From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
Subject: CUBA: Brilliance and Consistency of Washington Party Line
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
Date: Sat, 22 Aug 1992 23:42:49 GMT

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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