Whatever Doug. Sometimes you strike me as someone who would have signed that Open Letter from Lillian Hellman and other naifs vs. Dwight Macdonald in 1939, published in The Nation denying the totalitarian nature of the Stalinist USSR and that there were any similiarities w/Nazi Germany.. A week or two after that letter was published the Hitler-Stalin Pact was announced.
I signed the CPD statement on Cuba w/Chomsky and Zinn. That make them to the right of Sweig, too? Do you really want to sound like this?
ANTI-COMMUNIST LIBERALS AND LEFT JOIN U.S. IMPERIALIST ATTACKS ON SOCIALIST CUBA
May 1, 2003 Dave Silver
New threats and actions by the White House using the arrests, prosecution and sentencing of C.I.A. supported "political dissidents" as a pretext for escalating its attacks on the island. Millions of dollars from the C.I.A. have been funneled to the counter revolutionary and mercenary terrorists via the U.S. Interests Section in Havana and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Counter to international law as well as U.S.-Cuba bilateral agreements the imperialists in Washington refuse to return the hijackers and planes to Havana thus encouraging more illegal immigration. In addition the U.S. violates its own agreement by granting only 500 visas instead of 20,000. Bush wants to deflect sharp national and international criticism of the genocidal aggression in Iraq and the economy by supporting a rally in March in Miami with the chief Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch and the Cuban American Foundation who sported banners saying Iraq Now, Cuba Next.
Joining the imperialist initiative against Cuba are petitions of the "democratic left" as the Nation magazine calls itself, denouncing what they call cruel and excessive measures against the U.S. funded "dissidents." The Nation invites Leo Casey, red baiting anti-communist and former functionary of the United Federation of Teachers who follows his mentor Albert Shanker, to obtain many signatures. This same Casey that equated Paul Robeson's refusal to answer questions about any Communist affiliation with the racist and neo-fascist Trent Lott. The first petition was top-heavy with liberals and social democratic Professors like Stanley Aronowitz and Bogdan Denitch (of it's OK to bomb Yugoslavia fame)
The second Petition initiated by the Campaign for Peace and Democracy (CPD) stakes out a position 2 degrees to the Left . The effort was led by Joanne Landy, on the Editorial Board of the Journal New Politics. Although Landy criticized aspects of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on Globalisation, she had no problem becoming a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, that high level imperialist think tank that Kissinger made famous. Thus an opportunistic Landy petition with a more radical profile, earned the support of Z Magazine contributors, Chomsky, Michael Albert and Howard Zinn. This political current reveals its Achilles Heel. Its willingness to go on record against the Cuban Revolution. Or we can look at the former Reagan Interests Section chief in Havana, Wayne Smith who would like to see the end of the embargo (blockade is an act of war and more appropriate) not because it is morally correct and Cuba is a sovereign nation. No. There is an ulterior motive to encourage a "smooth post Castro transition" really meaning a post socialist Cuba. Their "alternative" is seeking some hybrid system neither capitalist nor socialist.
All progressive forces must strengthen their solidarity with Socialist Cuba and beware of traps in Left disguise. (dm.silver at verizon.net)