NJ Leftists vs. NY Leftists vs. Castro (how's a poor conservative to choose?)
When you're in a position of having to call out the Village Voice, Amnesty International, and Reporters Without Borders for being too far to the right, maybe it's time to stop, get your bearings straight, and ask yourself just how far off the reservation you've strayed. Nat Hentoff of the Voice (beloved by ATM hippies everywhere) has been on an absolute tear here, here, and here about 75 Cuban dissenters - 10 of whom are librarians - who have been given prison sentences of 20 or more years for, you know, thinking. Castro's status as a darling of the Left always triggers interesting (if oh so depressing) fratricidal battles among those on the American political spectrum who really feel bad about all that nasty violence stuff and wish it would just stop.
So far, this story has been pretty much buried by the popular press. But take a look-see at the debate occurring within the hallowed halls of the Leftist... um... community. This is from the most recent Hentoff article:
Ann Sparanese, a member of the governing Council of the American Library Association, has written a letter to the Voice criticizing my columns about Fidel Castro's prison sentences of 20 and more years for 75 Cuban dissenters, including 10 independent librarians...
She is exercising her First Amendment right to speak for herself—the basis for the intellectual freedom, including the freedom to read, that until now the ALA has considered fundamental to people everywhere.
At an upcoming midwinter meeting in San Diego, from January 9 to 14, the ALA plans to decide whether it will indeed live up to its principles and finally support the locked-up independent librarians in Cuba. It has refused so far.
Now, you may get distracted with disgust when you remember Ms. Sparanese as the New Jersey librarian that Michael Moore credits with making sure that his book Stupid White Men got published, but please try to focus on the current situation. The American Library Association - the same organization that has taken the ohhh-look-at-how-brave-and-Leftist-we-are stance of refusing to cooperate with all of the mountain of non-existent search warrants that have been issued under the Patriot Act - is refusing to condemn Castro for locking up librarians who handed out (wait for it) books! Cowardice in the face of human rights atrocities (not to mention astonishing latitude granted to regimes that emit even the slightest hint of anti-Americanism) are things that we've come to expect from the (far) Left. Fair enough. But try not be shocked at how Sparanese defends Castro:
"Also, Hentoff is mistaken about why the dissidents are in prison. The laws under which they were convicted criminalize collaboration with, or aid to, a foreign power seeking to overthrow the Cuban government. The Law of Protection of the Independence of the National Independence and Economy of Cuba (Law 88) was passed in 1999 in direct reaction to the passage of the Helms-Burton Law by the U.S. Congress in 1996. Helms-Burton tightens the economic embargo against Cuba and appropriates millions of our tax dollars every year for the overthrow of the Cuban government, euphemistically referred to as 'transition.'
"Those arrested were convicted of receiving aid from U.S. agents for the purposes of regime change, not for distributing copies of 1984. Even Amnesty International devotes quite a bit of ink to the role of U.S. policy in creating conditions for the 'crackdown' in Cuba.
You may encounter a problem when trying to make sense of that statement. At first, you find yourself overwhelmed by the sheer shamelessness and moral equivalence that Sparanese displays. And in fairness to you, it's tough to get past the fact that she's blaming Jesse Helms for Castro's crackdown. But it's dangerous to sputter too long about that, because then you might miss the fact that what we have here is a leftist activist saying that it's OK for a government to crack down on protesters!! She's saying that if an activist threatens the stability of a statist regime, that regime is fully within its rights to throw said activist in jail!! Imagine the sheer hypocrisy and doublethink that it takes for someone like her to write a sentence like that. You missed that the first time, didn't you? Well, that's what we're here for.
But we're not through yet! Because we here at dejafoo are basically whores for attention, we're officially nominating her for an Andrew Sullivan Sontag Award:
"And Cuba is not the only country to forbid the influx of foreign support to subvert its political process; so does the United States. The Helms-Burton Law and the USA Patriot Act are both overreaching U.S. laws which jeopardize civil liberties here and in Cuba. Both should be repealed. Without Helms-Burton, the Cuban laws would lose their rationale and those imprisoned might be freed. Many of us disdain the idea that our cherished professional values should be enlisted in the service of the wrong-headed and provocative foreign policy of our own government."
Where do you begin with this? Well, again, one’s first reaction may be to address it purely on the level of content. Hentoff, for instance, fires off this more-liberal-than-thou response:
I welcome Ann Sparanese's letter because in answering it, I can prove the brutal fact that even if the Helms-Burton Law and the USA Patriot Act were repealed, Fidel Castro's pervasive repression of dissenters in Cuba would not abate, since it is the very foundation of his rule. Also, there remains a division among the American left regarding Castro's recent crackdown that needs answering.
As for Victor Arroyo, I cited in my column a report by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, an organization that exposes the silencing of journalists, often at some peril to its own members.
The 52-year-old Arroyo was charged with having an independent library, Reyes Magos, in the city of Pinar Del Río. The prosecutors added, underlining the gravity of his crime, that the library had some 6,000 volumes.
But ultimately, that's a pretty unsatisfying, if predictable, response. I'm not sure what Hentoff's politics are (I can guess), but he seems to think that the problem with Cuba is "Castro's recent crackdown." He’s probably unwilling to criticize the concept of an egalitarian worker’s paradise, which is really where any discussion of Castro should start. So an alternative, potentially more satisfying, explanation for all of the things that are wrong with Cuba might involve the idea that it's a brutal dictatorship rife with nepotistic excess and political corruption where people are denied even the most basic civil liberties. That, at least, would be a start – we’re just trying to help. (Hat Tip: Bookslut)
So far, this story has been pretty much buried by the popular press. But take a look-see at the debate occurring within the hallowed halls of the Leftist... um... community. This is from the most recent Hentoff article:
Ann Sparanese, a member of the governing Council of the American Library Association, has written a letter to the Voice criticizing my columns about Fidel Castro's prison sentences of 20 and more years for 75 Cuban dissenters, including 10 independent librarians...
She is exercising her First Amendment right to speak for herself—the basis for the intellectual freedom, including the freedom to read, that until now the ALA has considered fundamental to people everywhere.
At an upcoming midwinter meeting in San Diego, from January 9 to 14, the ALA plans to decide whether it will indeed live up to its principles and finally support the locked-up independent librarians in Cuba. It has refused so far.
Now, you may get distracted with disgust when you remember Ms. Sparanese as the New Jersey librarian that Michael Moore credits with making sure that his book Stupid White Men got published, but please try to focus on the current situation. The American Library Association - the same organization that has taken the ohhh-look-at-how-brave-and-Leftist-we-are stance of refusing to cooperate with all of the mountain of non-existent search warrants that have been issued under the Patriot Act - is refusing to condemn Castro for locking up librarians who handed out (wait for it) books! Cowardice in the face of human rights atrocities (not to mention astonishing latitude granted to regimes that emit even the slightest hint of anti-Americanism) are things that we've come to expect from the (far) Left. Fair enough. But try not be shocked at how Sparanese defends Castro:
"Also, Hentoff is mistaken about why the dissidents are in prison. The laws under which they were convicted criminalize collaboration with, or aid to, a foreign power seeking to overthrow the Cuban government. The Law of Protection of the Independence of the National Independence and Economy of Cuba (Law 88) was passed in 1999 in direct reaction to the passage of the Helms-Burton Law by the U.S. Congress in 1996. Helms-Burton tightens the economic embargo against Cuba and appropriates millions of our tax dollars every year for the overthrow of the Cuban government, euphemistically referred to as 'transition.'
"Those arrested were convicted of receiving aid from U.S. agents for the purposes of regime change, not for distributing copies of 1984. Even Amnesty International devotes quite a bit of ink to the role of U.S. policy in creating conditions for the 'crackdown' in Cuba.
You may encounter a problem when trying to make sense of that statement. At first, you find yourself overwhelmed by the sheer shamelessness and moral equivalence that Sparanese displays. And in fairness to you, it's tough to get past the fact that she's blaming Jesse Helms for Castro's crackdown. But it's dangerous to sputter too long about that, because then you might miss the fact that what we have here is a leftist activist saying that it's OK for a government to crack down on protesters!! She's saying that if an activist threatens the stability of a statist regime, that regime is fully within its rights to throw said activist in jail!! Imagine the sheer hypocrisy and doublethink that it takes for someone like her to write a sentence like that. You missed that the first time, didn't you? Well, that's what we're here for.
But we're not through yet! Because we here at dejafoo are basically whores for attention, we're officially nominating her for an Andrew Sullivan Sontag Award:
"And Cuba is not the only country to forbid the influx of foreign support to subvert its political process; so does the United States. The Helms-Burton Law and the USA Patriot Act are both overreaching U.S. laws which jeopardize civil liberties here and in Cuba. Both should be repealed. Without Helms-Burton, the Cuban laws would lose their rationale and those imprisoned might be freed. Many of us disdain the idea that our cherished professional values should be enlisted in the service of the wrong-headed and provocative foreign policy of our own government."
Where do you begin with this? Well, again, one’s first reaction may be to address it purely on the level of content. Hentoff, for instance, fires off this more-liberal-than-thou response:
I welcome Ann Sparanese's letter because in answering it, I can prove the brutal fact that even if the Helms-Burton Law and the USA Patriot Act were repealed, Fidel Castro's pervasive repression of dissenters in Cuba would not abate, since it is the very foundation of his rule. Also, there remains a division among the American left regarding Castro's recent crackdown that needs answering.
As for Victor Arroyo, I cited in my column a report by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, an organization that exposes the silencing of journalists, often at some peril to its own members.
The 52-year-old Arroyo was charged with having an independent library, Reyes Magos, in the city of Pinar Del Río. The prosecutors added, underlining the gravity of his crime, that the library had some 6,000 volumes.
But ultimately, that's a pretty unsatisfying, if predictable, response. I'm not sure what Hentoff's politics are (I can guess), but he seems to think that the problem with Cuba is "Castro's recent crackdown." He’s probably unwilling to criticize the concept of an egalitarian worker’s paradise, which is really where any discussion of Castro should start. So an alternative, potentially more satisfying, explanation for all of the things that are wrong with Cuba might involve the idea that it's a brutal dictatorship rife with nepotistic excess and political corruption where people are denied even the most basic civil liberties. That, at least, would be a start – we’re just trying to help. (Hat Tip: Bookslut)
