> One of the great victories of the Eurocommunist movement was to have
> gotten the western Far Left to commit to the priority of bourgeois
> emancipation--that freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to
> organize, and multi-party elections were key foundations without
> which nothing good could be built. It is curious to see such
> extraordinary backsliding in the interest of propping up an old
> dictator.
Isn't this (and your other, erm, less collegial comments) a little uncalled for? Who has been letting go of these freedoms here? Or are these comments meant to be addressed to unmentioned others?
And what we are discussing is not propping up an old dictator, but the wisdom of tearing him down when that is inevitably going to lead to yet more US madness. Don't you think there is something to the argument that free elections in Cuba are highly likely to invite massive US interference? Do you think that is ok? Even if you think so, why should Cubans? Do you think that the Nicaraguan election model isn't something to be worried about? What kind of a freedom is it to be able to vote under threat of severe sanctions? To have a free press like Venezuela's? (Or yours, for that matter.) To have the sort of freedom of association enjoyed by Colombian unionists? Isn't the US policy partly to blame for having turned Cuba into a paranoid garrison in the first place?
Thiago