Doug questions timing, which is reasonable given the slaughter of thousands of Iraqi in the past weeks. But, I doubt very much given he forwards Human Rights Watch bulletins that he wouldn't find the lack of procedural justice appalling and the balance of political views among the Cuban dissidents (ex-Marxists like Elizardo Sanchez, left socdems, left Christian Democrat [like a Ruben Zamora of the FDR-FMLN] sons of a founder of the Cuban Communist Party aka Popular Socialist Party, unworthy. These aren't the far right CANF Brother to tHe Rescue, Alpha 66 crowd that I saw in the hundreds bray at us several yrs. ago outside a Fidelista event organized by IAC/WWP at Mission High School in S.F.
However, Joanna, am I jumping to conclusions you find the petition and plans for a demo, another indication of counter-revolutionary opinion among socdems? Hell, even Portside of CCDS published a "tidbit" from a Jim Williams that found fault with this, even if only from a concern for the bad PR hamhandedness, "Cuban gov't. shooting itself in the foot."
Ever since reading the article in the NYRB by Julia Preston around 1990 about the show trial of one of the veterans of the July 26th Movement that Fidel and Che led from the Sierra Maestra to triumph in Havana, General Ochoa, who led the heroic internationalist defense of Angola against the forces of apartheid South Africa and mercenaries from SoF, on trumped up drug-running charges, a bit of the reportage of Andres Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald, the book by French Trotskyist Jeanette Habel, "The Revolution In Peril, " published by Verso around '92, articles by Sam Farber in New Politics, an essay by Hans Magnus Enzenberger in one of his essay collections on the Cuban CP, I've been much more critical of abrogations of what Comrade Khruschev called socialist legality and the cult of personality of El Jefe Maximo, Fidel. More sources from leftists, critical of the tragectory of the Cuban Revolution are by Rene Dumont, Carlos Franqui, "Family Portrait With Fidel, " by a former editor of a cultural/political review there in the 60's, and K.S. Karol. Does the Cuban government with it's undeniable, admirable records in such areas as health care, have so little confidence in the masses political consciousness and it's underlying allegience to the goals of the Revo, that a political opening ala the Prague Spring is to be permanently foreclosed by a Stalinist polity? Or does the Party know that as some Cuban youths said to Ian Williams when he inquired why they did not want to be Young Pioneers, one said the Party was the bourgoisie! As Ian said in a Cliffite moment after relating this anecdote, Stalinism = State Capitalism.
What is disgusting is the recurrent tendency among some sectors of the left to squelch criticism and debate. That is the Right's game, not the left I've been proud to be part of since attending a huge anti-Vietnam War MOBE in the early 70's at the US Capitol. Michael Pugliese
On Fri, 11 Apr 2003 18:12:42 -0700, joanna bujes <joanna.bujes at sun.com> wrote:
> At 04:27 PM 04/11/2003 -0700, Doug wrote:
>> Why in god's name are you people doing this now? With the American
>> imperium full of adrenaline, jacking up the machinery of domestic
>> repression, and Israel shooting Palestinians at the rate of five a
>> day, is this really the moment for this? Utterly disgusting.
>
> Why indeed?
>
> Joanna
>
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>
-- Michael Pugliese
"Without knowing that we knew nothing, we went on talking without listening to each other. Sometimes we flattered and praised each other, understanding that we would be flattered and praised in return. Other times we abused and shouted at each other, as if we were in a madhouse." -Tolstoy