Fidel Castro with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, in 1977, celebrating the triumph of Pinochet’s torture regime. Pinochet ultimately faced a mild punishment and repudiation, but it looks like Castro will get away with his atrocities.
Castro with Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev. Among other crimes, Khrushchev masterminded racist pogroms and orchestrated planned famines.. Together, C and K nearly brought the world to a nuclear holocaust.
Castro with Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam. Castro’s behind-the-scenes scheming brought Mariam to power, with Soviet support. Castro’s admiration for Mengistu, who started his reign with a bloodbath, was unbounded. In May of 1977 the Swedish general secretary of the Save the Children Fund stated that “1,000 children have been killed, and their bodies are left in the streets and are being eaten by wild hyenas … You can see the heaped-up bodies of murdered children, most of them aged eleven to thirteen, lying in the gutter, as you drive out of Addis Ababa.” [1] Castro enthusiasticly applauded the action. Mariam subsequently undertook one of the century’s larger genocides, in which many millions died. Castro’s support for this genocide continued until Mengistu’s fall.
Spanish dictator Francisco Franco. Franco and Castro were life-long friends and mutual admirers. Castro modeled his speaking style and swaggering mannerisms on Franco’s. Castro’s “ideology” was Spanish Fascism (Falangism) until it suddenly became Marxism… a “change” that is meaningless, as it involved no change.
Don’t expect any “liberalization” after Fidel Castro’s phony “retirement”. The parasitic Communist ruling class of Cuba has been maneuvering to preserve its little criminal empire, and the vast wealth that it has accumulated by robbing, exploiting and brutalizing the Cuban people. Along with Raoul’s coronation, ultra-conservative Marxist ideologues and military thugs have been moved into key positions, among them 77-year-old José Ramón Machado Ventura and 72-year-old General Julio Casas Regueiro. Both these men, along with Raoul Castro, represent the most degenerate elements in the Communist aristocracy. In the mean-time, the propaganda machine of Marxist orthodoxy is being cranked up in the schools, and the informers and thugs are out in force.
The world’s media have, throughout his lifetime, coddled Fidel Castro, treating his tyranny as if it were a legitimate government, and turning a blind eye to the murders, disappearances, racism, persecution of intellectuals and gays, slave-trading, military imperialism and torture practiced by the Communist ruling class.
The horrible prospect is that Fidel Castro will die unpunished, rich and happy, with the historical record falsified to make him look like a “great man”. Not only that, he will have accomplished what all Communists have always dreamed of… the successful transformation of a Communist aristocracy into a permanent, hereditary one. This is what is really frightening, because it will be a signal to all future dictators that they will ultimately get away with whatever crimes they commit in their quest for wealth and power.
It is desperately important that the truth about Castro’s crimes against humanity be laid out to the public. It is desperately important that Castro be brought before a world tribunal of justice and convicted of his crimes before he dies. At least there was a half-hearted attempt to do so with Castro’s identical twin, Augusto Pinochet. It is desperately important, not only for the long-suffering people of Cuba, but to the rest of the decent people in the world.
And if I hear one more moron blathering the orthodox “Mussolini Made the Trains Run On Time” nonsense about imaginary “universal health care” and other idiocies, I will do what any decent person should do ― tell said moron to fuck off, and walk away.
Elsewhere in the news… remember the Bush administration’s pretended “opposition” to the even more brutal Marxist exploitation in North Korea? Such posturing, among America’s élite Conservatives, is as fake as their imaginary “free market” economics or their fake opposition to terrorism. So, right now, the New York Philharmonic is performing in North Korea, one of the conventional steps in another cynical geopolitical maneuvre. The press will overwhelmingly claim that this kind of sick chicanery is enlightened or “realistic” (the usual codeword for practicing evil), but what it actually amounts to is the abandonment of the North Korean people to an eternity of slavery and famine. Shame on Zubin Mehta for allowing himself to be used in this wretched exercise in pandering to the slave trade. The choice of playing Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” ― virtually an anthem of freedom and human decency ― to an audience composed entirely of champagne-swilling gangsters, is particularly offensive.
If Mr. Mehta had gone to perform for the people of North Korea, or to a group of musicians, it would have been acceptable. But he was playing, and pandering, to their oppressors. Mr. Mehta is a fine conductor, and musicians can’t be expected to have a sophisticated understanding of global politics. But a musician is obliged, like everyone else, to be humane and civilized, and it doesn’t take much sophistication to understand that celebrating dictatorship is morally wrong. Back in the 1940s, there were a number of famous conductors who debased themselves by doing similar shameful displays for Hitler. I am disgusted that Mr. Mehta is now in the same category.
[1] Stephane Courtois, et al. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press, 1999. pg. 691
To understand the true nature of dicatorship, go to First Meditation On Dictatorship
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