Michael Moore loves Cuban health care, but apparently forgot to look at Cuban prisons

This from Human Rights First, regarding the case of Cuban journalist and political dissident Dr. José Luis García Paneque, currently serving a 24-year sentence in Fidel's prisons:

Dr. García Paneque was arrested in March 2003 as part of a major crackdown on peaceful dissent in Cuba. He was charged under Law 88 and sentenced at a summary trial to 24 years in prison. Since 2005, he has been held in the “Las Mangas” prison in Bayamo, Cuba, where his health has been dangerously deteriorating.

In addition to developing severe digestive problems from the poor prison food and lack of movement and sunlight, Dr. García Paneque has been harassed by the common criminals in the prison. Dr. García Paneque cannot digest lactose and gluten, and such dietary restrictions are not accommodated by the prison diet. His wife reports that he has lost nearly 50 percent of his body weight.

In early June 2007, Dr. García Paneque informed his mother that the prison doctors had taken him to a hospital in Bayamo, Cuba, after he complained of intense abdominal pain. An ultrasound revealed a cyst measuring 36 by 38 mm on his kidney, which prison doctors want to surgically remove. Dr. García Paneque was transferred to the medical ward of “Las Mangas” from the beginning of June until the end of July 2007. The ward is not equipped to properly treat Dr. García Paneque’s health condition. Medical exams at the “Carlos Manuel de Céspedes” Hospital in Bayamo revealed that he is suffering from a cyst on his kidney and from pneumonia.

Despite his fragile health, Dr. García Paneque was returned to a humid cell without windows in early August 2007, sharing the space with more then 15 criminal detainees who reportedly subject him to harassment and beatings. On August 28, 2007, a common criminal entered Dr. García Paneque’s cell and beat him about the head. The injuries required four stitches above his eyebrow.

Members of Dr. García Paneque’s family, including his four young children, have been repeatedly harassed at home and at school, culminating in their fleeing the island in March 2007. Yamilé Llanes Labrada is an active member of the Ladies in White.

His family’s petitions for his release based on health concerns, as well as requests that he be treated by an independent medical professional, have gone unanswered by the Cuban authorities.

I continue my quixotic quest to find the true socialist workers' paradise.

(Being sure that Dr. García Paneque’s ill treatment in prison can be attributed to the US trade embargo.)

Comment Rescue (?) and child-related gun violence in Delaware

In my post about the idiotic over-reaction to a New Jersey 10-year-old posing with his new squirrel rifle , Dana Garrett left me this response: One waits, apparently in vain, for you to post the annual rates of children who either shoot themselves or someone else with a gun. But then you Libertarians are notoriously ambivalent to and silent about data and facts and would rather talk abstract principles and fear monger (like the government will confiscate your guns). It doesn't require any degree of subtlety to see why you are data and fact adverse. The facts indicate we have a crisis with gun violence and accidents in the USA, and Libertarians offer nothing credible to address it. Lives, even the lives of children, get sacrificed to the fetishism of liberty. That's intellectual cowardice. OK, Dana, let's talk facts. According to the Children's Defense Fund , which is itself only querying the CDCP data base, fewer than 10 children/teens were killed per year in Delaw

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici

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