Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 216.209.148.38 (talk) at 05:38, 14 October 2002 (Long rant about how you're being mean to Fidel). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This is blatant propaganda. US-friendly countries in Misplaced Pages with appalling human rights -- I'm talking tens of thousands murdered, not thousands of prisoners -- get whitewashed, while Castro gets alomst nothing but invective for human rights abuses many times more minor.

I'm not disputing that Castro's an autocrat and puts people in jail for criticizing him. But where's the mention of Cuba's incredibly generous aid work program, which sends twice as many foreign aid workers to poor countries as does the United States, a country incomparably more rich and ten times larger? Where's the acknowledgement of the obvious American role in encouraging human rights abuses by Castro's regime? Cuba's been subjected to an American terror campaign out of Miami for decades now -- real brutal stuff, dropping germs on cattle, blowing up an ammunition ship in Havana harbour slaughtering scores of civillians, burning down a department store with a thermite-stuffed doll killing scores more, blowing up a factory right at the height of the missile crisis and killing hundreds, bombing foreign tourists who dare to visit Cuba, I could go on and on. And that's without even discussing an embargo specifically aimed at preventing food and medicine from getting to Cuba in violation of every international law and WTO rule you can think of.

When America was subjected to the deaths of many citizens, but nothing even approaching the loss of American independence or the fall of its government, it clamped down significantly on civil liberties. If some incomprehensibly powerful country was terrorizing and starving America, do you think they'd fail to imprison people who advocate overthrowing their government?

The attackers at the Bay of Pigs were not "slaughtered". They were defeated, surrendered, and were eventually released (with the exception of some leaders, who were executed). If Cubans tried that on Miami, do you think a single one wouldn't be executed?

"Soviet subsidies" were far less than the economic damage done by the American embargo and did not "finance Cuba's social conditions". Cuba's citizens are still better off than many Latin Americans living under "capitalist democracy" despite forty years of murderous blockade. America preaches about the abused Cubans but struggles fiercly to prevent them actually leaving Cuba.

America's internal documents show they decided to overthrow Castro before he was a communist and before he had nationalized anything other than phone companies and similar obvious public utilities.

This whole article reads like a Cato Institute briefing or something. I don't know where to begin to fix it.