Vive Le Embargo!

The B.B.C. is not doing a we-love-Iran week – they are doing a whole season. All the crap one would expect (nasty oil companies did not give the Iranian government enough tax money for “their oil” [that it was the oil companies who found and developed the oil fields is not considered relevant], the revolutionary government overturned in 1953 were lovely people and Ike and Churchill were very wicked to help Iranians overthrow it and ………)

Nor is just special shows. For example, the nomal Radio Four “Today” programme on Wednesday the President of Iran’s (i.e. the ex terrorist and present organizer of terrorism) speech was given respectful examination – President Bush’s speech (given on the same day to the U.N.) was, of course, ignored.

Just as the 1200 (British time) Radio Four news totally ignored the landing of the Space Shuttle more than half an hour before – this was pro American story so it would not be dealt with till later (and only then in passing – even though nothing much happened in the news today).

One good thing about the 1950′s cars (some of which are still indeed running after fifty years of hard usage) – it proves that the big thing of the American left in the 1950′s “planned obsolescense” (the doctrine that evil business built things to fall apart so that poor customers would have to buy more of them) was a lie.

However, no doubt, this doctrine (like all of the left’s other doctrines) is still being taught in American colleges and in colleges around the world.

Having known a Miami Cuban or three, my answer would be ‘spite’ (or something close to it). They know in their heads that it probably helps keep Castro in power more that it hurts him (and certainly hurts everyday Cubans, including their relatives more than it hurts Castro) but giving it up would feel like a kind of defeat (certainly how it would be played in the Cuban media).

My own opinion is that engagement almost always is better than non-engagement and a few scumbags benefitting is a small price to pay for the reward of faster overall change.

how long would the purity of their socialist paradise last with the hordes of wealthy American tourists

I guess it would take a bit longer than a bullet from the end of a gun barrel to the heart of a “subversive capitalist sympathizer.”

Criminals don’t tend to be nice. Dictators don’t get much negative publicity from our free press (for some crazy reason).

I must believe Fidel found the US policy a relief and a respite and an opportunity for he and his friends to impliment their paradise undisturbed by outside influences.

The embargo has long been nothing but US internal politics. It is a bone to buy the votes of the Cuban expats and of little real use in any other way.

Yeah, if your a blood sucking despotic socialist, it sure doesn’t. In the workers paradise, the workers would see no benefit of a lifted embargo, only the fascist fat cats and their limpid acolytes in New York and L.A.

Quick, all you Castro groupies, get to Cuba soon so you can thrill to see al those nasty proletariat kept in their proper place.

Free enterprise, in name at least, is on the decline in Latin America.

Indeed. Mexico’s new president (elected by show of hands Saturday) is a leftist.