Oh, and for the record, PLEASE don’t think I’m in any way defending Castro. He’s a brutal thug and I wish he would be overthrown.
However, when we tried, we only united the Cuban people behind him. (Probably because they were so sick of the the US controlling Cuba previously).
So, it’s a shitty situation.
Well in 1961, Fidel Castro probably did gain the genuine support of the vast majority of Cubans. But I am imagining that even the loyalists (the working class and peasant people who his revulution really did benefit in concrete ways) are starting to wonder what Cuba is coming too. This is just part of a much wider crackdown.
What makes this crackdown bad is that things were looking up. The Pope came. America was becoming very isolated in its embargo. European, Canadian, and Latin American opinion was heavily on his side. The Elian Gonzalez fiasco discredited a lot of the more virulent oponents of Castro in Florida. Mas Canosa died. Jesse Helms retired. Chavez, Lula, and other sympathetic leftists were freely elected in Latin America. U.S. Governors went to Havana to denounce the embargo and form new trade relationships. Carter came and spoke on national TV unhindered. Project Varela was off the ground…
…and now with the eyes of the world elsewhere, Castro went overboard with repression. I think he is risking real trouble, not just from neo-cons with a sudden bravado with third world dictators, but his own people - whose hopes for some change are getting dashed.
Exactly. Castro’s time is long gone.
Do you have any basis for doubting the competency of the “attourneys”? BTW, the USA has come under criticism for precisely that: executing people who were not provided with adequate defense. You are aware of that aren’t you?
Personally I can’t see why you need eight years to try someone but, in any case, it’s their system. I hope you recognize other countries the right to have their own system and not to have to adopt the one you would prefer.
They didn’t murder anyone but they hijacked a vessel and threatened to murder which is a terrorist act by any definition, including the US definition. The hijacking is an extremely dangerous act which puts many lives at risk. I do not think it deserves the death penalty but, then again, most of the civilized world does not believe any crime deserves the death penalty. The USA is one of the very few developed countries which impose the death penalty and is in the good company of Cuba and China in this respect. If the USA has the sovereign power to decide what crimes warrant the death penalty, then I hope you will recognize the right of other countries to do the same thing.
Furthermore, we should take into account that Cuba is a country under siege which has founded fears of outside aggression. The USA under threats which come nowhere near having any possibility of succeeding in invading or destroying the USA has reacted with general panic and a general restriction of human and civil rights. If the USA was in a situation comparable to Cuba you could bet that Americans would consider anything was justified in order to save the country.
Sailor, I am not blind to these things. What is irritating is that the same people who rightfully assail this in the United States often make flimsy apologies for the Castro Regime. That is what the OP is about too if you read it carefully.
I’m sorry, but this is just absurd. Death penalty cases in the US take such a long time because there is a lengthy appeal process – i.e., the case is reviewed multiple times by different courts to be sure that everything was done correctly. And even then, there is a substantial chance for errors in the process.
One week is not enough time to prepare for a single capital trial, much less have the results of that trial reviewed on appeal. It is not enough time for the lawyers to interview witnesses, to gather evidence, to seat a jury, etc., etc., etc. I don’t think there’s any way you can go from commission of the crime to execution in one week and still say the defendants had anything remotely resembling a fair trial.
But hey, it’s OK because “it’s their system,” right? Hell, why not a summary execution on the spot? If that’s “their system,” then it’s just a matter of preference and they have a right to it, correct?
Nobody here is defending the Cuban government. As I said, I am playing Devil’s advocate and, sadly, while we may all consider the Cuban government as morally wrong, there are a lot of legal arguments in defense of their actions and, sadly, a lot of those arguments are bolstered by the actions of the USA. Arguments cut both ways.
I am of the opinion that human rights are inherent to all humans of whatever nationality and that national sovereignty is no excuse for the abuse of human rights. Many nations agree with this principle and are voluntarily cooperating in treaties and institutions which allow for cooperation in these things. This can only be good. That nations would voluntarily agree to subject their disputes to international mediation or arbitration can only be a good thing as it removes tensions and resolves problems. Now, when a country like the USA has been notoriously uncooperative in this regard and has refused to sign a number of international treaties and pretty much has the attitude of “we do whatever the fuck we please because we are sovereign” then, that nation should not be surprised when other nations use the same argument.
Many (most) developed and democratic countries are against the death penalty, against the use of land mines, against the use of cluster bombs and against a long list of other things which the USA continues to do just because they can. All those nations believe those things are wrong but the USA could not care less about what anyone else thinks. The USA is repeatedly telling the rest of the world with its words and its actions that it could not care less about what others think. Now, why would or should Cuba or any other nation care about what the USA thinks? What gives the USA the right to tell anyone what to do? It has lost all moral authority to do that. I wish it hadn’t but it has. It has taken a path of acting unilaterally and of confrontation with the rest of the world and it should not be surprised if the rest of the world tells them to fuck off. If the USA does not need to listen to anyone why would anyone have to listen to the USA?
Other than that, as I have said many times in my posts about Cuba, the Cuban government has no redeeming qualities. Nobody here is defending their actions as right.
So the fact that the US hasn’t signed the Kyoto accords lends credence to Cuba’s farcical trial processes? Spare me.
The US uses land mines that defuse themselves after a certain time. Given that the rationale behind banning land mines is that they exist long after a conflict ends, endangering the civilian population, the US’s use of them is hardly a terrible thing. If we can protect our troops while still looking out for future civilian populations, why shouldn’t we? Isn’t the argument made by those against land mines inapplicable to the US’s use of them?
The death penalty is a contested point among western states. I hardly think its status as immoral or unjust is as well-settled as the view that full and fair trials are critical to a free state.
When the US tells the world to stick it, it typically has an argument with some merit. That’s not to say the US is always right – it isn’t – but it generally has at least an arguable basis for going it alone when it chooses to do so. Reasonable minds can differ on the overall validity of those bases, but I think most folks will agree that the positions the US stakes out are not wholly without merit. I can see no such basis for the actions of the Castro regime. They are wholly without merit. It is folly to compare US action to that of the Cuban government.
I am not defending the Cuban system, I am saying that every time the USA refuses to cooperate and take into account the wishes of other countries (kyoto, International Court of Justice, cluster bombs, human rights of prisoners they have in Guantanamo, invading Iraq, etc, etc, etc etc) they are effectively losing any moral authority to ask any other country to play along with them. That’s all.
You are starting from the basis that your values are the good ones and that is not the way it works. It is the consensus of nations which decides what the values are and if the USA effectively tells the rest of the world to take a hike then it cannot ask them to play along. To get along you have to go along and the USA is pretty much refusing to go along with anyone.
I am not going to defend Cuban justice but, frankly, any system which takes 8 or 10 years to figure out if a guy deserves a punishment is a lousy system. Any trial which takes 10 years is a waste of time and money and, when it concludes the result is meaningless. Seeing how often US courts reach lousy conclusions I might prefer speedier administration of justice as they could not do much worse. Justice delayed is justice denied in many senses. The American legal system leaves a lot to be desired.
Ehh, you guys take eight years to kill someone, they take eight days. Either way it’s an abuse of human rights.
Yeah, Castro’s a bad guy. It will be good when he’s gone.
BTW, how much freedom did the Cubans enjoy under Bastista?
Castro is a dictator, certainly more benevolent than some. I’m not convinced Cubans were living in paradise under Batista. At least Castro was interested in educating and providing health care to his people, y’know, not all dictators share that interest.
I know many Cubans, and many of those in Miami are as unobjective, even more unobjective, as the apologists you slag. I have talked to many Cubans about this, in Cuba and elsewhere. They do not see Castro as a fatherly figure, but they do not see him as evil and a contempible criminal either. Many do manage their own businesses, albeit in a restricted, unfair manner.
Many people were surprised that Amnesty International concentrated its efforts on America in 1998. America does not have a very good human rights record compared to many WICs, seeing as it is one of the few to execute children and given the remarkable racial skew of the two million incarcerated citizens. Castro is no saint and unworthy of leftist idolization, but enjoying freedom is about more than empty words. America should get its own house in order. America has always found its own share of insipid apologists.
Hold on there, buddy. Cite? Is the death penalty even an option in the juvenile justice system?
<still hijacking>
Were they under the age of 18 when executed? If not, they’re not executing children; they’re executing people who were sentenced to death while they were juveniles.
I looked for a cite giving the offenders’ ages at the time of execution, but I couldn’t find one. Nevertheless, I find it difficult to believe that, given the extended appeals process in the U.S., there are many people here being executed before their 18th birthdays.
Anyhow, I don’t like hijacks any more than the next person, so I’ll drop this now and we can start another thread if more info surfaces.
</hijack>
I find your post mildly puzzling, ** Juniper 200**. Is there some difference you find between executing a 14 year old for a crime comitted when he was 14 and executing a 19 year old for a crime he comitted when he was 14?
Yes, because executing a 14-year-old is executing a child, whereas executing a 19-year-old (or someone who has passed that nebulous threshold of adulthood that plagues juvenile justice) is executing an adult. To take you inside my head for this argument, I’m thinking that the age when the crime was committed makes no difference; what matters is the age at execution.
I guess it boils down to my having a semantic issue with Dr_Paprika’s original statement that the U.S. executes children. Whether we execute children and whether the death penalty is a sentencing option for juveniles are different kettles of fish. I contend that children are not executed. Children may be sentenced to death, but they are very rarely (if ever) excuted in the modern-day United States. Adults, however, are sometimes executed for crimes they committed as children.
I don’t want to have a discussion here about the ethics of the death penalty in general or of the death penalty in regards to juvenile offenders in specific. My original request for a cite was based on a quibble of semantics that I didn’t fully explain the first time around.
On the matter if the death penalty the USA is at odds with the rest of the advanced, democratic, nations and in tune with China, Cuba, North Korea . . . Say what you want but it just doesn’t look good on a resume.
Man, I’m gonna have to start signing on during the weekend.
I’m only gonna jump in here and say a couple of things about the comparisons of Castro and Batista. Batista actually held power for a total of 18 years, 8 years after a coup in 1958, another 6 years after a coup in 1933, and was elected president, in a pretty much fair and open election in 1940. He served one term and was defeated in 1944, in another pretty open and fair election.
In the pre-1933 years Cuba had a functioning, but not very open, democracy, and between 1940 and 1952 Cuba’s democracy was tops in the Latin American world. In fact it was praised by Castro himself during his 1953 trial after his own failed coup, as follows:
Castro took power in 1958, and has held power in Cuba since then, for +44 years. In all those years there has not been one single open election, people can not assemble, speak, or write in complete freedom, as illustrated by recent events. There is only one political party, and one trade union, all others are illegal.
Was Batista good for Cuba or Cubans? Among other things he destroyed a nascent democracy that might have been a model for the rest of the 3rd world. He was a brutal and repressive dictator, but all told, when compared to Castro the man was small potatoes.
For those who would point to Cuba’s “logros” of high literacy rates, and socialized medicine, I’d point you to this document that compares rates of literacy, health, and diet between Latin American countries 1950’s and 1990’s. You’ll see that 1. Cuba was not that far down the list in the 1950’s and a number of countries in Latin America have caught and passed Cuba. All without having to endure +44 years of a repressive dictatorship.
bayonet, I don’t think anyone’s arguing that Castro’s rule is preferable to the series of governments the typical Latin American country has had over the past 44 years. If anyone in this thread disagrees with the assertion that Castro’s a repressive dictator, I’ve missed it.
However, even among repressive dictators, there’s a continuum. Castro’s not as bad as Saddam was, and Saddam in turn wasn’t nearly as evil as Pol Pot. “Not as bad as Saddam” still isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, needless to say.
Another cite to add to the list in the OP (not online, unfortunately) is “Castro’s Casting Couch” from the April 2003 Washington Monthly. It’s about the Hollywood types who suck up to Castro, while ignoring the repression he’s fostered.
And I’d like to thank the OP for accurately pointing its guns at that minority of lefties who are pro-Castro, rather than tarring all of us liberals with the same brush.