Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

Every conceivable sympathetic movement on the part of another person towards Castro and the Cuban government is interpreted by Castro as a justification for his ideological convictions. Over the past two decades, the Canadian, Spanish, Mexican and CARICOM governments, among others; the Pope, liberal American politicians, Black activists from the US, and Caribbean people have given Cuba and President Castro unbelievable breathing space to survive American pressure, but to date there has been no willingness on Castro's part to shift gear in the direction of obligatory politics. Castro simply does not believe in such a path because his psychological apparatus does not allow for this. Castro's world view is based on divine right, meaning that his position is right and truthful, and those who open up to him have come around to the acceptance that the Cuban ideological construct is philosophically grounded in history and has been proven right....

How ironic that the CARICOM-Cuba relationship contains the same ingredients as CARICOM-US friendship. CARICOM treads carefully in provoking the US because they have too much to lose. And it is the same with Cuba. Cuba has been generous to CARICOM states, with the latest manifestation of this being a huge number of scholarships to Guyana, the lessening of a shortage of medical personnel in Trinidad, and infrastructural help to Grenada. This explains the reticence of CARICOM on Cuba's savage lawlessness in the execution of three men following court trials, and the imprisonment of seventy-three others where the invisible demand of Castro hangs like a painting over the head of the jury and the judges are able to see Castro's face as they ponder their verdict....

--From a letter by Frederick Kissoon published in today's Stabroek News (no link, because Stabroek has no permanent online archive).

Today's Stabroek also publishes another letter by Armando Proenza describing the U.S. embargo as an "elementary violation of the human rights of the Cuban people for more than 40 years". It does not occur to Mr. Proenza that it is possible to oppose both the increasingly foolish embargo & Castro's human rights abuses simultaneously; but then, which ideologue ever had much time for logic--or justice?