LEGIS CANTIO CONTRA INEPTOS CRITICOS

It looks like someone didn't appreciate my little rant against the attention-seeking media whore in a local rag and wrote in to complain.

It was fascinating to read Sir C4's scatter-gun and ill-informed diatribe against MP Adam Price, Plaid, the European Union, Cuba and Carmarthenshire Council (Carmarthen Journal, March 12).

I trust his BA (Hons.) thesis was better researched and better presented.

Those of us who wish to be citizens of an independent Wales want our own membership of the EU and our own seat at the United Nations.

In this, we follow the pattern set by the Republic of Ireland as one of the most successful and prosperous nations in Europe, yet still independent, because they have embraced the realities of the 21st Century. None of this is anti-English; I am an Englishman who chooses to live and work in this country.

I wonder if Sir C4' has even visited Cuba, toured the country and met the people as I have.

Yes, there is a concentration camp on the island, where people are incarcerated without charge, without trial, and without access to lawyers, and are subject to the torture that is officially sanctioned by Washington. It is the American base at Guantanamo Bay.

If Sir C4' is reluctant to go to Cuba, he could visit Florida where five Cuban citizens, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernandez, Fernando Gonzalez and Ramon Labinino, have been imprisoned in Miami for the past nine years, following a travesty of a trial, which had little to do with justice but a lot to do with US politics.

I would be happy to furnish Sir C4', or anyone else, with full details of the plight of the Miami Five, and anything else that may open closed minds.

Philip D Whitehead
Foelgastell
Cross Hands

Oh dear, I've hurt the feelings of a poor little left-wing hippy. Here is my retort:

I would like to thank Mr. Philip Whitehead for his reply (Journal, March 26) to my previous letter (Journal, March 12). I feel honoured and privileged that he took the time to defend the indefensible.

Does any rational person actually believe that the Irish Republic (or Britain for that matter) is at present a truly independent country within the European Union when it has been the openly stated goal of the EU in all it’s guises over the past fifty-one years to bring about a ever-closer economic, military and political union all the continent’s nations? The EU is the fulfilment of Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler’s shared dream of a sinister European Super-state; an Orwellian nightmare that if it is allowed to usurp our time-honoured traditions of liberty and justice, will reduce our human rights and living standards to those of Cuba (or worse still, North Korea).

I am well aware of the harm Guantanamo Bay does to its inmates and America’s reputation as the self-proclaimed leader of the Free World. I’m also sure that Mr. Whitehead would agree with me that American sanctions against Cuba (as well as Iraq and North Korea among others) have been counter-productive, as the political leadership have exploited them to further entrench their power at the expense of the people whilst simultaneously making America the scapegoats for the hardships of the citizenry.

However, despite these serious injustices and the plight of the Miami Five, the crimes against humanity committed by the Castro clan, Ernesto "Che" Guevara and their cronies cannot be overlooked or excused. Cuba viciously represses dissent against the regime, tortures and executes its people (particular minority groups such as homosexuals and until the mid-1990s, Christians) and exported mass-murder and terrorism to Central and South America, Africa and the rest of the Caribbean during the Cold War. I’m also sure that despite the rights or wrongs of what has happened to the Miami Five, they have been treated far better than poor Normando Hernández González and the fifty-eight other journalists imprisoned in Cuba.

It’s for that reason that I wouldn’t want to visit Cuba or any other third-world socialist hellhole like Venezuela, Zimbabwe and China (though I must confess a certain perverse curiosity to pay a visit to the Stalinist museum / death camp known as North Korea). Yet I can understand how hard it is for apologists like Mr. Whitehead to remove their rose-tinted spectacles (circa 1960s) and realise that all the socialist dogma they consumed with their mothers’ milk was a fatal conceit for billions of people during the last century and still is for over a billion souls to this day. He and his ilk have my pity, the organ grinders of tyranny will have to eat the metaphorically lead of my trusty scatter-gun.

P.S.: LEGIS CANTIO CONTRA INEPTOS CRITICOS.
(Incantation of the law against inept critics.)

Brilliant, don't you agree?!? Only a women's reserve team goalkeeper for Romford Hockey Club could get the better of "Mr. Marmite".