Castro and the worldwide "intelligentsia"

Nat Hentoff savagely attacks Leftie "intellectuals" around the world who have signed on to a petition urging the UN Human Rights Commission to defeat a resolution America drafted challenging Fidel Castro. That the hard Left continues to love Castro is no surprise, since he's the last real Communist (if one ignores Hugo Chavez), and he's managed to be a reall burr in America's saddle for so long. What's disgusting is how the "soft" Left -- Hollywood's armchair intellectuals, the literary gadflys, and the MSM pundits -- all of whom profess to abhor Bush's supposed attacks on American liberties, can cozy up to a man who does this:

During Castro's March 2003 crackdown on dissenting Cuban human rights workers, journalists and independent librarians (who opened their homes as libraries to books censored in official libraries) they were sentenced to 20 years and more. Described accurately as "prisoners of conscience" by Amnesty International, many of them are held in savage conditions. "Some," reports Amnesty International, are in confinement for infractions of prison rules in "celdas tapiadas, 'walled-in cells' ... said to be very small with no light and no furniture; they lack sanitary provisions including drinking water, and are often infested with rats, mice and cockroaches; the prisoners are not allowed out, not allowed visitors and are not allowed to take exercise and sometimes are not permitted to wear any clothing nor given any bedding." In the interest of accuracy, Amnesty International does point out that "during 2004 and early 2005 a total of 19 prisoners of conscience were released, 14 of whom were only granted "licencia extrapenal," "conditional release" permitting them to carry out the rest of their sentences outside prison for health reasons, in the knowledge they could be detained again" by their vigilant jailer, Dictator Castro. There are two new prisoners of conscience, notes Amnesty International, including Raul Arencibia Fajardo, 41. His crime? He was a member of the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights and the Human Rights' Friends Club. What do the Nobel laureates protecting Fidel think of that? Amnesty is also investigating seven more cases of imprisoned dissidents.

Often, when the soft American left acts, one knows they're doing it simply to be contrarians -- that is, whatever Pres. Bush is for, they're against. The longstanding love affair with Castro, however, exceeds this simple analysis, and speaks to a deep, deep, stupidity amongst people who profess a level of knowledge and insight denied others.