Castro’s Useful Idiots
"More than 160 foreign artists and intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez, have come out in defense of Cuba even as many of their peers condemn recent repression on the Communist-run island..." [Reuters, 5/1/03]Those mentioned include Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, Aldolfo Perez Esquivel, Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover.
Blair on Bush
British Prime Minister Tony Blair... says he thinks the American leader's lightweight image is "complete bull." ... "I was about to say, 'He's not someone who will philosophize,' but actually that's not true, because he does. But 'directness' is the best way I can describe it. He has a very, very direct way of stating exactly what he feels about a situation." Blair added about Bush, "He is highly intelligent, and it's not clotted by so many nuances that the meaning is obscured. The good thing about (Bush) is that once he does really think that an issue has to be tackled he has big reserves of courage for doing it, and he won't really be diverted." [CNN, 5/1/03]
Should NYC secede?
A committee of the NYC city council is holding hearings on whether to endorse making New York City the 51st state. Writes the New York Sun,MarySol Rodriguez of the New York City Partnership, a business group, presented some compelling statistics. If the city were to come its own state, she said, it could lower the tax burden on residents by 13%."
Here again, the left is arguing on our terms. If people keep thinking like that, sooner or later they will reach the conclusion that the government shouldn't be used to sacrifice anybody to anybody else.
Duplomacy II
From Cox and Forkum:
Comments Allen Forkum:
As the anniversary of Mr. Carter's Castro coddling approaches, he is again confronted with harsh realities that contradict his socialist sympathies.
In May 2002, Carter condemned the Bush Administration for suggesting that Cuba is pursuing biological weapons, which dictator Castro called a "lie." Carter praised the Castro regime for allowing him speak freely to the Cuban people, who are not allowed such freedom. The former U.S. president encouraged dissidents by publicly airing their calls for reforms. The BBC News reported at the time that Carter left Cuba on friendly terms. Excerpt: Organisers of the so-called Project Varela have handed in a petition bearing 11,020 signatures to the Cuban National Assembly asking for a referendum on civil liberties. Mr Carter said he believed the Cuban Government had not yet decided how it would respond to the proposals. "I think it's accurate to say the decision to deal with it -- or not -- has not been decided," he said.
A year later, we now know what Castro "decided": 75 political dissidents and independent journalists were recently rounded up and sent to jail for 28 years, and three men who tried to hijack a ferry to escape to America were executed.
In an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article by Moni Basu (Castro's crackdown strains budding ties), Mr. Carter stated: "Needless to say, I have been very disappointed by what has occurred in Cuba," Carter said. "The dissident movement has been severely crippled, and I would presume Draconian measures adopted by Castro will be maintained."
We would presume Carter was also "very disappointed" when the Draconian North Korea dictatorship broke the agreement he helped broker and started developing nuclear weapons. (The cartoon above is an allusion to this cartoon.)
For more on Cuba visit Liberty for Cuba.
Self-Imposed Blindness
What better example of conservatives' stubborn unwillingness even to consider thinking in principles--and the disastrous results in practice:Is it realistic for any political leader to make policy today based on assumptions about what the world will look like nearly six decades hence?
As it happens, 58 years ago it was 1945, the year of the United Nations' founding. Whatever one might think of the U.N., one certainly cannot fault the men who started it for having failed to foresee how it would become a threat to world peace and an obstacle to American action today. [James Taranto, "Best of the Web Today," 5/1/03]
Yes one can fault them, James--that's what principles are for; anyone who had grasped the proper principles would have foreseen it, and Ayn Rand did foresee it.