Christian, Cuban Oppression

A female Christian teaching assistant is claiming discrimination against a school for telling an autistic pupil that she disapproved of gay marriage. It was in response to a question from the pupil. The school maintains the assistant did not present a balanced view to an impressionable 14 year-old. I find it ironic that this woman is claiming discrimination for a view that is in itself discriminatory. I just wonder what the teaching assistant's view about disciplinary action would be if another, say Muslim teacher had told a pupil, when asked about his beliefs, that it is a woman's role to be subservient to men or that Jesus was not the son of God? Except in the context of religious studies (in the multiple and not the singular), schools should not be a platform for religious expression. She should have politely told the pupil it was none of his business.

Been thinking a lot about Castro - ruthless dictator or the saviour of the Cuban people? Whatever your opinion, beyond any shadow of a doubt, he was the product of American support for the corrupt Batista regime; without America there may have been no need for a Castro, or indeed a Guevara. If the charge of ruthlessness sticks to Castro, it must equally stick to America. Castro gained control of a fantastically corrupt and dirt-poor country, provided the population with universal education, healthcare and jobs and the Americans were out to get him by any means possible, including exploding cigars and depilatory unguents to make his beard fall out - could he have been anything other than ruthless when his enemies were American backed? American 'democracy' had failed miserably and the place was ripe for communism.

He does have a touch of the Liam Neesons about him in this famous photo. In others he has an air of Brian Cox - the actor, not the physicist rock star. Image is indeed a strange thing - the enduring image from the Cuban Revolution is not Castro, but Guevara, who was there for a nanosecond and then moved on - a revolutionary rock star.