Havana—Maybe more than comedians, dictators rely on timing. Holding power is more than a series of purges, rallies and rigged elections. One has to know when to play the tyrant and when to play the savior. Fidel Castro, the world’s longest ruling dictator, proved he still has the knack last month when he timed a crackdown on internal dissent to coincide… return to article
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Reader Comments (18)Page 1 of 1 pagesIts amazing. An article like this, juxtaposed with all of your leftist Iraq articles. Let me quote from above, “You know what the secret is to this regime? Fear.” Sounds an awful lot like the situation in Iraq. Yet In These Times criticizes one regime and attacks the US for eliminating another.
Posted by Scott on Apr 17, 2003 at 5:05 AM I don’t think anyone here is pro-Iraq or in anyway supportive of their former government.
The whole point is what the US did, not what was going on over there.
A lot of people, I’m not saying you, will automatically say if you’re not for the US actions, you’re against them, or you’re on the side of whoever the US will attack this week.
The whole point, I think a lot of people here who are opposed to war make are the reasons, the lack of support from other nations, lack of support from respected leaders within our country and what we’ve done or haven’t done. Just a year ago the priority was finding bin Laden and he hasn’t been found.If we have a war, we’d like actual good to come from it for the people in Iraq instead of having the country sold out from under them to American contractors. And all the promises made to Afghanistan haven’t been kept, including the effort to find bin Laden.
That’s frustrating for all of us who don’t want to see further soldiers killed or have a known enemy to the US still out there. And don’t want further terrorist agression against us.Yes, fear is being used, I’ll have to agree. It’s a powerful way to get your argument across. Weapons of mass destruction and chemical weapons had a lot of people worried. But then, that reason disappeared because they knew they wouldn’t find them—still haven’t—so it became Iraqi freedom.
We’ve been lied to so much by our govenrment, both parties, that it’s incredible that people will go along with what they hear on the news.
Just two years ago, many Republicans said they didn’t believe the “liberal news media”. Now they do?Just something to think about.
Cheers,
Posted by neil on Apr 17, 2003 at 9:35 AM I get enough anti-Castro dribble in the mainstream media. I don’t need to read it here. Leave the one country that has stood up to U.S. imperialism alone. The monster we live in is where we need to focus.
Posted by James Schaudt on Apr 19, 2003 at 1:30 AM “free enterprise and electoral reform”.
That is the part of his goals that one could drive a truck through. When enterprise is freed for control by corporations it is taken away from individuals. When electoral reform means that money is the same as speech then elections can be bought. In spite of many concerns that I have about Castro, I have to give him credit for holding off those two big monsters.
Posted by j! on Apr 19, 2003 at 2:25 AM May I point out to you that Castro is not a dictator, but a revolutionary leader that liberated his people from a dictator. Get your stuff together man. Don’t be so biased! Or are you a Miami Cuban?
Posted by Kris Kenis on Apr 20, 2003 at 10:18 AM Castro is NOT a dictator but a revolutionary leader who liberated his opressed and enslaved people from a DICTATOR installed and maintained by the USA. Get your facts together people!!
Posted by Kris Kenis on Apr 20, 2003 at 10:20 AM Connecting Cuban “dissidents” (and one should use that term in the only sense in which it makes sense—ironically) to the millionaire neo-liberal Vaclav Havel doesn’t boost their stature as some sort of collection of progressives in any sense of the term. ITT’s views seem to coincide with the Bush’s administration’s on “regime change.” Unfortunate.
Posted by Joel Wendland on Apr 22, 2003 at 12:15 AM Note to some of the people who responded to this article: The same folks who apologize for or praise Castro are the same sort who apologized for Stalin, Hitler (because of his nonagression pact with Stalin), Pol Pot, Arafat, Kim Il, and Saddam Hussein. Well, I guess Castro is in good company if you look at it from a “progressive” perspective- the “progressive” crowd in the US never saw a socialist-communist mass murderer they didn’t like. (And socialists and communists really are two sides of the same coin- all oppose individual liberty in favor of some form of state or mob control.) Murder, deceit, denial of free speech, denial of religious liberty, banning of printing presses, imprisonment of poets, authors, and others who refuse to glorify the communist state, denial of property rights, is all OK if it’s done by a fellow “progressive” communist. I also find it amazing to see people rail against the US and praise Castro- from the safety of the US, using the very American rights that are not permitted the people of Cuba by Castro’s oppressive, thieving, terrorist-supporting regime. If you don’t like living in the United States, you’re more than welcome to seek a place in the Cuban Worker’s Paradise. You can get a job cutting cane or beating dissidents in Havana, whatever suits your mentality and nature best.
Posted by piasa on Apr 23, 2003 at 8:08 AM long live the cuban revolution…US out of Cuba, yanqui go home. Why is Patrick Michael an anti-communist? perhaps because he writes for the Financial Times? Why can communism and democracy never be used in the same sentence? Communism began as a dream of democratic control of production, and reformist ‘compassionate capitalists’ will only undermine that control further. Hasta la victoria siempre. Revolucion o muerte venceremos.
Posted by ned ludd on Apr 23, 2003 at 12:40 PM We are writing to invite you to sign the Campaign for Peace and Democracy’s new statement “Anti-War, Social Justice and Human Rights Advocates Oppose Repression in Cuba.” The initial signers include Michael Albert, Eileen Boris, Noam Chomsky, Joshua Cohen, Manuela Dobos, Ariel Dorfman, Barbara Ehrenreich, Janeane Garofalo, Barbara Garson, Adam Hochschild, Doug Ireland, Jesse Lemisch, Rabbi Michael Lerner, Nelson Lichtenstein, Katha Pollitt, Stephen Shalom, Adam Shatz, Naomi Weisstein, Cornel West, Reginald Wilson, and Howard Zinn. We are sending this message to everyone who signed our earlier statement “We Oppose Both Saddam Hussein and the U.S. War on Iraq: A call for a new, democratic U.S. foreign policy,” and to others. We believe that this statement reflects the same commitment to peace and democratic rights as the first one. If you would like to sign, please go to the CPD website at www.cpdweb.org Also, please forward this message to your colleagues and friends, and to listserves with people who might be interested in signing.
Sincerely,
Joanne Landy, Thomas Harrison, Jennifer Scarlott
Co-Directors, Campaign for Peace and Democracy
Posted by Jason on Apr 24, 2003 at 10:42 PM There has been a fair measure of indignation in response to recent events taking place in Cuba. Absent is any consideration that the Cuban actions might derive from legitimate concern. It would seem that anyone whose memory reaches beyond the last three months ought to recall the revelations of the Senator Church committee in the 70’s, as well as more recent senate hearings in the 90’s, regarding US adventures directed against the Cuban regime. Operation Mongoose immediately pops into mind and the parallels ought to give pause. At the very least, a healthy degree of skepticism is warranted in accepting the present news coverage.
Additionally, it is disappointing to hear of the execution of the three ferry highjackers. I oppose any form of capital punishment. Still, it is interesting to note that the Cuban government has chosen to act in a manor consistent with United States policy. From Amnesty International this interesting jewel was gleamed:“US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld released the operating procedures for trials by military commissions of people accused of “international terrorism”. The proposed commissions were provided for in a Military Order signed by President George W. Bush on 13 November 2001. They will have the power to impose death sentences. The operating procedures, announced on 21 March 2002, state that death sentences can only be handed down by a unanimous decision of seven commission members, who will be military officers appointed by the Secretary of Defense or his designee. There will be no right of appeal.”
The pot calls the kettle black.
So, is Cuba next on our national agenda?
Posted by B G Cosby on Apr 26, 2003 at 12:09 PM “May I point out to you that Castro is not a dictator, but a revolutionary leader”
No, you are unable to point such a thing out since it is not true.
If you wish to attempt to do so, you must bear in mind that a dictator is a ruler having absolute authority and supreme jurisdiction over the government of a state.
As to “revolutionary leader” isn’t Bush as much of a revolutionary leader as Castro? Cuba’s revolution took place more than two generations ago, before you were born, maybe before your parents were born. America’s revolution took place several more generations ago, but if one is ongoing, why not the other?
Posted by Nus on Apr 29, 2003 at 6:55 PM “...but if one is ongoing, why not the other?”
Interesting point, and, one that might reasonably be argued prior to Feb. 17, 1815. On that date the Treaty of Ghent was ratified, marking the beginning of a period in which the United States and Great Britain chose to settle their disputes peacefully—- some forty years after Lexington.
Such a condition of peaceful negotiation does not exit between the United States and Cuba. Such a condition of peaceful negotiation is not likely to exist any time soon. Therein lie the difference.
Posted by B G Cosby on May 1, 2003 at 2:19 PM Heh, re: Peter Anestos, member of a once vibrant org., the SWP, now run by a cult around Jack Barnes.
Pacifists are losers
If ever one needed a primer on the bankruptcy of political pacifism, they need look no further than Paul Reidinger’s truly bizarre essay over the legacy of Abraham Lincoln’s leadership in the war against the Southern slavocracy, or the Second American Revolution, as it is more precisely referred to [“The House That Lincoln Built,” Lit, 4/24/02]. Echoing the long-discredited argument of right-wing intellectuals and Southern “redeemers,” he claims the war was only “nominally” fought over slavery, and that in essence it was a “Bismarckian war of subjugation,” the long-term result of which has been the creation of an imperial nation-state on “an inhuman, emotionally inhospitable scale.” Shuddering at the “gruesomeness” of the war, he wonders if we wouldn’t all have been better off if Lincoln had gently “hemmed in” (whatever that means) the rebels, letting them, at some distant time, abandon slavery on their own.
Democratic rights enjoyed today in the United States, however weak or indifferently observed, are nevertheless the fruit of unremitting revolutionary and, yes, violent struggle. The Civil War, carried to the end, was objectively necessary precisely because 80 years of temporizing, compromising, and finally giving in to the slave owners had yielded nothing.
Reidinger’s piece shines light, however inadvertently, on the tendency of pacifism, with its recoil from all armed struggle, to open the door to reaction and defeat. Lincoln’s place in history is guaranteed because of, and not in spite of, his prosecution of a progressive and historically necessary war.
Fortunately, while Reidinger may not get it, many more do. The thousands who marched for Palestine here a few weeks ago made that clear with a chant that is as true as it is simple: “No justice, no peace.”
Peter Anestos San Francisco
Paul Reidinger responds: In the excitement of calling me all those names, Mr. Anestos seems to have forgotten to make a coherent point ? unless unsubstantiated assertions, stridently phrased, are now to be counted as coherent points.
Posted by Michael Pugliese on May 18, 2003 at 5:39 PM From the neo-Shactmanite, revolutionary democratic socialist journal, New Politics.
<URL: http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue19/farber19.htm >Cuba: The One-Party State Continues
Samuel Farber
[from New Politics, vol. 5, no. 3 (new series), whole no. 19, Summer 1995]Samuel Farber was born and grew up in Cuba. He is ther author of Revolution and Reaction in Cuba 1933-1960 (Wesleyan University Press, 1976) and numerous articles dealing with that country. He teaches political science at Brooklyn College and is a member of the editorial board of Against the Current.
IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE COLLAPSE OF COMMUNISM in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, some leftists are willing to take a more critical look at the socio-economic and political system that has prevailed in Cuba for more than 35 years. Among them is Carollee Bengelsdorf, a professor of politics at Hampshire College. Unlike many pro-Castro leftists, who substitute Third Worldist clichÈs for their scant knowledge of Cuban society and history, Bengelsdorf is intimately acquainted with Cuba. She must also be given credit for affirming the need for democracy as a central element of the necessary transformation of the Cuban polity and society.
<URL: http://www.wpunj.edu/~newpol/issue19/farber19.htm >
Posted by Michael Pugliese on May 18, 2003 at 5:45 PM Re: Patrick Michael Rucker (ITT, May 5, p. 5)
Hey, if I wanted to read this guy’s right-wing anti-Cuba drivel
I’d get the Pittsburgh Press-Gazette. April 16, to be exact.So “Paya is former Czech President Vaclav Havel’s choice for this
year’s Nobel Peace Prize,” is he? I’ll bet the millions of Czech
seniors who lost their Commie pensions under Havel are just thrilled
to pieces about that. (New Yorker, Feb 17-24, p. 94.)And just what in hell makes In These Times, The Nation, The
Progressive, and all the other hopelessly ineffectual “left”
word factories think they can tell _Fidel_Castro_ how to run
a socialist revolution? (I subscribe to them all, but sometimes
I have trouble remembering why.)Ted Cloak
1613 Fruit Avenue NW
Albuquerque, NM 87104
(505)243-5069
Posted by Ted Cloak on May 21, 2003 at 9:39 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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