Albert Arnold Gore has been awarded the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize. America's national joke is now the Norwegians' paradigm of modernity and savior of the planet. Jerry Lewis must feel relieved that now somebody else represents the cultural divide between the U.S. and Europe. Of course, Lewis actually claimed to be a comedian.
We were surprised that Gore was not credited with the invention of the internet in his citation. What is one more little lie compared to the monumental fraud of global warming, which has just been endorsed by that other dimwit who beat Al Gore to the prize he really wanted in 2000. The Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize are, after all, only consolation prizes; more fame and money for someone who really wants power.
What makes this award especially noxious to me is that no Cuban human rights advocate has ever been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Frauds like Rigoberta Menchú and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, supporters of Fidel Castro and the "Cuban model," have been honored by the Nobel Committee, but never those who have confronted peacefully the world's most savage and longest-ruling dictatorship.
Perhaps if Marta Beatriz Roque adopted the garb of an Arawak maiden or Dr. Darsi Ferrer formed a Cuban committee in solidarity with Mookie Wilson, the Cuban dissidents would rise to the moral greatness of the inventor of dynamite.
The Nobel Peace Prize has become as politicized and craven as the old Stalin Peace Prize, and some day soon it will become just as embarrassing and shameful to be a Nobel laureate as it is to be a Stalin laureate.
We were surprised that Gore was not credited with the invention of the internet in his citation. What is one more little lie compared to the monumental fraud of global warming, which has just been endorsed by that other dimwit who beat Al Gore to the prize he really wanted in 2000. The Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize are, after all, only consolation prizes; more fame and money for someone who really wants power.
What makes this award especially noxious to me is that no Cuban human rights advocate has ever been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Frauds like Rigoberta Menchú and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, supporters of Fidel Castro and the "Cuban model," have been honored by the Nobel Committee, but never those who have confronted peacefully the world's most savage and longest-ruling dictatorship.
Perhaps if Marta Beatriz Roque adopted the garb of an Arawak maiden or Dr. Darsi Ferrer formed a Cuban committee in solidarity with Mookie Wilson, the Cuban dissidents would rise to the moral greatness of the inventor of dynamite.
The Nobel Peace Prize has become as politicized and craven as the old Stalin Peace Prize, and some day soon it will become just as embarrassing and shameful to be a Nobel laureate as it is to be a Stalin laureate.
Cuban dissidents, the Ladies in White, Gorki, Darsi, and every Cuban mother who raises son and daughters to oppose the tyranny and take to the seas, every Cuban father who teaches dignity to his children are more qualified and morally deserving than Al Gore. They also would reject such price since their pride and high morals prevents them from being in such low company as the previous Nobel Prize for "Peace" recipients.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, Gorki was presented as a repressed voice in the Nobel Center for the Peace exhibition, giving the world a small peek into Cuba's reality of repression and the consequences one faces when one choses to be free inside and reject the police state instituted by Castro.
By the way, I quoted you on KillCastro.
The nomination committee passing over Cuban dissidents comes as no surprise. We mustn't forget one of the prize's more infamous nominees from a few years back.
ReplyDeleteManuel:
ReplyDeleteI read your beautiful translation of Los Dos Principes at Black Sheep, I want to ask something of you, since you are more knowledgable about Marti's writings.
In my copy of La Edad de Oro, it says, idea de la poetisa Norteamericna, Helen Hunt Jackson, I don't understand what it means, did she write it first, and Marti translated it to the Spanish? or that it was simply her idea? also can you please print it here too for your readers to enjoy, thanks
http://luisexto.blogia.com/
ReplyDeleteManuel:
I wanted to bring your attention to the above blog I discovered, seems it comes from Cuba by a defender of the revolution, I gather he's one of the writers in Juventud Rebelde, how I would love to see your input there.
I didn't know that they had the likeliness of Al BORE in a Natural Sciences diorama.... Even the monkey is running away from him.....
ReplyDeleteLOL..Charlie
ReplyDeleteCharlie:
ReplyDeleteThe monkey no doubt has its reasons. "One world," you know.
I omitted this paragraph from the post because I wanted to focus attention on Cuba's neglected dissidents:
ReplyDeleteWith the energy that Al Gore wastes to light up his Mac-Mansion, he could light candles to illuminate the whole world, literally; and with the caloric energy that he accumulates on his gargantuan frame, he could buy a Big Mac for all the hungry of the world, or even a Value Meal, if he dipped into his assets. But Al's humanitarianism is lite on dollars and heavy on rhetoric, and he is more concerned about the planet warming to death than people freezing to death for lack of fossil fuels.
Manuel, that paragraph belongs right in the core of your article....
ReplyDeleteManuel:;
ReplyDeleteAny thing on Helen Hunt Jackson?hope I didn't stump you, I'm baffled please help!!
Manuel:
ReplyDeleteI have searched every thing I can find on Helen Hunt Jackson, I have not been able to find any correlation between her and Marti, or the Two Princes.
Vana:
ReplyDeleteHelen Hunt Jackson was a 19th century American poet and novelist whose most famous work, Ramona, Martí translated into Spanish. Martí admired her greatly for her advocacy of the rights of native Americans. Her novel Ramona was an attempt to do for American Indians what Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin had done half a century earlier for African-Americans — raise the consciousness of the nation to the historic wrongs done to them and halt the campaign of extermination which the U.S. government was carrying out against them in the West. In translating Ramona Martí hoped to extend her beneficent influence beyond the Rio Grande, where Indians were also subjected to discrimination though not on the scale practiced against their U.S. counterparts, who were even denied the vote until 1924.
As to Martí's poem "Los Dos Princípes," it is indeed derived from an earlier composition by Jackson. That poem is now forgotten except when referenced to Martí's own classic version based on it.
Martí's poem is not a translation of Jackson's, but, rather, borrows elements of her poem to create a new (and better) one. Since poets regularly borrow ideas from each other, Martí was not obliged to acknowledge his debt to Jackson. But he felt empathy for the recently deceased Jackson and probably wanted to render her tribute by acknowledging her influence in creating the poem.
Manuel:
ReplyDeleteThank you for answering my question, I learned of her through my research and the work she did for America Indians, truly a great woman, no wonder Marti admired and borrowed from her, I'm indebted to you for letting me pick your brain, youre a good teacher, and may I add a patient one, again thank you
If the Nobel peace prize was nothing why ALL of the whining in the right wing blogsphere.
ReplyDeleteHA.. just take it- you'll never get control of the intellectual and journalistic elite!! Why, b/c smart people are hard right wingers!
I mean smart people AREN't hard right wingers!
ReplyDeleteWe control the academy and you will never get it!!
Getting a PhD opens one mind in a way, for the majority, that precludes the conservative mind set.
Anonymous:
ReplyDeleteEver heard of a Freudian slip, genius?
Manuel,
ReplyDeletetouche!
they say "the fish dies by the mouth". Here we see a beautiful example with the anonymous .
Good posting. When the Nobel Peace Prize went to Arafat it sank to the lowest rung of the moral ladder. For me, it lost all of its dignity and purpose.