Liberty Alone

Via:

EDM 982
FIDEL CASTRO
20.02.2008
Burgon, Colin

That this House commends the achievements of Fidel Castro in securing first-class free healthcare and education provision for the people of Cuba despite the 44 year illegal US embargo of the Cuban economy; notes the great strides Cuba has taken during this period in many fields such as biotechnology and sport in both of which Cuba is a world leader; acknowledges the esteem in which Castro is held by the people and leaders of Africa, Asia and Latin America for leading the calls for emancipation of the world’s poorest people from slavery, hunger and the denial of human rights such as the right to life, the right to shelter, the right to healthcare and basic medicines and the right to education; welcomes the EU statement that constructive engagement with Cuba at this time is the most responsible course of action; and calls upon the Government to respect Cuba’s right to self-determination and resist the aggressive forces within the US Administration who are openly planning their own illegal transition in Cuba.

Signatures.

Colin Burgon

I think an MP with a clue (they must exist…) should post a responding EDM, commiserating the people of Cuba for the years of dictatorship and the poverty which it has caused. Calling on the government to condemn the lack of civil liberties, the state sponsored killings of dissidents and the work camps for homosexuals and calling on the government to call for a peaceful transition to a liberal democracy which respects human dignity and the rights of the individual.
By all means condemn the US embargo, its an idiotic policy which has the opposite effect of the one intended (just like most government policy then) but Cuba has many trading partners, the US embargo does not have the effect Castro’s supporters say.

I’d love a LibDem MP to create such an EDM. Show that we’re not some bunch left-wing relics, but we believe in liberty and oppose the enemies of freedom wherever they are to be found.

Finally, what uproar there would have been for an EDM supporting Pinochet (for example). Yet a more brutal dictator is lauded by these idiots. I wonder how many would praise Stalin?

James Schneider points me at Danny Finkelstein’s list of why Castro is no hero.

I’ve also come across this which debunks many of the left’s apologies of Castro.

Lastly, here’s an economist who’s recently been to Cuba.

So, unless the program of the left is mass poverty, a rich elite abusing their power, the enslavement of minorities and executing dissidents, unless the left supports a clamp down on freedom of speech and expression, the freedom to trade and freedom of movement, unless it is sufficient to spout hollow rhetoric whilst oppressing ordinary people, Castro is no hero of the left, he’s only a hero of the despot and tyrant, of the power hungry oligarch.

I do not believe, unlike some, that the modern left wants these things. Of course, there will always be some, who see the opportunities that socialism and the modern left give for gaining power, but members of the movement as a whole, however misguided their policies be, do not want these things. Instead they seem driven by anti-American zeal and factional loyalty to utter such idiotic support for the monsters their movement has created.