. It was during those days that Captain Antonio Nunez Jimenez said that, from that day forward, 1961, which had been labelled the Year of Education, would be known as the Year of the Firing Squad. His prediction became true”, says in his book Against All Hope, former political prisoner Armando Valladares, who stayed 22 years in Cuban prisons.
At one point in time, the then commandant Raul Castro, head of the Army, stated that “the thugs that we are going to execute won’t be more than 400″, talking about the military and government officials under Batista.
The reality is that the true number of those executed for political causes over these last 36 years of Cuba’s history is not known, because the statistics on the executions are a complete secret, and in greater or smaller scale, the executions have not stopped at all.
http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/estoria.presidio.html
Read this one from Amnesty International:
In yet another blow to respect for human rights, Cuban authorities have ended a three-year de facto moratorium on executions by sending three men to their deaths before an official firing squad, said Amnesty International today.
“Coming on the heels of the mass arrest and summary trials of at least 75 Cuban dissidents — most of whom received shockingly lengthy prison terms ranging up to 28 years — these executions mark a serious erosion in Cuba’s human rights record.”
That took me two minutes on Google. Stephen Kinzer strains mightily to keep the standard of journalism at ‘The Groan’ to its historically low level.
And whilst we’re on the subject, any ignorant muppets who enjoy wearing Che Guevara T-shirts might like to read this:
http://www.independent.org/newsroom/article.asp?id=1535
and then consider adding to their wardrobe with some new ranges just out with logos printed on them like “Beria had balls“, or “Himmler is hip“!
Is anyone surprised that Duffy’s rant completely skates over the death squads, executions, starvation, infant mortality, ill-educated masses that populate the lands of milk and honey basking under the umbrella of his beloved United States?
As Kinzer pointed out, although it appeared to float straight over Duffy’s head… Since the Castro government came to power in Cuba in 1959, political killings have totalled in the hundreds, most of them summary executions in the turbulent post-revolution period. The Central American toll is in the hundreds of thousands.
But hey, why bother about the hundreds of thousands if you can wrench your bleeding heart for 400?
Well, you certainly didn’t “wrench your bleeding heart for 400″ last summer as you sat beside your Cuban swimming-pool sipping your rum and coke, did you, Councillor?
Where are you going for your hols this year – North Korea?
Me? I wouldn’t go to any of those festering, gangster-ridden dumps – except possibly Honduras which has recently shown, despite the bullying of that great libertarian, Obama, a healthy respect for consitutional law.
By the way, I see you hero Chavez is facing demonstrations in the street as he starts doing what all socialists do so well, rationing water and electricity. Viva la Revolution!
Not quite sure about this year yet, Duffers. Hoping to fit in the usual Spring and Autumn trips to Portugal, thinking of the South of France in the Summer, and I would dearly like a trip to Aus for the Ashes over Xmas, but I suppose I had better get out the old CIA handbook to check out whether your Government approve of the respective system of government in those countries first.
I always fail to see why you right-whingers are so whimpering and obsequious to the United States. Have you no personal pride man?
Anyway… keep that blanket tucked in on the front at Bognor, the wind down there can play hell with your chilblains.
On account of the Bognor joke I’ll call that a score draw!