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CUBAN DISSIDENTS JAILED, BUT AT LEAST THEY’RE HEALTHY AND LITERATE
Che Guevara’s daughter Aleida visited Australia in 2003 to shift some commie hero-worship boilerplate. The Age dutifully provided publicity:
Visiting Australia for the first time, she is promoting a new book, Che Guevara Reader, a collection of her father’s writing. Asked if she tries to be like her father, Aleida replies: “Everyone in Cuba has that commitment - to try to be like Che.”
They sure do. Just like Che, they want to leave Cuba. Now Aleida has returned, with another book, so The Age once again rolls out the red carpet:
A warm, amiable woman, Guevara travels widely, giving lectures that reflect her father’s, and her own, socialist ideals and to advance Cuba’s place in the world. She’s in Australia to promote her latest book - Chavez, Venezuela and the New Latin America.
Can’t wait to not read it. Author of this fawning nonsense is Roslyn Guy, The Age’s education editor. Bear that in mind as you read the following:
Cubans, once ill-educated and poor, are now almost universally literate and have more doctors per capita than almost anywhere on earth. But they are still poor and they live in a one-party state that abhors opposition. Like the US, it jails dissidents ...
Name these jailed US dissidents, Roslyn.
UPDATE/CORRECTION: Roslyn Guy is a former education editor at The Age; she last held the role in 2003.
“Name these jailed US dissidents, Roslyn.”
I think these are the people she’s thinking of:
Political Prisoners and POW’s in the USBeing incarcerated for doing things like killing a cop in cold blood (Mumia Abu-Jamal) makes you a political prisoner to the Moonbat Left.
Posted by Bruce Rheinstein on 2005 05 25 at 12:57 PM • permalinkAge readers don’t seem riddled with doubt.
Posted by chinesearithmetic on 2005 05 25 at 01:31 PM • permalinkUnlike other countries,the USA has a qualifier for achieving political prisoner status. The requirement is to kill a policeman or other figure of authority.The highest points are awarded for the killing of a white policeman.Extra bonus points are assigned if the perpetrator is African American and the victim is white.
The situation in Cuba is quite different.There,people who kill policeman are not called political prisoners. They are instead given the honorific of “corpse”.Fine. Let’s see if the Age can spin this:
http://www.spicyparis.com/paris.htmlPosted by Gary from Jersey on 2005 05 25 at 02:10 PM • permalinkI sent The Age an email requesting a list of these brave American dissidents languishing in obscurity. If this is true we’re going to have to bust some folks out of political prison. I frankly didn’t realize that it was possible to be a dissident in America in the classic sense. I thought the best one might hope to achieve is “outspoken critic.” How lucky we are to have the Age to set us straight. I’ll let you all know when the list comes through. Solidarnosc!
Yes, we take all dissidents in America and put them in walled compounds where their needs are taken care of by the government.
They’re called universities.
SMG
Posted by SMGalbraith on 2005 05 25 at 05:21 PM • permalinkShe says that Cuba is poor because of the U.S blockade, but Cuba is free to trade with every other country in the world, but then also she is against globalisation, ???.
Posted by Torontosteve on 2005 05 25 at 05:48 PM • permalinkBecause, as everyone knows, thousands of people throw themselves into the ocean to get away from universal literacy and health care…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 25 at 08:50 PM • permalinktorontosteve — Those aren’t Moore and Chomsky. Those are Windows-driven audioanimatrons deployed by Our Dark Master Karl to discredit the left. The real Moore and Chomsky are being kept alive at Area 51 as organ donors for Cheney…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 25 at 09:26 PM • permalinkRob Read, nice pun. But the similarities between Guevara and Pinochet are limited. Don’t get them mixed up.
For instance, Pinochet was installed by, supported by, and protected by the US, whereas Guevara was hunted and killed by the US.
Yes, they were each killers - but one in the name of misguided and deadly anti-imperialist nationalist socialism, and the other in the name of free trade, private enterprise, and regional security.
One of the fairly few amusing things about Che was that he was a communist victim. He was shot after the KGB, who considered him a dangerous loose cannon, tipped of the Bolivian police as to where he was hiding.
Posted by Susan Norton on 2005 05 25 at 10:03 PM • permalink‘Like the US it jails dissidents ..’
She must be referring to the Cuban librarians who were given 12 years apiece in prison for handing out copies of the American Declaration of Independence and the book 1984.
Oh, and the thousands of Cubans who risk their lives by taking to the ocean on rubber tyres ... obviously they dont know where their best interests are, imagine wanting to escape from a fully-literate society full of doctors—
I’m waiting with bated breath for the list of ‘dissidents’ in US prisons - I’m sure it will be forthcoming any day now…
This article reminds me of an opinion piece that the SMH published a few years back written by an intern on exchange from Texas (name escapes me). It went on about how people who spoke out against the Bush regime were being rounded up and incarcerated. I wrote a letter to the SMH demanding that they name these alleged dissidents and to put me in contact with the Mothers of the Disappeared. Funnily enough they did not reply.
Oh, and Cuba had the most doctors and the highest literacy in Latin America before the revolution. Castro had nothing to do with it.
Nor are modern statistics from Cuba to be believed; how on earth does Ms Guy know that Cubans “are now almost universally literate and have more doctors per capita than almost anywhere on earth”? Because Castro says so?
Here’s a great article on Che
http://www.lewrockwell.com/fontova/fontova44.html
Best bit,
” So let’s recall Che’s own plea when the wheels of justice finally turned and he was cornered in Bolivia. “Don’t Shoot!” he whimpered. “I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!””
Those Cuban doctors… do they work in hospitals like this?
[url=http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm]http://www.therealcuba.com/Page10.htm[/url]
(not for the squeamish)——
And as for Guevara and the CIA, I couldn’t find the link, but the CIA man who helped the Bolivians catch him is still around and you can read his account of the whole incident. He actually tried to save Guevara’s life (for purposes of interrogation), but the Bolivians reckoned otherwise…
I’ll try and find the link. It made a great read. Apparently Guevara’s personal hygeine was pretty poor even in good times - and after running from justice for a while he stank like an old tramp!
Roslyn Guy should be working for the BBC as this is typical BBC speak.
When having to acknowledge human rights abuses in a country you idolise. always try to match them with a country you hate. This lessens the blow and distracts the reader.
“Hey we do worse things no?”
the lies about the USA are of course immaterial since the Age readers will gladly embrace them.
No wonder its circulation is going down the drain fast.Martha Steward?
What about Michael Jackson? ;)
Posted by Art Vandelay on 2005 05 26 at 03:47 AM • permalink1. Medical training for Cuban doctors is very poor. More doctors doesn’t = good doctors or better medical care. I’m always surprised the quality of training is never mentioned in articles about Cuba’s medical care system.
2. Teaching literacy skills is not rocket science. Why, even under Adolf Howard, Australians are still learning to read. Though you wouldn’t know it from the way people carry on.
3. It’s always useful to compare Cuba to Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea (and even Malaysia). They were all impoverished countries with poor facilities and infrastructure in the 1950s. And the best thing people can now say about Cuba is that its people can read and they have lots of moderately well trained doctors. If only Singapore, Hong Kong, etc could say the same…
4. I was in Shenzhen in late 1995 when Castro visited China. I actually saw the putz up close, and the look on his face as he gazed around “third world” Shenzhen (more like Singapore than any Cuban city I’ve seen) was priceless. He had, I think, assumed the place would be like the rathole from which he’d crawled out. I doubt if the poor bastard ever got over it.
New York and LA are prisons for dissidents. Just ask Snake Pliskin.
Posted by Some0Seppo on 2005 05 26 at 09:31 AM • permalinkI’m thinking of picking up a copy of this books (used, of course) and taking it to the range so I can do to Che’s thought what the Bolivians and the Green Berets did…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 26 at 10:10 AM • permalinkIt’s a pretty good trick to brag about Cuba’s accomplishments—just remember to cite the fact that Cuba had the highest standard of living (GDP per capita) of any country in the Carribean when Castro took control, and now is only ahead of Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
That’s some accomplishment!
Thanks, Murph. Everyone here was having a fine time showing up Mr Nwab for his ignorance concerning the situation in Cuba, and you had to come along with the crude “fuck yous.” Now you’ve given nwabbie an opening to whine about how mean and crude rightwingers are, so much for civilized debate, blah blah blah. Could you have stepped in it any further?
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 05 26 at 09:00 PM • permalinkI find it very difficult to believe that these 1000 “doctors” correlate to anything. This is a country that doesn’t have enough toilet paper for goodness sake. You remember that Dear Leader just handed out pressure cookers(or something) to all of the households because they just got enough electricity to cook rice. Either they robbed their medical community of needed services because Ven. is paying them for the services or these are “technicians” of some sort passed off as doctors, or somewhere in the middle. Just a YoJimbo thought.
Good ol’ Che was a real hero; here’s a great critique of his
illustrious careerWhere are these “doctors” getting their training? Excuse me if I’m a little skeptical of Cuban medical schools—I doubt they have an equivolent of Harvard Med, U Penn, Johns Hopkins, Columbia Med, etc., etc., etc.,. I doubt their “doctors” are up on the latest technology. Their medical facilities look more antiquated than their cars. I read on gushing article in the LA Times that admitted that they use donkeys as ambulances. I doubt they have MRIs. They barely have modern equiptment in Canada and Europe, so I find it hard to believe that they have any in Cuba. They have no gas, barely any food, no electricity, am I supposed to believe they have medicine or bandaids?
And as for literacy, what books do they access to? They barely have meat and rice and I’m suppose to believe that they’re all sitting around reading Proust? Hmmm. BEFORE Castro, Cuba was the most literate nation in the Caribbean (and Latin America). Now they probably can all recite the commie propaganda that they’re force fed from birth, but as for being literate, well come on…..
Roslyn Guy is a former education editor at The Age; she last held the role in 2003.
Unfortunately, she’s no longer far enough left for that publication…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 05 27 at 09:53 AM • permalink
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How come Michael Moore and Chomsky are free, if the U.S. jails it’s dissidents.??