Friday, May 2, 2003
What is it about celebrities and the famous that makes them feel such affinity for dictators? Is it the shared experience of being able to stand out on a balcony and woo a crowd that causes them to be able to identify on a personal level with uniformed heads of state? [birdy sounds]"Hey, today they're going after Fidel, tomorrow, it could be ME!"[/birdy sounds]
This is reminiscent of that letter from the group of academics warning against Israel's "plan" to transfer the Palestinians when war broke out (and sounds just as silly).
Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage (Via LGF
Latin American Nobel laureates Garcia Marquez, Rigoberta Menchu, Aldolfo Perez Esquivel and South African writer Nadine Gordimer, also a Nobel prize winner, have signed a declaration of support, Mexican sociologist Pablo Gonzalez said.
U.S. singer Harry Belafonte and U.S. actor Danny Glover are also among the personalities who have signed the two-paragraph declaration "To the Conscience of the World" so far, Gonzalez announced to a May Day rally in Havana.
"A single power is inflicting grave damage to the norms of understanding, debate and mediation among countries," the declaration says, referring to the United States and the war in Iraq.
"At this very moment, a strong campaign of destabilization against a Latin American nation has been unleashed. The harassment against Cuba could serve as a pretext for an invasion," it continues.
President Fidel Castro's government has come under unprecedented international criticism from friends and foes after sentencing 75 dissidents to long prison terms last month, and executing three men who hijacked a ferry in a failed bid to reach the United States.[...]
