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great post

Armando Lago is a brilliant scholar. He's the author of "The Politics of Psychiatry in Revolutionary Cuba." I saw him on a documentary produced by the tireless anti-Castro filmmaker Agustin Blazquez entitled, "Covering Cuba" in which Lago talks about how he was rejected on American TV. They refused to interview him because--if I remember correctly--they said that the public was not interested in hearing about psychiatric abuse in Cuba. Remember, this is the same media that would on a daily basis broadcast Pinochet and Apartheid South Africa's smallest infraction!

About National Geographic, that publication has become so pro-Castro, it can give the NYT's a run for it's money. Not too long ago, they had a special on PBS on Cuba's flora and fauna and it was so politicized that I had to rub my ears I couldn't believe what I was hearing! Not only did NG praise Castro's efforts in safeguarding Cuba's nature [this is the same man who has turned Havana's bay into one of the most polluted in the world, allows Canadian Sherritt international to strip mine in Cuba-- even though strip mining is outlawed in Canada--and who has cut down thousands of old growth Cuban trees], but it also made a plug for lifting the embargo! So, I'm not surprised that NG did not mention Castro's genocide.

I hope that Dr. Lago's project receives the attention in the MSM that it deserves, though I won't hold my breath.

National Geographic was once a solid pro American institution even in the 1960s, but as of late, like all institutions they have been infiltrated by the Left. I don't read it anymore because for me the wonderment I had as a child with old copies of NG and travels and adventures in exotic lands has been gone for a long time now. NG is soft on Cuba and on Castro as is all of the MSM which NG is a part of now.

Note that Cuba is on the list at Genocide Watch.
Lago and Werlau deserve all our support, indeed, there will be a day of reckoning and their carefully documented list will stand as witness.

http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocidetable2005.htm

Ziva,

Thanks for bringing that to our attention, but did you notice how Genocide Watch undercounted the number of dead in Cuba and how they started in 1945? I'm not defending Batista, but by including Batista in the count, it trivializes Castro's tyranny and political murders. Cuba had years of relative peace even while Batista was in power. It was only during the later 50s that things started getting hot. And I'm not defending political murders here, but many times, the Cubans who where killed by the Batista dictatorship were terrorists, some exploted bombs in public theatres and department stores and committed all sorts of mayhem. An example: my mother tells me that next to her house, a man was sitting with his family watching tv and someone threw a molotov cocktail bomb inside the house and killed his two young children. Their "crime"? Their father was in the Batista government. In any case, by limiting it to "rebels" and "counterrevolutionaries" in the case of Cuba, Genocide Watch makes it sound as if its all part of a civil war. In fact, you don't have to be a counterrevolutionary in order to die in Cuba under Castro. All that you have to be is someone who is trying to escape the island prison as the men, women and children who were drowned when they tried to escape Cuba in that tugboat back in 1994; 41 were drowned by Castro's henchmen. Also, notice who good Cuba looks next to Argentina and Chile. The number they include for Argentina is 20,000 leftist and for Chile, 10,000s of leftists! The span for Argentina is 4 years and the span for Chile is 3 years!

Apparently, Genocide Watch doesn't take into account that many of the political murders in Cuba happen in jails. You are thrown in jail and killed slowly by malnutrition, beatings, hunger strikes, disease, etc.. and then the gov't simply says that you died of turberculosis or something like that.

1945 -- 1959
1959 – present

100’s rebels

1000’s “counter – revolutionaries”

Rightist gov’ts
Castro gov’t

Political

I don't have a problem starting back as early as 1945. We need the whole truth to be known, so these things will never be repeated.

It is noteworthy that it lists "100s" for the pre-1959 days, and "1000s" for post-1959. That's a telling stat right there. Only through the efforts of the groups mentioned in the post will the word get out about the true magnitude of castro's killings.

as a small semantical note, genocide is quite strictly defined these days to mean the attempt to kill off an entire group of people... as in Jews, Armenians, Christians, Tutsis, whatever. if I understand it correctly, the murders in Cuba were political in nature... not that that makes them any less heinous, but it doesn't necessarily qualify as genocide...

also, I'm not a huge reader of National Geographic, but they did have a good article on Chavez in a recent issue... I thought it was a very good piece of journalism, and didn't pull any punches.

pkrupa,
Can you tell us what specific issue of Nat. Geographic had the article on chavez?
I, for one, would like to see/read this article, but I am not nor have I ever been a subscriber, and I don't count myself as a frequent reader, even though, as a professional photographer, I admire the publication as a fabulous forum for the craft.
Yet, the wishy-washy politics of its leadership bother me, so I cannot bring myself to support it financially. Whenever I find an article that I would like to have in my files, I simply look up the particular issue at a second-hand book shop in town, where they sell back issues of NG for 25 cents each.
Julio

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