Hollywood's Darling, Liberals' Blind Spot***If the valiant Michael Kelly had not been killed in Iraq, he surely would have returned to whacking liberals and liberalism in his newspaper column. I would have read these columns -- it was hard not to read Kelly -- with some irritation but often with chagrin as well. When he said -- and I paraphrase him here -- that at the heart of American liberalism was a deep and inexplicable hole, I knew he was often right. Had he lived, he might have turned his attention to Cuba.
Just recently the government of Fidel Castro arrested about 80 dissidents and almost instantly brought them to trial -- if it can be called that. Foreign journalists and diplomats were excluded from the proceedings, in which 12 of the accused face life sentences. All of them are undoubtedly guilty of seeking greater freedom and on occasion meeting with visiting human rights activists. In Cuba, those are crimes.***
Opponents of US embargo on Cuba lament new crack-down on dissidents - It's Bush's Fault *** "The group of people that's running policy toward Cuba are ideologically committed to ending the regime, and I think would like nothing better than to see even the nominal cooperative relationship we have evaporate," said Sweig. Castro's response has been to send "a message internally to the Americans," said Sweig.
"The message is that 'if you force us, if you rub in our face the fact that you're helping to organize these dissidents, we're going to have to crack down on them, but if you pull back a little bit we'll allow them to function.'" According to Erikson, both the US and Cuban governments are interested in increasing hostilities: the United States, to boost areas of its own national politics, notably in favor of the anti-Castro community in Miami, and Castro, because he is fearful of losing power. ***