Afterthought

A Helen Yaffe fan, reading her book on Guevara

Something I didn't post about yesterday was that I tried to keep up with most of the BBC News Channel's Castro coverage between about 10am to 3pm (using the scrollable 'live' online News Channel feed so that I could quickly skip most of the rest of the channel's output before finding something better to do). 

The reason I felt I couldn't post about was that I'd missed an hour and that might have undermined the truth of the point I would have made (by featuring a strong critic of the late dictator): namely that all the one-on-one interviews done from the BBC studio within that time frame were with far-leftist fans of Castro (albeit all 'experts' - as Michael Gove might say [see above!]. 

One of them (just before Dateline London) was a female academic from the UK (Helen Yaffe of the LSE) who painted the most Panglossian picture of Cuba and Cuban human rights imaginable. Even Gavin Esler seemed taken aback by her refusal to admit any failings on the part of the Castro regime, including over its treatment of gay people. Gavin said that he had actually seen the sanatoriums/prisons where AIDS sufferers were locked up. He didn't go any further than that though and let her blithe reply that Cuba now has low rates of AIDS go unchallenged - along with all the rest of the 'happy clappy' pro-Castro stuff she spouted. (There are some pretty morally dubious academics teaching in our universities.)