France’s elected leader and his business cronies are in Cuba this week partnering with the heavily-armed Stalinists who occupy Cuba and oppress the Cuban people. In honor of this event it seems only fair to post some poignant historical reminders….
But in fact the parallels between the totalitarian occupation of France and the totalitarian occupation of Cuba are hardly identical. For instance:
According to the Cuba Archive Project, the Castro regime – with firing squads, forced-labor camps, torture and drownings at sea – has caused an estimated 102,000 Cuban deaths. According to the Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War, Nazi repression caused 172,260 French civilian deaths during the occupation. France was nation of 42 million in 1940. Cuba was a nation of 6.5 million in 1960. My calculator reveals that the Stalinists with whom French President Hollande partnered this week caused an enormously higher percentage of deaths among Cubans they “freed from a U.S. backed dictator” than the Nazis caused among the French they enslaved and tortured with the SS and Gestapo.
Given the endless stream of ostensibly reputable heads of state who have condoned, humored, justified, praised or otherwise paid homage to the worst Cuban in history, thus effectively enabling him, what does that say about the rest of the world with respect to Cuba and the Cuban people? Don’t think about it too hard, but always keep it in mind, because it’s definitely significant.