Earlier this month, we published an article by the U. S. ambassador to Canada, David H. Wilkins, announcing a new “Day of Solidarity with the Cuban People,” to be observed on May 21. In today’s edition of the National Post, Cuba’s ambassador to Canada responds. In his article, which appears on this page, Ernesto Senti Darias argues that Washington has no lessons to offer Havana when it comes to humanitarian “solidarity,” nor anything else. Throughout, the ambassador presents Cuba as a proud, benevolent regime while casting the United States as a cruel hegemon.
When I read this opening paragraph, which appears in an editorial from the National Post in Canada, I prepared myself for yet another puff piece glorifying the wonderful and majestic societal advances of Cuba’s totalitarian regime. So Imagine my surprise when I got to the third paragraph.
The fact is, the ambassador’s rebuttal is a classic example of communist agitprop. Completely ignoring the litany of human rights abuses listed by Mr. Wilkins, the Cuban ambassador instead ticks off showpiece Cuban foreign aid stunts in other nations. This is a mainstay of communist public relations: The Soviets, too, tried to distract the world from repression and poverty back home by sending delegations overseas to provide token good works. In Venezuela and Iran, Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are now following the same script.
And it gets better! Read the whole editorial, “The Real Cuba,” HERE.
The National Post is one of the few outlets in Canada worth a damn.
Money quote:
[Cuba] alone has remained a full-blown prison state
Bet the Cuban ambassador didn’t expect to read that from the editorial board…