Read your history. Through out the 1980s. About the same time the U.S. government was slaughtering Central American indigenous people, and blaming the Sandinistas for doing what the U.S. was doing, the U.S. government, even the disgusting Ronald Reagan pointed to AIDS isolation wards as a violation of human rights.
>
> > whether you like it or not your voice -- helps to justify the crimes that
> > we
> commit in order to oppose the crimes that you don't commit.
>
> How? I have asked several times for examples and the best you come up
> with is some bleary, half-baked hypothetical from dim history.
It is an interesting question. When is it proper for the comfortable and privileged in an aggressor nation to criticize the nation they are attacking? Because that is what this is about. The U.S. is an aggressor nation and we are attacking Cuba.
In the 1930s in Japan among their intellectuals, there was much discussion about the imperialism of Britain and the U.S. in Asia. The newspapers were full of the atrocities and slaughter and history of Western Imperialism in Asia. Practically all of what they wrote about the massacres committed by the West was true, which is not what can be said in the present case about Cuba. If anyone in Japan was so thick headed not to get the point, that this was justification for Japan's own actions in Asia, then I would say that they were so sunk in ideology that their usual moral senses had been negated.
And when you consider at the same time the massacres in Shanghai and Nanking were occurring, I have no doubt that the moral superiority of these Japanese intellectuals, patting themselves on the back for their defense of Asia, does not strike anyone in the U.S. as familiar to what we do. It is not the same at all, because you see, we are good people and deeply moral, and all we care about is solidarity with the poor and oppressed, no matter who the poor and oppressed are with whom we identify.
Excuse me for my sarcasm, but it is clear to me that you have no need to look yourselves in the mirror, dear boys and girls, who talk about massacres and repression in Cuba. You are nothing like the Japanese intellectuals who told the truth about Western imperialism and thereby justified the slaughter China. Nothing at all like them.
>
> > Your first responsibility is to stop the crimes that you commit, or your
> government commits, then maybe you can begin to think about the crimes
> committed by your neighbor, or some government overseas.
>
> They are both my responsibilities. As a queer, establishing solidarity with
> others queers around the world is important.
Yes, my dear boy. The sins of your neighbor are as much your responsibility as your own sins. That is called moral reasoning. It doesn't matter who your neighbor is or how many times you have stolen money from him or broke his kneecaps and beaten up his kids. This is not your first concern. Just keep on thinking about your neighbor's sins. It will make you feel good about yourself. It will make you feel you are doing something moral with your life.
> > By doing so you are not helping the people "over there," who ever they
> > are,
> you are only supplying ideological cover and pharasitical moral soothing for
> our crimes.
>
> No, I am speaking against queer persecution just as people spoke against
> apartheid --
The analogy is wrong and it shows that you really don't understand. We, the United States government and our business institutions were supporting apartheid South Africa. We were supporting them against their attacks, for instance against Angola. Our government was torturing Angola and our government was helping South Africa and our government was trumpeting about human rights violations in Angola not South Africa.
So your position is not analogous to those who spoke up against Apartheid, your position is analogous to those who condemned human rights violations of Angolans, and the Cubans who were helping the Angolans. Your position is analogous to condemning Angola, for not having a good human rights record, at the time we were supporting South African aggression and terrorism in Angola.
The fact is you are for some reason unable to "get" the point, as you say you do. The comparison to those who spoke up against Apartheid shows that you don't get it.
>
> > I am sorry Brian that you don't understand this.
>
> I understand what you are saying. I just think it is more abstract twaddle.
> I
> do not believe that any action taken by the United States government against
> Cuba has been based on Cuba's persecution of queers.
>
> But I do think there is a simple solution: governments should not persecute
> queers. Then they will be immune from criticism.
>
> Brian