Open Society: advance guard of the US Marines

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(While George Soros has shed crocodile tears about globalization, his 
worldwide network of NGO's and think-tanks have served up one policy paper 
after another on behalf of the geopolitical goals of US imperialism. As one 
of the "Top 25 Censored Stories of 1999", the article "NATO Defends Private 
Economic Interests in the Balkans" points out that his International Crisis 
Group (ICG) provided guidance in the NATO-led reshaping of the Balkans. Now 
it seems that Soros has trained his eye on Cuba, which has the temerity to 
defend socialism against Soros's preferred "Open Society" model, which is a 
grotesque admixture of Popperite libertarianism and liberal pieties. What 
Soros underling Aryeh Neier fails to point out in this lurid op-ed is the 
circumstances in which the alleged crack-down takes place in Cuba. Not only 
do you have a spate of hijackings, the chief US diplomat in Cuba, a lout 
named James Cason, has been accused of openly going around the island 
calling for a counter-revolution. On top of this, Cuba has been named as 
part of George W. Bush's "axis of evil", which is tantamount to a 
declaration of a preemptive war. Now I understand that Aryeh Neier makes 
big bucks as an intellectual prostitute for the billionaire financier, but 
this sort of context-nude op-ed only serves to discredit the imperialist 
agenda of its drafters--which is a function obviously of the overall 
degradation of an empire in its decrepitude.)

NY Times Op-Ed, Apr. 5th 2003
The World's Other Tyrants, Still at Work
By ARYEH NEIER

With international attention focused on Iraq, despots are seizing the 
opportunity to get rid of their opposition ? real or imagined. In Zimbabwe, 
Cuba and Belarus, independent journalists, opposition leaders and human 
rights advocates have been thrown in prison. Absent scrutiny, the leaders 
of these rogue regimes have been emboldened, aware that their actions are 
causing little more than a ripple of protest beyond their countries.

(clip)

In Cuba, the war is giving Fidel Castro cover for an unprecedented assault. 
Over the past two weeks his state security agents have arrested about 80 
dissidents. Prosecutors are seeking life sentences for 12 of those detained 
and 10- to 30-year prison terms for the rest. They include the economist 
Marta Beatriz Roque, the poet and journalist Raúl Rivero and the opposition 
labor activist Pedro Pablo Álvarez.

The list of arrests reads like a Who's Who of Cuban civil society ? with 
the obvious exception of those who were already in jail when the roundup 
started. They are the unsung heroes of a movement to liberate the minds of 
Cuba. But the names do not mean much to a world public now concentrated on 
becoming more and more expert on the latest in military equipment and on 
the geography of Iraq.

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/05/opinion/05NEIE.html


Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org