Cuba in the Olympics

if you haven't been following the Olympic baseball games, Cuba has now won four in a row (against Japan, Canada, the US and Taiwan). so far, Cuba has won 8 medals (1 gold, 3 silver, 4 bronze).

there is no doubt Cuba's athletic programs are, for a nation its size, world-class. consider that Cuba's population is only 11.5 million, compared with medal leaders U.S. (304. 8 million) and China (1.3 billion -- that's billion with a "b").

i'm not here to point out that Cuba's baseball team is really a professional team. the players are paid to play, though not much. they don't have to hold other jobs, nor are they college students. they are full-time baseball players, and spend much of the year playing in the national league.

no matter. these days, professionals are allowed to play in the Olympics (in basketball, for example).

no. i am here to point out a claim King Fidel (Retired) made a few weeks ago. trying to refute the allegations of human right abuses in Cuba, Castro pointed to Cuba's success in sports and answered a rhetorical question: a country can't have great success in international sports and at the same time systematically violate human rights.

i'll say it again. King Fidel stated that a country can't have great success in sports and at the same time systematically violate human rights.

one only wishes.

as a response, i would like to point to the great Olympic success of, amongst others, East Germany and the Soviet Union. both nations achieved superlative medal counts while engaging in unmitigated human right abuses and suppressing the most basic freedoms.

and how about Chauchesku's Romania? Nadia Comaneci indeed was a one-of-a-kind gymnast. Alas, she came from a country where many people were arbitrarily killed or imprisoned for political (and some times for no apparent) reasons; a country responsible for hundreds of thousands of abuses, deaths and incidents of torture against a large range of people, from political opponents to ordinary citizens; a country where 80,000 political prisoners were detained as psychiatric patients and treated in some of the most sadistic ways by doctors; and a country where, as the best estimates tell us, two million people were direct victims of repression.

so much for the "sports and human right abuses don't mix" line.

oh ... and lest one forget ... how about the current Olympic host? so far, China leads in gold medals, and is second in overall medals.

and of course, we all know that China is a paragon of respect for human rights. for a short list, look up Tibet, Tiananmen Square, the religious persecution of Falun Gong, the one-child policy and its corresponding female infanticide disaster, organ harvesting, and extrajudicial executions.

had King Fidel (Retired) bothered to think his argument through, he would have realized that human rights violations have no correlation whatsoever with a nation's Olympic success.

and Cuba is an excellent case in point.