[lbo-talk] Re: Cuba petition

[andie nachgeborenen]

Brad, will you look, just look, at the figures for basic human welfare in Cuba -- literacy, life expectancy, educational availsbility, whatever you like -- in Cuba? There is not a country in Latin America that come close the last time I looked. Nearest was Costa Rica, but CR had far more inequality ands far less opportunity. Cuba is unacceptably repressive, and I do not apologize for that. Nor do I think the welfare accomplishments of the Cuban revolution -- and yes, it was a real revolution -- excuse its human rights deficiencies. (Though, as I noted, there is a real question about what alternatives exist for Cuba that you have not bothered to answer, other than silently suggesting that it would be good were Cuba to accede to a US makeover a la success stories like El Salvador, Guatelama, and Nicaragua.) But it is obscene to put Cuba in the same category as Baathist Iraq or Syria or (a far lesser order of horror) Milo's Serbia.  If you can see nothing but the boot and the dungeon in Cuba, it must be because you've just washed your brain and you can't do a thing with it. My opinion of Berkeley drops daily. Hourly. jks

Bradford DeLong <delong at econ.Berkeley.EDU> wrote:>Luke Weiger wrote:
>
>>----- Original Message -----
>>From: "Doug Henwood" 
>>To: 
>>Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2003 4:05 PM
>>Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Re: Cuba petition
>>
>>> I'm enough of a liberal to think that procedural justice is very
>>> important. But, aside from the timing issue, which I think is
>>> critical, I'm still waiting for a good answer to a question I've
>>> asked here many times: how would you & other petition signers go
>>> about defending a revolutionary government against the machinations
>>> of the U.S., which would want to destroy you? There are real spies
>>> and plotters in Cuba, run from Miami and Langley.

In what sense is Castro's, or Saddam's, or Aideed's, or Milosevic's, 
or Coard's government "revolutionary"? By the time *that's* your 
definition of human progress, the abyss has looked you over quite 
thoroughly...

Brad DeLong
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