There are, of course, valid reasons for expressing concern about what follows Castro’s regime; while at the same time welcoming any increase in civil liberties and moves towards democracy. However there are also likely to be adolescent student types. Crooked Timber is a blog written by intellectuals, for intellectuals, which deals with the crucial issues of the day. Like Liberal Conspiracy, but with the added academic rigour and piercing insight that one might expect of its posters, their blog reaches heights other left wing blogs can only dream of. However, their new excursion into satirical writing is a welcome foray.
So let’s hear it for universal literacy and decent standards of health care. Let’s hear it for the Cubans who help defeat the South Africans and their allies in Angola and thereby prepared the end of apartheid. Let’s hear it for the middle-aged Cuban construction workers who held off the US forces for a while on Grenada. Let’s hear it for Elian Gonzalez. Let’s hear it for 49 years of defiance in the face of the US blockade. Hasta la victoria siempre!
Pervez Musharraf’s Pakistan Muslim League (PML-Q) has been comprehensively defeated in the Pakistan elections. The Pakistan People’s Party, Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) and other secular parties have swept aside opposition, including the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amil (MMA), an Islamist party which has been reduced to three seats in the National Assembly and lost control of Northwest Frontier Province to a secular nationalist Pashtun party.
In his first public statement since the election, PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif said:
Musharraf said he would quit when people tell him, and people have now given their verdict
As noted below, George W Bush has greeted news of Castro’s retirement with a call for ‘true democracy’ in Cuba. So that will be a ‘democracy’ where the candidates are not in the pockets of corporate interests, where more than 50% of eligible voters bother actually voting regularly, and where their ballots are counted towards the election of a candidate–not an electoral college, eh George? A workers’ democracy whose elected representatives are directly elected and recallable? Didn’t think so.
The usual outlets have tonight allowed far too much airtime to the celebrations of Miami mafiosi, drug lords and parasites, celebrating in anticipation of returning to feed in post-Fidel Cuba.
Tory supporters celebrate in London’s Smith Square following their party’s stunning election victory over the dour and innumerate Presbyterian dictator Gordon Brown. Middle-class property owners respond with threats of a coup, and demand the immediate nationalisation of all banks and building societies in a desperate attempt to forestall a house-price crash.
And will no doubt soon shuffle off this mortal coil.
So what’s next for the degenerate workers’ state in the Caribbean where dancing and copious amounts of recreational sex are pretty much the only forms of creative self-expression allowed and encouraged by those in power?
Various world leaders are today expressing the hope that Castro’s exit will create the conditions necessary for a transition to democracy in Cuba. Would that it were so simple. Castro the elder may be the figurehead of ‘El Revolucion’, but the stalinist state does not depend on him. Or even on Fidel’s sprightly, 76-year old brother Raúl, who will no doubt be crowned head of state, and combine this role with that of head of the armed forces.
Democratic change in Cuba will have to come from the ranks as well as a change of leadership at the very top, and there is little that the governments of democratic countries can do here.
George W Bush – who in his last months in power looks as if he might be doing something useful with his time – has said:
“The international community should work with the Cuban people to begin to build institutions that are necessary for a democracy, and eventually this transition ought to lead to free and fair elections. And we’re going to help. The United States will help the people of Cuba realise the blessings of liberty.”
Just keep the federal fingers out of the Cuban pie, George. And also those of US corporations who given half a chance would recreate Fulgencio Batista’s den of vice and iniquity.
¡Ya basta! Enough of the degenerate workers’ state, and long live the Cuban people. They surely deserve much better than this.
