May Day, May Day

Time hasn't been kind to the Left. The rosy dreams, the shining countenances uplifted toward the Marxist-socialist future of peace and plenty have faded and fled. The Bolshevik revolution, hailed by worshipers at the shrine of Lenin, lies exposed as a monstrous nightmare of death, deceit, and delusion. So, too, there remains of each successive marxist/socialist triumph--China, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Soviet bloc behind the Iron Curtain, etc.--only an unblemished record of repression and disaster.

Now, the already moribund Left has been dealt a kick in the crotch by one of its few remaining iconic figures, Fidel Castro. A month ago, Fidel, Hollywood's darling, poster boy of the Left, after secret trials where the defendants, some eighty of them, were denied counsel and were found guilty of a variety of crimes that amount to no more than criticizing Castro's government. For their contumacy of writing and speaking in dissent, they were sentenced to long prison terms, many between 20 and 27 years. In the same week, three men charged with hijacking a ferryboat, were also tried in secret without benefit of counsel and killed by firing squad.

You would think the Left, composed as it is of the most moral and humane beings on the planet, would rise up in indignation, fly off to Havana and every world capital, hauling protest signs and loudspeakers, assailing Castro and his thugs for this breach of civilized behavior. In the vanguard, surely, the particular friends of Fidel, Harry Belafonte and Pete Seeger, Oliver Stone, the whole greasy Left crew of fawning admirers would stand shoulder to shoulder.

Alas, no, that didn't happen during the previous 43 years of Castro's rule--his valiant experiment with Communism which reduced that fair and fertile island to famine and stagnation, to a prison flying the red banner of Marxist-Leninism, to being a supplier of troops for Soviet adventures in southwest Africa, to living off the hard-currency earnings of Cuban prostitutes. If Communism's supporters remained loyal to Castro then, why should an outbreak of authoritarianism make any difference?

That lodestar of the Left, The Nation magazine, entered its pro forma criticism-"deplorable" was all it could summon up, and even then writer Wayne S. Smith discovered the provocation which had induced this "crackdown": the chief of the US Interests Section in Havana (the equivalent of consul) had actually been holding meetings with dissidents in his own home. Golly, gee. A casus belli, indeed.

Some of Nation's readers were unhappy with this abundantly silly report by Mr. Smith. Accordingly, Nation offered its ghastly gray pages to "open letters," two of which appeared this week. The first, signed by a host of Lefties, scribblers and academics mostly, who describe themselves as members of the independent democratic Left, have got it all figured out: The only conclusion that we can draw from this brute repression is that the Cuban government does not trust the Cuban people to distinguish truth from falsehood, fact from disinformation. Brilliant, huh?

Of course it never occurred to them that their friend Castro, having the responsibility for running the place, knew he must suppress dissent or abandon Communism. Like all those avatars of social justice--Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and all the bloody rest of them--Castro knew this immutable truth from the start of his reign and had always stifled dissent with imprisonment and death. Only briefly and recently, did he allow some murmurs of dissent. Then, surprise! he thought better of it and went back to the well-traveled, indeed, inevitable social-justice road.

The second letter, issued from the Manhattan offices of the Campaign for Peace and Justice and signed by Noam Chomsky and a host of other Lefty stalwarts likewise declares they are opposed to repression in Cuba (and to capital punishment). Their message is blurred because of its windiness and by their willing blindness to the consequences of their initial step along that social-justice road. They pretend to be engaged in the usual search for a barking cat, a Left of decency and humanity. They spend more print damning the US because they find freedom oppressive--because, in truth, they hate America--than owning up to the criminal character of Castro's country.

They're clueless, these poor pathetic Lefties, and can't see that brutality is as inevitable in Communism as is scarcity of goods--and for the same reason they seem unaware that the scientific Marxism they preach to their cult followers is about as scientific as alchemy, that it is totally inadequate as theory, resting as it does on obvious absurdities, the labor theory of value among them. Their resentment toward this nation's prosperity and freedom overwhelms their scant powers of judgment. Like Groucho, they wouldn't join any club that would admit them. They have nothing but contempt for a system that permits lamebrains like them to flourish. They may have a point there.

Intellectuals Launch Campaign to Defend Cuba
Thu May 1, 2003 07:13 PM ET
By Marc Frank

HAVANA (Reuters) - More than 160 foreign artists and intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, have come out in defense of Cuba even as many of their peers condemn recent repression on the Communist-run island, one of the campaigners said on Thursday.

Latin American Nobel laureates Garcia Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, Aldolfo Perez Esquivel and South African writer Nadine Gordimer, also a Nobel prize winner, have signed a declaration of support, Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez said.

U.S. singer Harry Belafonte and U.S. actor Danny Glover are also among the personalities who have signed the two-paragraph declaration "To the Conscience of the World" so far, Gonzalez announced to a May Day rally in Havana.

"A single power is inflicting grave damage to the norms of understanding, debate and mediation among countries," the declaration says, referring to the United States and the war in Iraq.

"At this very moment, a strong campaign of destabilization against a Latin American nation has been unleashed. The harassment against Cuba could serve as a pretext for an invasion," it continues.

President Fidel Castro's government has come under unprecedented international criticism from friends and foes after sentencing 75 dissidents to long prison terms last month, and executing three men who hijacked a ferry in a failed bid to reach the United States.

Havana has said the crackdown is in response to a U.S. plot to topple the Castro government after more than four decades of failed efforts to do so.

Fierce criticism of Cuba's moves has come not only from Western government's such as the United States, but also from disillusioned foreign writers and artists, apparently sparking the pro-Cuba drive.

Portuguese Nobel Prize winning novelist Jose Saramago, a longtime supporter of Castro, wrote last month that, "from now on, Cuba can follow its own course, and leave me out," saying Cuba had cheated his illusions.

At the Thursday rally Castro told critics, particularly on the left, that their words could be used to justify a U.S. invasion.

The intellectuals who signed the declaration defending Cuba apparently agree, though they did not specifically express support for Castro's policies.

The declaration concludes with a call to governments and others to "uphold the universal principles of national sovereignty, respect for territorial integrity and self-determination, essential to just and peaceful co-existence among nations."

Gonzalez did not say who originated the declaration but said it would continue to be circulated among cultural figures around the world.

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=2670302

”In the vanguard, surely, the particular friends of Fidel, Harry Belafonte and Pete Seeger, Oliver Stone, the whole greasy Left crew of fawning admirers would stand shoulder to shoulder........Alas, no, that didn't happen during the previous 43 years of Castro's rule--his valiant experiment with Communism which reduced that fair and fertile island to famine and stagnation, to a prison flying the red banner of Marxist-Leninism.........

What is left out of the article and I think it is important – whereas the Cuban people are poor and yes starving little is said about the thousands of tourists from around the world who still flock to Cuba, spending millions of dollars....which like all “good little dictators” Castro takes for himself, and by Cuban standards, for his lavish life style. When Castro isn’t on display for the people or the fawning celebs, he lives rather nicely – no photographs please.............

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