{"id":526482,"date":"2010-04-13T18:41:58","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T22:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.szone.us\/f95\/raul-castro-s-orwellian-rhetoric-42247\/"},"modified":"2010-04-13T18:41:58","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T22:41:58","slug":"raul-castro%c2%92s-orwellian-rhetoric","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/526482","title":{"rendered":"Raul Castro\u0092s Orwellian Rhetoric"},"content":{"rendered":"
On 04.13.10 10:00 AM posted by Michael Orion Powell<\/p>\n

\n<ahref="http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Castro-Raul-Chavez-10-4-13.jpg">\"\"<\/p>Cuban leader Raul Castro is a figure right out of the world of George Orwell\u0092s political epic <ahref="http:\/\/www.online-literature.com\/orwell\/1984\/">1984. In that novel, Big Brother declared, through the propaganda subjected to the citizens of the future society of Oceania, that \u0093freedom was slavery\u0094 and \u0093war is peace.\u0094<\/p>\n

Castro has engaged in Orwellian rhetoric <ahref="http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/americas\/8603225.stm">in his response to mounting criticism over the government\u0092s treatment of dissidents who have gone on hunger strikes to protest their imprisonment. He denied that there was merit to the criticisms leveled regarding the treatment of political prisoners or the merits of their detainment, deeming such criticism as \u0093a ferocious campaign\u0094 to bring the Cuban government into disrepute.<\/p>\n

<spanid="more-31178"><\/span>One dissident, <ahref="http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/02\/25\/cuban-dissident%E2%80%99s-death-should-renew-front-against-castro\/">Orlando Zapata Tamayo, died February 23 after being incarcerated following a 2003 crackdown on dissidents, and another, Guillermo Fari\u00f1as, is now in a hospital. Castro has defended the treatment of Fari\u00f1as by saying that the government is \u0093doing what we can to save his life,\u0094 while <ahref="http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE63404U20100405">warning ominously that \u0093if [Fari\u00f1as] does not change his own self-destructive stance, he will be responsible, along with those who back him, for an outcome which we too do not wish to happen.\u0094 Castro\u0092s chilling warning reminds one of characters from gangster movies that warn those they are blackmailing that it would be awful bad if violence were to be inflicted on them or their loved ones.<\/p>\n

Just as Castro blackmails both Fari\u00f1as and critics by threatening some form of violence, he is <ahref="http:\/\/en.mercopress.com\/2010\/04\/05\/farinas-reply-to-raul-castro-determined-to-continue-fasting-until-death">quite incredibly claiming that it is actually the Cuban government that is being blackmailed by countries pressuring them for their actions, <ahref="http:\/\/www1.voanews.com\/english\/news\/americas\/US-Pressures-Cuba-After-Hunger-Strike-Death-89959637.html">such as the United States. \u0093We will never give in to blackmail, from any country or group of countries, no matter how powerful,\u0094 he said during a speech that was broadcast nationally. Castro\u0092s doublespeak is a clear reminder that, while not quite as bad Stalin or Pol Pot, Cuba\u0092s \u0093<ahref="http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/Research\/Reports\/2008\/05\/Cuba-Solidarity-Day-2008-Remembering-Our-Totalitarian-Neighbor">lesser but omnipresent tyranny\u0094 (as Heritage scholar Ray Walser put it) is the most brutal destroyer of freedom in our hemisphere.<\/p>\n

Michael Orion Powell is currently a member of the Young Leaders Program at the Heritage Foundation. For more information on interning at Heritage, please visit: <atitle="http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/About\/Internships-Young-Leaders\/The-Heritage-Foundation-Internship-Program" href="http:\/\/www.heritage.org\/About\/Internships-Young-Leaders\/The-Heritage-Foundation-Internship-Program">The Heritage Foundation Internship Program | The Heritage Foundation
\n<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n

http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/04\/13\/…lian-rhetoric\/<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 04.13.10 10:00 AM posted by Michael Orion Powell <ahref="http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/Castro-Raul-Chavez-10-4-13.jpg"><\/p>Cuban leader Raul Castro is a figure right out of the world of George Orwell\u0092s political epic <ahref="http:\/\/www.online-literature.com\/orwell\/1984\/">1984. In that novel, Big Brother declared, through the propaganda subjected to the citizens of the future society of Oceania, that \u0093freedom was slavery\u0094 and \u0093war is peace.\u0094 Castro […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-526482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526482"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526482\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}