April
22, 2003, 12:45 p.m.
Castro Kills Stone
The
most decisive counteraction in the West was done by HBO.
et
us pause in order to suppress any smile over the three Cuban hijackers
executed by Castro, but go on to smile broadly over the terrible consequences
of all of this for Oliver Stone. Here we were, April 2003, and Fidel Castro
reaches into corners of his country to round up 75 conspirators against
the socialist health of the Castro regime, giving some of them prison
sentences as heavy as 28 years. The trials were done in very fast motion,
so that there was no opportunity to reflect on what it was that the defendants
pleaded. But reports confirmed that no charges were leveled that suggested
that any of them had blown up bridges or passed exploding cigars into
Castro's dining quarters. What they did, simply, was to write and talk
in favor of freedom of speech. When Castro moves, he does so decisively.
The civil libertines were arraigned, tried, and sentenced, and background
thunder was provided by the rifles executing the three hijackers.
The most decisive
counteraction in the West was done by HBO. The movie and television company
had been planning a splashy introduction of an extended documentary on
Fidel Castro by — Oliver Stone. It was all packed up, ready to go.
In fact it had been screened in February at a movie festival in Berlin.
Castro had given three whole days to Oliver Stone, and that proved to
be total immersion — Stone came away a devout apostle of Castro and
Castroism. He spoke of his encounter: "We should look to [Castro] as one
of the earth's wisest people, one of the people we should consult." Now,
the conversion of Oliver Stone was probably not all that difficult. Stone
is attracted to any person, statement, event, book, firework, or parade,
that stimulates the depreciation of America and its institutions. In his
movie depiction of the assassination of President Kennedy, he suggested
that the FBI, the CIA, the White House, and the Supreme Court engaged
in a right-wing conspiracy vaster than anything ever imagined by Hillary
Clinton in order to conceal the story behind the assassination.
The wording of the
HBO official on the fate on Mr. Stone's documentary was finger-dippingly
delicate. "In light of recent alarming events in the country, the film
seems somewhat dated or incomplete." Perhaps it will be shown after Fidel
Castro restores liberty to the Cuban people, who have been without it
for 44 years.
At the very least,
it was foolishly thought, we would have sterner stuff from the United
Nations Commission on Human Rights. This organization meets every winter
in Geneva. It has had stalwart U.S. ambassadors in the past, including
Walter Berns, Allard Lowenstein, and Leonard Garment. They did what they
could, back in the Cold War, to breathe a little concern for human rights
into the Commission on Human Rights, but a resolution to call Castro to
account failed. What was got out of the commission was a wispy recommendation
that a representative of the U.N. be invited to Cuba to investigate human
rights. The commission voted with full knowledge that the invitation will
not be extended and, as usual, everybody will just get used to Cuba under
Castro.
There is a fresh
threat, however, hovering offstage, and not yet called up. It is to levy
economic sanctions against Cuba trade by the European Union. There is
also a movement in Congress to forbid the sending by Cuban Americans of
U.S. checks to Cuban families. These come to $1 billion of hard cash to
that sick economy, and no doubt such a measure would hurt Castro, but
such hurt would be disproportionate. The family that fails to get the
$100 monthly check from the Cuban-American emigrant is put into true pain
and distress. Such deprivations reach Castro as mere trivia, one more
price to pay for continuing to harness Cuba to socialism and poverty and
idolatry.
It is contended
by many observers that precisely what moves Castro to his excesses is
any movement that threatens mellowness. To permit free speech is to encourage
the very idea that Castroite resolution is softening. Calls by Cuban Americans
to end U.S. sanctions threaten his hold on Cuban life. Castro has disdained
the glasnost and perestroika adopted by Gorbachev-see what such things
did to the Soviet Union!
The challenge for
the United States is to ignore his continued manhandling of freedom and
to retaliate against it with the weapon he fears most, which is increased
exposure to Western capitalism and Western practices.
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us pause in order to suppress any smile over the three Cuban hijackers
executed by Castro, but go on to smile broadly over the terrible consequences
of all of this for Oliver Stone. Here we were, April 2003, and Fidel Castro
reaches into corners of his country to round up 75 conspirators against
the socialist health of the Castro regime, giving some of them prison
sentences as heavy as 28 years. The trials were done in very fast motion,
so that there was no opportunity to reflect on what it was that the defendants
pleaded. But reports confirmed that no charges were leveled that suggested
that any of them had blown up bridges or passed exploding cigars into
Castro's dining quarters. What they did, simply, was to write and talk
in favor of freedom of speech. When Castro moves, he does so decisively.
The civil libertines were arraigned, tried, and sentenced, and background
thunder was provided by the rifles executing the three hijackers. 
