Tuesday, June 06, 2006

Sun, sea and socialism

There is an unfortunate article on Cuba by the often admirable Labour MP Ian Gibson in today's Guardian.

Granted, America's obsession with its small neighbour is rather silly. Granted, it deals happily with many regimes that are worse than Castro's or equally bad. But what should we think of a passage like this?
Amnesty International claims that 72 prisoners of conscience are detained in Cuban jails, an allegation rejected by the Cuban government, which argues that all were tried and found guilty of being in the pay of an enemy power - the US.
So who is right? Do we trust Amnesty or an unelected dictatorship? Gibson does not even begin to address the question. His silence here gives the distinct impression that his sympathies are with the dictator.

Instead he goes on to write:
The International Red Cross has meanwhile reported that up to 40,000 people are detained by coalition forces in Iraq without charge.
That is shameful, and the allied intervention in Iraq looks increasingly like a ghastly mistake. But how can it remotely justify Castro's dictatorship in Cuba?

Once again we see the socialist need for a paradise somewhere far away and the snatching at any argument to defend it in the teeth of the evidence.

3 comments:

cymrumark said...

I think the point was to give some perspective. I am no great fan of Castro because of his imperialism as much as anything else but its ludicrous that there is still a blackade and that our own links with Cuba are so weak.

neil craig said...

This would be the Amnesty that deliberately publicised every atrocity story invented by the openly genocidal KLA & NATO (& almost completely whitewashed the KLA) & when, after NATO occupied Kosovo not only failed to apologise when all the alleged mass graves proved non-existent but ignored their KLA friends genocide of 6,000 Serbs under NATO authority.

When Castro helps Nazis commit genocide then it will be possible to compare his word with Amnesty's.

Anonymous said...

got any reputable links for the Kosovo-war-bashing? Anyway, it is a real shame how people wnt black and white in these discussions of International Relations. Remember Noam Chomsky's warm words to Pol Pot? Or those people who think dictators like Castro or populists like Chavez are great now? Sad, very sad.