Under the subject heading Create a Mass Party! - COSMONAUT fkalosar wrote;
<> [email protected] 25 #6729 <https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/6729> Castro shot a lot of people. He said they were murderers and probably most of them were. Then again "mistakes were [inevitably] made." But this is the third rail of revolution--you can't live with insurrection and you can't live without it and you can't have insurrection without firing squads and prison camps, especially when you are confronted by state violence, which utterly dwarfs the violence of the NRA and the rest of the sinister creeps on display in DC on 1/6and I really like the legacy of the Cuban revolution, though it may be about to vanish--but Castro's insurrectionary model was suited to objective conditions in Cuba and would fail abjectly here, though perhaps not some other insurrectionary model. If I could I'd like to travel to Cuba and talk to some revolutionaries and find out what they think we should do in the US. Of course, any serious conversation about this would be deemed sedition by Merrick Garland. Ken Hiebert replies: I think the question of the executions following the Cuban Revolution is more often a talking point for the anti-Castro right than it is for the Cuba solidarity movement. Also, the casual and careless references to firing squads and prison camps appeared to be an attempt to discredit this list. And so I reacted against this message from fkalosar. But maybe I should be thankful for his message, because it prompted me to do research that I have not previously done. Before I get to that I have one question. Your third sentence includes the words" mistakes were [inevitably] made." Who are you quoting? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#:~:text=Within%20the%20first%20two%20months,first%20six%20months%20of%201959. Various estimates have been made in order to ascertain the number of political executions carried out on behalf of the Cuban government since the revolution. Within the first two months of the 1959, Castro's government executed more than 300 Batista officials,[22] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#cite_note-APfeb59-22> with Latin American historian Thomas E. Skidmore says that there had been 550 executions in the first six months of 1959.[23] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#cite_note-Atlas-23> In an April 1961 UPI <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UPI> story, the agency stated that about "700 have died before Castro's firing squads" between 1959 and 1961.[24] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#cite_note-24> The World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators ascertained that there had been 2,113 political executions between the years 1958–67,[23] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#cite_note-Atlas-23> while British historian Hugh Thomas <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Thomas_(writer)>, stated in his study Cuba or the pursuit of freedom[25] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#cite_note-25> that "perhaps" 5,000 executions had taken place by 1970.[23] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#cite_note-Atlas-23> According to Amnesty International, the total number of death sentences issued from 1959–87 was 237, of which all but 21 were actually carried out.[26] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#cite_note-26> The anti-Castro Archivo Cuba estimates that 4,000 people were executed in Cuba between 1959 and 2016. The Black Book of Communism <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Book_of_Communism> estimated that between 15,000 and 17,000 people were executed by the state.[27] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#cite_note-27> According to Archivo Cuba, there have been 4,309 confirmed executions or extrajudicial killings since 1952; the actual death toll of the Cuban Revolution is estimated to be higher, but an exact count of victims is unavailable, given a lack of available records and political transparency in Cuba. [28] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#cite_note-28> [29] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#cite_note-29> The vast majority of those executed directly following the 1959 revolution were policemen, politicians and informers for the Batista regime who were accused of crimes such as torture and murder, and their public trials and executions enjoyed widespread popular support among the Cuban population. Most scholars agree that those executed were probably guilty as charged, but their trials did not follow due process <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Due_process>.[30] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#cite_note-30>[31] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#cite_note-31> The Cuban Government justified such measures on the grounds that the application of the death penalty in Cuba against war criminals and others followed the same procedure as the one previously followed by the Allies <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allies_of_World_War_II> during the Nuremberg trials <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_trials>. Some Cuban scholars maintain that had the government not applied severe legislation against the torturers, terrorists, and other criminals employed by the Batista regime, the people themselves would have taken justice into their own hands.[32] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Cuba#cite_note-32> And, Amnesty International quotes Fidel Castro - "Revolutionary justice is not based on legal precepts, but on moral conviction... we are not executing innocent people or political opponents. We are executing murderers and they deserve it.” https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/11/fidel-castro-s-human-rights-legacy-a-tale-of-two-worlds/ -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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