Losing to revolutionaries

As an utterly discredited Bush administration issues proud invectives and thinly-veiled threats against the regimes of Cuba and Iran, the world hears only arrogance and hypocrisy.

A brief look at history reveals that both regimes came into being as the direct result of America's own foreign-policy failures.

In 1959, Cuban revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro overthrew the Batista regime, a corrupt military dictatorship backed by the United States as a supplier of cheap sugar, coffee and other products for the American consumer market.

In 1979, Iranian revolutionaries under the spiritual leadership of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini delivered a similar fate to the shah of Iran, who was backed by the United States and Britain following their own 1953 overthrow by coup d'etat of Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, a democratically-elected and popular leader who had angered the great powers by resisting foreign control of the Iranian oil industry.

Having long denied the people of both Cuba and Iran the basic right of self-determination, having ultimately lost in both to revolutionaries who despite all excesses still enjoy broad support among those they rule, and having apparently learned nothing from either experience, America talks today of freedom and democracy. I suspect few are listening.

Mark C. Eades, Oakland,California

France's 'national heritage'

Regarding the article "France stops return of mummified head" (Oct. 27): Poor France. It must be hard to be a country so rich in history and so starved for indigenous art that they have to claim a tattooed Maori head as part of their "national heritage."

Has Christine Albanel, the French cultural minister, ever visited Monet's Giverny or Rodin's home in Paris? Has she seen Jean Cocteau's "La Belle et La Bête"?

When I go to France, I don't go to see body parts of Maori peoples. France should return them and celebrate its true national heritage. It has plenty to choose from.

Thomas J. Allsopp, Rome

Thank you, France

Regarding the article "Parental leave: An American papa in Paris" (Oct. 27): Bravo to parental leave in France.

I'm a Canadian expat in suburban Paris with much to gripe about in this strike-ridden bureaucratic country, but France is the place to be for families with young children.

My three-year old just started at a school run by competent staff and equipped with a library, mini-gym, playground, nutritious canteen and nap room. Before- and after-school childcare is available for the children if necessary.

It is quality early childhood education for free.

Before school started, I was working full-time and our child was taken care of by a licensed nanny while the government gave us a monthly allowance to offset the cost. And half of what we spent on our child was deducted from our income tax.

Now France pays me a parental- leave allowance to be a stay-at-home mom with my newest baby and pick-up my school-going three-year old everyday at noon. Merci la France!

Catherine Jan Fontenay-sous-bois, France