Posted: Sep 01, 2010 2:34 am
Strontium Dog wrote:FACT-MAN-2 wrote:So now its "thousands" and a "crime against humanity" is it?
Now who's misrepresenting?
Turn your heater down there bud, you're gonna blow a gasket, and then go look up what a crime against humanity is. Right after that back up your claim of "thousands."
Yes it's a fucking crime against humanity, and yes, it was thousands, though it would still be wholly wrong if it was one or one million.
Like I said, you're going to blow a gasket, if you haven't already.
I didn't think you'd make the effort to go find the meaning of the term "Crime against humanity," so here, I did it for you:
From: http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/C/CrimesAgainstHumanity.aspx
Crimes Against Humanity: An international criminal justice offence; the perpetration of [u]acts of war[/i] upon a civilian, non-soldier population --
A term used by, within and as so defined by the International Criminal Court treaty and including any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:
•Murder;
•Extermination;
•Enslavement;
•Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
•Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
•Torture;
•Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
•Persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender, (...) or other grounds that are universally recognized as impermissible under international law (...)
•Enforced disappearance of persons;
•The crime of apartheid;
•Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.
Nothing that happened in Cuba in the 1960's satisfies these criteria, so your cavalier and undiciplined use of language is duly noted. Not that it's anything new, mind you.
Strontium Dog wrote:
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/01/22/movie ... nding.html
In Cuba, thousands of homosexuals were sent to concentration camps in the late 1960's, together with others deemed deviant by the Castro regime. Echoing the slogan on the gates of Auschwitz, the camps were emblazoned with the words "Work will make you men."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_righ ... l_behavior
Thousands of homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, conscientious objectors, and dissidents were forced to conduct their compulsory military service in the 1960s at UMAP camps, where they were subject to political "re-education".[55][69] Military commanders brutalized the inmates.[70] Carlos Alberto Montaner says "Camps of forced labour were instituted with all speed to "correct" such deviations.... Verbal and physical mistreatment, shaved heads, work from dawn to dusk, hammocks, dirt floors, scarce food.... The camps became increasingly crowded as the methods of arrest became more expedient".[55]
In the late 1960s, because of "revolutionary social hygiene", the Castro government claimed to cleanse the arts of "fraudulent sodomitic" writers and "sick effeminate" dancers.[71] Additionally, men with long hair were locked up and their hair was cut.[72]
Castro has asserted, "in the country, there are no homosexuals",[73] and denounced "maricones" ("faggots") as "agents of imperialism".[74] Castro has asserted that "homosexuals should not be allowed in positions where they are able to exert influence upon young people".[75]
It makes me fucking sick how you continually play down the suffering of these people.
Likewise, I become ill at your constant badgering of Cuba's revolution. You aren't as concerned about the well being of Cubans as you are just flat pissed off that a people's revolution has succeeded and has done so against all odds. That's your angst. It shines like a supernova in the subtext of all you write about Cuba.
I have been to Cuba, several times as a matter of fact. I've spent a good deal of time there, gotten to know its people and the conditions in which they live. You haven't ... because in your land of the free you are not free to do so, ha, ha, ha. The joke's on you, buster.
The shit you quote from the NY Times is common everyday Cuba bashing and demonization that's gone on since 1960 and is about as honest as George Bush talking about WMDs in Iraq.
Now, we're talking about the 1960's, a period when Castro's government was indeed swamped with settling its revolution down, fighting off US meddling, and charting a new and unprecedented course for the country, certainly not a time when anything but the standard fare for homosexuals would have done. Hell, gays can't even serve openly in America's military to-fucking-day, let alone 50 years ago. And how were gays treated in America in the 1960's? Ask Mathew Shepard, oh wait, you can't ask him, he's dead, beaten to death and hung on a fence in Wyoming because he was gay.
Castro's government did the convenient thing, they directed that instead of serving their obligatory two years in the armed forces, gays would go to a camp, a camp with all the usual accouterments of military life except there were no guns, and put through some kind of educational/work program in a misguided attempt to wean them off their homosexuality. And has already been reported in this thread, many who attended these camps reported that life in them was a lot better than serving in the army.
And when asked about it 50 years on Castro did not dodge the question nor make excuses, he copped to it having been a mistake and he apologized for it. I wish to hell we had even one politician in America with those kinds of balls an that kind of honesty and integrity, just one!
It has been further reported in the thread that Cuba has managed to forge great progress in the manner that homosexality is treated in that country. I myself have seen gay musicians and dancers openly performing in Cuba in public places and entertainment venues. And yet in America the gay community is under almost continuous attack from homophobic right wing extremsists and Christian evangelicals, exemplified by the savage murder of Mathew Shepard. And gays still cannot serve openly in the armed forces.
I don't think the US has any lessons for Cuba today in the manner of treating its homosexual community nor did it have in the 1960's.
If you think throwing a bunch of demonizing hoopla from the NY Times is going to change what I know from direct, on the ground, first-hand experience in Cuba, I have another thought for you: It won't. It won't even come close.
Now, all that said, one last point: There have been a number of threads in which the current economic miasma in America and the manner in which America's middle class is under seige and collapsing, with 15 million Americans in search of work they cannot find and four million of them having lost their homes to foreclosure, has been the topic of discussion. I have yet to see you show your face in any of those threads and express sympathy or even empathy for your fellow citizens, millions of whom are suffering the heavy blows of unemployment and no health insurance and homelessness. Not one word from you about the plight of your own countrymen. Not one!
Hence, your claims of caring about the well being of Cuban homosexuals strikes me as being disingenuous at best, downright dishonest at worst. If you don't care about the well being of your own fellow citizens how can we believe that you care about Cubans? I don't think we can, and i don't, not for a minute.