Uncommon Sense

NYC teacher not only an idiot, he's also a communist

More than three years ago, I sounded the idiot alert for Nathan Turner, a New York City school teacher who took some of his students on an unauthorized field trip to Cuba.

Well, it turns out he wasn't just an idiot.

As the New York Post reports today, he's also a communist:

A Manhattan high school history teacher, who resigned under fire after taking students on a spring-break "Club Red" field trip to Cuba three years ago, is a self-proclaimed Communist who tried justifying the jaunt by telling Education officials he needed to see Fidel Castro one more time before the dictator died.

The shocking revelations are highlighted in a report released today by the city’s special investigator for schools. It recommends that Nathan Turner — who organized the April 2007 trip for himself and five students of the selective Beacon School on the Upper East Side — never be allowed to work in city schools again.

Turner, whose class walls were adorned with posters of Castro and Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, resigned in 2008. Besides placing full blame on Turner, 39, for violating federal restrictions for traveling to Cuba, the report also fully exonerates the school’s principal, Ruth Lacey.

"I don’t think [Lacey] could have done anything more to stop the trip except stand at the border with a gun in her hands," Richard Condon, the special commissioner who headed the three-year investigation, told The Post.

Lacey, the report says, told Turner before he left for Cuba that he couldn’t take students on the 10-day trip and that he had to stop holding meetings about the excursion at the school. Turner responded by saying he had "to go to Cuba to see Castro one more time before he died."

"You know, Ms. Lacey. I’m a Communist," Turner told her, the report says.

That Turner is an avowed communist shouldn't disqualify him from being a teacher, although you have to wonder how in tune with reality and with history he is.

But with his choices, and his fervent defense of a really, really bad idea — going to Cuba even though it was against the law and without the knowledge of schools officials — he has clearly demonstrated he doesn't belong in a classroom.

Cuba Idiot Watch: Makani Themba-Nixon

It pains Makani Themba-Nixon to admit it, but Fidel/Raul Castro's Cuba isn't perfect.

But as she sees it, it's still one of the best places on Earth, so she has withdrawn her name from a letter she and 60 other prominent black Americans recently signed criticizing racism in Cuba.

It was all a misunderstanding, said Themba-Nixon, she really is an idiot when it comes to Cuba.

"Although I know that racism (in Cuba) has not been overcome, I also know that the progress in Cuba is envied even in the United States,'' Themba-Nixon told the Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald.

Well, the Castros do run a fairly efficient police state.

"This does not mean that there should be no criticism, or no push for more progress. But I don't want any public statement we make to be turned into a weapon to attack a nation and a revolution that have contributed so much to the world,'' she added.

Well, there are those millions of exiles who have bettered the countries where they found refuge.

I will give Themba-Nixon the benefit of the doubt, and just conclude that she really is an idiot about Cuba, and that her sympathies are not the result of a twisted ideology — despite the fact that her retraction was first published by a Cuban government Web site. I know, perhaps I am too kind.

I wonder what prominent black Cubans, like Oscar Elias Biscet and Jorge Luis Garcia Perez "Antúnez," think about Themba-Nixon's assessment of the "revolution," but they were not available.

Cuban political prisoner Ariel Sigler's message for Matthew Bosisio and other idiots

Cuban political prisoner Ariel Sigler Amaya is trying to get out of Cuba.

American university professor Matthew Bosisio can't wait to go back, so he can drink more of the Castro Kool-Aid.

Before he returns, however, Bosisio might consider Sigler's most recent message for the world:

"This is obvious: They are trying to kill me little by little."

The "they" is the dictatorship that tortures Sigler and other political prisoners, and the dictatorship that Bosisio and too many others without a clue, think is something to emulate.

I doubt they would think that if they had to trade places with Sigler.

Cuba Idiot Watch: Matthew Bosisio

Georgia university professor Matthew Bosisio went to Cuba, and came back with was a mind full of mush about Cuba, its education system and the big, bad United States:

After spending 10 days in Cuba last month with a delegation of educators, I came away with the sense that the country is doing a remarkable number of things well. Not perfectly, but well.

Education is one of those things. Every child born in Cuba is guaranteed a free education from primary school through advanced studies. It is the collective philosophy that education is a basic right and the avenue for improving society.

It stems in large part to the vision of Jose Marti, Cuba's national hero, who said that "education begins with life and ends with death." Along with health care, education is the government's highest priority.

If education in communist Cuba is given the same priority as health care, Cubans are in bigger trouble than we ever thought.

No, the Cuban government's highest priority is the preservation of its dictatorial power, by whatever means necessary, and that includes an education system designed to indoctrinate, and thus control, even the youngest Cubans.

Cuban schools are just another instrument of the Castro dictatorship, and Matthew Bosisio is just another idiot about Cuba.

The scarier thing, his students think he's cool!

Cuba Idiot Watch: Terrence Howard

B-level actor Terrence Howard says he wishes the American health care system was just like Cuba's.

“Well, what’s interesting is we’re level with third world countries in poverty but some of these third world countries still have individuals – they have a health care system – you can go to Cuba and have anything done even if you’re not a Cuban citizen,” Howard told CNSNews.com in reference to President Barack Obama’s plan for government-run health care.

Well, what's really interesting is that this guy gets asked his opinion about Obama's health care plan.

Fortunately CNSNews.com attempts to provide some perspective about Cuba-care:

Cuba’s health care system has been criticized for its high doctor-to-patient ratio, as well as poor hospital conditions and lack of adequate drugs for treatment, including basic items such as aspirin. There essentially is a two-tier health care system in Cuba: one for tourists and government elites and one for the common people.
 
As the National Post has reported:  “After the Soviet Union stopped sending Cuba US$5-billion in annual funding to prop up its economy, the health care system, like most social services, fell on difficult times. In common with other buildings on the Communist island, hospitals are falling apart, surgeons lack basic supplies and must re-use latex gloves. Patients must buy their own sutures on the black market and provide bedsheets and food for extended hospital stays.”
 
“Antibiotics, one of the most valuable commodities on the cash-strapped Communist island, are in extremely short supply and available only on the black market. Aspirin can be purchased only at government-run dollar stores, which carry common medications at a huge markup in U.S. dollars,” reported The Post.  “This puts them out of reach of most Cubans, who are paid little and in pesos. Their average wage is 300 pesos per month, about $12.”

For more about the reality of Cuban health care, check out The Real Cuba.

Cuba Idiot Alert: Julia Wright

It's been a while since it has gone off here, but the Cuba Idiot Alert is blaring loud and clear this morning after I read this silly quote from Julia Wright in an even sillier story about how the Cuban people are better off after suffering several years of near starvation brought on by the end of Soviet subsidies:

"The crisis that Cuba suffered has made it a better place in certain aspects, as people had to become more resilient and self-sufficient and less wasteful. ... Although Cubans would certainly say that their food shortages and lack of inputs has been a hardship."

What an idiot.

Certainly.

Cuba Idiot Watch (Ché Guevara edition) — Benicio del Toro

Benicio del Toro

After a long hiatus, Uncommon Sense brings back the Cuba Idiot Watch, to highlight the mushy-brained politicians, starstruck celebrities and other idiots who, by choice or just by their own stupidity, don't get what Cuba and Castroism are all about.

What better way to kick off the revival than with Benicio del Toro, star of the upcoming Ché Guevara film orgy.

In an interview Saturday with an Argentine newspaper, del Toro offers several bits of idiocy about the Cuban revolution's chief executioner:

• "I believe that anyone who wears a Ché T-shirt, understands his message. If I see someone wearing a Ché T-shirt, I think, 'He has good taste.'"

Cuba Idiot Alert: Jean Ziegler

The headline to this story about the latest pronouncement from United Nations food expert — "UN rapporteur: US embargo a major threat to human rights in Cuba" — demands an immediate response:

Setting aside the inconvenient truth that a giant loophole in the embargo has allow the United States to become Cuba's largest supplier of food, what about "the major threat to human rights in Cuba" posed by continued Castroism and the political repression and economic mismanagement that comes with it?

Perhaps we can agree to disagree on the actual effects of the embargo, but the human rights of the Cuban people are violated no more than they are by their dictators. Anyone who doesn't see it is either a communist, delusional or an idiot.

And yes, the terms are not mutually exclusive.

At least now Louis Michel, another bearer of public relations gifts from Europe for Cuba, doesn't have to worry about being the biggest Cuba Idiot of the Week.

For more about Ziegler, the co-founder of "the Moammar Khaddafi Prize for Human Rights" and his sympathies, read here.

NYC school's trip to Cuba still under review

A couple of New York newspapers, the Sun and the Daily News, report the latest on the investigations into an apparently unauthorized trip to Cuba taken by students at the Beacon School.

The most interesting tidbit is that the trips may have been organized and funded by the notoriously pro-Castro Pastors for Peace/Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization.

The Sun reports:

The Interreligious Foundation is headquartered on West 145th Street. The group's Web site says the American government "says you can't go to Cuba and see things for yourself. We say you should!"

As part of a court settlement in 2000 with the Treasury Department, the Interreligious Foundation agreed it would not be eligible to receive authorization to provide services in connection with travel to Cuba.

The city's investigation into the trips was stalled when the Interreligious Foundation went to court to oppose subpoenas it had received from the city's special commissioner of investigation for New York City public schools, Richard Condon.

Last week, a judge, Judith Gische of state Supreme Court in Manhattan, upheld the city's subpoenas.

Those subpoenas request information including permissions slips, itineraries, and payments or contributions received from students and educators, the decision said.

In court papers, the foundation has not confirmed that it was involved in arranging the school trips.

The Beacon School's Web site was on the blink, so it could not be determined whether Nathan Turner, the idiot teacher whose students took the trip, is still on the faculty.

(H/T to Babalú and Cuban Triangle.)

Cuba Idiot Alert — Doug Morris

I had an open mind — or maybe I was too tired to argue — when I started to read this interview between "Rick Smith (radio host of United for Progress, a 100% pro-labor and unapologetically progressive voice, heard on WHYL News Talk Radio (960 AM), Carlisle, PA)" and Eastern New Mexico University education professor Doug Morris, who at some point in the recent past had visited Cuba.

I almost couldn't get past the first question and answer, when Morris explained why he went to Cuba:

Another reason for visiting Cuba is to renew one’s inspiration and hope in human possibility.

OK, after I quit rolling my eyes — after all, he is an academic maybe not wise to the real world — I moved onto the next few questions, just to be sure I understood where Morris was coming from.

Morris' confirmed he feels most at home on the extreme fringe of the idiot left, when he said this:

As to Cuba, under the revolution, Cuba has no history of death squads or torture squads, no mass imprisonment, mass kidnapping, and no mass repression. Some people who are referred to in the US as “dissidents” and imprisoned in Cuba would be called “terrorists” if they were operating in the US or in a US client state. In general, those “terrorists” are people who work for the US, are funded through the US Interest Section in Havana (basically CIA headquarters in Cuba), or they are funded by anti-revolution groups in Miami that often have connections to the CIA and thus carry out policies supported by US power. Those people are trying to destroy the Cuban socialist experiment and they are backed by real power, i.e. US power.

If only "terrorists" like Oscar Biscet and Normando Hernandez, with or without our help, were so successful, Morris would have to travel elsewhere to vindicate his idiocy.

You can e-mail Morris at [email protected]

You can read about Cuba's history of death and torture squads, mass imprisonment, mass kidnapping and mass repression, at Cuba Archive.