Most people know by now that Fidel Castro fell off a stage, apparently breaking his knee and arm, after making a commencement speech. The people of Cuba would be a lot better off had it been his neck. Despite the way Oliver Stone and many other Hollywood halfwits consider Castro some sort of demigod, he's just another thug that managed to hijack an entire country for his own personal aggrandisement. Steven Spielberg called his dinner with Castro "the eight most important hours of my life." Jack Nicholson said, "He is a genius." Naomi Campbell called Castro "a source of inspiration to the world." However, the harsh reality is a bit different, as Human Rights Watch reported in 1999: "The denial of basic civil and political rights is written into Cuban law. In the name of legality, armed security forces, aided by state-controlled mass organizations, silence dissent with heavy prison terms, threats of prosecution, harassment, or exile. Cuba uses these tools to restrict severely the exercise of fundamental human rights of expression, association, and assembly. The conditions in Cuba's prisons are inhuman, and political prisoners suffer additional degrading treatment and torture. In recent years, Cuba has added new repressive laws and continued prosecuting nonviolent dissidents while shrugging off international appeals for reform and placating visiting dignitaries with occasional releases of political prisoners."

The State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor publishes an annual report on human rights abuses in various countries. The 2003 report on Cuba contains numerous specific examples of the following:

• During the year... human rights activists were arrested for acts such as possessing and publicly displaying human rights literature, receiving money and medicine from abroad for families of political prisoners, communicating with international media organizations, and organizing meetings and demonstrations to call for political reforms.
• Prison conditions remained harsh and life threatening, and the Government restricted medical care to some prisoners as a method of control. Prisoners died in jail due to lack of medical care.
• The Constitution prohibits abusive treatment of detainees and prisoners; however, members of the security forces sometimes beat and otherwise abused human rights advocates, detainees, and prisoners. The Government took no steps to curb these abuses. There continued to be numerous reports of disproportionate police harassment of black youths.
• The Government continued to subject persons who disagreed with it to what it called acts of repudiation. At government instigation, members of state-controlled mass organizations, fellow workers, or neighbors of intended victims were obliged to stage public protests against those who dissented from the Government's policies... Those who refused to participate in these actions faced disciplinary action, including loss of employment.
• Detainees and prisoners, both common and political, often were subjected to repeated, vigorous interrogations designed to coerce them into signing incriminating statements, to force collaboration with authorities, or to intimidate victims.
• [T]he Constitution states that all legally recognized civil liberties can be denied to anyone who actively opposes the decision of the people to build socialism. The authorities routinely invoked this sweeping authority to deny due process to those detained on purported state security grounds.
• Authorities sometimes employed false charges of common crimes to arrest political opponents.
• The Penal Code includes the concept of "dangerousness," defined as the "special proclivity of a person to commit crimes, demonstrated by his conduct in manifest contradiction of socialist norms." If the police decide that a person exhibits signs of dangerousness, they may bring the offender before a court or subject him to therapy or political reeducation.
• The Constitution provides for citizens' freedoms of speech and press insofar as they "conform to the aims of socialist society"; this clause effectively bars free speech.
• The Constitution states that print and electronic media are state property and can never become private property.

It's impossible to understand why so many so-called Liberals support this monster. Especially confusing is his rabid support among the Hollywood Left, when he embodies the antithesis of everything all true Americans love -- free speech, liberty, prosperity, autonomy and justice. Their hypocrisy is stunning; they praise Castro, who is actually guilty of all the human rights abuses they falsely impute to President Bush... whom they condemn. For example, Liberals are chronically overwrought over nonexistent abuses of the PATRIOT Act, which allows the exact same methods already used to investigate organised crime and serial murders to investigate terrorism (surely, at least, a combination of both crimes). If their claims about its use to "destroy" free speech were actually true, then they should be overjoyed to be living in a more Cuba-like workers' paradise.

The best response to Castro's injury came from the Bush administration itself. During the daily press briefing on 21 October, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was asked about the official response to the news. You'll get no mealy-mouthed, nuanced, appeasing, falsely sympathetic pandering to totalitarian dictators from this President, that's for sure.

MR. BOUCHER: We heard that Castro fell. There are, I think, various reports that he broke a leg, an arm, a foot, and other things, and I'd guess you'd have to check with the Cubans to find out what's broken about Mr. Castro. We, obviously, have expressed our views about what's broken in Cuba.
QUESTION: Do you wish him a speedy recovery?
MR. BOUCHER: No. 

I wonder why those on the Left haven't yet blamed President Bush for tripping Castro? After all, they blame him for 9/11 (which was planned since 1996), the "bad" economy (which they refuse to admit has been improving for three years, since the 4th quarter of 2001), and the fact that the countries in Saddam's back pocket wouldn't fight him with us. They blame the President for high gas prices (because it's his fault we haven't been allowed to build a new refinery since 1976 due to environmentalists) and high oil prices (because he caused China's economy to boom and consume oil at unprecedented rates). They blame Bush for the lack of flu vaccines (because surely he was the party responsible for driving the vaccine business overseas in the 1980s, and then contaminating the batch that was due to be sold to us). When they think we're not looking, they even blame him for hurricanes, wildfires, earthquakes and volcanoes (because he didn't sign the economy-destroying Kyoto treaty, which the Senate rejected by a 95-0 vote in 1997) and probably for the lack of anything worth watching on over 200 channels of cable TV as well. So why haven't they blamed President Bush for Castro's broken knee?

Perhaps the "October Surprise" this election cycle will be a fake memo from President Bush to the CIA instructing them to plant a banana peel on the stage. Get Dan Rather on the line; he'll want to investigate that.

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