From: d40937@aiken (Jean Yves Desbiens)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Cuba : Is an embargo still necessary?
Date: 24 Dec 92 04:11:10 GMT
Organization: Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

Christopher Morton (cmort@NCoast.ORG) wrote:
: Do you or did you support sanctions against South Africa?
: 
:      a. The demise of National Socialism and the lack of Nazi Germany to 
:      support Afrikaans fascism has eliminated any real reason to be very
:      concerned about apartheid, hasn't it?  We don't need to worry about
:      RSAF as a base for hostile German forces, do we?

For someone who supposedly doesn't want to flame, your very 
condescending way of replying surely makes me want to set you ablaze;
such an arrogant argumentation , taking my post and changing selective
words to proove a point, won't sway me that's for sure.

Your link between germany and the Afrikaans is preposterous, fascism
existed in south africa before Hitler, Germany didn't invent it, and
it still exists in many place. As for the spread of apartheid , 't
apartheid is a homegrown solution and there wasn't 
any reason for it to spread, where could it go. The only other country 
in africa with a somewhat similar structure was Rhodesia and it
became a pluralist ( with some problems ) society before the first
sanctions took affect. You are confusing the fact that before 
the last few years there was a clear distinction between private 
matters (racism) and global matters (communism) the latter 
upstaging the former by far. It is a fact that Cuba tried to 
export communism when it was in its hey days but it is not the
case now, It is also a fact that apartheid was a purely south
african institution that wasn't meant for export and it is 
when its disadvantages began to outweigh its advantages ( for
the whites there ) that it began unraveling. The reason Cuba
is under the boot of the US is because it makes a nice easy target
with political gains to be made amongst the cuban american, if this is
not so then explain why China is on much better terms with the
US even though they are reputed for their zero tolerance to dissidents
and other evil foes. 
: 
:      b. Do you feel that, "The US's overpowering
:      urge to rid the world of every fascist country like a plague
:      that must be eradicated smacks of hipocrisy(sic) after its support
:      of the Soviet Union during WWII and Yugoslavia afterwards. For the US, if
:      someone is not an ally, he must be an ennemi(sic)."

First , the US didn't really help the USSR during WWII, they had begun
to fight back the germans before D-day. I submit that if D-day hadn't
come, the russians would have beaten the germans by themselves. The Russians
were asking for a second front since 1942, but by the time they got it
in June 1944 it was no longer absolutly necessary. At the end of the war,
the americans wanted as much to beat the germans as to prevent the
russians from taking all germany. So again their motives were not
pure in their *help* of the russians. 

The US did not have and still does not have to urge to get rid of every 
fascist country, only those that cross its path. There are numerous 
examples troughout the 20th century :

- Haiti , the original coup in 1933 that put Papa Doc in power was US backed ;
- Panama, originally an ally Noriega was sacrificed to sooth the public
  back home, the war against drugs is more important than international law
  isn't it;. 
- Iraq , Sadaam was a good guy (sic) until he attacked the oil fieilds
  of Koweit, the US supported him during the Iran-Iraq war; 
- Afghanistan , the Moujahadine are not saints, they are now fighting
  themselves and they grew and still grow opium for the heroin market;.
- Phillipines , Marco was a very good friend of the US and it was only
  reluctantly that it let him go down; 
- Vietnam , the south vietnamese weren't recognised for their human rights,
 on a side note this conflict contributed to the chaos in Cambodia and Laos; 
- Nicaragua , remember the Iran-Contra scandal and other not so
subtle involvments, this also deeply perturbed El Salvador;
- Argentina : the Perrons were big celebrity in the US;.
- Chili , the CIA backed coup by Pinochet in 1973 transformed one of
 latin america brightest economy in a ruinous mess.
- Iran, the shah wasn't that much better than the current ruler of
  persia for his people;
- and many more that I can research if neaded.

None of these involvments were justified locally, but what's good 
for the US is good for the world :-| so they were still done.
If you want to discuss any of these heavy handed involvments and
justify them, I am ready for your arguments, I doubt you can make a
case for more than one.

: I supported sanctions against RSAF.  If you did too, then I detect some 
: hypocrisy in YOUR position vis a vis Cuba.  Why is it ok to impose sanctions
: on South Africa and NOT ok against Cuba which is even LESS democratic than
: RSAF, which at least provides a semblance of democracy to a PORTION of its
: population...?

Democracy in south africa is a joke, democracy must apply to all if
it is to be meaningfull. Compared to the other countries
that the US has associated itself with, the cuban's human rights
record is not even close to being the worse. Hypocrisy is
when a country does an embargo against another 
country for a reason X and doesn't do anything when another
country does something a lot worse. That's what the US does on a 
regular basis, selective moral comtempt. I supported the sanctions
and as I explained earlier, if the cuban embargo was based on a true
altruistic do good attitude it would be applied consistently against
all those countries that infrindge international law, if it is
not so it must be a purely political decision. 

BTW : I am canadian, we were the first to support the sanctions against
south africa, we do not support the cuban embargo though, we can travel
to Cuba without hastle and their goods are readily available here.
--
SEIZE THE DAY, MAKE YOUR LIFE EXTRAORDINARY .  "Dead Poets Society"

Jean-Yves Desbiens                  | d40937@info.polymtl.ca
Etudiant en genie informatique      | 
Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal Can | To indeed be a god ...,
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.activism