June 04, 2004
Counter-Counterpunch
I just read this article in Counterpunch and right after I picked myself off the floor from laughing so damn hard at the stupidity of it, fired off an email to the "writer":
Mr. Morris,
I have just finished reading your "article" on Cuba and WMD's and can only come to the conclusion that, while you may be a doctoral student at a highly regarded university, you either have no idea what you are talking about or you have simply been duped by the Castro propaganda machinery.
Yes, it's true that Cuba has universal healthcare. Yes it is true that they have a slew of doctors and nurses per capita. But this "healthcare" you so adamantly laud is a farce, a ruse. Hospital wards close on a weekly basis in Cuba. Surgeries can't be performed because there's no rubber gloves. Medicines cannot be distributed among the people for they a stockpiled for the elite and the tourist class.
I ask you, do you know any Cubans? Do you know any Cubans living in the states? If you did, you might be aware of the fact that we are constantly being written and asked for simple medicines such as aspirin. Women in Cuba must get on a list and wait six months for sanitary napkins. And please, do not blame this lack of medicinal supplies on the embargo. The embargo allows for the export of medicine to the island. Always has. Dollar stores in Cuba have anything and everything available for purchase. Of course, it would be mighty difficult to buy a $2 bottle of Bayer if your monthly income is only $8.
You also laud the educational system which, while it may be true that said education is among the best, it is also true that this eductaion also serves the Castro regime. Children are indoctrinated in these schools. Forced to regurgitate the communist dogma that now strangles the island. A dogma that despite your personal affinity for, history has proven does not work. Beautiful maybe in it's ideal maybe, but completely unworkable in reality.
Did you know that every cuban student must spend time in "la agricultura", the fields, where they are forced to cut cane and reap tobacco for weeks at a time? All the while having to meet daily quotas? Bet you didnt find that anywhere in your I love Castro brochure.
You also boast of Cuba's infant mortality rate, but did you know that 6 out of ten prenancies are aborted in Cuba? Did you know the regime pays for young girls to abort their fetuses so that the embryos may be used for research and to remedy certain ailments for tourists?
How an educated person such as yourself can honestly laud and cheer the Castro government while at the same time that government has the most journalists encarcerated than any other country in the world is beyond understanding. This same article you have published at Counterpunch would have been edited, censored and perhaps even not published under Castro's system.
I ask you, what good is an education if you are not allowed to use it? What good is a literacy rate when the government controls what you can and cannot read? What good is learning if you cannot apply your intellect to what you believe in?
You condemn the US for being criticized by the UN and other nations, yet Cuba has a long history of human rights violations which you ignore.
You should definitely try to stop seeing the world through your rosy spectacles of student grants and dorms and theses. The real world isnt about hypotheticals, it's about realities, something you have lost your grip on but the Cuban people are more than familiar with.
Valentin J. Prieto
Cuban-American
www.babalublog.com
UPDATE: What is it about beards? Here's a picture of Mr. Morris at a protest back in 2003:
(Photo from The Digital Collegian)
Thanks to Oceanguy for the link.
Posted by Val Prieto at June 4, 2004 07:28 AM
Comments
Good job, Val! I can't wait to hear what, if anything, you get back from this clown.
Posted by: Craig at June 4, 2004 07:42 AM
I'd love to see an answer too. I wouldn't hold my breath, but I'd love to see one.
Posted by: paul at June 4, 2004 08:18 AM
Poor kid has a school boy crush on Castro and Castro's political PR machine. He's just a young, naive little boy, and his article--a piece of unmitigated hero worship--is a love letter to his hero.
Of course, he would probably never leave his country--a country filled with convenience and ease, even for someone as obviously useless as himself--for the deprivations of living as a common man in Cuba. If he had the strength of his convictions--and if those convictions were something more than the vaguest stirrings of thought in his inexperienced head--he would throw off the shackles of this horrible capitalist society and beg Castro for asylum. If he then had any integrity, he would insist that he live a common life, not the life of a pampered and privileged guest of the state.
My guess is that after a few weeks of his socialist getaway, he'd be on the first home-made boat back to the friendly shores of the US. I wonder how far his political compass would have shifted in that time?
Posted by: zombyboy at June 4, 2004 09:43 AM
Valentin J. Prieto
Cuban-American
www.babalublog.com
You're cuban?
Yes, please let us know if he responds. Great letter! --s
Posted by: J.Scott Barnard at June 4, 2004 10:52 AM
Here's an article with a photo of Senor Morris at an anti-War rally last year at Penn State.
Is that a Che t-shirt under that pullover?
Posted by: oceanguy at June 4, 2004 12:37 PM
That was a great response....what is it with these people and their talking points?????
Posted by: Stacy at June 4, 2004 08:24 PM
Now that I see the picture I understand completely...
Posted by: paul at June 7, 2004 12:49 PM
you surf counter-punch. you are brave. evcerytime i try to go there, my body begins to involuntarily spasm from all the b.s. that's posted there.
Posted by: tony at June 7, 2004 10:14 PM
Read the article. God, what a wonderful place. Wonder why he is not emigrating? Maybe he can explain how the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution work? I know he doesn't know any of my Cuban friends. What ails people like him?
Posted by: Tim at June 7, 2004 11:15 PM
Right after I read your answer to the Counterpunch article I have the same reaction. I picked myself off the floor from laughing so damn hard at the stupidity of it.
You too don't know nothing about Cuba. And I'm sure of what I'm saying because I live here, my all family live here.
Posted by: Olga at July 3, 2004 12:36 PM