Cuba Dwight Pelz, the newly elected chairman of the Washington State Democrat Party, penned this Castro-praising travelogue for the P-I after his visit to Cuba in 2002 "County could build ties with Cuban people".
We found teachers and students and farmers and government officials who were seeking to build Cuba in the face of so many obstacles. We found support for Castro.Oddly, he failed to notice any opposition to Castro.
Cuba Dwight's own support for Castro might have been what Sen. Murray and Mrs. Gregoire1 had in mind when they endorsed him for party chairman and praised him for being "a passionate advocate for the values we all share".
Hat tip to Richard Pope for digging up Pelz's article.
--
1 The haughty French-named Massachusetts-style Democrat who believes that "these talk show radios" are trying to kill her.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at January 29, 2006 04:17 PM | Email ThisCharge: Arrested in the repressive wave of March 2003 (Group of 75)
Sentence: 25 years in prison
Prison: Agüica, Matanzas
Organization: Director of the independent library ‘20 de Mayo’
Family: Isel Acosta Obregón (wife)
Address: Calle 26 de julio #30 e/3ra.del Oeste y Ferrocarril. Reparto Colón. Sancti-Spiritus
Review: Reyes Rodríguez’s father was sent to one of the Captive Towns within Cuba when the government separarted families during the Escambray. Afterwards Reyes Rodríguez was also sent with his family to the captive town of Ramón López Pena in Pinar del Río. His wife Isel was also a victim of exile within her own country. Reyes Rodríguez is a member of the Fraternal Order of Odd-Fellows, a mason and a practicing catholic. In 1988 Reyes Rodríguez relocated to the city of Sancti Spíritus and founded the Ex Club Cautivo and the Logia (Lodge) 20 DE Mayo #1. He is also a member of the Movimiento de Liberación. Reyes Rodríguez’s long and arduous trajectory of civil activism has not been ignored by the Castro regime.
Note: Review authored by ‘Proyecto Rostros del Presidio’ using diverse sources.
From Cuba Political Prisoner Info
Mr Pelz, do you approve of the arrest of person for distributing books deemed "subversive" by the government.
Posted by: JCM on January 29, 2006 04:55 PM"A pint of blood is equivalent to half a liter. Extracting this amount of blood from a person sentenced to death produces cerebral anemia and a state of unconsciousness and paralysis. Once the blood is extracted, the person is taken by two militiamen on a stretcher to the location where the execution takes place."
-- InterAmerican Human Rights Commission, April 7, 1967
This weekend marks the 47th anniversary of the triumph of the "26th of July Movement," which many Cubans expected would return their country to a constitutional government. Fidel Castro had other ideas of course, and within weeks he hijacked the victory, converting the country into one of the most repressive states in modern history.
Waiting for Fidel to die has become a way of life in Cuba in the past decade. Conventional wisdom holds that the totalitarian regime will hang on even after the old man kicks the bucket. But that hasn't stopped millions from dreaming big about life in a Fidel-free Cuba.
Cuban reconciliation won't come easy, even if Fidel's ruthless, money-grubbing little brother Raul is somehow pushed aside. One painful step in the process will require facing the truth of all that has gone on in the name of social justice. As the report cited above shows, it is bound to be a gruesome tale.
The Cuba Archive project (www.cubaarchive.org) has already begun the heavy lifting by attempting to document the loss of life attributable to revolutionary zealotry. The project, based in Chatham, N.J., covers the period from May 1952 -- when the constitutional government fell to Gen. Fulgencio Batista -- to the present. It has so far verified the names of 9,240 victims of the Castro regime and the circumstances of their deaths. Archive researchers meticulously insist on confirming stories of official murder from two independent sources.
Cuba Archive President Maria Werlau says the total number of victims could be higher by a factor of 10. Project Vice President Armando Lago, a Harvard-trained economist, has spent years studying the cost of the revolution and he estimates that almost 78,000 innocents may have died trying to flee the dictatorship. Another 5,300 are known to have lost their lives fighting communism in the Escambray Mountains (mostly peasant farmers and their children) and at the Bay of Pigs. An estimated 14,000 Cubans were killed in Fidel's revolutionary adventures abroad, most notably his dispatch of 50,000 soldiers to Angola in the 1980s to help the Soviet-backed regime fight off the Unita insurgency.
The archive project can be likened to the 1999 "Black Book of Communism," which documented the world-wide cost of communism, noting that "wherever the millenarian ideology of Communism was established it quickly led to crime, terror and repression." The Castro methodology, Cuba Archive finds, was much like that used in Poland and East Germany, less lethal than Stalin's purges, but equally effective in suppressing opposition.
In the earliest days of the revolution, summary executions established a culture of fear that quickly eliminated most resistance. In the decades that followed, inhumane prison conditions often leading to death, unspeakable torture and privation were enough to keep Cubans cowed.
Cuba Archive finds that some 5,600 Cubans have died in front of firing squads and another 1,200 in "extrajudicial assassinations." Che Guevara was a gleeful executioner at the infamous La Cabaña Fortress in 1959 where, under his orders, at least 151 Cubans were lined up and shot. Children have not been spared. Of the 94 minors whose deaths have been documented by Cuba Archive, 22 died by firing squad and 32 in extrajudicial assassinations.
Fifteen-year-old Owen Delgado Temprana was beaten to death in 1981 when security agents stormed the embassy of Ecuador where his family had taken refuge. In 1995, 17-year-old Junior Flores Díaz died after being locked in a punishment cell in a Havana province prison and denied medical attention. He was found in a pool of vomit and blood. Many prison deaths are officially marked as "heart attacks," but witnesses tell another story. The project has documented 2,199 prison deaths, mostly political prisoners.
The revolution boasts of its gender equality, and that's certainly true for its victims. Women have not fared much better than men. In 1961, 25-year-old Lydia Pérez López was eight months pregnant when a prison guard kicked her in the stomach. She lost her baby and, without medical attention, bled to death. A 70-year-old woman named Edmunda Serrat Barrios was beaten to death in 1981 in a Cuban jail. Cuba Archive has documented 219 female deaths including 11 firing squad executions and 20 extrajudicial assassinations.
The heftiest death toll is among those trying to flee. Many have been killed by state security. Three Lazo children drowned in 1971 when a Cuban navy vessel rammed their boat; their mother, Mrs. Alberto Lazo Pastrana, was eaten by sharks. Twelve children -- ages six months to 11 years -- drowned along with 33 others when the Cuban coast guard sank their boat in 1994. Four children -- ages three to 17 -- drowned in the famous Canimar River massacre along with 52 others when the Cuban navy and a Cuban air force plane attacked a hijacked excursion boat headed for Florida in 1980.
The horror of that event cost one more life: After visiting survivors in the Matanzas hospitals, the famous revolutionary guerrilla Haydée Santamaría, already in despair over the massive, inhumane boat exodus from the Port of Mariel, killed herself. That was a tragic admission of both the cost and failure of the revolution. The only riddle left is how, 25 years later, so-called "human rights" advocates like Argentine President Nestor Kirchner still embrace the Castro regime.
Mr. Pelz, It has so far verified the names of 9,240 victims... and you failed to notice any opposition to Castro?
Mr. Pelz you are a certifiable idiot.
And the State Democrats see fit to put Pelz at the head of the party. I honestly don't know who is stupider, his slavish adherence to a outmoded, historical dead, morally bankrupt, economically untenable ideology, or the dems who believe Pelz to be competent to run their party.
So much the better for republicans.
Posted by: JCM on January 29, 2006 05:36 PM[/sarcasm]
Posted by: Mike H on January 29, 2006 05:39 PMOf course, as you suggest, Pelz may be a fan of Castro for different reasons than Nethercutt, namely because he's more likely to be a far-left leaning, communist commrade of Castro's.
Posted by: Patrick E. Bell on January 29, 2006 05:40 PMIt I were Diane Tebelius, the first thing I would do is start running Television Ads that expose the true colors of Pelz.
And I'd make it abundantly clear to all voters that Democrats are the party that "finds support" for a lot of really bad people and bad ideas.
But you gotta hand it to them, by picking leaders like Pelz and Dean, the Democrat party is showing that at all levels, it's willing to put its failed principals first, at the expense of any appearances or ideas that appeal to average Americans.
Castro is not appealing to most moderate Democrats. Thank you Mr. Pelz.
Posted by: Jeff B. on January 29, 2006 05:49 PMEd Vulliamy in Havana
Sunday March 24, 2002
The Observer
A savage new voice of opposition to Fidel Castro's regime is being beamed into Havana from a Miami radio station. The owner of that voice is Fidel's daughter.
Over the past month Alina Fernández Revuelta has become the latest talk-show host to hit the cacophonous airwaves in Cuba's fin-de-communist epoch.
Of all the dissidents hovering over Castro's final years, Fernández may be among the most damaging. 'I do not refer to Mr Castro as my father,' says Fernández. 'I do not love him, I am his exile.'
Fernández's opposition to her father's regime is the stuff of heated family drama. It is also the story of the child who came to hate her father and everything that he represented, and defected to ally herself with his bitterest enemies, a group that has for years plotted in Miami for his downfall.
Disgusted with Cuban politics as a young woman, Fernández joined the opposition, only to find herself persecuted by her father's government. She defected to the US in 1993, travelling on a false Spanish passport and heavily disguised via Madrid, before introducing herself to the Cuban exile opposition - literally, across a table in its unofficial headquarters, the Versailles restaurant in Miami's Little Havana.
In 1997 Fernández published a memoir describing visits by her father engulfed in 'stinking' cigar smoke and his omnipotent presence in her early life. She recalls one box-wrapped gift of a doll for her to play with: of himself, with full beard, military fatigues, red star epaulettes, cap and boots."
Watch out when Pelz starts handing out dolls of HIMSELF!!!!
I was expecting much worse.
With all you "Dwight (love Castro)" comments I thought he really did say something wrong. But he didn't.
He just mentions that people support Castro. He's offering a point of view that most people in the US don't care to even look at. It reminds me of Senator Murray mentioning the fact that people support Bin Laden.
The only thing wrong with what he said was that he was politically incorrect. "No one can ever say ANYTHING good about Castro, otherwise they MUST love him".
Also: Gregoire and Murray's support of Pelz only means that they looked at the 100,000 more important issues than Washington State's relation with Cuba. To claim that Gregoire/Murray's endorsement means that they feel the same way is very ridiculous.
Gerald, LiberalWashington.com
Posted by: Gerald on January 29, 2006 06:26 PMFor Dwight Pelz to emphasize only his perceived positives about Castro is ludicrous. The only explanation is that Pelz agrees with Castro philosophically and has become one of Castro's Useful Idiots.
Posted by: dude on January 29, 2006 06:32 PMWow, I'm sure glad we don't have any members of congress here in the Seattle area who have done that too... oh, wait a minute...
Posted by: Mike H on January 29, 2006 07:41 PMActually, I was thinking of Bahgdad Jim, but Murray works just as well.
Posted by: Mike H on January 29, 2006 08:54 PMMaybe a "First Rate Education and Health Care for Dwight Pelz" initiative -- to borrow from the exact language of his April 11, 2002 op-ed piece in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Dwight Pelz would receive a first rate education about the first rate health care practices in Cuba, such as those practiced on some 166 opponents of the Castro regime on May 27, 1966.
Pelz would have as much blood as possible extracted from himself, using the same methods and procedures that the Castro regime used. The blood would then be sold to the highest bidder, and the proceeds used to pay any PDC fines that may be assessed against Pelz or the state Democrat party.
This initiative could be written in a creative fashion, just like Goldstein's "Horse's Ass" initiative. Of course, the Attorney General's office would sue right off the bat to have it declared unconstitutional, but this would only serve to publicize Pelz's ridiculous praise of Castro.
Posted by: Richard Pope on January 29, 2006 09:02 PMHey thanks for bringing up Murray's mention of Osama establishing day care centers. So does that somehow justify Osama and al-Qaeda to you? I bet Hitler did a few good things, and no doubt, Castro has done some good things too. Hey, Tookie Williams wrote a childrens book.
That's what you Democrats/ Progressives and Liberals are defined by: your relativism. For you, it actually makes sense to try and establish some moral ground in defending some of the world's well documented, most evil men.
Here's a clue for you, degree matters. Next time you read a puff piece praising Sound Transit's ridership in the P-I, or hear on CBS that a huge number of our soldiers have died in Iraq, etc. ask yourself this simple question: "As compared to what?" If you bother to hold Castro up in a comparison against others, you will find that indeed, he is depraved.
But I'm sure you will find a way to delude yourself from my comments, because to you, it's all relative.
Posted by: Jeff B. on January 29, 2006 09:22 PMHe had a wonderful way with children, and absolutely adored them (well, except for maybe the ones he butchered in concentration camps).
Posted by: Mike H on January 29, 2006 10:04 PMWhy not write about something interesting and relevant to your readership?..like, say, the election of Diane Tebelius and what it means to the increasing tension between the evangelical and corporate wings of the Republican party...
Posted by: bfree2think on January 29, 2006 10:11 PM"As a county councilman, Dwight Pelz has championed a resolution to establish a sister relationship between King County and the Cuban province of Granma. Granma is named for the yacht on which Fidel Castro returned to Cuba in 1954.
Pelz was part of a Seattle delegation that visited Cuba in 2002 and returned with positive reports.
Sisterhood is powerful, but Pelz should respond to a trio of questions:
Will you pursue the Cuba sisterhood relationship if elected to the Seattle City Council? Will you try to take the City Council back into foreign policy, a field in which it has a well-documented record of foolishness?
The 2002 visit coincided with a crackdown by Castro on dissident writers and journalists. Did Seattle visitors protest human rights violations by Cuba's totalitarian government?"
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/242844_joel30.html
Posted by: Richard Pope on January 29, 2006 10:15 PMFrom this conservative, let me say, "Welcome, Comrade Pelz!"
Cartman
P.S. Would anyone like to wager how long it is before Comrade Pelz howls for the microphones???
From this conservative, let me say, "Welcome, Comrade Pelz!"
Cartman
P.S. Would anyone like to wager how long it is before Comrade Pelz howls for the microphones???
"Screw you guys, I'm going home" ;'}
Posted by: alphabet soup on January 29, 2006 10:59 PMType the words "pelz" and "castro" in google news and tell me what you get.
Gerald, LiberalWashington
Posted by: Gerald on January 30, 2006 12:56 AMThe Seattle P-I had three articles with Dwight Pelz and Fidel Castro in 2005 when he was running for Seattle City Council:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/search/PIsearch_new.asp?UserQuery=pelz+castro&rank=&a_type=all
The Seattle Times covered the issue in one of its editorials about the Democrat chair race:
http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=joni19&date=20060119&query=pelz+and+cuba
Interestingly -- the leading liberal editorial writers of the Times and P-I, Joni Balter and Joel Connelly, have been the harshest critics of Pelz being an apologist for Castro.
Your analysis on Liberal Washington that the GOP has the upper hand in this state for November 2006 is pretty much on point.
http://www.liberalwashington.com/home/2006/1/29/who-has-the-upper-hand-in-november.html
However, you have not given nearly as much weight to the 90 degree turn that Washington Democrats have taken to the left. This move, combined with the Washington GOP moving somewhat closer to the center, will swing the centrist vote this fall heavily to the GOP.
Posted by: Richard Pope on January 30, 2006 02:05 AMhttp://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/101289_cuba24.shtml
Posted by: Richard Pope on January 30, 2006 02:46 AMMy other point was that the media is not talking about Pelz and Castro at all, and I'd be surprised if it will be mentioned at all. It seems more like a conservative blog wish, like... a middle schooler trying to create a new fad that will fail.
Posted by: Gerald on January 30, 2006 06:28 AMInterestingly enough, albeit just a smidge LEFT of the topic...
Leftist Blogs Indicate Intraparty Rift? Well, DUH!...
"These harsh leftists on the Internet are merely the logical result of the leftward drive that the Democratic Party has been engaged in for a long, long time. It really is the natural result of the kind of no-holds-barred political brawling that the far left has sponsored since their attacks on Goldwater that these leftist Bloggers have ended up calling their own side "flaccid" and filled with "gutless sellouts". The ever escalating hatred spoon fed to leftists as they get further involved in the political process has been inevitably turned upon their own. As each step left is taken, more is wanted. And, as their efforts meet with repeated failure among real Americans and end up on the ash heap of failed political policy, they get frustrated and push for even more extreme views. After all, they certainly cannot imagine it is they, rather than everyone else, whose ideas are wrong. Like true believers they feel it must be a lack of conviction among their Party members, of course.
So, Mr. VandeHei's warning will fall on deaf ears. We are not seeing a Democratic Party only lately coming to extreme leftism because of the efforts of "liberal Web logs". It is the Bloggers who are only lately come to the game of extremism. Hard left Democrats are happy to use these Bloggers and their rhetoric to shore up their already blatant leftist tilt."
Well, Hello Goldstien visitors, instigators and agitators! Does any of that sound a bit familiar?
Posted by: Cheryl on January 30, 2006 06:29 AMGerald...
"Apparently"????????????? Apparently you say???
So now the LEFTIST PINHEADED strategy is to DENY Komrade KPelz said this????????
You beat everything, you know that Gerald!
APPARENTLY????????
http://www.seattlecuba.org/index.htm
Posted by: Richard Pope on January 30, 2006 07:15 AMIf pelz only mentioned the positives (peopel supporting him)...you say thus he's innocent.
Well, you guys nearly hung Reagan and others for failing to condemn nazis when they were at the cemetary etc.
I think the princple you all espoused was "call out the evil, and don't mention only the good"
Of course you run from that now...
Is Mao a good guy, Stalin?
Posted by: righton on January 30, 2006 07:34 AM1. I said "all you guys can talk about was a quote apparently from April 11th, 2002." If you knew how to read you would understand I was stating that I wasn't completely sure of the date.
2. I'm not trying to say that what he said was alright, I'm saying that Sound Politics is trying to make a big deal out of something that is really quite small. Ironically, continuing to say stuff like "Comrade Pelz" makes conservatives seem even more conservative (and extremist), which is just as 'bad' as the left becoming more left.
3. You are slightly insane. ;).
Gerald, Liberal Washington
Posted by: Gerald on January 30, 2006 07:46 AM1. Hitler was really a nice guy at heart -- loved animals - was a vegan and abhorred smoking (hummm) - about as metrosexual as they came in the 1930's -- all he really wanted was to clean up the Berlin nightclub scene, establish law and ORDER, build roads and Volkswagons - "People's Cars" -- the whole anti-semitism thing was "really quite small."
2. Thanks for helping to illustrate the truth that "liberalism is a mental disorder."
Posted by: Bill on January 30, 2006 08:08 AM
If this is the case, then what does this say about the most vocal and politically active of the party, i.e. the ones who actually voted him into this office?
This far-leftism probably makes a lot of centrist Democrats wondering if the party has moved on without them, or if they should "MoveOn" to follow the party (sorry about the pun there--couldn't resist).
You have no class...
Posted by: Playin' Possum on January 30, 2006 08:41 AMTHE PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF TACOMA HAS HAD A SISTER CITY IN CUBA FOR MANY YEARS...NOW THAT THE MARXIST HAVE ENLIGHTENED US ALL IN TACOMA BY OUR CITY COUNCIL...
(8 COMMUNISTS & 1 R.I.N.O.)
IT IS OUR DUTY TO BECOME "PASSIONATE ADVOCATES FOR THE VALUES WE ALL SHARE" AND SPREAD THE WORD.
Just curious: Of those of you who are attacking Pelz for saying he found support for Castro on his visit to Cuba, how many of you have actually been to Cuba?
I thought not.
Posted by: Bruce on January 30, 2006 09:24 AMDarn those immigrants with their fancy names. So good to see SoundPolitics taking a stand for racial purity in the USA.
Posted by: Bruce on January 30, 2006 09:29 AMCuba
You mean that fun filled country that executes people for attempting to leave? Sounds like a fantastic place.
Posted by: swassociates on January 30, 2006 09:33 AMOne more thing Bruce
Just in case you haven't noticed I don't see a lot of people in Miami boarding boats to take advantage of the excellent health care and schools in Cuba your party so admires.
Posted by: swassociates on January 30, 2006 09:52 AMThat is one of the most idiotic questions I have ever heard. People are willing to float across 90 miles of shark infested ocean on an inner tube to get away from that place... why the hell would I want to spend a small fortune bouncing around various countries to get a flight to go there? What, are you saying that all the refugees fleeing the place (like Castro's own daughter) don't know what they're talking about and we shouldn't take there word for it? I've never went to Iraq during Saddam's rule, but it doesn't take a genious to figure out that that was a bad place to live.
Oh, I forgot, they had free health care too, so it must not have been that bad.
Posted by: Mike H on January 30, 2006 10:06 AMGerald accuses me:
"3. You are slightly insane. ;).
Posted by Gerald at January 30, 2006 07:46 AM"
I'm insane Gerald??? You are defending a KLOWN who loves Castro and I'm insane.
Keep talking you KLOWNS!!
Posted by: Mr. Cynical on January 30, 2006 10:22 AMDoes that excuse what Hitler did? Not for a second!
Posted by: fred on January 30, 2006 10:34 AMI particularly like the reminder of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize nomination of Castro by the most LEFTIST PINHEAD in Norway:
OSLO, Norway (AP) - Cuban President Fidel Castro has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on behalf of developing nations, a Norwegian politician announced Thursday.
Hallgeir Langeland, a left-wing member of Parliament, said he knew his decision to nominate the Cuban leader might be seen as controversial. But he said Castro deserved recognition for helping other nations despite the hardships of U.S. sanctions imposed on Cuba after his communist government seized power in 1959.
Just another note to the KLOWNS who condemn those of us with opinions of Cuba for not personally visiting there......
Castro only allows folks to visit the nice beaches and other vacation spots. The KLOWNS who are organizing this www.seattlecuba.org movement just lap up what they are shown by Fidel. The reality is, the vast majority of Cubans would move here in a heartbeat! What a gaggle of KLOWNS we have in Seattle. Committed to Socialism...no matter how many times it has been proven to be a horrible idea!
I actually tend to agree with your observation here Gerald. Both Party's are guilty of overstepping their bounds once they obtain control. KPelz is a classic example of the arrogance of the Far-Left activists. It's insane to make this KLOWN Chair of Democratic Party. It's political suicide in fact. Makes me think that the LEFTIST PINHEADS desire to be in charge...but once they are, they realize they have no firm agenda, all the whacko's come out of the sewers with there far-out ideas, they get totally side-tracked and then the Right takes over.
LEFTISTS play on emotion and pitting the Poor vs. the Rich.....just like Castro did to gain power.
Watch KPelz' tactics....he will emulate Castro....promising Utopia to the downtrodden on the backs of the wealthy. The oldest trick in the book....and the foundation for Socialism & failure.
With all due respect Bruce, but you are making a stupid arguement. Whom should we beleive... Pelz, who, wanting to establish a relationship based on his preconcieved notions about the place, went on a government controled tour and saw only what Castro wanted him to see, or the thousands of refugees-- including Castor's own daughter-- who risked their lives to flee that place? Sorry, but just because Pelz has been there and I haven't doesn't make him more enlightened about Cuba.
You yourself just acknowledged that Castro's governemnt is horrible (and should be lauded for making such a painfully obvious observation). Please don't then turn around and lecture us that since we haven't been there, we shouldn't be critizing Pelz for his statements simply because he has there (and probably paid for the trip with my tax dollars). He, not us, is the one making the ASSumptions. He, not us, is the one disconnected from reality.
And for the record, I don't like our policy towards Cuba either. I don't think it has been effective. I think we ought to be opening up towards them for no other reason than to put ourselves in the position to help with the aftermath of the inevitable death of Castro, but also to help bring to light the brutality of his regime. But to go there, see only what Castro wants you to see, and report back that its all rivers flowing with milk and honey is the height of niavete. To criticize those who are calling him on such idiotic statements simply because they haven't been there is to show the real "disconnect from reality".
Posted by: Mike H on January 30, 2006 12:28 PMI see. We are supposed to have faith in the words of people put forth as examples by the very murderous dictator they fear.
Right.
Do YOU know any Cuban exiles?
Have you spoken to any that escaped Cuba?
Or any that left family behind?
Our youngest sons Godmother fits all those criteria and trust me, THERE IS YOUR FACTUAL BASIS, not the fearful marionettes good ol' Fidel trots out when he has yet another stupid American liberal paying homage to his murderous ways.
Posted by: Cheryl on January 30, 2006 12:38 PMBut ... Stefan and others mocked Pelz for saying that he found support (presumably, a significant amount) for Castro. In my experience, that support was genuine, though certainly not unanimous. We only hurt ourselves by denying this reality.
Posted by: Bruce on January 30, 2006 02:42 PMTo make this claim of a regime operated by a totalitarian dictator who executes citizens for attempting to escape, is absurd, and ridicules.
BTW - What is your experience with Castro supporters?
Posted by: swassociates on January 30, 2006 03:32 PMI'm sure Pelz would have found support for Adolph Hitler had he toured Germany in 1937 or 1941.
Sure it's reality - but what does that say about Dwight Pelz? Does he acknowledge this reality and point to how absurd and unjustifiable it is? Of course he doesn't - because he doesn't think it is absurd and unjustifiable.
Posted by: Larry on January 30, 2006 04:14 PMWhat planet is this person from ? Who is denying that his support for Castro is not genuine, maybe not unanimous - I sure don't. I think you are in pain to think about the blunder that the WA Democrat Party made - KDewey Pelz wears that albatross around his neck and it isn't going away, and he is also the member of the canvassing board who most made a mockery of honest elections in King County in 2004. Thank God, he is no longer part of that sham operation !
Posted by: KS on January 30, 2006 06:57 PM