Blimey!

by

Here’s an interesting read from Times Online UK:

“History will absolve me,” declared Fidel Castro from the dock in 1953. At four hours’ duration, his famous speech gave an ominous augury of later loquacity. But the voice is now diminished. Last month, in a statement read out on state television, an ailing Castro conceded that the transfer of power to his brother Raúl might not be temporary.
With half a century’s hindsight, we can predict that history will withhold the absolution he expected. Cuba’s revolution has deformed international relations and subjugated the people in whose name it is implausibly proclaimed. Castro’s legacy is a stagnating, dysfunctional one-party state.

Now, perhaps it’s because I still havent had my cafecito this morning, but am I reading this right? Is this person stating that Cuba’s problems havent been caused by the evil embago?

Castro’s defenders cite the iniquities of the US economic embargo and the successes of Cuba’s welfare policies. There is, in both cases, less than meets the eye. Cuba is literally in ruins: Havana’s colonial architecture is in crumbling disrepair. The economy is sclerotic. Production of sugar, once the island’s primary industry, has collapsed. National income largely depends on tourism, remittances from families living in the US and subsidies from Venezuela. For the leader who launched a “Great Revolutionary Offensive” in emulation of Mao’s Great Leap Forward, it is an ignominious outcome.
The US has not caused this fiasco. Castro was perfectly capable of squandering Soviet subsidies on a massive security apparatus and bizarre ventures in animal husbandry. But America’s unilateral sanctions (the Helms-Burton Act) are so obviously punitive to third parties that the US is wary about implementing them. They alienate European governments while doing nothing to promote change in Cuba. The EU is justified in finding this exasperating, but not in tempering the aim of political reform by easing its own diplomatic sanctions. When Raúl Castro assumed power, the EU pitifully responded by claiming a “new situation”. Two years ago the EU Commissioner Louis Michel concluded a visit to Cuba by urging pro-democracy campaigners to avoid provoking Fidel Castro.

6 thoughts on “Blimey!”

  1. Val, the rest of the article is pretty good too. On the other hand, some of the idiots commenting could use some time living in Cuba as a Cuban, don’t ya think?

  2. As de la Cova points out, castro never uttered those words during the trial for the Moncada attack. He used another phrase which escapes me now, but later edited it when he published the speech while in prison.

  3. The argument that the “embargo” is the cause of Cuba’s woes, implicitly denies the reality of the world. Strange how the economic powerhouses in Europe and Asia cannot provide sufficient trade with Cuba to provide a good living for Cubans. Wonder why (;)

  4. Wait, is this on the level? It’s not April 1st, so I guess it is. Well, maybe there’s some hope, after all, though it’s definitely way past time for presumably rational people to “get it.”
    Of course, the longer the disaster goes on for, the harder it becomes to cover up or whitewash the truth without looking seriously dubious.
    Still, I’ll take it, even though it’s rather little and VERY late.

  5. The author of this piece has his own blog (and he published a very interesting and relevant post today. We definitely have an ally in Oliver Kamm. Full post below: http://oliverkamm.typepad.com/blog/2008/01/livingstone-on.html:
    In my piece today about Fidel Castro, I comment on a widespread and misplaced romanticism on the part of many foreign observers of Cuba. The politician I particularly have in mind is the Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. I noted on this blog last April that I had written to Joy Johnson, of the Mayor’s Press Office, with this question:
    “I recall that last year, at a European Trade Union Solidarity Conference with Cuba and Latin America, the Mayor declared: ‘If I am lucky enough to be re-elected in 2008, one of the main features of my third term would be a major celebration of the Cuban Revolution on its fiftieth anniversary.’
    “I wonder if the Mayor has noted a report from the BBC this week that a Cuban journalist, Oscar Sanchez Madan, and a lawyer and dissident, Rolando Jimenez Posada, have received long prison sentences for, respectively, “social dangerousness” and writing anti-government slogans. According to the independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights and Reconciliation, the trials were held in secret and without defence lawyers present.
    “I should be glad to know if, in conjunction with his celebration of the Cuban Revolution, Mr Livingstone plans to make any statement or engage in any private diplomacy about these incarcerations. Given the importance of the subject, I should appreciate it if you or he were able to couch a reply in a form that you would not object to my quoting publicly.”
    Ms Johnson kindly did reply promptly, with permission to quote her. I have waited till I wrote about Cuba in the press before publishing her comments, but in the end it would have taken a disproportionate amount of space if I had included her statement in today’s Times article. I’m thus reproducing her comment here. This is what she said:
    “A spokesperson for the Mayor said: ‘The Mayor is opposed to every violation of human rights from any quarter. He therefore rejects the highly selective approach of those who highlight one or two allegations of abuses by the Cuban authorities but ignores the torture and illegal detention without trial of hundreds of inmates of the US illegal prison at Guantanamo Bay and the impact of the US illegal blockade on the lives of millions of ordinary Cubans. Such double standards debase those who hold to them.'”
    Now, there is much you could say about the Mayor’s views on Cuba, but one thing stands out in Ms Johnson’s statement. It is not about Cuba: it’s about the Mayor’s domestic political enemies (of whom I am cordially one). Given that the Mayor invites judgement on his views on foreign affairs, spends a good deal of council taxpayers’ money on promoting those views, and explicitly draws support from certain interest groups on account of those views, I find this a discreditably insouciant attitude to a pressing instance of the abuse of human rights.

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