Comments on: Washington’s False Logic of Torture http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/09/washingtons-false-logic-of-torture/ a radical newsletter in the struggle for peace and social justice Thu, 08 Dec 2011 15:07:30 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Lloyd Rowsey http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/09/washingtons-false-logic-of-torture/#comment-28663 Lloyd Rowsey Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:37:52 +0000 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/?p=3263#comment-28663 I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m changing the subject. On page 220 of Ignacio Ramonet’s Fidel Castro: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography, Ramonet asks Castro: When the (revolutionary) war ended, you and your followers had promised to bring to trial and eventually put to death members of Batista’s repressive forces, and you created the “revolutionary tribunals” that carried out a purge that many observers characterized as excessive….Do you think that that was a mistake? In reply, Castro said in part: “I think the error may have been in…allowing the proceedings to be attended by a great number of our countrymen who were justly outraged by the thousands of crimes that had been committed….I’d been in Venezuela….and….When Machado fell in 1933, Machado’s people were dragged through the streets; there were lynchings, houses were invaded (etc, etc)….we would tell our people that our Movement did not want to see people dragged through the streets, or personal vengeance, because justice would be done. We were still very much influenced by the Nuremberg trials, which had taken place just some twelve years earlier, at the end of the Second World War.” (Italics mine.) I also hope this doesn’t sound like another “left-winger” airing out his pet peeve now that Bushco has decided the internet is safe enough for “free speech” – and just (peaceful) protesters, at least if in the streets, will be arrested and persecuted under the full cover of silence in the national media. Considering the embargo of Cuba could be ended with the stroke of a pen – and wouldn’t require bringing many tens of thousands of troops home, the embargo in my opinion is more immoral than the Iraq War. I hope this doesn’t sound like I’m changing the subject. On page 220 of Ignacio Ramonet’s Fidel Castro: My Life: A Spoken Autobiography, Ramonet asks Castro: When the (revolutionary) war ended, you and your followers had promised to bring to trial and eventually put to death members of Batista’s repressive forces, and you created the “revolutionary tribunals” that carried out a purge that many observers characterized as excessive….Do you think that that was a mistake?

In reply, Castro said in part: “I think the error may have been in…allowing the proceedings to be attended by a great number of our countrymen who were justly outraged by the thousands of crimes that had been committed….I’d been in Venezuela….and….When Machado fell in 1933, Machado’s people were dragged through the streets; there were lynchings, houses were invaded (etc, etc)….we would tell our people that our Movement did not want to see people dragged through the streets, or personal vengeance, because justice would be done. We were still very much influenced by the Nuremberg trials, which had taken place just some twelve years earlier, at the end of the Second World War.” (Italics mine.)

I also hope this doesn’t sound like another “left-winger” airing out his pet peeve now that Bushco has decided the internet is safe enough for “free speech” – and just (peaceful) protesters, at least if in the streets, will be arrested and persecuted under the full cover of silence in the national media.

Considering the embargo of Cuba could be ended with the stroke of a pen – and wouldn’t require bringing many tens of thousands of troops home, the embargo in my opinion is more immoral than the Iraq War.

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