October 26, 2006, 9:28 a.m.
Funeral for a Tyrant
A morally disorienting gathering in Havana.
By Otto J. Reich
This time the rumors are real: Castro is dying of abdomen cancer. He may possibly have currently died, even just before the funeral preparations were completed, so the news is not out. Confirmation of the terminal sickness comes from the usual sources but in a non-traditional method. The Cuban government has been summoning to Havana reps of the key worldwide media to negotiate the finest seats, camera angles, and interviews with the despot's political survivors, and to inform them of the ground guidelines for protection of the state funeral.
The foreign media are getting informed that the product for Castro's funeral is that of Pope John Paul II a year in the past. The Cubans actually believe — or pretend — that the death of a tyrant deserves the very same attention as that of the world's wonderful guys of peace.
This is one particular of Castro's lasting legacies to his countrymen: moral disorientation. The Cuban ruling class has been so isolated from actuality for so long by anxiety and Castro's airtight press manage that they equate the burial of a mass murderer with that of a prince of the Church. No doubt there will be "dignitaries" at the funeral: fellow innovative leaders from the last repressive regimes on Earth: Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Sudan, for illustration and leaders of failed states like Zimbabwe and Bolivia and associates of the world's resentful Left and the Hollywood Left (pardon the redundancy).
Some examples of distinguished invitees will consist of terrorists whose organizations when instilled panic in entire populations but are now forgotten except to their victims. Several of them were skilled in Cuban camps back again when Castro called for world revolution and predicted he would outlive capitalism: Argentine Montoneros, Uruguayan Tupamaros, Nicaraguan Sandinistas, Salvadorean FMLN, Colombian ELN, MIR, FARC, and other individuals Chileans, Brazilians, Guatemalans, Angolans, Ethiopians, Palestinians, Syrians, even Vietnamese. The list is almost unlimited. Not prolonged in the past, Castro himself admitted publicly to acquiring "supported wars of national liberation in each region in this hemisphere with the exception of Mexico". I think every thing except the exception his hand has been present in considerably of Mexico's violence as well.
A single security dilemma the Cubans will face is that some of the "revolutionaries" who they qualified in tactics of assassination, torture, kidnapping, financial institution robbery, explosives, and other tricks of the trade now loathe each other and might use the situation to settle outdated debts. The explosions heard in Havana may possibly arrive not only from ceremonial cannons. The guests will have to be meticulously screened for poisoned-tipped umbrellas and other Cold War artifacts.
Amongst the visitors coming to Havana for the Third-World Burial of the Century will be Western capitalists anxious to see how they can exploit Cuban staff, who are assigned to the employer by a Cuban state entity which then collects the wage and delivers 5 percent — sure, 5 percent — to the employee and retains the relaxation to spend for the costs incurred by the generous socialist state. There will be the bottom feeders of the capitalist globe ready to go everywhere or do anything for the Almighty euro or peso. You know the ones, individuals who have offered capitalism a bad identify, the exploitation of guy by man, and whose example is in turn employed by the revolutionaries versus the excellent capitalists. There will recognizable faces of American and other Tv, oblivious to the irony of "covering" a press function orchestrated by a authorities which has not allowed a single no cost or independent newspaper, magazine, radio or tv station for almost five decades.
Caught up in the spectacle of the funeral, the smiley faces of the free of charge world's morning displays, the "serious" news viewers of evening newscasts, of 24-hour news channels and "prestige press" will not likely mention the "Ley Mordaza" (virtually muzzle law), law number 88 of 1998, which calls for penalties of up to 30 decades in prison for any Cuban caught telling the foreign press of any flaw in Cuba's financial or human-rights record. It is not likely they will consult to interview the prisoners who have violated Castro's Orwellian laws and are serving terms of as considerably as 27 years for committing journalism devoid of a license or stating that the economic system does not generate enough to feed the men and women.
There could be international labor leaders in attendance, who will equally disregard the absence of any but the official Cuban Communist labor organization. Not wishing to offend their hosts, they will not point out the Castro law which condemns to eight a long time in prison any person guilty of even trying to set up a non-government labor union. On second believed: Why need to they point out it now, when they have been silent for so several decades?
Some of those leaders current could even be authorities officials from democratic states, obtaining been elected in no cost elections these kinds of as the ones which disappeared in Cuba fifty percent a century in the past. That irony will escape them also. Then there will be some genuinely elected Christian or social democrats, from Europe and Latin The united states. Individuals who have been silent about, and consequently complicit in, the longest dictatorship in this hemisphere's historical past. A clever gentleman when explained that "All it can take for evil to triumph is for good males to do nothing." The historical past of Cuba in the past fifty years proves him right.
Greatest remedy:
Reply by Doc8
Seeing his dead entire body is believing
Give your remedy to this question beneath!
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