Although American corporations evicted from Cuba would love us all to share your hatred of Fidel Castro, the fact is that Cuba's current lack of prosperty has more to do with the US trade embargo of the pass forty nine years.

The most notable violation of human rights in Cuba is Guantanamo Bay prison; the most notable export from Cuba are free medical educations for improvised people of Latin America.

The lack of media freedom inside Cuba after so many decades is also only possible due to the US embargo, not Fidel's superior management skills. In one ironic twist, the US embargo has benefited the people of Cuba by largely protecting them from the US greed-is-good globalization of Cuban culture.

As an Australian I would be more concerned about the psychopathic serial-killer military culture of the TNI who slaughtered a half million of their own people during 1965/66, who successfully invaded East Timor in 1975, unsuccessfully invaded West Papua in 1962, and who have been cruelly oppressing the Provinces of Indonesia ever since Sukarno betrayed and crushed the United States of Indonesia government in 1950.

Of course I am an Australia concerned about human rights and rouge self-funding militaries wishing to expand their borders and indoctrinate the Javanese population with anti-western nonsense. Hope that helps put things back in perspective, All Best. :)

Daeron, while I share your concerns about Indonesia/TNI, I don't think we need to take an either/or approach here. The fact of the matter is that, as John Ballantyne points out, the Castro regime is an oppressive and murderous tyranny that should have been nipped in the bud.

As it wasn't, we have seen droves of people flee in exile (across a Berlin Wall of water), export of ideology and death to Africa (and what wonders it achieved there...), and the degeneration of Cuba into something which makes a 'banana republic' look really nice.

If the horrible US embargo is to blame, why have so many other non-embargoed Communist and totalitarian economies collapsed as basket cases? Don’t blame America; blame Karl Marx.

It is tragic that this Fasco-Marxist will likely escape justice for his crimes. I certainly don’t see the likes of Amnesty International calling for a trial – which is why I congratulate John Ballantyne for raising the issue.

John Ballantyne has written a very important piece and I congratulate him for this.

Unfortunately, as can be seen by the above post, there are still left-wing people who have an enormous faith in the tyrannical government of Cuba, despite the overwhelming evidence of ongoing human-rights violations in that unhappy country.

Those who support Fidel Castro are totalitarians who care very little about civil liberties and the fact that millions of innocent people have lost their frreedom and are entirely subject to a murderous regime which gives an average salary of only $20 per month in Cuban pesos for the working class to survive.

From 1898 to 1958, however, pre-Castro Cuba was a fairly prosperous society, and found itself in 1958 with a per-capita income that was topped in Latin America only by Argentina’s, Venezuela’s and Puerto Rico’s. Only Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil had higher total industrial production.

The large Cuban middle class was socially active, liberal, and thriving. One member of the labour force out of five could be counted as skilled worker, and the illiteracy rate was among the lowest in Latin America.

In absolute terms, the small island had the third highest number of doctors in the subcontinent, the highest number of TV sets, and the highest level of movie attendance.

In a few decades, however, a quite prosperous society passed from a condition of sustainable socio-economic development to a state of organized inhumanity, with a ruthless communist government deliberatly planning the elimination of thousands of so-called political 'enemies'.

Even so, many leftists of totalitarian mind keep arguing that left-wing dictators such as Fidel Castro are ‘progressive’ leaders, even though he is ahead of a government that consistently restricts basic human rights, including freedom of expression, and maintains harsh prison conditions to ‘political prisoners’ whose only crime was daring to disagree from those who are in power

Correct DamianW, we don't need to take an either/or approach. Unfortunately others do use selective vision, they ignore vital regional issues while George Bush cries about Darfur and Mr Ballantyne now cries about Cuba?

The problems in Iraq, Timor Leste, PNG, and West Papua are the same issue - colonization. West Papua was the first attempt at neo-colonization and has a foreign military occupation force; and East Timor is still adjusting to the changing of its puppet masters from Jakarta to local 'representatives'; but the nation's wealth is to be harvested for foreign interests.

Ever since NNGPM on behalf of Shell, Mobil, and Chevron discovered Ertsberg in 1936; West Papua's wealth has disrupted de-colonization and other nations have made many billions mining West Papua; result is that the West Papuan people now enjoy less civil freedom and quality of life than they did in 1962.

Unable to get a US license for "Ertsberg" - Mountain of Ore - they kept Ertsberg secret. Then in March 1959 the Dutch announced they were looking for the mountain source of gold they found flowing into our Arafura Sea, soon Rockefeller's Freeport Sulphur was asking a Dutch company for a partnership via which to lodge a claim for the Timika area (Ertsberg) as a possible copper deposit.

After the Indonesian military proved unable to take the territory itself, *inside* the White House a McGeorge Bundy and Robert Komer began telling Kennedy that he had to force the Netherlands to sell the people and lands of West Papua to Indonesian control.

As a pro-business Liberal voter I am not going to sacrifice Australia's interests and responsibility for the benfit of a few corrupt American corporations. Most US corporations are decent citizens, but there are some very skilled and corrupt business cultures still causing woe from Cuba to West Papua to Iraq. Lets be clear about whose interests we are concerned about - I don't care if George Bush's fiscal backers at Bechtel and Freeport McMoRan go bankrupt; I'd rather have prosperty in our region including the West Papuan people's rights.

Augusto... the pre-castro picture you paint of Cuba seems a little rosier than I suspect it was.

You're ignoring the oppression at the hands of Batista, and your post would seem to indicate that the colonial stranglehold that Spain had on the nation was all well and good.

I'm certainly not saying Castro's reign was any better, but I hardly think that it was some kind of caribbean utopia before hand.

We can argue about Castro's crimes but this is interesting coming from Newsweek, the publication of the National Civic Council. In the 1980s Washington effectively was engaged in a brutal war against the Church (which was organising the poor) with the backing of the Vatican and, it turns out, the support of the NCC. Bishops, nuns and so on were murdered for the crime of liberation theology. If Castro will die unpunished then in this he will surely not be alone.

I am from the left of center quite proudly and strongly center unity ALP.
I hope one day the left can stop giving total support to every one who is seen as leftist.
Castro is a dictator and no saint, maybe he is no better or worse than Bush.
And when we need to tell the world just how bad Bush is they may listen if we do not hide grubs like this under our hair shirts.
Al Gore America needs you , the world needs you.

Markob… I think you should let people know what so-called "liberation" theology means.

In his 1987 book O Socialismo Como Desafio Teológico (‘Socialism as a Theological Challenge’), Leonardo Boff, the leading advocate of liberation theology in Latin America, declared that the oppressive former communist regimes in Eastern Europe, especially the Soviet Union, "offer[ed] the best objective possibility of living more easily in the spirit of the Gospels and of observing the Commandments".

Returning from a visit to the former Soviet Union in 1987, just a few years before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, Boff also argued that these notoriously oppressive regimes were "highly ethical and… morally clean", and that he had "not noticed any restrictions in those countries on freedom of expression"

BBC Online today has the headline "Castro 'to be fit to hold power'". If true, his recent illness must have led to radical changes in his approach!

John Ballantyne has raised the anomaly that the outcry demanding that Pinochet be brought to justice been unmatched by demands that his even more murderous fellow Latin American military dictator Castro be tried for his crimes.
A second anomaly has been inadvertently raised by the mention of Guantanamo Bay. Prisoners at Guatanamo, for all its faults, have not suffered anything like the abuses perpetrated for the last nearly fifty years against opponents of the Havana regime just over the fence in Cuban jails, but there has never been any outcry from human rights advocates remotely resembling the criticism of Guantanamo. First-hand descriptions of conditions in Castro's jails can be found in the recently published From The Gulag To The killing Fields, edited by Paul Hollander.

"You're ignoring the oppression at the hands of Batista, and your post would seem to indicate that the colonial stranglehold that Spain had on the nation was all well and good."

It is now when Spain and other European countries, plus Canada, are exploiting Cuban workers by doing business with their oppressor. Melia, who runs several large hotels in Cuba where Cubans are not allowed, must use the workers that are supplied by Cuba's fascist regime. They pay Castro in euros, he pays his slave workers in Cuban pesos and pockets the difference.
The same thing happens with the slave doctors that Castro ships all over the world. Those countries pay him with oil, like Venezuela, that he then sells in the Bahamas at a much higher price or hard currencies and Castro pays his slaves in pesos and laughs all the way to the bank. No wonder his fortune is now close to one billion dollars according to Forbes magazine.
It is inconceivable that there are people who 50 years later still think that Castro is a champion of the poor. The fact is that he is more fascist than Batista, Pinochet, Somoza, Franco, Duvalier and Stroesner combined.

People keep on blaming the embargo for Cuba's poverty. That's rubbish. The US is the only country with a trade embargo against Cuba; no other country is prohibited from trading with them. And in spite of this "embargo", the US has sold over hundreds of millions of dollars worth of food to the island; the figure was $87 million in 2004 alone. In 2005, it was $338 million (although that included "agricultural products", whatever that means). Yet somehow there are still shortages.

Don't blame the US for Cuba's woes. Blame the terrible government, and it's inabilities to create wealth for it's people. Blame Castro. *That's* the true source of Cuba's woes.

GOOD ARTICLE ABOUT TIME SOMEONE SEE THAT LIGHT!

http://cubaspeaks.blogspot.com/

According to the census of June 1933, the Jewish population of Germany consisted of 505,000 people. Jews represented less than 1 percent of the total German population of 67 million. Approximately 300,000 German Jews managed to escape before the Holocaust. Of the remaining 205,000, 170,000 were killed in the Holocaust. (Source: The Holocaust Encyclopedia).

The Cuban Archive Project has identified and documented 102,000 Cubans killed by Castro (and this number, of course, is always growing).

Hitler killed 170,000 German Jews relative to a total German population of 67 million in 1933 (when he took over). Castro has killed 102,000 Cubans out of a total population of 6.6 million (when he took over in 1959).

Proportionally, Castro has killed 7 times more Cubans than Hitler did German Jews. Even if we relate Castro’s killings to the current Cuban population (11 million), he has still killed 4 times as many Cubans than Hitler killed German Jews.

Moreover, if all the European Jews killed by Hitler (6 million) in all countries to which he extended the Holocaust are taken as a percentage of the total population of Europe, Castro has still killed more Cubans per capita than Hitler killed Jews.

As bad as Hitler? No, worse.

Good article.
And it is a shame Fidel Castro's crimes don't get as much attention as the Pinochet's, Hitler's or Bush's.
It's has to do with the ammount of money and resources Fidel's propaganda machinery uses to make him look like a small, but heroic David fighting the U.S. embargo-Goliath. The fact of the matter is U.S. dollars are the only real source of any real income for the cubans and the cuban government. And Fidel gets it anyways.
How? simple: We cubans living outside that country are more productive, successful and make more money than the Cuba's global production. Fidel's laws prohibit cuban exiles to return Cuba as normal citizens, but as mere tourists. We must go there/or send money to save our left-behind relatives from total hunger, since an average monthly salary in Cuba (paid in cuban pesos) equals $20 USD.
So what does Fidel do? He overcharge us, he steal from us, he overtaxes us entering at Custom Cuba's airports. His officials tell us: You either pay or we take the stuff you bring for your family, even if you bring only your personal stuff you must pay or you're send back to U.S. without seen your family.
And here is the best part: Since almost no one, (except the venezuelan oil-swamped Hugo Chavez) give monetary credit to Cuba, Fidel is forced to pay everything to United States companies only in cash. The very same cash we cuban exiles overpaid him!.
-not enough space.-to be continued-

Embargo? Yeah, right.
Embargo has never been stop for anything in Cuba. No american citizen go to Cuba to prohibit a cuban from opening a restaurant, a bank or a barber shop. No american law stops no one in Cuba from buying or selling a shrimp, a house, a car or a banana. And they never will. Fidel's laws do that. It's his only call.
It's hard to imagine how much damage and control you can exercise when you have a whole country's resources (human and monetary) at your disposal (like Fidel does). He can do anything and not be accounted for it. Against that, there is only the work of few people willing to tell the truth, and willing to risk everything for it.
Please, pass the word: Cuba's government is the longest, creepiest, most sophisticated, bloodiest and ferocious left fascist dictatorship there is in this world. Here is the truth: please, visit therealcuba.com

For what it's worth, I couldn't help but notice that some of the (slightly Photoshopped) photos of Cuba at therealcuba.com website have appeared on other web sites before, but then they were involving stories from Vietnam, Haiti and a couple of other places.

If the problems are so obvious, why hasn't the US invaded them yet, like they did at Granada? Why did they need to plan a manufactured crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods as far back as 1962 yet done about it nothing since?

The USA had embargos against Hitler during WW2 too, but that didn't stop them selling their goods via an intermediate country.

"For what it's worth, I couldn't help but notice that some of the (slightly Photoshopped) photos of Cuba at therealcuba.com website have appeared on other web sites before, but then they were involving stories from Vietnam, Haiti and a couple of other places."

As the webmaster for therealcuba.com, I would like to know which photos have been "slightly Photoshopped" and which ones have been previously used involving stories about Vietnam, Haiti or any other place.
I am very careful to check each an every photo that is posted in therealcuba.com and would be happy to review any specific photograph that you make reference to.
My website has been visited by well over a million people in two years and no one has ever been able to point out to a photo that has been altered or taken in another country. Its accuracy is the main reason for its success.
There is no need to "Photoshop" any photo from Cuba in order to show the brutality of the fascist regime and the mismanagement, stupidity and failure of the ruler that has been oppressing the Cuban people for close to 50 years.
I hope that you would be nice enough to tell me which photos you are referring to. Otherwise, I would think that you were lying in order to promote your agenda.

"102 000 Cubans killed by Castro"? Pull the other one.

therealcuba:

Don't pay any attention to rache's charge that the photos on your site are "photoshopped" or duplicated elsewhere. It is a charge that he does not document because he can't, and since he can't he has no recourse but to cast aspersions on your honesty when it is his own that is in question.

We must be very wary indeed of anything which rache calls "manufactured" since he also believes that the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) was "manufactured."

During the October 1962 crisis, Castro endeavored to convince Khruschev to launch the missiles against the U.S., thereby precipitating World War III with Cuba as Ground Zero. That is the kind of "patriot" that Castro is, willing to sacrifice his country and his people for his own aggrandizement. Of course, he wouldn't have shared their fate, but retired to his bunker to watch like a petite god this Armageddon of his own making.

Khruschev removed the missiles from Cuba in exchange for Kennedy's promise not to invade the island. This agreement, known as the Kennedy-Khruschev Pact, established the U.S. as the guarantor of Communism in Cuba, and this is the reason that the U.S. has not liberated the island.

Tsk, who to believe? One guy says photos have been touched up & another says he's the one who put them there. You just can't believe what you find on the net these days, can ya?

Therealcuba,
On your humor page, there is a photo of a horsedrawn car (Castrogas2.jpg)
Here's the original(?) version.

http://www.fenderforum.com/userphotos/index.html?recid=19593

The Socialist Sandals photo had been sent to me some time ago with a note that they it was taken in Haiti.

This topic had a good run elsewhere some time ago with good points raised from both sides.

http://www.cubamania.com/cuba/showthread.php?threadid=16692

I'm no fan of Castro or any other political leader in the world.

Despite the quantity of unsourced statements on your site, I don't doubt your motives or sincerity in what you believe and I actually wish you the best of luck in your endeavours.

Cubano.
I never said that the Missile Crisis was faked.

If you care to actually read the linked document http://emperors-clothes.com/images/north-i.htm (Page 7 onwards) it will prove that the USA was planning to provoke a war by faking an attack by Cuba by killing innocent people or shooting down commercial aircraft - so much for any Khruschev-Kennedy-Castro agreement.

If they were prepared to do this over 40 years ago, and with all the atrocities claimed to have occurred since, why haven't they done it yet?

Maybe Castro just doesn't have any WMDs (or oil) or perhaps humanitarian causes simply don't matter in Central America.

Could it be because that even as late as November 2006, the UN voted 183 to 4 for lifting the embargo? The US Congress is now debating whether the embargo may have actually strengthened the Cuban government and even the Pope and other several religious leaders in the US have spoken out against it.

rache:

If the U.S. had wanted to invade Communist Cuba after 1962, it could have done so under the aegis of the Rio Pact (1948), which bound the U.S. and all Latin American countries to liberate any nation in the Americas which fell to Communism. But the U.S. chose to ignore the Rio Pact and other conventions because it did not desire to precipitate a war with the Soviet Union. This was a grave mistake because as Khrushchev's son-in-law and aide has since confirmed Khruschev would not have attacked the U.S. in case of that eventuality. If you require me to read 7 pages of agitprop in order to learn about this mythical and never realized attack which the U.S. supposedly planned on Cuba, I respectfully decline.

You say that you "are no fan of Castro or any other political leader in the world" and there's your mistake. Fidel Castro is not a "political leader" since politics has not been practiced in Cuba since 1959. For there to be politics there must be a system open to politics. The Castroite system is not even a one-party state (that would actually constitute an "opening" in the system); it is a one-man state, completely dominated by one man and run in the interests of one man.

The U.N. Human Rights Commission has condemned on numerous occasions the Castro regime's systematic violations of human rights. And, of course, there is no trade embargo any more except on paper since the U.S. is now Cuba's largest trading partner thanks to innumerable loopholes that have gutted the embargo.

I am glad that you now admit that you don't know if the pictures in dispute originally appeared in therealcuba or on some other website; and that you don't know either whether the sandals picture depicts a Cuban or a Haitian. That being the case you had no reason to accuse therealcuba of deceipt. An apology is in order.

Augusto: If Boff made the statements attributed to him, so what? It changes nothing so much as the NCC's shameful support for a policy that lead to the murder of nuns and priests of their own church because of their support for the poor and oppressed is concerned. This includes the current Pope who is such a moral pygmy that he used the inquisition no less, which he then headed (as Cardinal Ratzinger), when the war was at its height (and after the murder of Archbishop Romero) to condemn liberation theology the consequences of which was to facilitate aggression, as he would have well known. This is the same Pope who bemoans "moral relativism" etc. Pope John Paul II will be made a saint by Ratzinger soon, in a "hurried" process, but in the hearts of millions of Latin America's poorest of the poor Archbishop Romero will forever, rightly, be a saint.

Cubano - the Northwoods Document is certainly not "agitprop". It's an official Government proposal that was declassified in 1997.

It was part of the Cuban Project (Operation Mongoose) that came into effect after the failed Bay of Pigs and at the peak of the Cuban Missile crisis.
It was suspended on October 30, 1962, but three of ten sabotage teams had already been deployed to Cuba. On November 8, 1962, one CIA team blew up a Cuban industrial facility.

It makes for interesting reading - if only to see how easy it is to manipulate public opinion, even in the free world.

From Rachel: Therealcuba,
On your humor page, there is a photo of a horsedrawn car (Castrogas2.jpg) Here's the original(?) version.

Don't you know what a "Humor page" is? It is supposed to be funny and yes, the pictures in there are Photoshopped, but that is not what you implied on your previous post. You made it look as if the realcuba.com was not credible because the photos were not real. That is like saying that the news published by a newspaper are not credible because they also have a "comic section" or an editorial cartoon.
If you had made reference to the humor page on your first post, I would not have taken issue with what you had said. But I challenge you or anyone else to prove that the photos in the news pages of therealcuba.com have been altered in any way or not taken in Cuba. They depict the real Cuba, the Cuba that the tourists who stay in the compounds that castro has built for them would never see.

Cuba was America's TOILET, but no longer.

John Ballantyne, you have conveniently forgotten that the American Mafia was on it's way to owning Cuba, it's politicians and economy. There are many well researched books and documentaries about this. We only recently saw one on the ABC (about Frank Sinatra).

It took someone with the courage of Castro to expel these swine.

On the other hand, America was not immune. The Mafia went on to pollute American politics to this day. They polluted the CIA, who tried to use them for clandestine operations. They played their part in the killing of Kennedy, the War on (for) Drugs, and all of the death and mayhem that ensued when the US interfered with Central and South American politics.

My money's on Castro. Cuba seems like a beacon of light, relatively speaking.

This for the Cuban diaspora who spit venom from their condos in Florida:

Get over it. Take your eyes off Cuba's riches. You will never own them. You will never dabble your feet in Cuba's clear seas, while peons do your menial work.

Cuba has no use for useless drones. Cuba has no time for rampant consumerism. Cuba has a date with destiny in a changing world.

They say that Florida may be inundated if the sea level rises too dramatically -

Ah then , roll on global warming -

Rache, re 1962. The U.S.A. did not plan to do any of those things. A general floated the idea, but the idea was never implemented. There is no evidence to suggest that the government planned to do it.

"Get over it. Take your eyes off Cuba's riches. You will never own them. You will never dabble your feet in Cuba's clear seas, while peons do your menial work."

Chris baby, you are a Cuban wannabe. Who the hell cares about what you have to say. This issue will be resolved among Cubans, those in exile and those in Cuba, and you, thank God, are not one of us.
Take care of your own country and stop licking the boots of a mass murderer like Castro. Were you in love with Hitler and Pol Pot also or is Castro the only murderer tyrant that you like.

wobbles:

First, what a peculiar moniker. I don't know if it's meant as a description of your person or your opinions.

I am sure that the U.S. had contingency plans for invading Australia in case the Soviets did or even to prevent the Soviets from doing so. There are all kinds of contingency plans for improbable situations. I'm sure Australia even has contingency plans for invading New Zealand. The Northwood Document was such a plan. And, of course, it never happened.

markob:

It doesn't matter to you that Boff was a supporter and apologist for the Soviet Union? Is it possible to be a "moral paragon" and at the same time support the world's most tyrannical regime? The "liberation" that Boff had in mind entailed the suppression not the expansion of human rights. That would have made him a very peculiar kind of "liberator." Thank God Boff is nothing more now than a footnote in the history of moral relativism.

As Ballantyne suggests, it seems that if you're on the "right" side of politics (i.e. Augusto Pinochet) you'll be hounded as a war criminal, whereas if you're on the "left", like Castro, you'll fade away and no one will really care.

This is the case with good old Chaiman Mao, of China, who - it is estimated - killed some 30 million people. Yet for so long, the people of China and the Western world, have focussed on the atrocities of other leaders like Adolf Hitler. Don't get me wrong here, all of these leaders were cruel, abhorrent sods, but let's put things into perspective.

Currently, it is not just Castro who, it seems, will die unpunished, but Zimabwe's Robert Mugabe. Fortunately, the world's media has seen through the Magabe facade. Yet I think it will take some years yet for our mainstream media to wake up to the disasterous reign of Fidel Castro. For now, television programs (namely on our national broadcaster) are more than happy to spout off about Cuba's so-called wonderful health system (ahem, why then do so many try and flee to Florida in all kinds of leaky craft??!!). I was horrified to see a recent Foreign Correspondent program exonerating Cuban doctors who were working in troubled parts of the globe. Far from seeing these doctors as being used by Castro (or gladly participating) as a kind of Marxist missionary crew, the program portrayed them and the program as being of the most notable humanitarian value!!

Grey,
The document itself is proof that they were planning to do it and there was more than one general involved. The reason it wasn't implemented is because Kennedy would not approve it. (Maybe GWB would). The document is also believed to have been declassified in error and was never meant to be seen by the public - that's why it's so interesting.

Contingencies are one thing but it's the METHODS considered that are of concern.

Shooting down civilian planes, staging bogus enemy attacks, blowing people and things up, just to claim "self-defense" and some sort of moral superiority?

Cubano; I am no apologist for Castro but nothing Boff ever said about the USSR can justify the murderous wars waged in Latin America in the 1980s. That is the point. And unlike Castro's crimes these crimes are our crimes so therefore for any moral agent here it is elementary logic that these crimes are the ones that matter. The effect of concentarting on Castro's crimes is to create the groundwork for these other crimes and hence is a morally illegtimate enterprise. I ask a question; was the US assualt in Central America in the 1980s justified? Yes or No?

markob:

Do you mean: Was the spread of Communism in Central America something that the U.S. should have supported? No. What a nice "bridge" Central America would have made between the U.S. and the Marxist states of Venezuela and Bolivia! What would have been next? Mexico?

Chris Shaw:

The mafia no more owned "Cuba, its politicians and economy" than it does Australia's. The "well-researched books and documentaries" attesting to this falsehood are published by Ocean Press, Castro's overseas publishing house, located, of all places, in North Melbourne, Australia. Of course, your own "knowledge" doesn't come from these propaganda books but from the fictional Godfather II (what a great populist you are!).

You say that your "money's on Castro." I'm sure that doesn't mean very much. Besides, Castro doesn't need your money. His personal fortune is estimated by Forbes Magazine at $US950 million, and he wrung every penny of it from the blood and sweat of his hapless people.

ElMondoHummus,

Fidel, alongside the US and USSR, supported my countries bid for independence. They were opposed by Australia, UK and New Zealand who did not want to let our natural resources come under our own control.

Fidel, alongside the People's Republic of China, supplied our nation with doctors whilst Australia made pariahs of us by pressuring us into a deal which would have us collaborate in the disenfranchisement of thousands of refugees.

All indications are that the tyranny in the developing world is not coming from Cuba; but from those who oppose her.

Sorry,

Xavier

P.S. For those who like to quote UNHCR, check which government on the Cuban island is most heavily criticised for its human rights violations, namely in relation to the illegal depravation of liberty and denial of equal access to the law. Guesses?

Xavier Barker:

Being enigmatic doesn't make you smart or fascinating. What it does make you is unintelligible. For starters, you might try revealing the name of your country. I presume that it's a Pacific atoll rich in minerals which the local oligarchy (to which you belong) is now free to exploit rather than foreign colonialists.

You shouldn't be grateful to the Fidel Castro for the Cuban doctors, but to the Cuban doctors themselves. As part of Castro's international medical korps, they worked as slaves in your country, receiving little or no renumeration for their work, although your government did pay Castro in dollars for their services. I hope your people were good to them and at least fed them.

Fidel Castro, by the way, has disenfranchised millions of refugees and murdered tens of thousands on the high seas who were trying to escape his island-prison.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission has condemned Cuba on numerous occasions for its systematic violations of human rights. In Cuba, people have been sent to jail for just owning copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What infernal foolishness are you talking about?

Cubano: Ok, now we understand each other. For you, the NCC and the Vatican what happened in the 1980s was justified. That's all we need to know.

Cubano,

I don't seek to be smart or fascinating. Clearly I am intelligible, as your conclusions about my country show. And what would make you believe I belong to any oligarchy?

The doctors working in my country were very popular, well looked after and worked hard. Rest assured, in my country, as in all of the Pacific, no person goes hungry as long as someone eats. However, perhaps more testament to the state of my country than theirs, all they spoke of was a return to Cuba.

I won't make any effort to defend Fidel's government of his people but can only say that he has treated my countrymen with dignity and supported our right to self-determination. That is something for which we must remain ever grateful.

Thanks though,

Xavier

Xavier:

Attribute my knowledge of your country more to my powers of discernment than your powers of explication. As for your being a member of the oligarchy, it is, I think, a fair supposition given your facility with English. This pretty much defines classes in your country.

I am glad to hear that your people treated with kindness and generosity the Cuban doctors and that they did not starve when they were amongst you. I am glad also that they left a favorable impression with you and your countrymen. No thanks to Castro, of course.

If Hitler had supported your country would you have been grateful to him? The important thing about Castro is not whether he supported your country's right to self-determination, but whether he supports his own country's right to self-determination. And the answer to that question is: No.

Xavier, sir:

I would never disparage your country's progression to freedom. However, that does not excuse or undo the terrible things that Castro has done. He's impoverished his people and ruined the infrastructure of Cuba, he's turned them into a debtor nation that cannot pay it's debts to countries - even allies like Venezuela. He's eliminated so many social freedoms... the list goes on and on. Whatever laudatory acts he's committed for your country, none of them change the fact he's ruined his own.

I praise your country's march to independence, but that does not erase, change, or impunge the fact that Cuba's woes are due to Castro's government, not America's embargo. That was my whole point.

ElMondoHummus makes a good point. Cuba's public indebtedness is the highest per capita in the world. This will be Castro's legacy to his countrymen: a country in ruins with the world's largest deficit. You can add to that as well the world's highest suicide rate and the world's highest abortion rate. Yes, it's a true "Socialist paradise": no money; no hope in the present and no hope in the future.