More Miami Herald/Glenn Garvin Sunday op/ed insanity: List of 'Worst Dictators' omits Fidel and Raul

[Mika]

List of 'Worst Dictators' omits Fidel and Raul Castro
http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/tv/v-fullstory/story/960251.html

If I were making a list of the world's greatest experts on lists, David Wallechinsky would be right at the top. He's been compiling quirky collections of names and facts for more than three decades now, in books like The People's Almanac and The Book Of Lists, and he's the master of the form.

Who else is going to give you the names of 17 Children Who May Have Lived With Wild Animals? (No, Flipper's pal Bud doesn't count.) Or 10 People With The Most Square Miles Of The Surface Of The Earth Named After Them? (Sure, Amerigo Vespucci is at the top of the list, but I bet you didn't know that Norway's Queen Maud came in third.)

So it's with some trepidation that I dispute the absence of our local boys, Fidel and Raul Castro, from Wallechinsky's list of The World's 10 Worst Dictators, in the issue of Parade magazine bundled inside today's Miami Herald.

Admittedly, the criteria for evaluating dictators are vague and controversial. Body counts are indisputably important; any roster of the most infamous dictators of the past hundred years, for instance, would have some combination of Stalin, Hitler and Mao up at the top. But after that, it gets harder to pin down.

Do you give points for weirdness? (Albania's Enver Hoxha banned tractors as a foreign and sinister technology.) Or peculiar sexual proclivities? (North Korea's Kim Il Sung once wrote a love sonnet to the mimeograph machine.) Or downright creepiness? (The Central African Republic's Jean-Bedel Bokassa occasionally ate his political opponents.)

It could be argued that the word count of a dictator's self-proclaimed title ought to be given fair consideration, in which case Uganda's Idi Amin -- or, His Excellency President for Life Field Marshal Al Hadji Dr. Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular, as his friends called him -- becomes a real contender.

And surely Turkmenistan's Saparmurat Niyazov would deserve some serious attention for requiring anybody applying for a driver's license to first take a 16-hour study course on his book Ruhnama, or The Book Of The Spirit.

But in looking over Wallechinsky's list -- which is a current all-star team, not a Hall of Fame that includes the undearly departed -- it's nearly impossible to see how the Castro brothers didn't make the cut. Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe killed 163 people? Way ahead of you: The Castros are at 15,000 and climbing, according to the extraordinarily conservative count of Miami's Cuba Archive. Sudan's Omar al-Bashir has driven 2.7 million people from their homes in six years? Dude, 10,000 Cubans looking for a way off the island jumped over the walls of the Peruvian embassy in Havana in one day in 1980.

Wallechinsky notes solemnly that Eritrea's Isaias Afewerki has locked up 10 local journalists since 2001. As a reporter, I certainly think that's bad news -- but just last week Cubans observed the sixth anniversary of the so-called Black Spring roundup, when the Castros arrested 75 independent journalists and political dissidents. Fifty-five are still in prison.

If Wallechinsky hasn't heard of Black Spring, I'm not surprised; the United Nations apparently hasn't, either, and made Cuba a member of its Human Rights Council.

And then there's the matter of Moammar Gadhafi, who makes the list mainly on grounds of longevity; in September, he'll celebrate 40 years in power -- a decade less than the Castros. Moreover, they've done it in the heart of world democracy. Every other government in the Western hemisphere; even Hugo Chavez's lurching, spastically authoritarian regime was seated in a reasonably free and fair election. Only the Castro brothers continue to treat their country like a family farm that they can milk at will.

So why aren't they on Wallechinsky's list? Probably for the same reason that Barbara Walters once threw Fidel Castro a dinner party, or that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's brain trust flocked to the Soviet Union to study Stalin's economic program, or that lovable old Will Rogers returned from a trip to Mussolini's Italy with the admiring observation that the ''dictator form of government is the greatest form of government -- that is, if you have the right dictator.'' Because, to paraphrase Lord Acton, power seduces, and absolute power seduces absolutely.

That's not necessarily true for most average Americans, who mostly mind their own business and wish everybody else would do the same. The United States was founded, after all, in a fit of libertarian resistance to the arbitrary whims of a king.

But the chattering classes bred by a society increasingly built around mass communications -- intellectuals, social engineers, policy wonks and the journalists who flit about their margins -- are a different matter.

They share the popular disdain for what they see as arbitrary power. Of the 10 dictators on Wallechinsky's list, eight are sullen despots without discernible ideology who rule for no purpose but to perpetuate themselves. (The two exceptions are North Korea's Kim Jong Il, whose communism has devolved into whackjobbery kidnappings of actresses to make movies for him, and Iran's Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose Muslim zealotry is incomprehensible to America's secular political court.)

But it's another matter when it comes to bending the popular will for the purpose of remaking society for egalitarian economic or social purposes. Then the checks and balances built into the constitution become an impediment to good government. And longing eyes start to stray toward totalitarian societies where the rulers know how to get things done.

Rexford Guy Tugwell, one of FDR's chief economic advisors, thought his boss could learn a thing or two from both Stalin and Mussolini. ''It's the cleanest, neatest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen,'' he said after a trip to the Soviet Union. ''It makes me envious.'' A later visit to fascist Italy made an equal impression. ''Mussolini certainly has the same people opposed to him as FDR has,'' Tugford noted. ``But he has the press controlled so that they cannot scream lies at him daily.''

Some admirers of Castro's Cuba have, without a doubt, been communists -- for instance, the New Left activist and author Abbie Hoffman, whose flattery of Fidel Castro was fulsome if peculiar. (''He is like a mighty penis coming to life.'' With friends like that ...)

But others have been simple power groupies, including New York Times reporter Herbert Matthews, whose daftly admiring reports from Castro's guerrilla camps during the war against Batista almost single-handedly created the insouciantly charming image of Castro that persists to this day.

Before switching his affection to Castro, Matthews, too, had been an admirer of Mussolini. And his heroic portrait of the Italian army's 1932 invasion of Ethiopia infuriated Africans almost as much as his later stories did anti-Castro Cubans.

It was also Matthews who provided the rationale for subsequent generations of journalistic and political courtiers to avert their eyes from Castro's dark side: the show trials and their bloody aftermath, the squalid economy, the ramming of a tugboat full of women and children trying to escape Cuba. ''A revolution is not a tea party,'' Matthews wrote. On that, at least, we can all agree.

:eyes:

[EFerrari]

1. Are we sure this guy is not a troll in LBN?

lol

[Judi Lynn]

2. First time I've seen an exile drag out their "El 13 de Marzo" claim in years!

They sucked that spectacle dry long ago. They finally shut the #### up when they realized people were catching on to the fact the only first person account of the incident allegedly told the story to an "exile" in Miami who told the world.

The tugboat the Cuban emigrants commandeered was pointed toward the U.S. Cuban coast guard authorities knew the old shallow boat couldn't make it to the States, and went after it, intending to turn it back. The Miami "exiles" insist the Cuban Coast Guard sank it deliberately and the drownings of some of them were intentionally incurred by the Cuban government. Right.

Funny to see someone dragging this out again. Maybe they believe those of us who saw through their version back then have forgotten all about it! It had all the sincerity, the credibility of the "exiles' " claim that heavenly dolphins surrounded the child Elián Gonzalez and protected him throughout the trip from Cuba to the United States in the boat owned by his mother's ex-con boyfriend, Lázaro Rafael Munero. They were wildly confused about this, as the men who found the kid said they were out fishing for dolphin, the FISH, that day in their small boat when they saw him.

Here's a wonderful mural someone created to capture the meaning of the event!

~click to view~

http://cache.gettyimages.com.nyud.net:8090/xc/780203.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF193875DCB1DD8387ABBB62823F4D9113FF7284831B75F48EF45

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_KgBT8kIRgBo/SXi36ioawhI/AAAAAAAAE2Y/WwAHWu42sgg/s320/elian+mural.jpg

No, you're not on drugs. This is Miami religio/hysteric art

You notice the mean Bill Clinton, and someone who looks like Saddam Hussein up in the corner, as well as the nice Pope, and the kid's mother.

Speaking of dictators, too bad Miami's own Cuban "exile" blood/power hungry dictator, Jorge Mas Canosa isn't alive to get on this guy's list. He ruled Miami with an iron-fist, controlled national politicians and presidents, as well as our national foreign policy toward Cuba for all the years up to his death several years ago. He was one filthy bastard. He sponsored terrorism and murders for years, as revealed to the New York Times by bomber/mass murderer Luis Posada Carriles.

Oh, jeez! I just looked up "Glenn Garvin," the author of this drivel, and see he's the TV critic at the Miami Herald. Well, well, well! Looks like they had to send him in to replace some of those government-paid "journalists" at the Herald who were outed when _Bush was occupying his stolen Presidency.

http://media.miamiherald.com.nyud.net:8090/static/opinion/images/garvin.gif

GLENN! Nice work, Mr. future Pulitizer Prize winner!

[Mika]

3. The 13 de Marzo incident IS THE red meat of Miamicubano exile radio.

I think I've mentioned previously that I once participated in a local public radio sponsored "town hall" "discussion" on US/ Cuba policy, some time ago. Somehow I agreed to be on the panel (since I had been in Cuba during elections and a friend of mine knew the host, who seemed to be a fair guy in the pre show interview). In keeping with the intransigence of the RW exile mentality (LOL) my describing the election process in Cuba became de facto support for Castro (supposedly) murdering the drowned in the 13 de Marzo sinking. It had all of the other RW exile panelists screaming and finger pointing (at people "like me"). Scary shit. The host of the show, Joseph Cooper, referred to the lefties and pro trade conservative moderates on the panel as "the Castro supporters" despite our objections to the characterization. It was lively, and the RWers lied and dodged as usual, and "the Castro supporters" came with facts and figures that meant nothing to the booing and hissing rabid exile crowd who hate health care and education and democracy.
Was VERY scared to put the key in and start my car for a few months afterward. :scared:

[Judi Lynn]

4. Oh, mygawd. You commie demon, you! How dare you answer an invitation to a radio show discussion

and NOT babble the hard-liners' view on Cuba. You gotta remember you can only repeat what they tell you you can say about Cuba, or ELSE.

I remember when you said you'd started riding your bike to work. Is it connected in anyway to all the fingerpointing and hissing directed at you publicly that day?

What a let-down, however, seeing grown people acting like that. You'd never expect to end up sitting in the same room with so many hysterics without a friendly attendant or two to help out.

[EFerrari]

5. Mika, Judi, what is the strongest case that CANF has sponsored

terrorism? I'm going to go look but wanted to ask you two because you probably have a link just sitting there, doing nothing. :)

[Judi Lynn]

6. Here's a really quick answer, EFerrari. The bomber/mass murderer Luis Posada Carriles

named them in an interview with New York Times journalists Ann Louise Bardach and Larry Rohter!

Sunday - July 12, 1998


A BOMBER'S TALE: Part I

Taking Aim At Castro

Key Cuba Foe Claims Exiles' Backing

By ANN LOUISE BARDACH and LARRY ROHTER



MIAMI - A Cuban exile who has waged a campaign of bombings and assassination attempts aimed at toppling Fidel Castro says that his efforts were supported financially for more than a decade by the Cuban-American leaders of one of America's most influential lobbying groups.

The exile, Luis Posada Carriles, said he organized a wave of bombings in Cuba last year at hotels, restaurants and discotheques, killing an Italian tourist and alarming the Cuban Government. Mr. Posada was schooled in demolition and guerrilla warfare by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1960's.


In a series of tape-recorded interviews at a walled Caribbean compound, Mr. Posada said the hotel bombings and other operations had been supported by leaders of the Cuban-American National Foundation. Its founder and head, Jorge Mas Canosa, who died last year, was embraced at the White House by Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton.

A powerful force in both Florida and national elections, and a prodigious campaign donor, Mr. Mas played a decisive role in persuading Mr. Clinton to change his mind and follow a course of sanctions and isolation against Mr. Castro's Cuba.

Although the tax-exempt foundation has declared that it seeks to bring down Cuba's Communist Government solely through peaceful means, Mr. Posada said leaders of the foundation discreetly financed his operations. Mr. Mas personally supervised the flow of money and logistical support, he said.

''Jorge controlled everything,'' Mr. Posada said. ''Whenever I needed money, he said to give me $5,000, give me $10,000, give me $15,000, and they sent it to me.'' Over the years, Mr. Posada estimated, Mr. Mas sent him more than $200,000. ''He never said, 'This is from the foundation,' '' Mr. Posada recalled. Rather, he said with a chuckle, the money arrived with the message, ''This is for the church.''

More:
http://www.bardachreports.com/articles/nyt_19980712main.htm

More:

CANF and AIPAC are not banned from USA, becuz they are rightwing terrorist organizations
Submitted by yankhadenuf on Mon, 2008-06-30 04:55. Nonviolence
"The Cuban-American National Foundation Is a Terrorist Organization
by Salim Lamrani
August 18, 2006

On July 22, 2006, the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF) celebrated its 25th anniversary at the Hotel Biltmore in Coral Gables. However, the most powerful US-based extreme rightist Cuban organization, shaken by a new scandal, could not enjoy that party appropriately.
In fact, a month earlier, on June 22, 2006, Jose Antonio Llama, a former CANF director, revealed publicly what everyone knew for a long time: the CANF is a terrorist organization. Llama acknowledged that he, along with members of the organization´s hierarchy, had set up a paramilitary group to carry out attacks on Cuba and to assassinate its president, Fidel Castro <1>.
According to "Toñin", as his friends call him, the CANF had a cargo helicopter, ten ultra-light remote-controlled planes, seven boats, a Midnight Express speedboat and an unlimited amount of explosives. "We were impatient about the survival of the Castro regime after the demise of the Soviet Union and the socialist system. We wanted to speed up democratization in Cuba using any means to achieve it," he said <2>.
The 75-year-old former director explained, without omitting a detail, his terrorist career. For example, he underlined that the plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, planned in 1997 with four of his accomplices, during the Ibero-American Summit on Isla Margarita, Venezuela, was frustrated due to the interference of Puerto Rican authorities when they were on his boat La Esperanza. He and his acolytes were tried and acquitted in December 1999 due to… lack of evidence <3>.
After the trial, Llama distanced himself from the CANF, as the organization refused to pay for the legal expenses resulting from his trial and that of his partners. The revelations of this personage came to light as a result of a financial conflict with the Florida-based extremist organization. In fact, Llama accuses the CANF leaders of having embezzled 1.4 million dollars that he himself had contributed to set up the paramilitary wing. "Where are the boats and planes that I financed with my money? Where did they go? Who has the original titles?", he complained <4>.
Llama says that the project to organize terrorist attacks on Cuba was worked out at the CANF annual congress in June 1992. Businessman Miguel Angel Martinez presented the idea, saying that "much more than lobbying in Washington" had to be done to overthrow the Cuban government. Two presidents of the organization, Jose "Pepe" Hernandez and Jorge Mas Canosa, were appointed by other members to set up the terrorist faction. "We began to meet and consider everything we needed to buy", he recalled <5>.
According to Llama, other Cuban exiles joined the paramilitary faction, including Elpidio Nuñez, Horacio Garcia and Luis Zuñiga, who abandoned the CANF in 2001 to found the Council for the Liberty of Cuba (CLC), Erelio Peña, Raul Martinez, Fernando Ojeda, Domingo Sadurni, Arnaldo Monzon Plasencia and Angel Alfonso Aleman <6>.
The explosives were acquired through businessman Raul Lopez, who had participated in terrorist activities against Cuba in the 1960s. He owned a company authorized to buy explosives to open drainage canals for the sugar industry in South Florida, so he could supply dynamite to the criminal group <7>.
Jose "Pepin" Pujol, 76, a close friend of the famous terrorist Luis Posada Carriles´, had been in charge of buying the boats since 1993. "The title of the Pelican was on my name. The procedure was that I searched for the boats, Toñin made the down payment and Elpidio Nuñez was the guarantor," he pointed out <8>.

More:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/34430

These guys have been in over their heads in terrorism since the very first. I can look for more later, believe me there's a TON of material to read on the subject.

Some of their terrorism was carried out right in Miami itself to keep the flock submissive, and all dissent unexpressed. Some human rights organization stated in Miami free speech is endangered. I can get that statement, also.

[EFerrari]

7. See? Mil gracias, Judi Lynn!

:hi:

[Mika]

8. The Posada/Bosch bomb op of the Cuban airliner was funded by the CANF & Canosa.

Ann Louise Bardach interviewed Posada for the NYT in which he admitted the deed and the funding stream.

Batista's grandson defended Bosch in his immigration appeal. Then the grandson was appointed to the Fla. supreme court by Jeb.

Some of this is outlined in Webster Tarpley's unauthorized Bush biography. http://www.tarpley.net/bush1.htm

:hi:

[EFerrari]

9. Omg. Thanks, Mika.

:hi: