Posted on 04/29/2003 9:44:16 AM PDT by William Wallace
As soon as Fidel Castro seized power in 1959, I saw on television the firing squad execution of an array of political prisoners, which he ordered. He then began filling his brutal prisons with Cubans whose sole crime was a desire to breathe freedom after the Batista dictatorship -- only to find themselves in another totalitarian quicksand.
At one point, interviewing the already legendary Che Guevara -- an international Cuban revolutionary icon -- at the Cuban mission to the United Nations, I asked him if he could foresee, anytime in the future, free elections in Cuba. Crisply dressed in his military outfit, Guevara burst out laughing at my callow naivete.
Having interviewed Cubans who survived Castro's gulags, I have never understood or respected the parade of American entertainers, politicians and intellectuals who travel to Cuba to be entranced by this ruthless dictator who, for me, has all the charisma of a preening thug, akin to any killer on "The Sopranos."
These Castro-philes are among those who discredit liberalism because they're unable to recognize and be repelled by unbridled evil. Consider Steven Spielberg, who has developed impressive resources through his Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation to keep alive the horrifying presence of the Holocaust. Yet, as quoted in the April 11 Wall Street Journal, Spielberg described his audience with Castro last November as "the eight most important hours of my life."
Was Spielberg's life that barren until those gloriously transcendent hours with the chief warden of Cuba's prisons?
From time to time, I still think of Elian Gonzalez, so vivid a free spirit here until condemned by Janet Reno and Bill Clinton to a land where schoolteachers must keep a record of any signs of their charges' lessening fealty to the relentless light of their lives. I wish the American press would pay more attention to the ongoing lawsuit alleging that Doris Meissner -- head of Clinton's Immigration and Naturalization Service -- ordered the destruction of evidence that would have contradicted the Clinton administration's forcible removal of Elian to Castro's continuation of Stalinism. Judicial Watch in Washington has the information on that lawsuit.
In any case, the next batch of fawning celebrities and members of Congress who party with Castro, will try to evade the recent show trials of independent journalists, human rights advocates, poets and other dreamers of democracy who have been sentenced by Castro's kangaroo courts to punishments of up to 27 years. Britain's Economist magazine notes that "since many of the dissidents are aged between 50 and 60, in practical terms they are being put away for life."
One prisoner of conscience packed into the gulag is the internationally respected independent journalist Raul Rivero, director of Cuba Press agency, and a board member of the Inter American Press Association. In the Castro courtroom -- from which foreign journalists and diplomats were barred -- Rivero, suffering from phlebitis and other ailments, was sentenced to 20 years for being an independent journalist.
"This is so arbitrary for a man whose only crime is to write what he thinks," his wife, Blanca Reyes, said in an April 8 New York Times article. "What they found on him was a tape recorder, not a grenade."
The Clinton administration -- which has so much to answer to history for -- promoted "people-to-people" trips to Cuba, which have continued. The American tourists and the participants in educational and cultural exchanges will not be able to engage in person-to-person visits with Raul Rivero, and other Cubans whom the Castro "justice system" has turned into non-people. Not even such an eminence as Spielberg will be free to show Rivero videos of Holocaust survivors.
Spielberg, immersed in pre-production of his next film, was not available for comment on Castro's latest eradication of dissenters. But his representative, Andy Spahn of Dreamworks, told The Wall Street Journal that Castro had been "provoked" to order the crackdown, because the head of the American mission in Havana, James Cason, had been meeting -- can you imagine? -- with Cuban dissenters in their homes last February.
And if an American official had, however discreetly, been meeting with Jews in Berlin who still hoped that the world would come to their rescue -- if it only knew of the design for the Final Solution -- would that diplomat have exceeded his responsibilities to humankind by "provoking" Hitler?
HBO has wisely cancelled the May showing of Oliver Stone's Castro-admiring "Commandante." During production, says the Journal, Fidel was "given the power to stop filming at will."
The show would have been a fitting complement to HBO's "The Sopranos."
" By virtue of the commitments made by both Parties in the Migration Accords signed in 1994, their mutual interest in normalizing migration procedures was then recognized – for which, regarding safety at sea, recognition was also given to their common interest in preventing the unsafe departures from Cuba that endanger life. In that sense, the United States would discontinue its practice of paroling all Cuban immigrants reaching US territory in irregular ways and Cuba would take effective measures in every way possible to prevent unsafe departures by using mainly persuasive methods."---Source
I ask (quite rerasonably, I think) that you post the US law and / or procedures to support your assertions about the CAA, yet you have now twice posted some kind of talking points propaganda from the Cuba Interests Section.....
Surely you don't think that something from the CIS is adequate support? You indicated in your first post of it that you knew that it was coming from 'the Commies', so ignorance isn't an excuse here, at least.
Now I've posted supporting text from the other side of the issue confirming that indeed this is the way the law has been interpreted for 35 years.
Proof positive , that in practice the CAA does exactly what I've said it does.
Well, it's no surprise that the Supreme Court sent Elian Gonzalez back to a communist dictatorship and ruled that Nebraska could not legislate against infanticide.
After all, the same court had earlier seen a threat in a student leading a prayer in a football stadium. Not a good week for children, as far as the Supreme Court went. Not a good week for morality or the Constitution either.
I'm sorry to see Elian being taken back to Cuba, but I'm even sorrier to see so many Americans ignorant of or indifferent about the communist dictatorship in Cuba. Remember, I said sorry not surprised.
A recent news story reported that 80 percent of the seniors from the top 55 colleges and universities -- including Harvard and Princeton -- scored a D or an F on a 34-question American history test. The people who did the study said that 99 percent of the students could identify Beavis and Butthead, two sick television characters, but that only 23 percent identified James Madison as the principal framer of the Constitution.
Now, these young men and women have had 16 or 17 years of formal education. And still they're ignorant as toads about the history of their own country. Are your children in public schools? Why?
It appears to be largely a consumer fraud.
So, if ignorance of their own country is so widespread, it's no surprise that so many Americans seem to think that Fidel Castro is no worse than a grouchy cigar salesman. I'm quite sure most Americans don't realize that prior to Castro, Cuba had the highest standard of living in Latin America. Now it's close to the bottom.
And I just love all these news analysts saying the Cuban-American community in Florida has lost its political clout. That just shows you how stupid someone who purports to be an analyst can be. In the first place, the fight for Elian was in the courts, and Cuban-Americans never
said they had clout in the courts. They have all along been willing to accept the decisions of the courts. This was a legal battle not a political battle.
If you think Cuban-Americans have lost their political clout, then alienate them, and see if you can win a statewide election or an election in Miami-Dade County. The only clout they've ever had is that they are intelligent and hard-working, and they're willing to put their money where their mouths are and vote.
In other words, unlike so many of their critics, they do their duty as American citizens. They do know history, and they do not have defective memories.
They do all of this, by the way, because, unlike so many of their critics, Cuban-Americans do indeed dearly love this country, and they've proved it in every way a human being can. The only thing they wanted for Elian was the liberty his mother died trying to give him.
The child will be treated with psychiatric drugs, if he hasn't already been, to erase his memory so his communist mentors can start re-programming him with a clean slate. Not even 6-year-olds, if they speak favorably of freedom, are tolerated in Castro's prison land. For as long as Elian remains in a communist Cuba, he will never have the freedom to express his thoughts without fear.
I will pray that he not become like his father -- a willing servant of tyranny.
In this tragic episode, only the Cuban-Americans in Miami emerge as heroes. They stood up for liberty and yet respected the law. They have set an example that other Americans could profit from by studying it.
As for those who mock and despise the Cuban-Americans, hey, the enemies of liberty always hate the lovers of liberty just as cowards always resent the brave.
Published in The Orlando Sentinel on July 06, 2000
Only if you consider admitted Commie talking points to be superior support for your argument, Luis. I don't, but YMMV.
Kinda sounds like someone we know has that Islamic disease, make history up if it doesn't suit you, then defend the lie to the death. Take umbrage with those that know the facts, throw a temper tamtrum, then demand sympathy, if all else fails, blow something up, hahaha.
HEY!
I had relatives just south of you!
They lived in St. Augustine, Florida from 1671 to about 1812.
Because that, along with the rest of your posts, is a lie.
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