Nothing has changed in Cuba
Harry Turtledove wrote a wonderful short story called "The Last Article" about the failure of the Gandhian movement in India in an alternate history in which it was not England, but Nazi Germany, which was the occupying power there.
When the Indian workers went on strike, every tenth worker was rounded up each night and shot. The strike was broken by the third day.
When the Indians lay across the rainroad tracks, the trains simply kept going.
The book ends with Gandhi himself being taken out and "given a noodle-" a bullet in the back of the neck- while Nazi "Viceroy" Field Marshal Model sits down to a lunch of blood sausage.
The story takes its inspiration from a concession made by Gandhi himself: that non-violence works only against a civilized enemy- one with a conscience. It worked against the British. It would not have worked against the Nazis.
And it isn't working in Cuba against a regime in which only the first name of the dictator has changed following Fidel Castro's retirement.
The revolution he led half a century ago remains as brutal as ever.
HT: Real Clear Politics
When the Indian workers went on strike, every tenth worker was rounded up each night and shot. The strike was broken by the third day.
When the Indians lay across the rainroad tracks, the trains simply kept going.
The book ends with Gandhi himself being taken out and "given a noodle-" a bullet in the back of the neck- while Nazi "Viceroy" Field Marshal Model sits down to a lunch of blood sausage.
The story takes its inspiration from a concession made by Gandhi himself: that non-violence works only against a civilized enemy- one with a conscience. It worked against the British. It would not have worked against the Nazis.
And it isn't working in Cuba against a regime in which only the first name of the dictator has changed following Fidel Castro's retirement.
The revolution he led half a century ago remains as brutal as ever.
HT: Real Clear Politics
Comments