Vote in the Name of God!

Polling for "The Prince of Darkness or The King of Fools" shall end when at least 50 votes have been cast. We are already half way there. Then I shall reveal what I think about each of the players in this farce which I have dubbed the "War of the T-shirts." What I think about them, of course, is not much; and I confess I have been unable to decide for myself which is the least odious. That is why I need you to tell me which I find less disgusting, for only then will I know how to proceed in this matter. Split the hairs for me; look beneath the surface. Undoubtedly I have paid more attention to Babalú than to Stuck on the Palmetto. But does this indicate that I find Babalú more disgusting, or just the opposite? Can it be that I despise SotP even more and show my contempt for it by refusing to acknowledge its existence in more than a cursory manner?

I have never faced such a crux!

How can the enemy of my enemy be my friend if my enemies are enemies?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Help me!

Vote!

Now!


POSTSCRIPT:

Could this be a conspiracy on the part of Babalú and Stuck on the Palmetto to drive me insane? If so, it appears to be working.

The Prince of Darkness or The King of Fools?

In the flame war between Babalu and Stuck on the Palmetto, which would RCAB feel less disgusted siding with?
	Babalu
	Stuck on the Palmetto
pollcode.com free polls

Castro's Lawyers Kurzban & Davis Face Disbarment in Cubas-Izquierdo Custody Battle

Never underestimate the fragile psyche of a madwoman or trust her to do your bidding. Never, never place your reputation in her hands, much less your livelihood or, indeed, your life. This is a lesson that will cost Ira Kurzban and Magda Montiel Davis a great deal now and in the future. Any lover of liberty or common decency cannot but rejoice at their fall. In any circumstances it would have been welcome and is certainly long overdue; but in the present circumstances, in particular, it is doubly satisfying and doubly-deserved. May justice find all the enemies of Cuba as it found them and confound them as it confounded them.

These artificers of evil in wolf's clothing — or is that a redundancy? — have committed the gravest offence of which any attorney can be guilty. They have fabricated evidence and suborned a witness to perjure herself. Disbarment is inevitable and jail and a monumental fine are by no means to be discounted as punishments for such conduct.

Yesterday, we meditated upon the mysterious disappearance from Judge Cohen's courtroom of Elena Pérez's deposition of custody, whereby she surrendered her daughter to the state. Missing also were the minutes of the judicial hearing where this document was formalized. As Charlie Bravo rightly commented the material does not beccome immaterial except by human agency. There can be no other conclusion except that pertinent documents were stolen to alter the court record and make it more difficult for the Cubas-Izquierdo custody case to proceed. I asked, cui bono? The answer escaped no one. If the mother can't be shown to have relinquished custody, then there is no custody case.

Now the inverse has happen. Castro's attorneys have fabricated false evidence which they have attempted to introduce into the court record. One of the most important elements of this case which goes to show that the father had abandoned his daughter and never inquired about her health or well-being after she left Cuba with her mother was the fact that he had never sent her a letter or birthday card, made a phone call to her or written to the mother inquiring about his daughter. Such an omission is difficult to explain, and coupled with the fact that he had signed away custody to her insane and abusive mother before she left the island and had only taken an interest in the girl when the Castro regime did, would seem to indidate that the birth father felt no paternal attachment to her, and, indeed, had rejected the child in word and deed.

To correct this situation and improve the image of the birth father, Kurzban and Davis (the mother vacilated between the two) fabricated letters from the father to his ex-girlfriend, which Izquierdo wrote out in his hand and Elena Pérez agreed to say she had received in Houston 2 years ago, as per her own testimony. We would not be surprised if the Castro regime provided pre-postmarked envelopes for the letters to make the ruse more convincing. They might have gotten away with it except that the mother couldn't go through with it at the end because of her fear of going to jail for perjury. This price was more than she was willing to pay to insure that the daughter she had abused ended up with her indifferent father. Given her mental condition and the pressure exerted on her by Izquierdo's attorneys this would have been unlikely. It is highly likely, however, for Kurzban and Montiel, and should also carry consequences for their client (Izquierdo, not Castro).

Judge Cohen was taken aback and somewhat incredulous at this turn of events. Clearly, she didn't want to believe Pérez. Kurzban and Davis must be dear friends. In the end, she did ask that magic question, cui bono? She phrased it as "What do you [Pérez] have to benefit by lying?" What indeed, Judge!

Re-read the first paragraph. I couldn't decide whether to make it the introduction or the conclusion.

The Pot Calls the Kettle Prieto

Beneath the feigned hurt and indignation, Val Prieto is probably celebrating this evening. It's not every day that Babalú — his "humble blog," his "lowly blog" — is featured in El Nuevo Herald much less accused of being so unhumble and unlowly as to be able to fuel mass hysteria in Miami with last Friday's "Breaking News: Fidel Castro Is Dead" post, and even, which Cossio does not mention, compel the White House to disavow the rumor.

Cossio also blames blogger PerezHilton, but this seems hardly fair since his stock in trade is gossip-mongering and one would have to be stupid to credit anything he says. Babalú, on the other hand, aspires at least to be respectable, although if it continues to wave the bloody shirt it may find itself classed with PerezHilton and the other the scandal blogs forever.

Cossio labels Babalú "irresponsible," which is rather a mild criticism given the level of its deception. The possibility that it may have been self-deception as well does not excuse the enormity of reporting Castro's death as a fact when Babalú had nothing to back it up with but fantastical scenarios of its own invention.

One would wish that Babalu's "editor-in-chief," as Val Prieto now styles himself, would acknowledge his responsibility and take his lumps as a man. But, no such luck. Unrepentent and unchastened, we can only expect more of the same from him.

Sad but not unexpected.

Never unexpected.

http://www.elnuevoherald.com/noticias/mundo/columnas_de_opinion/story/83514.html

Senator Larry Craig's Dalliances in Castro's Boy Brothel

Senator Larry Craig's sexual indiscretions would be of absolutely no interest to me if he inopportuned on adult men who were free to reject his sophomoric advances in whatever way they thought most appropriate. But Mr. Craig's history shows that he is also a predator with no regard for the age of his victims. This fact has been known and tolerated by both his colleagues and his constituents since he was implicated in the first Congressional page scandal in 1980. A lifelong bachelor who, until the age of 62, had at least the common decency of not ruining a woman's life by marrying her, Craig suddenly proposed to a staffer last year when Mike Rogers of BlogActive outed him on the Ed Schultz Radio Show in Oct. 2006. His now wife brought 3 children into the marriage which Craig adopted this year and claims as his own in his official biography, which gives no indication of their adoption. Given his past conduct these children may be to him what Michael Jackson's blonde blue-eyed made-to-order children are to him — not just a cover but perhaps something more sinister. In view of his history, we should all rejoice at Craig's arrest and public humiliation, literally, at his own hands. It is just what is required to put an end to more than 30 years of deceit, hypocrisy and worse, and it may discourage other politicians who adopt homophobia as a means to conceal their own hatred of who they are, because homophobia appears to be becoming, in right-wing Republican circles, the most reliable indication of homosexuality itself.

There is still one aspect of the Senator's "secret life" — which was no secret to anyone in the Washington establishment — that has not received any scrutiny thus far: Craig's junkets abroad to exotic places that pedophiles favor because of lax laws and the people's poverty. I will let the suddenly active corps of Idahoan reporters, who have sat on this story for 25 years, pursue these leads themselves and limit myself to the senator's dalliances in Cuba.

These were made possible by Craig's sudden interest in Cuban affairs and advocacy of the interests of Fidel Castro, which he developed against the interests of his own party, which won the 2000 elections thanks to the support of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans, its largest minority constituency. It's impossible for Republicans to carry the state of Florida without the votes of Cuban-Americans and impossible for the Republicans to win the presidency without Florida. I mention this just in case any reader from Idaho thinks that their first-in-the-nation primary counts for anything.

No, I don't just blame Craig for his courting of Fidel Castro. I also blame his constituents who were more interested in selling potatoes to Castro than Craig was in selling to them the idea that the Cuban people are also deserving of freedom. Politicians should lead their constituents, not follow them like dogs. Trading with a future democratic Cuba would be greatly in the interest of Idahoans, but trading with a bankrupt larcenous state is not. Not only is it morally wrong, but economically ill-advised. It means going to the back of the queue of creditors which Cuba has defrauded over last 48 years, including every country that it has ever traded with, as well as thousands of foreign companies and individuals. But Craig not only wanted Idahoans on that line, he was also in favor of repealing the only protection which they had against Castro defrauding them. Craig wanted the Cuban regime to be able to buy U.S. goods on credit; presently they are only allowed to do so by paying cash on the barrel. In the end, by enabling Castro to cheat them, Craig was doing a great disservice to his constituency of government-subsidized farmers-in-name-only corporate conglomerates. Although they are not worth shedding tears about, Craig's indifference to their real interests does call into question his real interests in this matter.

As a U.S. senator who does Castro's bidding, Larry Craig was received in Cuba with every distinction accorded to a visiting chief of state, including the obligatory 8-hour tete-a-tete with its Maximum Leader. Gifts were exchanged: Castro gave Craig a box of his special-reserve Cuban cigars and Craig gave Castro a case of Idaho wine. [The 639th (unintentional) attempt on his life?]

But Craig got more than the cigars. Craig also got the gold pass to Castro's boy brothel, maintained for the benefit of Raul and his circle, diplomats, foreign journalists, Castro's celebrity groupies, and, of course, visiting dignitaries like Craig who peddle their influence in exchange for satisfying their warped libidos in a pedophile-friendly state closer to home and not so well-known for catering to such "eclectic" tastes, as, say, Thailand. Besides having a wider selection in Cuba where all races are represented, the pedophiles are not only protected by the government but there are no agents from the Society for the Suppression of Slavery hounding their footsteps, as in Thailand; nor are they subject to deportation to their native countries for prosecution there, as provided in the latest international accords (to which Cuba, of course, is not a signatory).

What Craig didn't realize was that all hotel rooms in Cuba which are made available to VIPs are outfitted with concealed cameras, as is, of course, the house where the boys are kept. Unbeknownst to him Craig must have starred in dozens of X-rated movies, stored in the vaults of Cuba's Directorate General of Intelligence (DGI) and viewed regularly for laughs by his cordial hosts. Of course, they were not gathered just to have a laugh at his expense, but as insurance against his ever becoming less than grateful for the "hospitality" that he was shown in Cuba.

We know of the existence of this brothel thanks to the legendary Argentine soccer player and notorious closet case Diego Maradonna. He visits Cuba frequently to fight (or indulge) his monumental cocaine habit and has related his "intergenerational adventures" to fellow pederasts in Argentina, who in turn have spread the news of the "good times" to be had there. Of course, Castro's boy brothel is only for his "special guests." All other tourists with dollars must find their own quarry, although they, too, enjoy the indulgence and protection of the Cuban regime.

Maradonna sports a large tatoo on his arm of fellow Argentine "Che" Guevara, who was the 20th century's biggest persecutor of gays after Hitler. It is possible, of course, to expect anything from men like Craig and Maradonna but self-recognition. For Craig, however, reality has come knocking at last on his bathroom stall.

http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2007/04/larry-craig-will-not-surpass-william.html

http://www.thestencil.com/archives/2007/08/tuesday_morning_1.html

Sumner Welles: When Public Men Commit Private Acts In Public Places

Sumner Welles with FDR in Warm Springs, Georgia, in Nov. 1933, where Welles had gone to brief the president on the Cuban situation. This is a posed photograph intended to mislead the public. Roosevelt, of course, could not drive a car.


You would think that being a public figure he would have avoided sex in public places. You would think that being a middle-age man, not a teenager, he would have avoided sex in public places. You would think that I was alluding to Senator Larry Craig of Idaho, but I am not.

At 6'5" tall, he would have stood out anywhere. In Cuba, where the average male height in 1933 was closer to 5'5" than 6'5", he was a virtual colossus. To make the contrast even more striking, he always wore a black woolen suit in a semi-tropical country where white linen suits were de rigour for men who wore them. He seemed to embody in his person the country which he in fact represented diplomatically — imperial, ominous and a bully.

His name was Sumner Welles, recognized by The New York Times in 1998 as "among the half-dozen most influential career diplomats of this century." He was also the last American pro-consul in Cuba and the most important foreign diplomat in in our country's history.

Welles had known FDR since he was a boy, and as a 12-year old had been a page at Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's wedding. He followed in Roosevelt's footsteps to Groton and Harvard and FDR sponsored his entry into the foreign service. In 1933, FDR sent Welles to Cuba to stop a revolution. He didn't succeed. Despite his efforts at mediation, Gerardo Machado was overthrown. His next mission was to insure that the revolution would not do what, well, Fidel Castro's revolution did in Cuba 25 years later — renounce its debts and confiscate U.S. properties. In this he was successful principally because the Cubans themselves wanted no such thing. They were quite satisfied when the provisional government lowered electric rates.

Welles did not think they would stop there, which was probably the logical conclusion when the new provisional president Ramón Grau de San Martín refused to swear fealty to the Cuban Constitution because it contained the Platt Amendment, which gave the U.S. the right to intervene in Cuba at its pleasure. Welles' diplomacy was punctuated by the U.S. fleet within sight of Havana. But the Cubans rightly sized up Welles and his boss and didn't blink but continued progressive reforms that weakened U.S. influence on the island without challenging it outright. In less than a year, Roosevelt would proclaim the "Good Neighbor Policy" and the Platt Amendment would be abrogated, though the U.S. retained Guantánamo naval base.

His mission to Cuba having been considered a success, Welles was appointed Assistant Secretary and then Under-Secretary of State and was considered the likely successor to Secretary Cordell Hull, then in his 80s. No doubt had Welles, who was half his age, been appointed to succeed him, he would still have been a major player 20 years later in the Kennedy administration and might have offered useful advice on how to deal with Castro. But Welles' star had long dimmed by then, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that it had been put out.

It happened on the presidential train as it was returning to Washington, D.C. from the funeral of House Speaker William Bankhead, in Jaspar, Alabama, where FDR and Bankhead's actress daughter Tallulah drew a crowd of 65,000 to the tiny rural church. It was summer and the temperature must have been 120 degrees or more in the train. Everybody was pretty much stewed either from the heat or efforts to combat it with mint juleps and sterner stuff. The president, vice-president Wallace and the cabinet went to bed early. Welles was up till 4:00 in the morning drinking and was the last to retire to his sleeping compartment, which was between the president's and Labor Secretary Frances Perkins'.

Before calling it a night, Welles asked a porter to bring him coffee (porters at that time were all black men or boys). Welles then requested something else with his coffee. He propositioned the porter and offered him money if he would bugger him. The man politely declined and fled in terror. Declining a white man's request then could have gotten any black man lynched in the south. The porter's solution to this dilemma was to send the youngest porter, a 13-year-old boy, with the coffee. Surely he supposed, in his world-class naïveté, that this would stop Welles' advances. It did not. The boy ran off and yet another porter was sent with the coffee. And still another and another, with similar results. If just one of them had remembered, in his shock, to put the coffee down; but they obviously held unto the pot as some kind of protection. Finally, word got to the President of the Railroad, who was on board, and he in turn contacted the chief of the president's Secret Service detail, named Whitehead, who enlisted yet another porter to entrap Welles, ordering him to leave the compartment door open so that he and his deputy could catch Welles in fragranti. But Welles saw Whitehead lurking in the corridor and slammed his door shut. He had, of course, slammed the door on his life and career.

No police report was filed. None of the dozens of reporters on the president's train filed the story. Welles was even allowed to stay on the job till Secretary Hull learned the truth and threatened to resign himself unless Welles did. Roosevelt, who said he didn't blame a man for what he did when he was drunk, was forced to request Welles' resignation. Welles' career was over at 50.

Sumner Welles became a bigger alcoholic and his long-suffering wife finally left him. Welles hired a French bisexual butler to replace her, who finished the ruin of him that had begun on the presidential train. In 1948, Welles attempted, unsuccessfully, to commit suicide by jumping into a frozen creek on his 500-acre Washington estate. He was too tall and the creek was too shallow. Although he didn't drown, he almost froze to death. In 1956, he was outed by Confidential magazine, which that same year almost exposed Rock Hudson as well. Liquor, which had precipitated his ruin, finished him off at age 68 in 1961.

No Cuban historian ever mentioned Mister Welles' strange fate. Perhaps they felt pity for him or thought it all just too monstrous to believe much less confine to paper.

Here's the article from Confidential Magazine, which relates the story of another train incident, from 1937:

http://www.reformation.org/welles-confidential-magazine.html

Cui Bono: The Unasked Question in Judge Cohen's Courtroom

Cui bono? Whom does it benefit? The ancient Roman formula for determining responsibility as well as culpability for any given act. As far as such constructs go, it is the gold standard: so brief yet so profound, encapsulating the psychic history of man better than Freud ever did.

Also known as the "Rule of Cassianus," the Roman judge who devised it in the days of Cicero (who recommended its use), cui bono is still the most relevant question that can be asked at any trial. For, except in very few instances — so rare that we erect statues to the exceptions — man is activated by his own interests, first and foremost. If you would know the architect of any work, do not look at the inscriptions, but at the bottom line. Whoever benefits directly by any act may be presumed to have committed it, whether as hero or villain.

Keep that in mind.

It appears that the most important documents in the Cubas-Izquierdo custody trial, which begun today, in Miami, have mysteriously disappeared from from the Juvenile Court Clerk's Office, adjacent to Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen's courtroom, where they had been deposited by the Department of Children and Families as per official procedure. The documents in the lost folder, which constitute the court's official record, include the mother's voluntary surrender of custody to the state, known as a dependency disposition (that is, she disposed of her dependent). Also "misplaced," as The Miami Herald characterizes it, is the transcript of the legal hearing where Elena Pérez agreed with the state's contention that she was an unfit mother and renounced custody of her children.

Now this is no mere case of casual negligence which can be easily remedied by duplicating the lost documents. The court has, or should have, the originals documents and these cannot be duplicated. So irregular is this loss and ominous its consequences that it could impact or even preempt the case. In fact, the abusive, psychologically-unbalanced and suicidal mother, who is supposedly penniless, has hired her own attorney to represent her "interests" in the case, though legally she has none. It is obvious that the Castro regime is hedging all its bets, and if it does not succeed in getting custody for the father, may just claim on the basis of the lost court record that the mother never surrendered custody and attempt to have her so-called "parental rights" reinstated. Kurzban, the lawyer hired by the Cuban regime, threatened to avail himself of the opportunity afforded by the "lost" of the official court record to petition the Third District Court to halt the trial and give custody to the birth father.

It was reported by The Miami Herald that Judge Cohen was outraged with this development and blamed, of all people, the Department of Children and Family Services. Yet the pertinent documents had been deposited by DCF with her court clerk. The documents had disappeared from the court's own custody and jurisdiction. How is it possible that the most important documents in the most important case to be heard by Juvenile Court could just vanish without a trace? Yes, flukes do happen, but there are no indications that this was a fluke. If the documents were permanently removed or misplaced for the interim from the clerk's office, who could have done it and why?

Now is when we must ask ourselves cui bono?

One Man's Obsession: The Smugglers Who Risk All to Free Castro's Slaves

For more than a year Babalú's Henry Gómez has been trying to convince every member of the MSM who will listen (not many) to do a story on the intrepid men who rescue Castro's captives from his clutches, otherwise known and persecuted as "smugglers," in the old Southern tradition of labelling rescuers of men as "yellow dogs," "scaliwags" and "rascallions," among the nicer names given them by slaveholders whose victims they "stole" to freedom.

Henry, of course, doesn't want the MSM to champion their cause much less recognize their merits (small chance of that). He wants the media, always hostile to Cuban refugees and those who champion their cause, to do (or invent) a story about how these men are really in Castro's service, if not agents of Castro.

There is just one glitch: no evidence exists to back up Henry's allegations except in his fertile imagination where anyone who rescues a Cuban is a villain and abetter of Castro and all Cuban newcomers should be returned to the island to add their body temperature to Henry's cherished pressure cooker where saints and sinners will be sacrificed for the greater glory of, well, Henry and those like Henry who believe that the Cuban people, not Castro, are the only obstacle to Cuba's freedom.

As Alfonso's Chardy's story in The Miami Herald points out, there are dozens of smugglers of Cubans in U.S. jails. If what Henry presumes were true, they needn't be. All they would have to do is state that Castro has some part in their activities and their sentences would be commuted in exchange for their testimony. But none has "confessed" to this because it is not true. They prefer to remain in prison for the "crime" of rescuing men from slavery than to go free for the sin (but no crime under U.S. law) of being complicit in their enslavement. Still, Henry is not convinced: maybe the smugglers really want to be in jail, or are too loyal to Castro to betray him, preferring instead to betray their families and destroy their own lives in order to continue serving him. Yes, Henry will believe anything because in fact he believes in nothing. If all men were like Henry, all men would think and act like Henry. Thankfully, most men aren't and don't.

These so-called smugglers are the moral giants of our generation, conductors on a new underground railroad that travels over the ocean, no less noble an enterprise than the first or one less fraught with dangers. Castro's Coast Guard even shoots at them and has killed at least one of them, and also imprisons them by the score. This, however, doesn't convince Henry that Castro and the smugglers are not in cahoots. On the contrary, he seems to believe that it bolsters his case. You see, according to Henry, if the Castro regime wants deniability it has to interdict and even kill a few of them. Of course, if the smugglers were in fact in business with Castro, shooting at them and killing them is not the best way to win their trust nor would it be especially good for business. You can hardly sell someone "protection" by shooting him dead. That would surely discourage the others. It should be clear, then, to anyone but a halfwit that the smugglers are Castro's quarry, not his allies. They should certainly be our heroes for challenging Castro on a daily basis, face to face and under his own nose.

As for Henry, he is a case study in self-hate and rabid assimilationism: the Cuban Tom Tancredo, who doesn't want to free Cubans, but to free the U.S. of Cuban "migrants." Though the son of refugees, Henry has a special disdain for all who flee Castro's prison today (including the 4-year old whose birth father wants to make a gift of her to Castro). No one believes more firmly that "Cubans belong in Cuba" than this self-described "American-Cuban." His stated support for Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson leave no question as to his xenophobia and nativism, which reminds us of another first-generation American — Tom Tancredo.

Henry's post at Babalú ends with a plea to Alfonso Chardy of The Miami Herald to investigate the smugglers for supposed Castro connections. Mr. Herald Watch seems to forget that Chardy was a co-writer of Oscar's Corral Martí Moonlighters story.


POSTSCRIPT:

According to information furnished by Pedro Argüellos Morán, one of the 75 independent Cuban journalists imprisoned by Castro in 2003, there are two alleged smugglers confined with him at the Canaleta Provincial Prison, in the so-called "province" of Ciego de Ávila. They are Jorge Luis Echemendía Solano, 42, sentenced to 12 years in 1999 for "human trafficking," and Edvín (Edwin?) Alfonso Ruíz, 31, sentenced to 3 years in 2006 for "entering the country illegally." Both men are residents of South Florida. The Ministry of the Interior has offered to release both on the condition that they request "repatriation" (that is, agree to remain in Cuba permanently). Both have opted to complete their full sentences rather than pact with Castro. Since entering your own country or assisting others to leave it is not a crime anywhere in the world except Cuba, these men should be classified as political prisoners, or even as prisoners of conscience. Of course, they are not. International human rights organizations follow Castro's lead in such matters. One wonders how many more rescuers of men are jailed in Cuba's 300 other prisons that we know nothing about because there is no one to report on their incarceration. H/t Charlie Bravo.

Angels Who Smuggle Men to Freedom
Insanity, Homoeroticism and Xenophobia on "The Babalú [Faux] Radio Hour"
Henry Explains Fred Thompson to Us
Fred Thompson: Cuban "Immigrants" Are Suitcase Bombers
Since He Was 7
"The Most Serious, Systematic Revolutionary of Modern Times"

"Fellow Cubiches: I Come To Chastise Val, Not to Praise Him"

For the last 3 days, the leading post on Babalú blog has been Ziva's homage to Val Prieto on reaching and surpassing the 2-million visitor mark on Friday. She praises Val in the most exaggerated terms which makes her sincerely-intended accolades sound contrived and overreaching, like the slogans that the smiling cadres carried in Stalin's May Day Parades:

• THE HEART AND SOUL OF BABALÚ IS OUR EDITOR, VAL PRIETO.

• VAL, YOU ARE BABALÚ.

• IT IS YOUR BEAUTIFUL WRITING THAT NOT ONLY INFORMS, BUT ALSO GIVES US, YOUR READERS, THE GIFT OF EXPERIENCE.

• WHEN YOU WRITE OF YOUR ANGER AND HEARTBREAK OVER THE LATEST NEWS IN CUBA, WE TOO BOW OUR HEADS AND WEEP.

• IT IS YOU, VAL, AND YOUR GIFT OF SHARING YOURSELF THROUGH YOUR WRITING THAT IS BABALÚ.

Really, if I weren't laughing, I would be weeping, too. But it is physiologically impossible to do both at the same time, and my first instinct is to laugh.

Readers have also been penning their own tributes to Babalú's founder. Fifteen by last count. Yes, 15 individuals out more than 2,000,000 and many of these associated in one way or another with Babalú. Not even one of the 100,000 that took Val's bait last week about Castro's death bothered to thank Val for having misled him. One, in particular, even took Val to task for it. Before all the Babalunians fall upon the dissident voice and brand him an ingrate and traitor for striking a note of discord in the weekend-long Prieto lovefest, or Val himself, feeling greatly wounded exercises his prerogative of re-writing the record by banishing the critic from his blog, I think I'll copy and save the dissident's remarks before they vanish into the ether leaving nary a trace:


Fellow cubiches,

I am a first time blogger, long time reader of Babalu. Generally, the postings I have so far read on this site have been excellent. However, this particular posting commemorating the reaching of the 2 million hits milestone, achieved to a great extent by erroneously reporting the death of Fidel Castro is, to say the least, in very bad taste. Yes, it is a significant milestone for any blog to get 2 million hits and you have every right to celebrate. Pero coño, handing out kudos to the boys at the same time Babalu is suffering from a major credibility slump is a little too much. How about an apology? That should be your next posting boys and girls.

Yes, indeed. It would show character. It would show the willingness to learn from past mistakes. It would show humility. It would show honesty.

Which is why it will never happen.


POSTSCRIPT:

Just as I predicted, Ziva trashes the infidel:

TVdude, you can take your insults somewhere else. Unlike some bloggers who brag a lot about who visits their blogs but keep their site meters private, ours is open for inspection. So feel free to take a look, and you will see that we were close to the two million well before recent events. In fact, the post I wrote commemorating our milestone was written weeks ago and has nothing to do with Friday's post. So take a hike asshole and your way out you can kiss our collective Cuban asses. — TVDude

Another reader comes to TVDude's defense:

I agree with Tvdude.

I guess that makes me an a-hole.

Far be it from me to give you guys advice since I am entering Val and companies house here at babalu, but I can't imagine me and Tvdude are the only ones that find this out of line. At the very least you guys should have held off on patting each on the back after what happened on Friday.

Just my two cents on this. My intention is not to offend, just to give my opinion. — Angel Rodríguez

Henry Gómez continues the pile on, or perhaps we should just say "piles" since it's from that scatological perspective that the Babalunians argue:

The idea that the rumors of castro's death were started by Babalu as a ploy to drive readership is ridiculous and anybody that makes that accusation is an asshole. First of all the rumors having flying around since Nuevo Accion reported a sudden decline in castro's health about 3 weeks ago. Last weekend Perez Hilton reported on his widely read blog that fidel had died and this week even Drudge got in it. It's not our fault that castro's health is Cuban "state secret". If you don't like the postings here, or how we happened to cross 2 million, then do yourself a favor and get lost. And don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. — Henry Gómez

No, Henry. It's not your fault that the state of Castro's health is a state secret. It is your fault, though, if you exploit that fact to raise people's expectations with false reports of Castro's death which, intentionally or not, garner you 100,000 visitors over a 24-hour period when Babalú's average is 2-3 percent of that number. If you compare yourselves to Perez Hilton, a self-avowed and unapologetic purveyor of gossip, then don't expect to be accorded more credibility than he is. If your "victory" seems less than pristine, it is because you yourselves have clouded the waters.

Fidel Castro Undergoes Tracheostomy

Our good friend Charlie Bravo informs us that Killcastro's contacts in Cuba have learned that Fidel has undergone a tracheostomy in recent days. This has been confirmed independently by Karmchand, a blogger from Cuba, whose Bitácora Cubana we recommend to your consideration.

This development tells us something about the present state of Fidel Castro's health. He was obviously having difficulty breathing on his own, which necessitated the tracheotomy; however, his condition is not yet so critical as to require a ventilator to do his breathing for him. Still, a tracheostomy is not a positive development. Speech is now difficult if not impossible for him.

Castro now has an artificial pipe for inhaling air and an artificial pipe for exhaling air. I wonder, if Chávez blew on one end, whether the air would come out the other? We know which end Chávez would choose to blow into.

Click here:

http://reviewofcuban-americanblogs.blogspot.com

Elena Pérez: Her Life As a Mother and a Mistress (Or Chasing Cod in Cabaiguan)

There's an explanation for everything in life, and, of course, there is one for Elena Pérez's sudden desire to see her daughter's custody awarded to her biological father and penultimate boyfriend Rafael Izquierdo. It is not for love of the girl, that much is obvious. It is not because Izquierdo is a good man, nor because she particularly wishes to have him and his wife raise her. No mistress would ever want her lover's wife to raise her child, under ordinary circumstances. As for Rafael, Elena may still have illusions about him, though his neighbors in Cabaiguan have none. There neighbors remember, even if she does not, the many times that he beat her, the stories which she related of her abuse and the bruises that confirmed it. The same stories, incidentally, which his neighbors in Cárdenas told of Juan González's abuse of his wife, Elián's mother. That evidence was never aired in a courtroom because Clinton and Reno preëmpted the legal process. It will be otherwise at the Cubas-Izquierdo custody trial. And it is powerful and self-corroborating evidence: for why would Izquierdo's neighbors (or González's, for that matter) take a position contrary to that of the Castro regime in the question of Rafael Izquierdo's character and reputation when they know the consequences that might attend their defiance, why, indeed, unless they were telling the truth?

It was, in fact, Izquierdo's physical abuse, coupled with her own schizophrenia, which earned her a reputation as the town "crazie," that caused her to abuse her own infant daughter. Why, then, does she desire that this man be entrusted with her daughter's custody now? Because he has purchased her acquiescense. We do not know everything that passed between them at their recent "reunion" in the States; but we at least know one thing, because Rafael publicly admitted it. Elena has received assurances from her onetime flame that she will be allowed to be a part of the child's life (and hence his) in Cuba: "I am not going to be so strict," he said. "I am never going to keep her from her mother." That is, he is going to repeat his role as catalyst and enabler of her daughter's abuse at the hands of her mother. To return the child to Cuba, then, is tantamount to returning her to the tender mercies of not only Castro but also her abusive, psychologically-unbalanced and suicidal mother.

It is interesting that Ms. Pérez had no objection to Joe Cubas' adoption of her 13-year old son, who was her personal favorite (she never beat him). Of course, her son is now the legal heir to the Cubas fortune and she doesn't need two heirs to that fortune when one will suffice. It may prove useful to her to have a millionaire son sometime down the road. In any case, a man of Joe Cubas' proven humanity and fellow-feeling for the oppressed Cuban people, surely would never turn his back on his son's birth mother, no matter how execrable her sins or the wrongs that she has committed against her own children or Cubas himself. She is no doubt counting on that as some kind of personal insurance for the future.

Her plans for the immediate future, however, are to return to Cabaiguan to dethrone whoever has replaced her as town "crazie" and taken her place on left side of Izquierdo's bed. Oh, yeah, and to reunite with her daughter, the same daughter, incidentally, whom she tried repeatedly to give away to strangers before signing her over to the state. She has promised, however, that "I won't leave Miami until my daughter does." Of course not. Can't let her only tangible tie to her old flame escape through her clutching fingers. In other words, we can reduce her "parental concern" to one thing and she'll be chasing it and her daughter down to Cuba.

When Shall We Know that Fidel Castro Is Dead?

We will know instinctively that Fidel Castro is dead when we wake up one morning and the air is purer, the sunlight brighter, the earth more teeming with life and our hearts lighter.

It is not this morning.

The Death of Fidel Castro Redux

Every rumor is a new blossoming of hope. Let us rejoice in Castro's death as long and as often as we can. It shall anticipate but not diminish that sublime hour when we shall inhabit an earth that is free of him. No, his death will not bring us closer to freedom but it it will remove the greatest obstacle to it and end the darkest chapter in our history. The legacy of the man will survive him for the moment; but that moment will be brief. Cuba must move forward. It is an inexorable law of Nature and Cuba is not the exception.

We shall say no more until Castro is really, really dead. If you read it here, it will be true.


POSTSCRIPT:

The glorious day has been reached. After crawling there inch by inch, over a period of weeks, making slow but certain progress, it suddenly rode on an unprecedented wave of its own creation over the much-anticipated goal and then some: Babalú blog passed today the 2 million mark on its Sitemeter, which means that it has entertained that number of visitors since 2003. Today will surely be remembered in the annals of history for it. With 2 or 3 such epic events per week, supposing that Castro cooperates by not really dying, Babalú may hope to reach its next million landmark in 4 weeks rather than 4 years. Congratulations to the self-appointed dean of Cuban-American bloggers and much success in his future circulation drives.

Letter to Elena Pérez: Birth Mother of the Cuban Refugee Girl

"If she can't be with me — her own mother — then she should be with her own father who wants her. Material things don't matter in life, but being raised and loved by your real parents does. You can't treat real parents like nothing; they are the most important thing." — Elena Pérez, birth mother of the Cuban refugee girl

Elena Pérez:

You appear to have been restored to a semblance of sanity, or if not sanity, to your real self, which insanity may actually have ameliorated. Your real self, as revealed in your despicable declarations to the media, shows you to be a warped human being, incapable of empathy even for your own daughter, or, rather, the baby that you delivered just so you wouldn't explode.

For her entire life, in Cuba and the U.S., and for as long as she was condemned to be in your custody, you abused her; and even now, that she has been removed from your custody, you are still endeavoring to inflict pain on her. So you want her to be with her biological father, your sometime sexual partner, who never took any interest in her welfare, in Cuba or here, the man (he is as much a man as he is a father) who allowed you to abuse her in Cuba and consented that the abuse should continue in the U.S. by surrendering sole custody to you. In another father, with no possibility of leaving Cuba himself, such a sacrifice would have been an expression of parental love, as it was in the Jews who gave their children away to Christians so that they would not end up in the ovens. But it was no expression of love on his part that guided his decision to cut her off from his life forever. He knew when he signed away custody that he had entrusted his daughter to a monster and washed his hands entirely of her and you (the last part must have hurt you). No letters, no phone calls, no birthday cards were sent to his daughter. You and her were a nightmare for him which he was glad to shake off forever, or so he thought, little realizing that someday his dormant parental instincts would be miraculously reawakened through the wondrous agency of the fatherfucker of all Cubans, the tyrant from whom you fled.

Of course, you want us to believe that you were a loving mother and are ceding your daughter to her biological father only because you can't have her yourself. But she is not yours to cede anymore. You do not now and never shall have any say in her life again, thank God. Your opinion in this custody case matters less than a stranger's, less than mine. There have been too many deaths of children in recent years due to the negligence of family services agencies and judges who believed that it was always in a child's best interest to be in the custody of a birth parent, even when the child had known nothing but abuse at her (his) hands. So resign yourself to the fact that your parental status is terminated and your opinion of no consequence whatever anymore.

So "material things don't matter in life," you say. Well, they mattered to you once, anyway. Didn't you come to this country in the first place because you were dissatisfied with living conditions in Cuba and wanted the material things that you now disdain when it is more profitable to disdain them? Didn't you in fact enter and win a lottery to come to this country and be "corrupted" by its materialism? Surely it was not the quest for freedom that brought you here since you are now so eager to have your daughter returned to slavery. And will you follow suit so that you can keep her company?

Ironically, this time it was not you who won the "lottery" but your cast-off boyfriend. If he succeeds in his attempt to deprive his daughter of a life and future, his own fortune will be made. The miserable landless "farmer" will become a protégé of the Cuban state. Like Juan González, Elián's father, he will literally eat at Castro's table (or at least under it). He will never have to work again (not that he works now). And if he behaves himself — that is, if he takes himself entirely out of his child's life and allows her to be used (not that he will have any choice then) as abuelito Fidel's (or Raúl's) marionette — the aptly-named Izquierdo, like González, will be made a "Hero of the Republic" and selected a deputy to the People's Assembly. Not bad for a malanga farmer (when was the last time anyone saw a malanga in Cuba?)

At least you have the assurance that if your child is deported to Cuba, she will not want for milk. Unlike other Cuban children, her supply will not be cut off at age 7. She will always be well-fed and well taken care of because she will represent the (false) face of Cuba's children to the world. Those material needs that you pretend not to care about will be satisfied in Communist Cuba. It is everything else that she will be deprived of. Her personality will be washed from her with mild-altering drugs and mind-control techniques, exactly as happened to Elián. Her expression will become distant and vacant, as if her very soul had been vacuumed through her eyes. This is the fate that awaits your daughter in Cuba, and given your past history, we are not surprised that you see nothing objectionable in it.

You are right in one respect — being raised and loved by own's parents does matter. You and your boyfriend are not capable of providing love to this child or raising it. You have proved it already beyond a doubt. If you had even the least love for your daughter you would not still be trying to destroy her life. Neither would your tethered ex-boyfriend, who is speculating with his own flesh and blood.

Of course, it is of no importance to you — your heart is incapable of love and much less gratitude — but the child that you abused and your boyfriend abandoned has been lucky the second time around, for now she has parents who do love her and are worthy to raise her. And, of course, she still has her older brother, who protected her from you and filled-in for the father who abandoned her. They are her family. They are the most important people in her life. Not you. Not your ex-boyfriend.

The Poor Little Cuban Girl that They Call "Eliana"

Judge Jeri B. Cohen: Love Child of Janet Reno and Doris Meissner

Joe Cubas: Castro's Worst Nightmare (and Henry's)

Henry Gómez is in sackcloth and ashes tonight and it becomes him. His greatest nightmare has come true: the little Cuban girl whom he has spurned with callous disregard, stubbornly refusing to see her as anything more than a pawn and refusing to say even one word on her behalf, has no need of him as a champion; for the man fighting to save her life and upholding the honor of our country, who adopted her brother and now wishes to adopt her as well, is Joe Cubas, a man Castro hates even more than Posada Carriles, though he won't give him the satisfaction of acknowledging it.

Joe Cubas is one of those noble latter-day abolitionists who smuggle Castro's slaves to freedom. The slaves that he helps escape Castro's plantation are the ones most prized by the dictator, his own personal pets, groomed for his amusement and aggrandizement. Castro exploits all Cubans and robs all Cubans of the product of their labor and talents. But the talents of these slaves, in particular, have the greatest market value and their theft by Castro amounts to billions in the aggregate. Joe Cubas has restored to these Cubans the dignity of labor, and, in doing so, redeemed more Cuban lives than anyone since Mariel.

It is not a baseball player whose life Joe Cubas has saved this time, but two of the legions of children whom Castro has condemned from the moment of birth to lives of misery and want, stunted and circumscribed lives. There was nothing that Castro could do to reclaim his emancipated athletes: Castro's Fugitive Slave law is only enforced by the U.S. Coast Guard on the high seas, not in U.S. courts.

It is, of course, different with the little girl that Joe and his wife have taken into their home and into their hearts. Castro thinks that he can use the courts to kidnap her as he used Clinton and Reno to circumvent the courts. Possession of the little Cuban girl means more to Castro than even Elián's did. This thing with Joe Cubas is personal. Lázaro González and his family meant nothing to Castro; they were simply obstacles in his way that had to be disposed of so he could have his way. Joe Cubas, however, is the exile Castro hates most: the head that he most wants to see on a platter before he can see no more. What better way to take revenge on Joe Cubas than to steal the child he loves and who loves him?

Joe Cubas' money, influence and position do not sway Henry as the Estefans' once did Val Prieto. Even with Joe as her foster father, even acknowledging, as he does on Babalú, that this is a "vendetta" against Joe Cubas by the Castro regime, Henry is holding steadfast to his oft-stated position that she should be returned to her father-by-proxy Fidel, so that he can have a matched set for his puppet theatre. It is still all about his identity crisis not the little girl's fate: "We're going to be hearing a lot about this. The Herald got its wish, a huge international story complete with an opportunity to mock the exile community."

Who cares if they "mock" us," Henry? I mock you, don't I? A great many people mock you and deservedly so. THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU. It is the life of an abused little girl that hangs in the balance. Let her story have as much publicity as it can get. Let Cuban exiles, safely in this country, be insulted and mocked a thousand times ten thousand. What does it matter? The only thing that matters is this little girl's life and future. We may not be able to rescue all the children of Cuba, but we should not drop this one down a well.

A Peculiar Kind of "Conspiracy" and a More Peculiar Kind of Conspiracy Theorist

Having tired of harping on Oscar Corral's disgrace (which I, for one, will never tire of), Henry Gómez is now suggesting at Herald Watch that the long-suffering 4-year-old Cuban refugee girl whose father wants to sacrifice her to Castro on an altar of cowardice and self-interest, is in fact a secret weapon being deployed by The Miami Herald and the Castro regime, which have joined in a conspiracy to discredit Cuban-Americans by appealing to their better natures in the hope that they will do for her what they did for Elián, and, against the tide of popular opinion, champion her right freedom.

We have refuted his ridiculous contentions several times over the last 5 months, all the while marvelling that he could be so depraved and lacking in human empathy as to blithely drop this child into a bottomless well in order to be spared the censure of his Anglo neighbors and judges, who, on every survey and opinion poll, have never needed an excuse to look with contumely on Cuban-Americans. They hate what we represent — success; we are too "uppity" for their taste; no one ever taught us to behave as their inferiors. But, of course, there are exceptions to Cuban dignity, and Henry is obviously one. Their approval — which, incidentally, he shall never have, no matter how obsequious or accommodating — is necessary to him in order to feel like a real American, or, an "American-Cuban," as he styles himself. The happy resolution of his identity crisis matters more to him than the life of this child. Nothing can be more monstrous or unnatural. Or, rather, one thing can: to admit it publicly without one drop of shame.

What is so terribly wrong about defending another Elián, or a thousand Eliáns?

All other Cubans I know are proud of the part they played in the Elián affaire. Popularity is never a basis for principled action, nor should it be its end. The victory that our enemies obtained through the use of foul and underhanded means doesnot vindicate their position or justify their action — not then, and certainly not now. The history of Elián in Cuba has given the lie to the credulous or stupid who accepted at face value the regime's assurances that the boy would not be used as a political puppet, which is a motive that they reserved for Cuban exiles but disdained to attribute to Castro. How patently wrong they were! How manifestly right those who oppossed his illegal extradition to Cuba!

At first, I believed that the Elián affaire had proved a traumatic experience for Henry which he did not want to relive. Now I am of the opposite opinion. I now believe that Elian's repatriation was a victory for Henry, that he actually championed it from the first as he has the Cuban girl's, and even celebrated his kidnapping at gunpoint as the vindication of his position. His position now is consistent with his position then. To hold any other position would be to admit that he was wrong about Elián, and that he will never do. Henry should rather all the children of Cuba perish than have to admit he was wrong. If there is a word for that kind of evil, I, for one, don't know it.

From the Tellechea Digital Archives: Carl Hiaasen and Jesús Díaz Battle Over Martí Moonlighters Story and Díaz Blinks

[Thanks to Tom Fiedler’s unguarded remarks about Cubans "extremists" being "chihuahuas" guilty of a "blood libel" against Oscar Corral for questioning his source for the Martí Moonlighters story, racism assumed its rightful place at the center of the witch hunt against Cuban-American journalists last year at The Miami Herald. Another bigot at The Herald, Carl Hiassen, not merely muttered his racist insinuations like Fiedler but published them in a column that The Herald itself characterized as "sarcastic." Publisher Jesús Díaz Jr., fearing the escalation of the crisis, had tried to postpone the scheduling of Hiassen's column on the Martí Moonlighters. Hiassen complained to the McClatchy corporation, the new publishers of The Herald, who in turn phoned Díaz and, in effect, instructed him to publish Hiassen's column, whereupon Díaz resigned as publisher. Díaz did not acknowledge until much later, when Hiassen's role was made known, that he had resigned because Hiassen had ratted him out to the boss, undermining his authority at the paper. Instead, Díaz preferred that others should think he was leaving the paper because The Herald had rehired the fired reporters and failed to live-up to his own exalted concept of journalistic ethics learned in accounting school. Here is our dissection of Hiassen's column whose intent was to further besmirch the Martí Moonlighters but whose unintended result was to force the man who had fired them to resign, the only public service that Carl Hiassen has ever done for the residents of South Florida]:


Finally, Someone Appreciates Journalists’ Work
By Carl Hiassen
September 17, 2006

Like many taxpayers, I’d always thought Radio and TV Martí was just another political boondoggle, squandering millions of dollars while fruitlessly beaming anti-Castro programming to Cuba. [You obviously don’t read your own newspaper, which is something that you have in common with most of your colleagues in the editorial department, who didn’t appear to know that their reporters’ work for Radio Marti had been covered in The Herald for years. If you read The Herald (is it hard to get in your home in Maryland) or bothered to verify what “[you’d] always thought,” you would know, from the testimony of Cuban dissidents and deserters, that Radio Marti is heard by a majority of the Cuban people and that that the regime has always resented and combatted this “intrusion” on its monopoly on information, which it certainly would not do if it had been ineffective. For you, however, it is “fruitless to beam anti-Castro programming to Cuba.” Why is it fruitless? Don’t you believe that Cubans deserve to know the truth? Even if you don’t believe that it is the truth, don’t you think that they deserve another perspective than the official one? Apparently not. For you, Castro is not a problem, and if he is not a problem then there is nothing to fix].

Now we find out that the U.S. government-run stations are actually running a charity for needy journalists, at least 10 of whom have been paid to appear on their programs. [Perhaps you just found it out, since, admittedly, you don’t read your own paper; but the Herald has known all along that its journalists also contributed to Radio Marti and fired them ex post facto. As for Radio Marti being “a charity for needy journalists,” I think you are probably the last person who could empathize with “needy journalists” since for you journalism is not a job but a hobby. Perhaps you are suggesting that only rich men like yourself should be journalists since, supposedly, you wouldn’t need “charity” since the Republicans in Congress already provide the rich with all the charity they could possibly want (tax loopholes, repeal of estate taxes, etc). When a man works for a living and is paid by the entity for which he works, it is not “charity.” Or are your royalty checks also “charity?”]

Some people might call this corrupting the press; I call it compassionate conservatism. [”Compassionate convervatism,” as already noted, consists of tax breaks for the very rich like yourself. And, by the way, have you ever failed to cash your government checks?]

Is there a more underpaid, ragged and dispirited sector of the American work force than reporters? [Are you including yourself?] At long last we’ve got an administration that appreciates our toil and sacrifice and reaches out to help. [Yes, you in particular, may well rejoice at the administration’s largesse].

Look what it did for Armstrong Williams, a newspaper columnist and conservative talk-show host. Back in 2004, he got $240,000 from the government to babble wonderful compliments about President Bush’s No Child Left Behind education program.

Many journalists called Williams a sellout and a prostitute, but they were probably just envious [Finally, a little truth creeps in]. The same sort of thing is happening now to the reporters moonlighting for Radio and TV Martí. [No it is not. Williams was paid to slant the news and shill for the Bush administration. The Cuban journalists were employed by Radio and TV Marti and their employment was a matter of public record, as Armstrong’s sub rosa arrangement was not. And there was no commitment on their part to slant the news or shill for the Bush administration.]

Two of those who accepted money from the stations were fired from their day jobs at El Nuevo Herald. Said Publisher Jesús Díaz Jr.: “I personally don’t believe that integrity and objectivity can be assured if any of our reporters receive monetary compensation from any entity that he or she may cover or have covered, but particularly if it’s a government agency.” [In its final denouement, this story highlighted the lack of “integrity and objectivity” at the Miami Herald itself.]

Since Díaz is also my boss [but not for long, as (your) long knife were already out], I should be careful how I put this, but: Lighten up, bro! [Diaz, in hindsight, should have been the one who was more careful with you].

You’re right: Once a reporter starts cashing a government paycheck, his or her credibility as a public watchdog is shot. [Is that right? But only when it's a “paycheck.” Not when it’s tax breaks for the rich, exemptions from estate taxes, agricultural subsidies and other perks which super-rich journalists like yourself enjoy at our expense].

But how about a teeny exception for TV Martí? Lots of folks in the newsroom could use the extra dough, and nobody will ever see them on the air because Castro jams the signals. [Do you ever set foot in the Miami Herald (let alone Nuevo Herald) newsroom? Don’t you just e-mail your columns from home while “moonlighting” for your publishers?]

Over the last five years, while staff reporter Pablo Alfonso wrote columns and covered Cuba for El Nuevo Herald, he was getting paid nearly $175,000 to host programs on Radio and TV Martí. [That’s $37,000 a year, the median wage in Florida]. During that same period, staff writer Wilfredo Cancio collected almost $15,000. [That’s $3000 a year, or pocket change to you. They weren’t paid this money as a bribe or gift, but for their work at Radio Marti. Thousands of other journalists (99% of them non-Cubans), including Edward R. Murrow, have worked for government-sponsored broadcasting. But, of course, The Miami Herald and you only bothered to cast aspersions at the Cuban-American journalists].

The fact that it took so long to catch them tells you how puny the audience is. You’ve heard of Pirate Radio? This is Pipsqueak Radio. [The audience for Radio Marti, in any case, is larger than the audience for the Miami Herald. Just how “puny” your own circulation is can well be gaged by the fact that the loss of 1800 subscribers sent the paper into a tailspin. But you are not suggesting, of course, that we judge the credibility of the Herald by its circulation? That is exactly, however, what you are suggesting about Radio Marti].

Both TV and Radio Martí broadcast from a blimp in the Lower Keys until it was popped by a hurricane last year. Then a plane from the Pennsylvania National Guard was procured to transmit to Cuba for a whopping four hours on weekends. [Four hours of truth on weekends still trumps 24/7 of the Castro regime’s lies].

Now the programs are being beamed by a specially equipped private aircraft flying out of Key West. After Fidel Castro underwent surgery, the broadcasts were increased to six times a week, but even that failed to kill off the Cuban leader. [Do you expect radio beams to ‘kill off the Cuban ‘leader’?”]

Some parts of the island do pick up transmissions from Radio Martí, though interviews with recent arrivals indicate that its listenership has dipped. [Actually, most parts of the island pick up transmissions from Radio Marti. As for its listenership having “dipped,” what do you actually base that conclusion on? How many “recent arrivals” have you interviewed? Can a “recent arrival” make it even within 50 feet of your guarded compound?]

As for TV Martí, it’s basically a ghost station that few in Cuba can receive because of the electronic jamming. Since it began ‘’broadcasting'’ in 1990, TV Martí has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $125 million. Naturally, Congress keeps shoveling money at it. [So if Castro starts shooting down our airplanes again, we should ground all civil aviation?]

Radio and TV Martí are currently funded at about $37 million annually, including $10 million for the airplane that flies around transmitting the signals, which may still be easily blocked.

That leaves about $27 million lying around for executive salaries, studio production and talent. There are plenty of U.S. journalists, including me, who are eminently qualified to host TV programs that no one will ever see. [Or to write a column that nobody ever reads except when it libels Cuban-Americans, as this one does].

Getting paid to say snarky things about Castro would be an easy gig. For years I’ve done it for free, characterizing El Comandante as a windbag, geezer, liar, despot and all-around phony. I never received a dime from Uncle Sam, even when my columns were properly punctuated. [Leave your guarded compound and sinecure, get a job at Radio Marti, go work every day, and you too will be paid for your work].

But now, thanks to the Bush administration’s generous Outreach Initiative for Ethically [do you mean "Ethnically"] Muddled Reporters, financial opportunities abound. So does temptation. [Well, now we know that it is not “ethically muddled reporters” who are the Herald’s problem but ethically muddled policies and racist editors].

According to a report last week in El Nuevo Herald, numerous magazine and newspaper journalists in the English-language press have accepted payments to appear on Voice of America radio, the government’s official overseas megaphone. Among them: syndicated columnist Georgie Ann Geyer, Tom DeFrank of the New York Daily News and David Lightman, chief of The Hartford Courant’s Washington bureau.

These folks are probably in hot water today [no they are not; no one was purged except the Cubans] because of people like my boss, who cling to this old-fashioned notion that the mere appearance of sliding into bed with the institutions we cover is intolerable. [It’s delicious irony to hear you defending the “boss” that you stabbed in the back and led to the door].

Party poopers! Do they really believe that a journalist’s integrity can be compromised for a lousy $175,000? [Again, $37,000 a year over 5 years for hosting a radio show. How much does Howard Stern get? One billion?].

Where’s the trust? Where’s the compassion? More important, where’s my damn check? [Look in your mailbox, or send the help to do it].

RCAB News: The British Are Coming!

Before Goo-Goo went Gaa-Gaa this morning — that is, before Google shut down Blogger for maintenance — the Review of Cuban American Blogs was honored by a visit from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). If ever any people on earth were misinformed about Cuba and Castro, it would be the sons and daughters of Albion (not to call them anything else). There is no lie about Cuba that they have not swallowed, especially of the kind that demeans the Cuban people and our history. By their lights, Castro introduced both fire and toilets to Cuba, and the Cuban people have the "government" that they have always needed.

The British have kept their notion of the "White Man's Burden" long after they ceased to be burdened by it. "Colonials" to them, whether theirs or anybody else's, are at best noble savages to be led along the paths of civilization by whatever means necessary, even the most uncivilized means; for in their minds, civilization follows the flag, not the other way around.

When Winston Churchill was 21 he was attached to the Spanish Army in Cuba as a correspondent for an English newspaper during Cuba's War of Independence (1895-1898). In a report sent to The Saturday Review, Churchill wrote: "They [the Cuban rebels] neither fight bravely nor do they use their weapons effectively. They cannot win a single battle or hold a single town. Their army, consisting to a large extent of coloured men, is an undisciplined rabble. The rebel victory offers little good either to the world in general or to Cuba in particular. Though the Spanish administration is bad a Cuban Government would be worse, equally corrupt, more capricious, and far less stable. Under such a Government revolutions would be periodic, property insecure, equity unknown."

Not only did he write "pestes" about the Cuban rebels and the population in general and sympathize completely with the killers of Marti and Maceo and 300,000 other Cubans, Churchill even fired his rifle at those fighting for Cuba's freedom and was awarded the Military Cross by the Spanish government. Imagine: there was still a place on earth where you could hunt humans like animals! Jolly good show!

Churchill returned for a visit to Cuba after World War II, and we Cubans, of course, being the hospitable and forgiving people that we are — or were then — put out the red carpet and feted him as the savior of civilization and a national hero. Perhaps we impressed him, or he did what a polite guest should do: praised Cuba to the skies. Of course, there would have been no Cuban Republic to praise if Churchill and his Spanish allies had prevailed 50 years earlier.

The British have never outgrown their bias for imperialism, not even when they outgrew their empire. Today they are more racist, xenophobic and insular than at any other time in their history, because now they must tolerate the presence among them of millions of dark-skinned peoples from their former Third World colonies. Before they could afford not to be overt racists in their own country (just in their overseas colonies). That made their hypocrisy a lot easier to perpetrate at home. Now their innate racism festers at home as it never did anywhere else in the 400 years of British colonialism. In fact, this is the very heyday of British racism. The more inferior they become in the world, the more superior the British feel at home.

So, yes, welcome BBC! There is much for you to learn here. I can't teach you not to abhor Pakistanis or West Indians, but I can teach you why you should abhor Castro.

The Cuban-American Misfits Review: Of Dead Blogs and Other Irrelevancies

Today I was going to revise my Fraternal Blogroll, for at least three of the links are now dead. Two of these were founded after mine and were very short-lived; one in particular, The Cuban-American Misfits Review, is a sensible loss to me; for it was the first (but not the last) homage blog dedicated to me. I do not call it a parody blog because humor, in any form, was in short supply there. Orthography, syntax and style didn't fare too well, either. Still, it was an earnest and sustained effort, with more than 40 posts before it folded under the weight of its own dullness. Its birth certainly boded well for it. Its godfather, Val Prieto, who is also the godfather of this blog though not quite in the same way, even devoted one of his asinine posts to publicizing it on Babalú and took a big chance doing so, since those unaquainted with the joke discovered there the existence of the Review of Cuban-American Blogs and migrated here, where they have moored ever since (along with Val and the whole Babalunian crew). I myself welcomed the Misfits Review in a post and also linked it immediately, realizing that this was something that could only rebound to my favor. I suppose fantomas and Val realized it, too, eventually, and shut it down. Too bad. Its consistent lack of humor, unwavering focus on me and, most of all, its obsession with my superiority in all things, which its author appeared to accept and confirm in all his scribblings, was a kind of joke to me, at least, which, though pathetic rather than bathetic, nevertheless amused me with its unsupported pretensions. You know that you have really failed to wound or even annoy if the target of your "humor" recommends and links you and then forgets about you. Just as, conversely, you can be sure you have hit a raw nerve if the object of your humor is too afraid even to acknowledge the existence of a blog that to some extent revolves around him. Now that is fear, raw and pure, and the greatest satisfaction that a critic can ever enjoy at the expense of his subject.

There was a second blog devoted to me which I have recently discovered entitled Review of the Review of Cuban-American Blogs. It is a title which fantomas first suggested here, but which would have suggested itself to anyone if it suggested itself to fantomas. But fantomas did not act quickly enough and "Manuel A. Chechechea" beat him to it. A much better writer by far than fantomas, he did not have fantomas' staying power. This personal effort Val did not promote on Babalú as he had fantomas' Misfits Review. It elicited only one post, better than anything that fantomas, the proverbial monkey sitting at the typewriter for one million years, could ever write, but still just one single and solitary post. This blog, obviously, was born in a moment of anger (which are the best moments for humor) but then quickly abandoned but not erased. I invite you to visit it. Maybe you can encourage its author to re-start it by leaving your comments. I will always do everything in my power to encourage the efforts of my self-styled enemies, because without them, where would I be? Where they still are, God forbid!

The funniest thing that my esteemed tocayo "Manuel A. Chechechea" ever created was not his superannuated parody blog, but his (mine) Blogger Profile, which I reproduce here before it disappears without a trace (as "Chechechea" himself already has):

Manuel A.Chechechea

•Industry: Communications or Media
•Occupation: Know-it-all
•Location: Union City : New Jersey : United States

About Me:
I think and I write and I lay bare the folly of anyone who does not agree with me, the greatest mind and most original thinker in the history of the world. In anything I write, the wisdom of the ages is distilled for all lesser beings to marvel at. Read and be dismayed at your smallness in the presence of my intellect.

Interests:
Me. Myself. I.

Favorite Movies:
None. No one can make a movie about the greatest man and do me justice. I would be the greatest subject for a motion picture in the history of motion pictures. The Hollywood worms do not know what they are missing in telling my life story.

Favorite Music:
None. No one can play and compose like me (even though I am not a musician).

Favorite Books
None. Except what I write. I am the greatest writer that has ever lived.

If everybody thought about me as highly as Val does I wouldn't have to write those checks.

BTW, I've decided to leave my "Fraternal Blogroll" exactly as it is, as a tribute to those departed blogs: Ya No Más; Cuba: Island Paradise, Island Prison; and the Cuban-American Misfits Review. You have made poor Tocororo's mistake by deleting your blogs. I hope you do not regret it.

This one still lives but barely:

http://reviewofthereview.blogspot.com/

A Judas Gets the Judas Kiss

If after the appointed time of his bondage is complete, a slave shall plainly say, "I love my master and shall not leave him," then his master shall bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl; and he shall serve him for ever. — Exodus, xxi, 2-6.


Now would seem to be the time to bury, and bury deep, the honors and decorations which the Castro regime has bestowed on its accomplices, apologists and worse. No man, even if dedicated to the degradation of his people, desires to extend it to himself by embracing an association which is already emblematic of treason and shall one day stand for the most depraved and sustained indifference to human life in the annals of history. No man, that is, except Max Lesnik, Castro's friend of 60 years and inveterate enemy of Castro's victims whether in Havana or Miami. The author of the slogan "Cuba sí, yankee no," unable to tolerate Communism himself except as a fawning admirer from afar, Lesnik is pleased to wish this curse on the Cuban people and has done everything in his power over 48 years to make that curse a permanent one. Imbued with the same hatred for his countrymen as Fidel and the desire to make them suffer, he has not found it difficult to confound his interests with the Cuban dictator's. I ask myself: Why does this man hate his fellow Cubans so much? The people who provided a refuge to him and his parents from the same evil, under another disguise, with which he is now himself complicit? But why question the roots of evil when it is enough that evil exists in the world?

Evil had a holiday in Havana last week when the unsinkable Max Lesnik was awarded a journalism prize by the same entity that had earlier that same week awarded its "Dignity Prize" to Fidel Castro. Lesnik was praised for "upholding the Cuban flag high in Miami [and] using his honor to fight terror and lies, the favorite weapons of the anti-Cuba mafia in southern Florida." Supposed attempts on Lesnik's life because of his pro-Castro activities were characterized as "occasions of counterrevolutionary terrorism," implying that Lesnik represents and embodies the Revolution. UPEC also praised Lesnik's "contribution to the struggle to obtain the release of the Cuban Five, serving long prison terms in the U.S., and his work towards putting an end to the U.S. blockade [sic] against Cuba."

UPEC, the official "union" of Cuban "journalists" — you know, the same people who are restricted to one hour of internet usage per day and have their internet logs examined daily by the DGI and are not allowed to write one word which is not approved by the political commisars — recognizing in Lesnik a kindred soul, although one allied to Castro by personal choice rather than from lack of choice, and from real opportunism rather than feigned conviction, elevated the "hero journalist" Lesnik to the first rank of the regime's most servile hacks. And this stupid man — for, above the treachery and arrogance, Lesnik is first and foremost a stupid man — actually accepted the award, which makes it impossible for him or his daughter ever to claim again that he is anything but a servile stooge of the regime (and that is putting it kindly, very kindly). It must have been a macabre joke at his expense, the Judas kiss of an enemy who wishes to destroy him for good; but Lesnik is too stupid or too vain or too enamoured to see this and accepts as an "honor" what was meant as an insult and bar sinister; for Max Lesnik is no less contemptible in their eyes than he is in ours, though for different reasons.

Lesnik is certainly deserving of Castro's "Pulitzer Prize." Not only for the reasons cited at the awards ceremony, but because it was Lesnik who either planted the Martí Moonlighters story in Oscar Corral's ear or who informed Havana of its imminent publication, so that Cuban TV's "Mesa Redonda" could scoop The Miami Herald on the story. This is the kind of "journalism" that Lesnik practices and the kind that is rewarded in Communist Cuba. All the "honorees" were in their eighties: not until then, I suppose, when they are tottering on the grave and passed all defiance or hope, does the regime see fit to festoon its servants with their putrid honors. Oscar Corral himself has a long wait.

CubaVerdad: A Valuable Internet Archive

I don't believe that it is on anybody's blogroll but it should be on everybody's. It isn't even necessary for me to describe it as it describes itself very well: an archive of more than 35,500 articles about Cuba; 73 targeted RSS newsfeeds about Cuba; and 33 pages of audio recordings and videos about Cuba, such as the Castro-Chávez Radio Hoax (audio); Che: Anatomy of a Myth (video); and Cuban Students Punished for Accessing the Internet (video).

Its mission statement assures us that this is a resource as valuable as it is well-grounded:

Cuba Verdad aims to provide it's members with a central exchange to receive both articles and links about Cuba with the aim of providing them with an extensive source of information for those interested in freedom and democracy in Cuba.

Cuba Verdad hopes to become a central data source for those supporting the cause of freedom and democracy in Cuba providing members with a wealth of published articles and links to sites containing information about Cuba.

Cuba Verdad is in principle open to all that support freedom and democracy in Cuba independent of their political affiliation provided they support human rights, political freedom and freedom of expression.

I strongly recommend CubaVerdad to your consideration.

http://www.cubaverdad.net/

From the Tellechea Digital Archives: Oscar Corral's "Martí Moonlighters" Story Revisited

[We are approaching the first year anniversary of Oscar Corral's now infamous hatchet-job on anti-Castro Cuban journalists at The Miami Herald and elsewhere, whom he accused in a Sept. 8, 2006 front-page article of being in the pay of the U.S. government (and hence co-opted by it) because they received pro-forma honoraria for appearing on the anti-Castro Radio and TV Martí, which they had done with the knowledge and assent of The Herald itself and following in the footsteps of Edward R. Morrow and thousands of other MSN journalists who had worked for government broadcasting since 1942, when the Voice of America radio service was founded. Corral's "underground investigation," as he called it, led to the arbitrary firing of the journalists and created a schism at 1 Herald Plaza involving the staffs of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, for which the fired journalists had worked. The subsequent revelation that there had been no internal Herald policy prohibiting them from freelancing at Radio Martí, that they had indeed requested and obtained the permission of their editor to do so, and, finally, that The Herald itself had published an article 4 years earlier which reported one of the journalist's association with Radio Martí and even boasted of it, led to the rehiring without prejudice (but without an apology) of the fired Cuban journalists and precipitated the departure of The Herald's publisher Jesús Díaz and its executive editor Tom Fiedler, who resigned and retired, respectively, in the wake of the fallout from the story.

We are reproducing here our response to Jesús Díaz's justification for the firing of the journalists, published in The Herald, on Sept. 17, 2006. In future days we will be publishing other significant documents in the Martí Moonlighters' Affaire, leading up to the Sept. 8th anniversary of Oscar Corral's libellous and discredited story. — MAT]:



THE MIAMI HERALD FROM THE PUBLISHER
September 17, 2006

A Free Press Can Require Painful Choices

By Jesus Diaz Jr.

In order to have democracy, a country must enjoy freedom of the press. [In order to have freedom of the press, the millionaires who own the presses and their lacqueys must convince us that a corporation’s interests also represent the interests of their community or the nation at large.] The past week has been painful for many in the Cuban community and for employees at The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald. [It has been principally painful, however, for the 3 journalists you arbitrarily fired and their families. You and your employees, who did not have the basic decency to protest their firings in a formal petition, are the cause of their pain]. Many have questioned the motives behind the dismissal of two El Nuevo Herald reporters and a freelance writer who did a significant amount of work for us while simultaneously working for and being paid by Radio and TV Martí. [By “significant work” what you really mean is fair, impartial and objective work that was beyond reproach. Since you could not impugn their work for The Herald (and didn’t even try), you chose instead to assassinate their character].

I approved the dismissals because, as the publisher of these newspapers, I am deeply committed to the separation between government and a free press. [The only thing that you were “deeply committed” to was beating out the Chicago Tribune on this story. As for yourself, you have yet to explain why it is not a conflict of interests for you to chair the official U.S-government Cuba Transition commitee]. Further, our employees violated our conflict-of-interest rules. [You have thus far refused to make public these “conflict of interests rules.” When were they adopted? By whom? How specifically do they apply to these three journalist? Where, in short, does it say in your “Rules” that reporters or freelancers are forbidden from working for government-sponsored foreign broadcasting? It is certainly not in the contracts that these journalists signed]. All of our journalists acknowledge and agree to adhere to our policies, which include this statement [Which is it, “rules” or “policies?"
Rules are not the same thing as policies. Rules are immutable whereas policies are whatever tickles the publisher’s fancy at any time]:

"We demonstrate our principles by operating with fairness, accuracy and independence, and by avoiding conflicts of interest, as well as the appearance of conflicts of interest [Like Caesar’s wife?]. Our news operations will be diligent in their pursuit of the truth, without regard to special interests." [Then you have certainly violated The Herald’s principles (which is it now? Rules? Policies? Principles?) by acting yourself without “fairness, accuracy or independence” in this matter. You have already admitted, after initially lying about it, that The Herald knew about the journalists’ involvement with Radio Marti as early as 2002, when The Herald actually published a story which presented as a laudable activity what you would later characterize as a conflict of interests and assault on freedom of the press. What were the “rules, policies and principles” in 2002? When did they change? And did you ever apprise anyone that they had changed? I don’t mean the way you “apprised” the 3 journalists 30 minutes before you fired them. The victims of Stalin’s purges were accorded more due process than the 3 reporters you fired].

Our decisions, painful as they were, reaffirm our commitment that reporters and editors at our newspapers are free of even the hint of a conflict of interest. [Well, that’s the second time that you mention how “painful” your decision was. Perhaps it might not have been a “painful” decision if it had been a reasoned and thoughtful decision. But you made it “painful” by your own premature and unmeasured acts. Doesn’t it seem odd to you that no other newspaper in the country has fired or disciplined reporters involved with Radio Marti, VOA or Radio Liberty (not to mention PBS or NPR)? Perhaps they don’t have the same high ethical standards that you do. Or, more likely, they are not as draconian, unfair and undemocratic as you are].

It is by sustaining this transparency [What “transparency?” Due process for these journalists would have been transparency. Kicking them out the back door isn’t transparency] that we can assure that our reporters will continue to function as impartial and independent watchdogs in our community [Has anyone ever suggested let alone proved that the fired journalists’ reportage was ever anything else?] and tackle investigations leading to stories such as the House of Lies series, which disclosed corruption in the Miami-Dade Housing Authority, and Fire Watch, which uncovered abuses in Miami-Dade’s fire-watch program. [That’s right, pat yourselves on the back; nobody else is going to. Whatever your past scoops may have been, they do not excuse this miscarriage of justice].

As a child in Cuba, I lived under a totalitarian government where freedom of speech did not exist. I remember my parents telling my sister and me, over and over, ‘’Do not say anything bad about the government'’ for fear of reprisal. I do not want my daughter to ever have to say that to her children or to her grandchildren. [You do not live now in a totalitarian regime, although you yourself act with the same star-chamber arbitrariness characteristic of all such regimes, including Fidel Castro’s].

I am committed to fair and independent journalism because I firmly believe that a totalitarian government cannot survive under the spotlight of a free press. [If you are “committed to fair and independent journalism” then you should practice it for a change. What little free press there is in Cuba must struggle across the skies over the Florida Straits to reach Cuba. You would stifle and silence that lonely voice by denying it the support of some of the best U.S. journalists who bring to Radio and TV Marti the fairness and objectivity which, again, none has ever suggested that their reportage lacked]. Throughout this past week, I have been reminded that a dictator such as Fidel Castro would not be in power if Cuba had a free press. [Fidel Castro came to power precisely because the U.S. had a free press. Ever heard of Herbert Matthews? A free press is only as good as the commitment to freedom of individual journalists. The three fired reporters have shown their commitment to freedom in word and deed time and time again. Have you?]

A SHORT JOURNEY [Too short].

History has proved that the journey from an open society to a totalitarian regime can be a short one. [Full of profundities, aren’t you? How exactly did you get your job? I’ve heard of all ten journalists that Corral’s story smeared, but I’ve never heard of you. How did you get to be The Herald’s publisher? By flying under the radar? Well, you did a very good job there]. When journalists receive regular payments for government-sponsored reporting while working for free-press outlets, we take a step down this dangerous path. [Professional journalists, hundreds if not thousands of them, have worked for government-sponsored radio since the Voice of America was founded in 1942. On exactly what “dangerous path” has this taken us? The end of the Cold War and the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe? Why did you specifically target Cuban-American journalists for your censure? Didn’t non-Cuban Latin Americans and Spanish-speaking Anglo experts also appear on Radio and TV Marti? Why weren’t they named? For that matter, why weren’t paid-contributors to the Voice of America and Radio Liberty named? They work for the same government and the checks they receive are also identical].

Let me be clear: [Now you are going to start?].

• The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald are committed to fair and independent reporting. [However many times you repeat it won’t make it true].

• The institutional position of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, as expressed on our editorial pages, has been to support the work and goals of Radio and TV Martí. [Except when you try to sabotage their work by denying them the services of those who allow them to fulfill their mission with professionalism and fairness. Your now often-repeated “support” for Radio Marti includes portraying it as a “propaganda machine” with which no reputable ethical journalist would be connected, and with which The Miami Herald, in particular, is loathe to associate even indirectly. With “friends” like you, Radio and TV Marti better watch their backs].

I also wish to clarify our position on a number of questions and rumors, which we have heard over the past week:

• The Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald and our parent company, McClatchy, have no plans to open a bureau inside Cuba. [Really, hasn’t that been your expressed objective for many years? Did that objective change at the same time you changed your “rules, objectives, policies”?].

• Cuba rejects or does not respond to our requests for visas for our reporters. [So you are trying?]. As such, any reporting by Miami Herald staff members from Cuba comes from those who have made their way into the country as tourists, requiring us to run their stories without bylines in order to protect their identities. [Wasn’t Oscar Corral recently in Cuba? Is that where he “researched” his Sept. 8 story?].

• We do not know why the Cuban TV program Mesa Redonda commented on the essence of our story before it ran. [So you admit that this “rumor” at least is true].We are confident this information did not come from anyone at The Miami Herald, and we believe that Mesa Redonda may have gained this information from a review of our public-records requests, since these requests are available to the public. [On what grounds are you “confident” that no one at the Miami Herald informed the Castro regime on your story prior to publication? Or, for that matter, how “confident” are you that the flow of information wasn’t the other way? There are no coincidences in this world. As a journalist, you should be a little more inquisitive. That’s “inquisitive,” not inquisitorial].

I am concerned about our readers’ reaction to columnists Carl Hiaasen’s and Ana Menendez’s opinion columns in today’s paper. [Yes, you should be concerned about columns that are inflammatory and unfair. And you shouldn’t write unfair and inflammatory columns yourself like the present one]. My first reaction was to keep both columns, which represent Carl’s and Ana’s opinions, from running in the paper at this time because I believe they may inflame sentiments in the Cuban community. [So you considered practicing censorship because you and you alone know what’s best for the community. Have you ever considered that truth may be what is best?].

LIMITING FREEDOM [At The Herald].

However, many in our organization have told me that doing so would be the equivalent of suffocating the very freedom of the press I was trying to protect when we dismissed the El Nuevo Herald reporters. Therefore, the articles are published in today’s paper. [In this case, you listened to your subalterns’ opinions. You, obviously, were not as openminded about the 3 fired journalists, because several editors, including the executive editor of El Nuevo Herald, objected to your unilateral decision].

I am saddened by the pain [The pain never stops for you, does it?] these events have caused in our community during the past week. [Not that “these events caused,” but that your own actions caused; and you shouldn’t be “saddened,” but sorry]. We are not perfect, [Really? You had us all fooled] but rest assured that we will continue to work diligently for the betterment of our community. [Is that a threat?].

Jesús Diaz Jr. is [was] the publisher of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald.

[Footnote: I had originally posted this article last year on both the Orlando Sentinel Forum and New York School of Journalism's PressEthic blog. Upon checking today, I discovered that the article had been deleted from both. So much for "PressEthic" (is there only one?). Fortunately, I always keep backup copies of everything I write.]

A Crash of Titans and the Truth Prevails

Those who missed yesterday's epic fight between Enrique Rubio (aka fantomas & Longfellow) and Alex Hernández (aka "Ya No Más"), which the latter won by knock-out and left fantomas literally crying "¡No más!", can view it at your pleasure by visiting the Madhouse for the Stupid and Obnoxious, where it's playing 24-hours a day for an unlimited engagement. Scroll down to the bottom of the 200+ comments (a long and interesting trek). Never a dull minute (except when fantomas is holding court). Not recommended for those with week stomachs and faint hearts. Can you cut it in The Madhouse? We'll see.

Enrique Rubio (aka "Fantomas") Is "John Longfellow"

Perhaps the most famous personality in the history of Cuban-American blogs is "John Longfellow," who achieved his greatest notoriety at Miami's Cuban Connection, Oscar Corral's un-blog, but who at one time or another pestered practically every Cuban-themed blog before being booted. The Longfellow persona was infantile, anal retentive, bigotted and obsessed with Cuba and Cubans though purporting to be a "100% percent American." At times he presented himself as an admirer of Castro and a defamer of Cuban-Americans, and at other times, far fewer, he pretended to side with the oppressed Cuban people and defended Cuban-Americans. Whatever his political stance on any given day, or, indeed, at any given moment, Longfellow's purpose was always to disrupt discussion and make himself the center of attention. I tangled with him many times and always got the better of him, much as I've always gotten the better of Fantomas here (first clue). Based on my analysis of Longfellow's writing I correctly surmised years ago that he was Puerto Rican. And so he turned out to be. Though Cuban by birth he has lived in Puerto Rico for most of his life and acquired the native's distinctive inflection which was reflected also into his writings (at least to my trained ear). I listened yesterday to Fantomas' sporadic blog radio show where he had invited me to appear (same distinctive Puerto Rican accent). The final clue he himself provided when he threatened to do to RCAB what he had once upon a time done to Miami's Cuban Connection, flood it with propaganda from NAMBLA (the North American Man-Boy Love Association). It was this tactic that brought down Oscar Corral's blog even before it was decimated by fallout from the Miami Moonlighters story.

Nowadays Longfellow (aka Fantomas) moors at Stuck on the Palmetto, where he is the chief attraction and is kept on a much tighter leash than he ever was by Oscar Corral, whose disdain for his once-popular blog is legendary. Indeed, perhaps it would be more correct to say that Corral's indifference killed his blog and Longfellow was the catalyst. I would have left Longfellow to his own devices, wreaking havoc here and elsewhere on the Cuban-American blogosphere, except that last night he threatened to do to this blog what he did last year to Corral's. Under the circumstances I was left no choice but to expose him.

I do not know but strongly suspect that Babalú is complicit with him. This is certainly ironic because as "Longfellow" Fantomas was booted from Babalú more times than he could remember and his personal disdain for Val Prieto, as expressed hundreds of times on Corral's late blog and elsewhere, make everything I've ever said about Val after March 29 sound like gentle chiding. The end of the cat-and-mouse-game that fantomas has been playing with the Babalunians is my only regret in "outing him." Val and Henry are dumb enough to have been fooled forever by him. Having joined BUCL and become Val and Henry's "good friend" and nominal ally — that is, been embraced and co-opted by the Babalunian establishment — one would have supposed that Longfellow (aka Fantomas) would have ceased his efforts to sabotage Babalú blog; but the fifth-columnist continues to challenge them and spout pro-Castro comments as "tango." I guess fantomas (aka Longfellow) was right when he claimed here time and time again that he was not a Babalú "satellite." No, the sun has not been born yet that can trap and neutralize this wayward comet and harbinger of ill.

Last night, fantomas was challenged here by an Anonymous commenter, whom fantomas himself identified as his "New York nemesis" Alex ("Ya No Más). It was quite a contest between the two with me as the reluctant referee. They tore each other apart, but Alex connected with the most punches and at the end fantomas was literally begging him "No más." I cannot vouch for the truth of anything that they said to each other here, although fantomas' threat to turn this blog into an outpost for NAMBLA is certainly no way to refute Alex's accusations of pederasty. I removed most of their comments to The Madhouse, where readers may make up their own minds.

Despite his having threatened to destroy this blog, I have not banned Fantomas (aka Longfellow). Banning, deleting and censoring are Babalú's tools, not mine. But the enemy within has been exposed.

Longfellow is Fantomas. And Fantomas is Enrique Rubio.

The Sun-Post's Rebecca Wakefield Polishes Oscar Corral's Apple Again

Beware of the wrath of the gods, but be even more wary of their humor. Their wrath can sometimes be anticipated; it thunders from afar, but it thunders. Their humor, however, flies above our heads and drops copious guano on us when we least expect it. Such was Oscar Corral's unhappy case. The instrument of the gods in Corral's case was the Sun-Post's Rebecca Wakefield, who wrote a worshipful profile of Oscar Corral in her paper just 3 weeks before Corral allegedly directed his charm and $50 at a teenage prostitute, who was no doubt more cautious of Corral's intentions than the gullible Wakefield. I've already summarized Wakefield's story and I don't think I can improve upon it: "Intrepid ace reporter takes on Miami's Cuban extremists and becomes martyr-in-waiting".

Wakefield portrayed Corral as a paragon of journalistic ethics. As it turns out, however, his personal ethics left a lot to be desired; and, of course, what we are as humans impacts what we are as journalists, clowns or salesmen. One would suppose that were Wakefield to write a follow-up of her story she would make that the motiff. But her judgment, like Corral's or anybody else's in the Third Estate, is infallible and not subject to reassessment or second thoughts.

When she again mentioned Corral's name, two weeks after his non-alleged arrest, it was on a blog called Urban Squall where she glossed over Corral's conduct and her own shameless puffery and concentrated instead on a peripheral player in the Miami Moonlighters story, the cartoonist José Varela, who had his own name besmirched by Corral's story because he had at one time accepted a $200 honorarium for an appearance on Radio Martí. No doubt this contributed to his later actions at 1 Herald Plaza. His issues with the paper were not precipitated by financial or marital problems, as Wakefield and everybody else speculated at the time; but, rather, had a great deal to do with his disgust at the institutional corruption which he witnessed there. As he revealed in a comment on the Review of Cuban American Blogs:

"Manuel, you are not far from the truth with what you wrote in the last the paragraph ['The only explanation I can find for what amounts to a cover-up by the Miami media is this: perhaps all the media in Miami are replete with adulterers who pay to fornicate, luckier but no less depraved than Oscar Corral, and this was just a can of worms that nobody could afford to open.] They cover up for one another because there is just too much shit going down. An undercover cop caught one of their number masturbating in a public restroom; he's still a bigwig at Diario las Américas. Another character, who's on the State of Florida's Registry of Sexual Predators, was removed as managing editor at the time of my incident for appearances' sake. The editor had moral problems also with two female employees; he is still at the job but one of the women (now his wife) was removed to avoid a conflict of interests. In short, the flawed humans who work in the third estate in Miami are as subject to moral turpitude as the very power that they wield is susceptible to corruption. No-show jobs, the opportunistic assignment of little columns to the favored few, the allocation of funds for overseas assignments that are little more than paid vacations and for conferences and conventions in exotic locales like Brazil — all this is also part of the endemic corruption that prevails there. Corrollo used to tell me when he was mayor that they were all "influence peddlers." And that's only the top of the iceberg; underneath there are even more perverse things to be found. It's hard to say it because it may appear that in doing so I am besmirching Miami's reputation; but, in fact, there is another Miami which is deserving of honor, the Miami to which my grandparents and parents (now deceased) belonged, who eaked out an honest living in factories, tomato canneries and gas stations from dawn to dusk in order to be able to raise their kids and give them an education. Miami is saved by such noble and hardworking people. It's unfortunate that "Granma" uses the other perverse ones to generalize about Miami."

Wakefield's post centered on an ingenious cartoon Varela drew in the wake of Corral's arrest for solicitation, which RCAB also reproduced. The cartoon shows Corral impressing the teenage prostitute by assuring her that he's paying her with money received from The Miami Herald, not Radio Marti or TV Marti, which causes her to exclaim: "Wow, what ethics!" It really is a little masterpiece, encapsulating in a few trenchant words a year's coverage of the Moonlighters story in light of recent revelations about Corral's own extracurricular activities.

Wakefield, however, did not make the message of Varela's cartoon the focus of her blogpost. She ignored the topical story and preferred to concentrate on José Varela's troubles at The Herald in Nov. 2006, which matter has been settled already in the most satisfactory manner imaginable to him. If not a complete vindication of Varela's actions, the two days' probation which he received for barricading himself in a Nuevo Herald editor's office is as close as one can get to judicial vindication short of actual acquittal.

She should, perhaps, have focused on the fact that Corral's arrest on prostitution charges confirms what Varela had been alleging all the while and everybody had been scoffing at, namely, that the deans and doyens of American journalism, who demand the strictest morality and ethics from everybody else, especially politicians, hold themselves above all moral and ethical rules, as a law unto themselves. This is a truth that needed to be said, although it was better illustrated in Varela's cartoon than in his desperate act. Yet we would sooner excuse his desperation than Corral's hypocrisy. It is, of course, otherwise with Corral's apologist Rebecca Wakefield.

http://www.category305.com/media-watch/jose-varela-on-oscar-corral.php

Reflection on Fidel Castro's Death

Some day, after he is dead, we shall look back with some appreciation at the fact that we got to see Fidel "die" so many times before he actually did.

In life, he suffered all the deaths of a coward; and in death, he shall suffer all the deaths of a traitor. May the Bible and Dante be right.

Martí and Fidel: The Apostle and the Pharisee

By: José Varela

Fidel: Oh it's you, Martí, the "Intellectual Author" of the Revolution.

Martí: Cut that out, Fidel, or I am going to sue you.

http://varela1.blogspot.com/

Val Prieto Wants to Give Raúl Castro the Business

[I have a big backlog of posts; the Oscar Corral story pretty much knocked Val & Henry off my front page. It's not that I haven't been writing about their foibles. I have, of course. There just wasn't room to insert them in the prominent position that they deserve. I hope over this week-end to catch-up and publish the lot of them. Here's the most recent one commenting on Val's suggestion of yesterday about rewarding Raúl after Fidel's death in the hope he will abandon communism. A similar idea was floated around 1959 and for some years later and some apologists for Fidel still blame Eisenhower and Kennedy for not trying hard enough or at all to "ween" Castro away from Communism by giving him whatever he asked for and then some. But, really, what more could the U.S. have given him than what it in fact gave him — a solemn pledge, enshrined in a treaty, to do everything in its power to see that he died in office? Here's Val still parroting the "appeasement at all costs" or "surrender without defeat" philosophy made famous by Neville Chamberlain 70 years ago:]

In a post entitled "Buenos Dias, ... grrmmphh" (I guessed he titled it thusly so that nobody in the future would ever be able to find it and call him up it), Val informed his readers that he was up into the wee hours of the night grappling with an idea that had "pitched a tent and a residence" in his mind. It must have been quite a narrow but lithesome idea to have been able to pitch a tent and a residence in the short expanse of land that is Val's brain.

What was this remarkably self-accommodating idea that so tantalized him? "Fidel is the revolution and the revolution is Fidel." I must say that I'm impressed, and I am not being sarcastic. Sure it's a cliché, a very old and oft-repeated cliché, but at least it is true (not the whole truth but a substantial part of it). Val then goes on to expound that no real transition in Cuba will take place until Fidel is actually dead. Now Val has been saying that Fidel is dead for the longest time. I suppose that what he really means is that without Fidel's presence (real or not) an explosion of discontent will erupt on the island which would threaten the foundations of the regime.

And what does Val believe should be the U.S. reaction to widespread discontent in Cuba? Well, we might expect his answer to be that it should tighten the pressure cooker, after all that's what Val has always advocated in respect to exiles providing assistance to their starving relatives in Cuba. But, no, for once Val doesn't want to implode his countrymen in that pressure cooker, but to release the steam. Val proposes that upon the announcement of Fidel's death the U.S. immediately lift the trade embargo and "all restrictions vis-a vis-Cuba." Let us humor him and suppose that such a thing were legally possible (which it is not).

This then begs the question: Was our beef just with Fidel, not with the Revolution, not with Communism, not with Raúl? We were right not to reward Fidel, but would be justified in rewarding Raul for 48 years of tyranny at home and enmity to the United States? Just so long as it is not done in Castro's lifetime (official or otherwise), Val would not hesitate in recognizing and rewarding the monument to political reppression and economic lunacy that Fidel created in Cuba.

Ironically, Val may be right: not in the sense that the U.S. would be justified so to act but that it may act even without justification. Its foreign policy towards Cuba is in fact founded on Val's pressure cooker analogy. It wants to let off just enough steam to reduce the pressure on the regime so that it will not implode. It doesn't matter to Bush, just as it did not matter to Clinton, whether Cuba regains her freedom or not, just as long as whomever is in charge can keep the peace on the island, even if it is the peace of the grave; and, above all else, the U.S. wants someone in charge powerful enough to prevent another (much greater) Mariel in an election year. Whoever can manage that, even Raúl, is America's "Man in Havana." This should come as no surprise to anyone because the U.S. has maintained an attitude inimical to Cuban freedom since the first days of the Revolution and done everything to thwart it even when, as in the Bay of Pigs, it seemed to be supporting it.

The World Awaits With Bated Breath: "The Tellechea Hour" on the Fantomas Blog Radio Show

Fantomas said...
Oye estoy pensando hacer un blogtalkradio y quiero que seas mi invitado de honor... daría por cualquier cosa de escuchar tu tono de voz en inglés y en español.
¿Que te parece hoy a las 9 pm EST?
8/16/2007 3:34 PM

Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Fantomas:

A great many people would like me to appear on their faux radio shows. You must be on your best behavior all of next week to earn that privilege. If you do, you must announce my visit every day on your blog and every other blog for another week. Only if you faithfully fulfill these requirements can you hope to have me as a guest, which would guarantee you the biggest audience in the history of Cuban-American blog radio. Your ratings could only be topped if I appeared on The Babalu [Faux] Radio Hour, and that, of course, will never happen.
8/16/2007 7:42 PM

Fantomas said...
Che che me la pusistes dura pero no podía esperar menos de ti.

Me extraña que quieras participar con Fantomas en un radio show ...

Pero como ya has aceptado a comparecer entonces we got a deal...

Lo único que te digo es que estas pidiendo mucho, I don't have a problem with announcing your royal appearance on the Fantomas Radio Show on my blog one week in advance.

Solo te advierto algo: si me cancelas después de haberte hecho la promoción te juro por mi madre que te envío los fantomas thugs que tengo en el east coast para que te den una senda paliza.

Así que mira a ver que vas a hacer.

Tell me the date and the time so that I can properly select the show at once...

The radio show will be done in both languages English and Spanish.
8/16/2007 8:33 PM

Manuel A.Tellechea said...
fantomas:

My appearance is contingent on your good behavior for one week here. This does not mean that you should vanish for one week from this blog or agree with everything I say, but, rather, that you will comport yourself with dignity and sanity here. I know it is a tall order, and, frankly, I don't believe you can do it. But we will see. Only after you have successfully completed your probation will I consent to appear on your show. You should know by now that I am a man of my word. Of course, there will be no other guests or callers to your show. Just you and I and the biggest audience in the history of Cuban-American blog radio. If you attempt any unwelcomed "reunions" with Val or other unpleasant people (and you know who they are) I will immediately leave the show.

Now, those are my rules and you either play by them or we don't play at all.
8/16/2007 8:53 PM

Fantomas said...
Agreed 100%

Remember just one thing:

I AM NOT A SATELLITE, NEVER BEEN, NEVER WILL BE!

METETELO IN YOUR HEAD.
8/16/2007 9:05 PM

Manuel A.Tellechea said...
fantomas:

You may not remember that we tried this experiment before and that you failed miserably to live up to your part of the agreement. I wish you better luck this time. Certainly you have every incentive to succeed. During next week I expect you to dazzle us all with your erudition (smartness) on the RCAB.

Oh, fantomas, how you are going to be the envy of all your fellow Babalunian satellites! Be sure to use protection for your own sake: they do not love you well.
One last thing: I could have auctioned this honor for a king's ransom and instead I bestow this it on you. Think deeply on that, fantomas, or as deeply as you can, and learn the meaning of gratitude.
8/16/2007 9:47 PM

Fantomas said...
Tranquilo Manny, I got your point.

Te lo dice a "kinder, gentler Fantomas" for 1 week only.
8/16/2007 9:50 PM

Manuel A.Tellechea said...
P.S.: And, yes, fantomas, I will be giving you demerits for improper conduct (well, not that kind of improper conduct). On the third demerit you will be disqualified from the honor of entertaining me as your guest on your [faux] radio show.
8/16/2007 9:52 PM

Manuel A.Tellechea said...
P.S.S: And I myself will not necessarily be nice next week. Be warned. This is not going to be a cakewalk for you. You will earn all 60 minutes of my valuable time.
8/16/2007 9:56 PM

Fantomas said...
I am ready for the opportunity to have such a great guest in my humble and seldom used The Fantomas Radio Blogtalk show.

Next week will be a piece of cake for me in regards to my behavior... no matter what you do to entice me to get disqualified or sent to the madhouse...

I got your number now.

Again, who is your internet nemesis? You have not answered me that one.
8/16/2007 10:30 PM

Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Fantomas:

Well, you seem to be in a good frame of mind and if you keep your cool under fire you may be able to carry the day.

As I said, you have nothing to fear from me. It is your friends and allies in the Cuban blogosphere who now envy you in addition to hating your guts (which they always have). I hope that you can survive their spite, not to mention the coconuts and dead chickens on your lawn. Be of strong heart. Other men have chanced more for less.
8/16/2007 11:26 PM

Fantomas said...
Manny just answer me this one...

Why do you say the Cuban-American blogosphere hates fantomas?

What have I done to any of them?

Yo pense que ellos me querían mucho.
8/16/2007 11:54 PM

Anonymous said...
What is the date and time of that show? Shit... can't wait for this one. Buying my popcorn already!

Signed,

A Prudent But Not Cowardly "Anonymous."
8/17/2007 1:41 AM

Fantomas said...
Manny, like you said before, this is not a popularity contest...

Anyways for the people who love me silly and for my detractors:

I want you all to think of fantomas as if I were Alex from Clockwork Orange... here is my favourite part...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxrfVFBZWL4

I am a good friend after all, right Mr. Manuel?
8/17/2007 2:09 AM

Manuel A.Tellechea said...
fantomas:

You can see for yourself the excitement that is building in every corner of the Cuban-American blogosphere at my prospective appearance on your show. Never has the dead medium of radio been more alive. The air literally cracks at the anticipation of our meeting. Men who would never have given you the time of day are begging you now for your show's URL. Oh happy inspiring spectacle of the redemptive power of genius!
8/17/2007 3:08 AM

Fantomas said...
It is going to be bigger than Imus vs Sharpton... Even the king of all media is interested in the outcome...

Remember it is going to be just you and me... inside the ring... no phone calls allowed.

No referees...

The world will be listening...

Che Che in español... I can't wait...
8/17/2007 3:14 AM

Fantomas said...
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hostpage.aspx?host_id=1699
8/17/2007 3:16 AM

Anonymous said...
Lol "the air literally cracks: pffftt ... I just have one question — what time is this show? I CAN'T EVEN SLEEP BECAUSE OF THE SUSPENSE! Well, not really, but I thought I'd add to the excitement. This is going to be one hell of a show! Be there or be square!
8/17/2007 3:47 AM

Anonymous said...
Cubans are Awesome!!!
8/17/2007 3:48 AM

Anonymous said...
I'm feeling it baby! I'm feeling it! The suspense is GROWING! Start the show!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOO HOOO!
8/17/2007 3:53 AM

Fantomas said...
Manuel people are lining up already... this is amazing...

Se me ha prendido el bombillo... si cierras el Madhouse, si dejas de atacar a otros Cuban blogs por gusto y si te portas bien next week ... estoy considerando invitarte once a week to the "Tellechea Hour at Fantomas Radio" where we can both cohost a show and talk about the previous week's acontecimientos en Cuba and the blogosphere...

¿Que te parece la idea, chamaco?

[Then] successful People will start hating us for sure.
8/17/2007 3:53 AM

Anonymous said...
:)
8/17/2007 3:53 AM

Anonymous said...
Fanto, you're dreaming now.
8/17/2007 3:55 AM

Anonymous said...
:0)
8/17/2007 3:56 AM

Fantomas said...
Not really, I am awake just as you are.

Who are you? Why the disguise?
8/17/2007 3:57 AM

Fantomas said...
Una musiquita cortesía de Fanto:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/hostpage.aspx?show_id=23261
8/17/2007 4:00 AM

Anonymous said...
lol why not? Good luck to both of you ;)
8/17/2007 4:02 AM

Manuel A.Tellechea said...
fantomas:

I don't know if the whole world will be listening, but certainly everyone in the Babalunian empire will be listening. If your show aired at the same time as The Babalu Radio Hour, they would literally be listening live to your show. That is why I tell you that you must protect yourself against the effects of their envy. Because, for once, they do envy you. No longer are you just a tool for them to use against me, the court jester that the Emperor Valentín kicks and jabs at pleasure. No! Now you shall have risen above him, and he shall grovel at your feet. I am delighted to empower you, fantomas. I have long thought that by virtue of your superior intellect (superior to Val's, anyway) it is you who should lead the Babalunian legions. For you, this is merely an opportunity to become the king of Cuban blog radio. Your vision is not as wide and far-reaching as mine (whose is?) To me, it is evident that this will precipitate a revolution in your favor among the Babalunians. I am even prepared to crown you symbolically on the air. You were nothing, fantomas; but you can and will be everything!
8/17/2007 5:47 AM

fantomas said...
"You were nothing"
According to you?
That was a low blow...
8/17/2007 6:41 AM

Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Fantomas:
"Nothing" compared to what you will be!
8/17/2007 7:50 AM

All You Ever Wanted to Know About Oscar Corral But Didn't Know Where To Ask

Included here are all the posts, from the newest to the oldest, which we have devoted to Oscar Corral on the RCAB, the most comprehensive archive on the web of his recent meretricious conduct:

The Sun-Post's Rebecca Wakefield Polishes Oscar Corral's Apple Again
Deserving of the Pulitzer for Best Cartoonist
The Miami Media's Reaction to the Oscar Corral Affaire
Ah, Poor Henry Misses Me at Herald Watch
RCAB News: Cornering the Market on Oscar Corral
El Nuevo Herald Buckles to The Miami Herald While Granma Comes to Oscar Corral's Defense
Discussion of Oscar Corral Affaire Banned at Babalú Blog
Corgiguy Protests RCAB's Treatment of Oscar Corral
Oscar Corral: Rescuer of Lost Souls
Schadenfreude: Oscar Corral Gloats About Arthur Teele Jr.'s Downfall
Yamilet López: The Girl Whom Oscar Corral Propositioned
Oscar Corral's Alleged Homosexuality: Slander or Libel?
Oscar Corral Deletes Comments Critical of Him at "Miami's Cuban Connection"
Re Oscar Corral: Is Prostitution a "Victimless Crime?"
Oscar Corral and the Divine Finger
"In Miami's Fair City/Where the Girls Are So Pretty..."
New Times Names Oscar Corral "Best Commie Spy" in "Best of 2007" Issue
The Wrong Reporter For the Posada Story
Oscar Corral: The Man Without Principles

Deserving of the Pulitzer for Best Cartoonist

By: José Varela

Corral: I want you to know that I'm paying you with money from The Miami Herald, not Radio Martí or TV Martí.

Teenage prostitute: Wow! What ethics!

http://varela1.blogspot.com/

The Miami Media's Reaction to the Oscar Corral Affaire

Although it is hardly admirable we cannot but be impressed by the spirit de corps that exists and flourishes among Miami's journalistic community, although it is, after all, a one newspaper town, for all intents and purposes. The only other English-language newspaper is the alternative weekly Miami New Times, which is what one would expect it to be. The two Spanish-language daily newspapers, El Nuevo Herald, which is an offshoot of The Miami Herald, and El Diario Las Américas, which exists in its own mileau and almost in its own time and space, are not rivals of The Herald in any way, though occasional antagonists (El Herald, ironically, more than El Diario).

So the silence decreed by The Miami Herald on the Oscar Corral Affaire has not been challenged in any way by other Miami papers, nor, for that matter, by any papers that border its circulation area, not even the Sun-Post, which had profiled Corral only 3 weeks earlier in an embarrassing puff piece that only seems more embarrassing now (intrepid ace reporter takes on Miami's Cuban extremists and becomes martyr-in-waiting).

The Corral story provided an excellent opportunity for the other local papers to assert their independence and forge a distinct character, and, yes, for their circulations to grow. But even the contrarian New Times — aren't alternative newspapers supposed to be? — limited its coverage to its webpages, where it squandered real scoops and diluted the story with the usual attacks on the Cuban-American community, which is the daily bread of their blogs. Worst still, with the exception of Herald Watch and the RCAB, which have covered the story in-depth within the measure of their resources, it did not even merit a mention on most Cuban-American blogs and only derivative and quickly cut-off discussion on Babalú.

We must really ask ourselves why this is so, since this was the week's big story in any venue which did chose to cover it, such as Miami's Spanish-language talk radio. Although its leftwing critics chide it for a thousand so-called sins, it is not guilty of the sin of omission. Its coverage of the Oscar Corral Affaire could have been emulated by all media in Miami. It was not, which is to their very great discredit.

It says a lot that Granma, official organ of Cuba's Communist Party, covered the Corral story more exhaustively than any Miami newspaper, and being alone and unchallenged in in its "reportage," foisted more lies and propaganda into the discussion than would otherwise have been possible if any other outlet had bothered to report on this story. The lavish praise which Granma heaped on Corral, unseen since the death of Herbert Matthews, was itself worthy of notice by the Miami media, which, of course, noticed nothing.

The only explanation I can find for what amounts to a cover-up by the Miami media is this: perhaps all the media in Miami are replete with adulterers who pay to be fellated, luckier but no less depraved than Oscar Corral, and this was just a can of worms that nobody could afford to open.

"Che" Guevara's Progeny to Fly Argentine Way

No rafts for them, but the descendents of Ernesto "Che" Guevara, artifex with Fidel Castro of the destruction of Cuba, are scrambling out, rodent-like, from Fidel Castro's sinking ship of state. His daughter, Celia Guevara March, age 44, the most rabid Castroite of the tribe, has applied for and been granted Argentine citizenship on the basis of her father's nationality and will be relocating there with her family on Fidel Castro's death. It means nothing but it is curious nonetheless that this woman's matronym is "March" and her father's was "Lynch." Why she should have remained in Cuba for so long and is only now preparing to leave it on Castro's demise is one of those imponderables that can only be explained by the innate hypocrisy of Communism.

The man she calls a "surrogate father" murdered her own father as surely as if he had pulled the trigger: Castro exiled him to Bolivia, knowing that there was no possibility of inciting a revolution among that country's highly sensible Indians, who would and did flee from Guevara as from any conquistador; but to make 100% certain that he would fail, Castro instructed Bolivia's Communists to provide him with no material assistance or cooperation, not even with the asthma medicine that he needed to survive; and it may even have been a Castro agent who betrayed Guevara's location to the Bolivian military who were tracking him with the assistance of Cuban-exile CIA operatives (that's kind, it should be the other way around).

Even after he was dead, Castro did not canonize him without reservations and even concocted a posthumous letter wherein Guevara supposedly confesses that he had been wrong and Fidel always right in respect to the revolutionary process and berates himself for not having recognized Castro's supreme greatness before.

How Guevara's widow could have raised her children under the "protection" of the man who killed her husband and their father boggles the mind. How his children should have remained so tenaciously loyal to a man who had shown no loyalty to their wretched father is another imponderable, the kind of grotesquerie that one only encounters in a society as perverse and irrational as the one that Castro and Guevara foisted on Cuba.

Celia Guevara, a veterinary at the Havana Aquarium, has been endeavoring lately to trademark her father's likeness and name, as Martin Luther King Jr.'s children have done with their father's. No one can reprint or even recite their father's speeches in public without paying a royalty to the King estate or facing a lawsuit. No doubt Celia and her siblings have equally high hopes of exploiting their father's legacy. Already they have lost at least $50 million in royalties from T-shirt sales. As for the copyrights to their father's published works, Castro controls those and no doubt they will endeavor to recover title to Guevara's "intellectual property" once Castro is gone. So, in effect, "Che" Guevara's heirs will continue to profit for many years in the future from their father's murder of 14,000 Cubans, which his legend and celebrity is founded on.

After Mussolini's death, Italy passed a law that forbade his progeny from living in Italy. Eventually, after three decades, the law was eliminated and they were allowed to return. His daughter Alessandra Mussolini now leads a neo-fascist party in parliament. But fascism is now an irrelevancy in Italy. Not until fidelismo becomes one also in Cuba should the heirs of its founders be allowed to return to the country that their fathers' despoiled and from whose predations they have lived all their lives and will continue to live in the future.

Good riddance to the whole tribe of them! Let them take their name to market and see what it will get them in their father's homehand. We have had enough of them.

RCAB News: The U.S. Coast Guard Makes the RCAB a Port of Call

Today we were visited by the uscg.mil (Military), otherwise known as the U.S. Coast Guard. That is the domain name; the ISP belongs to the Department of Transportation, in Washington, D.C. The search words that they googled were: "money paid to Cuban smugglers." The post to which they were referred was Angels Who Smuggle Men to Freedom. We trust they learned something. There is so much for them to learn and unlearn.

I visited the United States Coast Guard webpage, which proudly proclaims "Happy 217th Birthday to the Coast Guard, More than 1,000,000 Lives Saved Since 1790." No mention of how many lives it has not saved or was responsible for ending, or do they just detract that from the number of lives saved? H/T to Bill Clinton and George Bush.


POSTSCRIPT:

Has the Review of Cuban-American Blogs been placed on some official Resource List for the U.S. military? For no sooner had we finished writing about the U.S. Coast Guard's unexpected visit to these precincts, we received a visit from army.mil (Military), U.S. Army Research Laboratory, based in Hyattsville, Maryland. The Coast Guard visited us at 12:59:07pm and the U.S. Army at 1:54:01pm. We'll keep you apprised if the Navy or the Marines are next.

Fidel Castro's Double in the Time of His Moribundity

Fidel Castro's double lived a charmed life and was an important man in his own right. Of course, his relevancy hinged on Fidel's and it is never a safe thing to live in the shadow of another man, especially one as hated as Fidel Castro. In a sense, he was an uber-bodyguard. If he died in the line of service it would not be because he intercepted a bullet for Fidel, willingly or accidentally, because the two, of course, were never seen together in public. If he took a bullet for the Maximum Leader, or swallowed poison for him, or performed any other of those small offices, it would be because he himself was the target by proxy for the assassin, the magnet for bullets intended for Fidel. There would be no posthumous glory for him as Fidel's "savior" because, of course, he did not officially exist. The double also had "bodyguards" in his escort, but they did not serve the purposes of normal bodyguards, that is, they were not there to actually protect his life but to assure everyone after he had been killed that it was not really Fidel lying in a pool of blood. They even carried signed letters from Fidel to that effect with all other documentation certifying that Fidel's double was not Fidel. This was never directly told to him, but he must have supposed it unless he had actually convinced himself that he was anything but expendable anywhere and at all times.

His duties were at first those of a decoy, but when it became known that he had a flare for impersonating Fidel and did no discredit to him in the process, he began to be used as a double, who could fill-in for him at minor appearances at factories and schools where little more than a few encouraging remarks and backpatting was required. He enjoyed these little excursions, how grown men would weep from emotion in his presence or women swoon. Well, Fidel was their god, with absolute control over their lives for all of their lives, and, of course, with the power of life or death over them. The Romans too would have quaked in the presence of the God Caligula or the God Nero. The double knew that he was just a man, and even that the man that he impersonated was also just a man, and a frightened man at that: why else would he have need of his services?

The double's job entailed more than donning the comandante's uniform; yes, literally his uniform, for Fidel's tailor also outfitted him. Of course, his measurements were never taken; he was expected to maintain the same weight and general contours as Fidel. He was probably the only man in Cuba who actually had to worry about losing weight. Fortunately, the regime provided him with unlimited supplies of condensed milk and a good quantity of beef — yes, beef — so that he would be able to maintain Fidel's fornido appearance.

Of course, he was allowed no family of his own and had little to do with families of his siblings. His resemblance to Fidel had always been a joke in his family and it would not have required much intuition to figure out the rest. Officially, he had a botella (sinecure) at the Ministry of Communications (unintentional irony?), but was never seen there. In fact, he had been ordered never to present himself there. He wondered sometimes if the double might not have a double himself. He had seen enough strange things to make that entirely plausible. He was tempted at times to inquire into the matter but thought the better of it. If he had subsumed his personality into Fidel's, why should it matter that another man might be willing to be his stand-in? The thought even flattered him in a way; perhaps he had more in common with the chief than he had ever imagined. In any case, nothing seemed more pathetic to him than the life of the man who impersonated him.

There was only one thing that he feared; well, actually, two. First, of course, that Fidel would die and his own utility end. He had heard of pharaohs who had their entire retinues buried alive with them. He knew that he was more than just a water carrier and that it might be better to suppress his existence after Castro's death, which would be, in a maccabre way, the ultimate homage to him. He hoped this "suppression" would involve no more than an order to shave his beard, return the uniforms and forget he had ever impersonated Castro, a story which, he thought, few would believe anyway. Perhaps he would be reassigned to the botella at the Ministry of Communications and the guy presently holding his job returned to whatever job he held before becoming his understudy.

The first shock of his life came when Fidel fell in public and fractured his knee. His own mortality which, given his job, had never lurked too far from his consciousness he could accept well enough, but the sudden realization that Castro could die and undermine completely his settled life filled him with terror. He didn't want to return to his old life or assume his old identity. The insufferable boredom of it was more than he could take. How could a man who had been adulated as much as him, even by proxy, give all that up at a moment's notice and retire to what would surely be a hermetic life. The thought was too much to bear. Truly it may be said that no man more sincerely wished health and long life to Fidel than his double.

His immediate concern was whether he would be able to feign a limp and how convincingly. He even began to practice and found it more difficult and uncomfortable than he had supposed, which made him more determined to master it. For him posing as Castro's double was more than a job — it was an art, and he was not wrong; specifically, the magician's art of illusion, though he thought more highly of it. So while Fidel was in rehab learning how to walk without a limp his double was in training learning how to. Nonetheless, he was not called upon to perform his latest trick and got the opportunity to "convalesce" during Fidel's period of recovery.

To be continued...

Fidel Castro Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature

Gee, he just started blogging and he's already winning awards! Fidel Castro, Renaissance man, called by Gabriel García Márquez the greatest master of the Spanish tongue since Cervantes, has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, Sweden's leading literary prize. Well, not quite, but just as relevant. The Union of Cuban Journalists (who are neither journalists nor a union) has awarded the Not-Quite-So-Maximum Leader its "Dignity Prize" (it must be a very little award) "in recognition of his exceptional merits and work in favor of the press and the homeland." The president of this un-union of un-journalists, Tubal Paez, said Fidel Castro "represents a synthesis of the dignity of all Cubans, the homeland and humankind." Throw in some implements of torture, a handful of chícharos and enough shit for blending and you shall have your synthesis, though surely it will bear no relation to "dignity."

No doubt all other Cuban "unions" will follow suit in honoring the man who outlawed independent unions in Cuba and strikes, replaced the 35-hour work-week (for which workers were entitled to 40 hours' compensation) with a 60-70 hour work-week during which workers pretend to work and the state pretends to pay them, eliminated the "13th month" bonus (which all Cuban workers received at Christmas), brought back child labor (abolished in Cuba in 1878), repealed minimum wage laws, abolished collective bargaining, made "volunteer" work for the state compulsory and authorized the payment of wages in script or non-convertible currency.

RCAB News: What the Hell? "Knight-Ridder?"

Is there a "Knight-Ridder" anymore? Doesn't the McClatchy corporation own The Miami Herald and all the former Knight-Ridder papers that it hasn't unloaded yet? Well, nobody apparently has bothered to change the IP addresses of the newspaper's computers to McClatchy, because the Review of Cuban-American Blogs was visited at 4:54:35pm by someone from "Knight-Ridder," located in Miami, FL, who had done a google search for "granma, oscar corral." That person (and you know on whom suspicion falls first) stayed logged-in for 42 minutes an 23 seconds and viewed 15 pages, specifically all the posts on Oscar Corral.

Ah, Poor Henry Misses Me at Herald Watch

There was a time when Henry and I were allies, back in the heyday of Herald Watch, when we were both combatting Oscar Corral and his abetters at The Miami Herald at the height of the controversy about the Moonlighters story. He obviously misses those days. They were memorable days, and I have always acknowledged Henry's leading role in securing justice for the wronged Cuban journalists and hastening the departure of Jesús Díaz and Tom Fiedler from The Herald. I believe I said it was the greatest public service ever performed by a Cuban-American blogger. [Where did he go wrong?]

Henry remembers those heady days fondly, too, because yesterday he thanked me on Herald Watch for an "Anonymous" comment I did not make. His exact words: "Thank you for your comment anonymous, err I mean Manuel." Yes, you "err," Henry. I don't make anonymous comments. I value my thoughts and my prose style too much to leave them orphans in the world. I have never — not even once — left an anonymous comment on any blog. Is that understood, Cuban Patriot? Or should I repeat it again?

Now, I will admit that a really good writer who sometimes styles himself "Anonymous" and at other times "asombra" has landed at Herald Watch and that his opinions and (more remarkably) his prose style greatly resemble mine. So, at least, I understand why Henry was fooled. But it is not me. However, if it gladdens Henry's heart to think so and helps him relive old memories, he is free to continue cherishing that illusion. The association, even though incorrect, does not embarrass me.

Judge Jeri B. Cohen: Love Child of Janet Reno and Doris Meissner

We know she doesn't play by the rules. We know that she doesn't measure her words. We know she can be vitriolic. We know she has a penchant for making outrageous statements that shock people not by their candor but their lack of candor. We know that she is auditioning every day for Judge Judy's job. We know that she is an inveterate racist who doesn't even attempt to hide her bias but showcases it in her courtroom every day, taking the gamble that those who disagree with her will not notice and those who agree will. We know that her racism is not casual and reflexive but calculated and calculating. We know that she has higher aspirations and would mow down anyone who might stand in her way, including a helpless child whose life is at her mercy. We know her because we know her type and we have seen what her type can do in Janet Reno and Doris Meissner. We know her, finally, by her words and her actions. We know all there is to know about Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen and never had any doubt of her intentions in respect to the 4-year-old refugee girls whose wretched father, acting as proxy for the Castro regime, wishes her returned to the tender mercies of that system to be raised as an automaton and plaything of its capos.

What does surprise us, however, is that she would reveal her verdict before the conclusion of the trial. That is a special flavor of jurisprudence, a flavor not often encountered but more common than is supposed. Many, if not most, judges make up their minds about a case before it is ever heard: the defense or prosecution has a chance to sway the judge to their side, granted, but not much of a chance. Judges, the least accountable of public officials and the ones held in highest public esteem, usually labor under the apprehension that their judgment is infallible and preen themselves on being able to arrive at it with all deliberate speed, almost instinctively. The trial is just an afterthought which most would agree could be dispensed with except for the appearance of injustice that doing so would create. The thing itself, justice itself, has already been dispensed with it. Only the play remains. Most judges are content to read their lines and hit all the marks on the stage. Not Judge Cohen. In a previous case of judicial malfeasance she told a Cuban defendant, in the middle of his trial, that if all Cubans (not Cuban criminals, but Cubans) were deported back to the island there would be no crime in this country. Imagine if she had directed her comments at blacks or any other minority in this country (except possibly Arabs) what the reaction would have been. But since it was Cubans that she was impugning, it was OK. Having learned nothing from her past misconduct -- and why should she have learned, since she was not removed, sanctioned or even reproved for it? -- she has seen fit to repeat it again.

The Miami Herald has revealed that Judge Cohen has already announced her verdict to the Department of Children and Families and the child's guardian ad litem. Short of a miracle (that is, of the possibility of changing her mind), she is determined to give custody to the father. No matter that the biological father abandoned the child in Cuba. No matter that by doing so he was complicit in the insane mother's abuse of her. No matter that the father signed a document relinquishing his parental rights before allowing the mother to take the child to the U.S., knowing that the pattern of abuse established in Cuba would likely be continued here, and, frankly, not caring one bit. No matter that this father never attempted to help his daughter in any way. No matter that he never sent her a birthday card or even wrote a letter inquiring about her. No matter that his interest in the child was only awakened when the Castro regime ordered him to claim his parental rights in the United States, rights which, incidentally, don't exist in Castro's Cuba, where the State is the sole legal guardian of every child and its authority cannot be challenged by the parents.

What Judge Cohen intends to do to this nameless child is separate her from the only real family she has ever known and assign her custody to a stranger and his even stranger handlers in Cuba. The Coral Gables family that has already adopted her 12-year half-brother and has been taking care of her since she was removed from the abusive custody of her mother is her only family. To deprive her of their love and protection would be a crime against Nature which no biological fact could justify.

The Department of Children and Families announced last week that it was considering calling her 13-year-old brother to testify at her custody trial. Why do they even have to consider it? This boy has been his sister's protector from the day she was born, who shielded her from the mother's abuse and took the place of her absent father. His testimony is the only relevant first-hand testimony in this case besides the girl's, whose opinion is discounted because of her age, as if a child could be old enough to be lashed but not old enough to have an opinion about it.

This case, in Judge Cohen's opinion, has reached a "crisis situation." Why? In her own words: "This child is extremely bonded [with her foster family]. She is digging in. She says, 'I am not going.' She says [to her father], 'You are my friend, but you are not my father.'" In other words, at age 4, this child already has the cognitive abilities which the judge deciding her case doesn't.

With a well-meaning but highly incompetent state agency championing her cause and a none-too-well-meaning judge to decide it, the child's only hope is in a future reversal by an Appellate Court of Judge Jeri B. Cohen's forthcoming prepackaged decision.

RCAB News: Cornering the Market on Oscar Corral

The Review of Cuban-American Blogs' exhaustive coverage of the Affaire Oscar Corral, unmatched by any other blog or newspaper, has won it thousands of new readers in a week's time. If you Google "Oscar Corral prostitute" or "Yamilet López" the first entries are from this blog, which means that they are the most popular resources for those topics on the internet.

And the good news continues: one of those googlers requesting information on "Oscar Corral" came to us from Cape Town, South Africa, and stayed logged-in for 36:38 minutes. He holds the distinction of being our first visitor from the African continent.

We were also visited this morning by USDA's Office of Operations, in Fort Collins, Colorado. It used the search words: "are cubans given 10,000 from dry-foot."

Can this possibly mean that the U.S. intends to fulfill its quota of 20,000 refugees from Cuba this year (currently 10,000 short) before the new fiscal year begins on Sept. 30? And has the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Office of Operations been charge with feeding them?

In any case, the USDA website lists nearly 10,000 resources on Cuba, including Trade with Cuba, Export Requirements for Cuba and Untapped Potential of Cuba. Food for thought.

http://www.usda.gov/wps/portal/!ut/p/_s.7_0_A/7_0_1OB?navid=SEARCH&q=cuba&site=usda&Go_button.x=13&Go_button.y=8

El Nuevo Herald Buckles to The Miami Herald While Granma Comes to Oscar Corral's Defense

For a brief time last year Miami became a two newspaper town again. The two papers shared the same building and their respective staffs were paid by the same company, but their editorial content, in the period in question, differed markedly. One paper, time and time again, appeared to contradict the other, indeed, went so far as to challenge its veracity. Never before had the smaller newspaper, long considered a cut, paste and translate offshoot of the larger, asserted its independence to such a degree on such a controversial subject. The David challenging Goliath, of course, was El Nuevo Herald, sister publication (perhaps "stepsister" would be better) of The Miami Herald. Although its openly belligerant tone might suggest otherwise, it was El Nuevo Herald that was on the defensive. Its "sister" publication had challenged the Spanish paper's ethics in a story which resulted in the firing of three Cuban-American journalists on what later turned out to be fabricated charges of "dual-loyalty" worthy of the star chambre. The Herald article also impugned the reputations of Cuban exile journalists who did not work at The Herald and fomented discussion from many quarters on the "unprofessionalism" of Latin-American journalists in general, whom it was suggested did not play by American rules when it came to objective and balanced reporting.

The man responsible for creating this schism at One Herald Plaza was Oscar Corral, whose Sept. 8, 2006 front-page story charged that three journalists employed by El Nuevo Herald had violated a non-existent Herald ethics code that supposedly forbade those in its employ from freelancing for U.S. government broadcasting, as thousands of MSM reporters have done, including Edward R. Murrow, over its 60-year history. Corral's story began to unravel from day one. As it turned out, the Miami Moonlighters' work for Radio Martí, the Voice of America's Spanish service to Cuba, was not only known and approved by the then editor of El Nuevo Herald, since deceased, but had even been mentioned in a profile of one of the journalists published a year earlier in The Herald. Its shock at this "discovery" and reaction to it was then exposed as the coup de theatre which it had always been. In the end, the fired journalists were re-hired without prejudice (although without an apology, either) and publisher Jesús Díaz, a dilettante with no professional credentials, and executive editor Tom Fiedler, a race-baiter who called Corral's critics "chihuahuas" and accused them of committing a "blood libel" because they suggested that Corral was fed this story by Havana, which reported Corral's findings before they were published in The Herald, were both compelled by the fallout from the Corral story to resign (Diaz) from the paper or retire prematurely (Fiedler). Oscar Corral, whose factually-challenged and poorly-edited article gave rise to this imbroglio, was neither fired nor disciplined, though his conduct was excoriated in the harshest terms by the paper's ombudsman. Nevertheless, Corral took to portraying himself as a martyr for journalistic ethics who put his life on the line to tell a (mendacious) story. In a puff piece published in the Sun-Post he even claimed that he and his family were obliged to go into hiding for 3-weeks because he feared an attack from extremists in the community. There was no basis for such "fears" besides his native cowardice and an inward recognition of wrongdoing. The 3-weeks spent in a "secure location" were, in fact, little more than an unscheduled paid-vacation -- a bonus, if you will -- for a job poorly done.

Last week, when The Miami Herald broke the story, four days after the fact, of Corral's arrest for soliciting a teenage prostitute, El Nuevo Herald limited itself to translating and repeating The Miami Herald's inconspicuous treatment of the story, which consisted of 90 words buried on the bottom of page 3 in the Metro section that noted neither the reporter's name nor his affiliation in the headline.

The Miami Herald's coverage of Corral's arrest was understandable given its past "encircle the wagons around him" approach to protecting its ace [anti-]-Cuban-American reporter. There were no follow-up stories on Corral's arrest or the community's reaction to it although there was no bigger story in Miami last week. But The Herald simply chose to ignore it. Its editor when questioned about Corral's arrest offered his unconditional support but no explanation for Corral's conduct other than implying that he wasn't on assignment for The Herald (which Corral is likely to have first told the police). His comment, at least, put to rest any suggestion that Corral was working "undercover" for The Herald when he was arrested. The editor's loyalty to Corral was reflected by what wasn't published in the paper rather than by any active defense of him there. The Herald, which must have received many letters to the editor regarding Corral's arrest, chose to print only one from Miami Moonlighter Paul Crespo, but availed itself of its "editorial prerogative" to cut, rephrase and even add words to it, suppressing the most critical parts. Still, it was more than El Nuevo Herald has done, which has not touched the story since it reprinted The Herald's concealed story.

Now, this could be a case of taking the higher ground on the part of El Nuevo Herald's editors, who may perhaps not wish to be seen as revelling in Corral's fall; the fall itself being sufficient in itself for them. This would be good and well if they were not also journalists bound to report a story which was of great interest to their community, as they must know. Why, then, have they remained silent? Given what we already know of the revulsion for Corral in the Nuevo Herald newsroom, inspired by his attempt to defame the Moonlighters and call into question the journalistic intregrity of all Cuban-American journalists, the only plausible explanation for their silence is that they have been prohibited from covering or commenting upon Corral's arrest.

It would appear that at some point during the last year El Nuevo Herald lost whatever autonomy it formerly gained from its "sister" publication. In effect, the "sister" publication has become the parent publication. No doubt this development was precipitated, if not ordered, by the The Herald's new owners, the McClatchy Corporation, who were greatly embarrassed and befuddled by this whole mess, and, predictably, put the blame for it not on the perpetrator of this scandal but on its victim. Whether this demonstrates bigotry on its part for the only Spanish-language newspaper in the McClatchy chain or a preference for dealing with its English counterpart because, perhaps, it assumes that The Nuevo Herald is the foreign entity which The Herald and even the reporter's union suggested last year it was, the result remains the same: the silencing of the paper that was created to serve the needs of Miami's Hispanic community. In effect, The Herald is saying that those needs are indistinct from those of its Anglo readers, which itself calls into question the necessity of having an independent Spanish-language counterpart to The Herald. This cannot bode well for the future of El Nuevo Herald.

Granma has not been as reluctant to defend Corral as The Nuevo Herald has been reticent to criticize him. As it did when the Moonlighters' story was published last year, the official organ of the Cuban Communist Party has come out in defense of Oscar Corral, who is identified as the greatest scourge and principal target of the Miami "Mafia." In fact, Granma suggests that Corral was a victim of entrapment by this so-called "Mafia" which is apparently as much in control of the city as Castro is of the island. The article itself sounds suspiciously like Corral's own writing in parts even through the filter of translation and was no doubt fashioned with his imput. Being a translator myself I can spot that easily; the fact flew over the head of the editor of Herald Watch, who reprints and links the Granma article (surely a first).

If Havana had the goods on Corral before his arrest, as has been suggested here, and was using that information to blackmail him into becoming the conduit for its propaganda at The Herald, his arrest must have loosened that particular stranglehold on him, but a greater one still remains: his alleged collaboration with the regime, which, whether voluntary or coerced, would destroy what remains of his reputation as a journalist and make him fit to work only for People's World, or, indeed, Granma. It would, therefore, still be in the interest of both to conceal that fact. If it remained silent in the face of Corral's disgrace, Granma's silence might be interpreted as suspicious since it was not silent before, while defending him would dispel the same suspicions; for surely, some would conclude, the regime could not be that obvious if Corral was an asset. Distance, then, ironically, is not the best option. By going against expectations Granma shields itself while reinforcing its support for Corral. I don't know how welcome such public support is by Corral, but he really has no choice in the matter. The last thing he can do at this juncture is question Havana's strategy, even if its ultimate strategy is eventually to dump him or feed him to his enemies. No, it is not easy being Oscar Corral, whatever accomodations The Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald and Granma make on his behalf.

A Poll for the Ages

Which do you support in the epic struggle between RCAB and Babalu for the hearts and minds of the Cuban-American blogosphere?
	The RCAB; it is doing the Lord's work.
	Babalu blog; it is doing the Devil's work.
pollcode.com free polls

Beyond the Babalunian Pale!

Ah, the ecstasy of one who discovers the Review of Cuban-American Blogs for the first time! I will never know that experience myself but I can well imagine what a life-altering one it is for those fortunate enough to make the discovery. How their hearts must leap to know that there is a constellation in the Cuban-American blogosphere brighter than Babalú and its satellites, and one with fresh water and clean air fit for humans and inhabited by such stars as Killcastro and the RCAB.

Well, we have been entertaining a lot of such Christopher Columbii since the Oscar Corral story broke. No blog has covered it more exhaustively than ours and it is here that everybody who googles "Oscar Corral" seems to come. One visitor this morning stayed for 97 minutes and another for 110 yesterday. Of course, this trend was already underway. Before the Corral Affaire, the all-time record at the RCAB had already been set by a reader who remained online, viewing 53 pages, for a total of 363 minutes and 8 seconds, or six hours, 3 minutes and 8 seconds continuously, starting at 9:29:34 pm on July 29 and concluding at 3:32:42 am on July 30.

Welcome, new readers! There is rational life beyond the Babalunian pale!


UPDATE:

So far just today (Sunday, Aug. 12 @ 5:30) 40 visitors to this blog have stayed for 1 hour or longer. I don't know what's happening, but I like it.

Discussion of Oscar Corral Affaire Banned at Babalú Blog

He said it on several occasions and I have no problem believing him: Oscar Corral's arrest on a charge of solicitation awakened in Val Prieto much fellow feeling, as if it had been him, not Oscar, who had fallen from grace.

Yes, in the beginning, Val was giddy with excitement and was even accused by some in the blogosphere of indulging in schadenfreude. There is some evidence for this. He placed a transcontinental call to Henry Gómez in the wee hours of the morning to tell him of Oscar Corral's arrest as if it had been Fidel who had been caught fellating Satan. Lumbersome Henry, then in San Francisco for a New Age advertising convention, later would regret not taking the call, because it deprived him of 5 extra hours of gloating. But Val, who is afraid of dead chickens and coconuts, was chastened by the word "schadenfreude." You can be sure candles were lit and mirrors covered in the Prieto household at the mention of the word.

As we all know, Val is awed by big words, but big words that are also ominous send him into a panic. In a cloud of Florida Water, Val began chastising commenters on his blog for being too critical of Corral. First, Val confessed himself to be "certainly not elated" by Oscar's bad luck; then he reminded his readers that he (Oscar, that is) was "innocent until proven guilty" (Val is always the first to invoke the déclassé cliché). Finally, on this week's Babalú [Faux] Radio Hour, Val admitted that he "felt bad for the guy," which is the highest expression of sympathy in Val's vocabulary. Val was feeling Oscar's pain — on what level we won't speculate — which outraged the less sensible Henry and George, who had milked Oscar's misfortune for all it was worth. Henry had not only been the first to raise the pertinent question about the gender of Corral's prostitute, but had even asked — sarcastically, he says — if the police hadn't been "tracking a serial killer that preyed on prostitutes in that part of Miami a few years back." The fact that he's not too proud to kick a man when he's down is something we've always liked about Henry. Yes, he's evil, monstrous even, as shown in his penchant for returning children to Castro's Cuba, but he is not a hypocrite when it comes to his enemies, and he knows which enemies he should engage and which enemies he should avoid engaging. Our minimalist-brained Val, who cites Shakespeare from quotations he finds in calendars, has no such inhibitions.

Finally, Val, whose fellow feeling for Oscar was growing apace with others' condemnation, decided to end discussion of Oscar's troubles in Babalunia. He did not issue a formal bull, as he had done in March, outlawing criticism of the Estefans upon threat of excommunication. Strange, but Val doesn't do that anymore. Did he learn blog etiquette in the meantime? Who knows? Still, he does throw out pointers, and those who are attuned to his soundwaves (besides dogs and mice) get his meaning.

When asombra, Babalu's most articulate commenter, tried to bring up the subject again and even likened Oscar to Bill Clinton (which is worse than insulting someone's mother at Babalú), Val had had enough. He replied with a good line that he must have stolen from someone: "Can't we talk about Global Warming? The earth has a fever, you know." The literalminded took this comment at face value and, in George Moneo's case, as a cue to write a post about the fallacy of global warming. The rest realized that Val did not want any further discussion of Oscar's self-inflicted wounds and the discussion, accordingly, stopped. Or, rather, moved to Herald Watch, Henry's blog, where there is no fear of schadenfreude.



2

Another explanation for Val's about-face vis-a-vis Oscar Corral is that he received a call from the editor of The Miami Herald, Anders Gyllenhaal, or even Corral himself, humbled and grovelling, who revealed to him some "secret information" to which the rest of us are not privy and won't be made privy, but which convinced Val that a great miscarriage of justice was being committed against Oscar. In other words, it's deja vu all over again: the identical situation which turned Val into a fanatical defender of the Estefans, except that this time it was the editor of the MSM citadel in Miami calling him and promising to "do" lunch, or any other local luminary whose power and money our fawning and grasping Val stands in awe of. There is no balm more soothing to Val's gossamer ego than to have more successful men grovel at his feet. If that were an antidote against failure, Val would be a successful man, too.

Of course, we know what the conclusion to this story will be; we've seen this picture before. Val will be betrayed in his expectations, and, having served his purpose, discarded. Then, four months later, to be exact, Val will call Corral or whomever a "traitor" and resume his former antagonism to the Estefans, oh, I mean, Corral.



3

And, of course, a third explanation for Val's sudden embrace of Oscar Corral would be — me. Because I make no distinction between Val Prieto and Oscar Corral, and attack one for his hostility towards Cuba and the other for his ignorance about it — which may, in the end, do more harm than Corral's hostility — Val tends to regard Corral with something like comradery, because he believes, as all small minds do, that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Val's anti-Castroism, poorly expressed but sincere, should incline him towards my position; but his hatred for me, which blinds his judgment and confounds his ends, pushes him to defend and empathize with Corral. And this impulse, which Val knows to be a dangerous one, Val does not indulge fully for fear of alienating others, but he indulges it enough.

I, of course, do not allow Val to dictate to me what I should think. All the Babalunians who have had the opportunity to correspond privately with me, and there have been many who have initiated such dialogues, ostensibly on behalf of Val and perhaps even at his urging, have always been amazed by my own lack of malice towards Val & Henry, which seems to them all the more humane and generous because they are acquainted with their visceral hate for me; and they have left convinced that I am neither the instigator nor perpetuator of this feud, but, rather, the reasonable upholder of the truth in a contest with those who have little or no respect for it.

A Message to Prieto

Ah, poor Val is feeling neglected. It seems I have been paying too much attention to Oscar and too little to him. Well, get yourself into a mess like Oscar and attention will be paid, Val. I'm afraid there is only so much I can do with dead chickens and coconuts; you've got to get me better material. Even your late attempt at exhibitionism by threatening to shave your legs and get a bikini wax live on Babalu, did not stir much attention this time, being the fifth or sixth time that you have threatened public decency by such a display.

But I suppose I must take pity on you, as you are the godfather of this blog. Alright. I'm going to write a nice little post that links you and your new friend Oscar Corral. That's the best I can do at this time, little grasshopper. Will that make you happy? I thought so. Now fall asleep in a stupor while you await its imminent publication.

P.S:

It always gives me great pleasure when you attack me in your sophomoric way without using my name, causing general puzzlement on your blog. It is good to know that even my name frightens you and that you live in its shadow.

Corgiguy Protests RCAB's Treatment of Oscar Corral

corgiguy said ...

Manuel

Do you enjoy flogging a dead horse?

And in your christian faith what happen to the idea of not judging others?

I wonder how your enemies are going to treat you the day you fall from your moral high ground.



Manuel A. Tellechea said...

Corgiguy:

Exactly as they treat me now.

And exactly what is wrong with morality? Should we condone immorality to show that we are good Christians? What Bible have you been reading?

I don't have to "forgive" Oscar Corral because he has not done anything to me. His wife, children and parents need to forgive him. The teenage girl that he contracted for sex needs to forgive him (and all the others that came before her). Even his employer needs to forgive him for the discredit this "company man" has brought on his company (although it really boggles the mind that anyone could discredit The Miami Herald).

You may forgive him yourself if you feel he has betrayed your expectations. I don't.

Oscar Corral: Rescuer of Lost Souls

19th-century British prime minister, William Ewart Gladstone (1809-1898), whom Queen Victoria hated, well, because he was too Victorian, was in the habit of going out late at night to "rescue fallen women." There is no evidence that he laid a finger on any of them. There is no record that he ever laid a finger on any woman. His contact with them was limited to rescuing them, and then going home, alone, and masturbating, which events he noted in his Diaries with an "X."

Nor was Lord Gladstone the only Victorian to engage in such "works of reclamation." General Charles Gordon (1833-1886) would prowl the streets at night looking for waifs and take them home with him, bathe them personally — remember, the Victorians invented the Biblical quote "Cleanliness is next to godliness" — give them new clothes in the morning and send them off to become Horatio Alger success stories. As a matter of fact, the Rev. Horatio Alger (1832-1899) also did the same thing in America. The Victorians were great humanitarians and also great experts at having their cake and eating it too. If Freud had never been born, mankind would still hail their "good works."

Since, obviously, The Miami Herald editors are not going to cover Corral's ass by claiming that he was doing an investigative report for them into prostitution in the area, his only other option is to claim that he was on a humanitarian mission there, following Gladstone's footsteps in his Acura, assisting a "fallen woman" (or, in his case, a teenager) with a donation of $50.00 to buy food and lodgings for the night, so that he could pray into the wee hours for her redemption while the fallen woman related to him the story of her corruption. There is even a Victorian word for that: "unbosoming" yourself.

In case the story sounds familiar to you, there is a modern precedent: this is what televangelist the Rev. Jimmy Swaggert claimed 20 years ago he did with prostitutes, too. He kind of got away with it; anyways, his ministry, much reduced, is still around. Maybe that will be Oscar Corral's fate, too — to stick around, but as a reporter for a weekly shopper.

Schadenfreude: Oscar Corral Gloats About Arthur Teele Jr.'s Downfall

[This insufferably self-congratulatory article, in which Oscar Corral, under the guise of mourning Arthur Teele Jr.'s suicide and lamenting what role he may have played in it, uses Teele's death to extoll his own journalistic and human virtues, is a tour de force in arrogance and cold-bloodedness on a scale certain to horrify anyone. First notice the awful title of the article: "Source Suicide Prompts Soul Searching." Teele was not a man to Corral, just a source. And that is the only sincere moment in the entire article and Corral probably wasn't even responsible for it. The crocodile tears which Corral sheds over Teele's corpse are real tears now because of his own identical disgrace, brought down, as Teele was, by his dealings with a prostitute. One is tempted to mention that much-bandied about word lately schadenfreude, applying it not to Corral's critics but to Corral himself. Corral claimed in this article that "Teele's death "shattered [his] noble perspective" and "almost closed the curtains on [his] convictions about journalism" [note that Corral says his "convictions," not his career; supposedly, he would have continued his career even without "convictions"]. He also felt that Teele had cursed him in particular for his role in his downfall and feared that Teele would some day exact vengeance from him: "Teele’s ghost lingers, every day, in the lobby in his oversized glasses and his dapper suit, waiting for us to walk through the glass doors." So Teele's ghost had gone from "standing sentinel over [Corral's] convictions" to gunning for him in the Herald lobby. I wouldn't be surprised if he really blamed the dead man for his fall. This article was originally published in the "Communigator," the awfully named magazine of the University of Florida's College of Journalism and Communications, from which Corral holds a Master's (1996). We reprint this article not because we wish Corral to follow Teele's example but because we are quite sure that he never would while there's a whole world of the quick and the dead to blame for his troubles]:

Source Suicide Prompts Soul Searching
by Oscar Corral

I was on Interstate 95 heading back to The Miami Herald last summer when I received a call that Arthur Teele Jr. – the former Miami Commission chairman I had spent more than a year investigating and questioning – had shot himself in the newspaper building lobby.

When I arrived 10 minutes later, cops had sealed off One Herald Plaza, which was surrounded by TV crews and reporters sniffing around for color and sound bites. Teele’s body lay on the shiny terrazzo floor, blood framing his head, his trademark oversized glasses resting inches from one hand, the gun near the other.

Teele – a person of such fierce disposition that he once clocked a lobbyist in the face and bragged about his kills as a decorated soldier in Vietnam – had taken his life with a bullet to the head.

He was a troubled man at the time of his suicide in July 2005. He had been removed from office after being arrested on state corruption charges. Prosecutors accused him of taking more than $100,000 in kickbacks from contracts given to developers through a quasi-governmental city agency he chaired – money intended for some of Miami’s poorest residents. The Feds charged him a few days earlier with money laundering and fraud. He had gone deep into debt to help pay his legal bills.

Then came what appears to be the last straw: hours before Teele killed himself, an alternative tabloid, the Miami New Times, published a tawdry account of his alleged, uncorroborated exploits with drugs and a male prostitute, taken verbatim from the files of the Miami-Dade State Attorneys Office.

I had spent almost two years focusing on the obscure city agency that Teele chaired, the Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), and some of his questionable activities in that capacity. The CRA, which operated with public funding outside of the city of Miami’s charter, oversaw redeveloping Overtown, one of America’s poorest neighborhoods, according to the U.S. Census.

One of my stories detailed how Teele ordered the CRA to hire a convicted prostitute and thief. She was eventually fired. Another story detailed a questionable deal Teele brokered to build parking lots in a place where many residents don’t own cars. These lots remained empty years after they were built.

Investigators used my stories to help formulate the corruption charges against him.

Teele spent long hours with me, several times over lunch, talking about his ideas for expanding the boundaries of the CRA, explaining the agency’s problems such as the gaping holes in its accounting and finances, and lambasting me for asking about them. Some of the last times I interviewed him, the conversation dissolved into angry tirades on the “yellow journalism” that he accused me of doing.

Teele went to Herald Executive Editor Tom Fiedler demanding my removal from the Miami City Hall beat, saying my coverage was racially biased. Teele was an African-American. I’m Hispanic. Fiedler stood his ground, telling Teele my coverage was fair and that I would continue to cover the city and the CRA.

Since the early 1980s, Teele was a powerful leader, head of the U.S. Urban Mass Transportation Administration in the Reagan administration in the ’80s, chairman of the county commission in the 1990s, chairman of the city commission, a force to be reckoned with in Miami politics. But during his last days, his life unraveled into a tangle of arrests and humiliation.

Then on the scorching summer afternoon of July 27, New Times hit racks around the county. Teele took a seat on a bus bench outside the Herald building with a green canvas bag. At 6 p.m., he walked into the lobby. After calling former Herald columnist Jim Defede, a friend, he pulled the gun out of the bag and held it against his head.

As police cars neared the building, he pulled the trigger.

When I arrived a few minutes later, nursing a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach, I told my editors that I couldn’t participate in the coverage. I left the building shaken after about an hour, escorted to my car by a sympathetic co-worker.

By now, the blood has been washed away. Teele is buried. The shock has passed into the annals of local lore. But to me, the Herald lobby is still haunted by Teele, standing sentinel over my convictions.

This is about what we do as journalists: the endless digging, the confrontations, the exposing. We know it can put corrupt people in prison. We know it can help reform broken and unjust systems. But can it contribute to someone’s suicide?

I remember often posing questions to Teele that I felt the FBI or the state attorney’s office should have been asking. Reporters carry no guns or badges. We have no subpoena power. The only thing between Teele’s yelling and wagging finger and me was my notebook.

When Teele took his final bow, he almost closed the curtains on my convictions about journalism. I always viewed reporting as a constructive, creative career, not a destructive one. My coverage of the CRA and Teele was the first serious investigative reporting I had done in my career. When Gov. Jeb Bush suspended him after the first of several corruption-related arrests Teele faced in the year leading up to his suicide, I felt that my reporting had helped the poorest part of the community see justice.

But Teele’s suicide shattered my noble perspective. The politicians we cover are not supposed to kill themselves in the lobby of our newspaper.

I took a few days off to think over my career choice. I considered leaving the profession.

To this day I wonder what would have happened had I run into Teele in the lobby that day. Maybe I could have talked him out of pulling the trigger. Maybe he would have taken me with him.

When I returned to work following Teele’s suicide, one of my editors, Judy Miller, invited me into her office. She told me that I had nothing to feel bad about. That I had just done my job.

I still haven’t pieced together all the lessons Teele taught me about politics, about corruption, about our role in protecting democracy. But one thing is for certain: Teele’s ghost lingers, every day, in the lobby in his oversized glasses and his dapper suit, waiting for us to walk through the glass doors.

http://www.jou.ufl.edu/pubs/communigator/fall2006/alumniangle.php

Yamilet López: The Girl Whom Oscar Corral Propositioned

On New Year's Eve 2004, Yamilet López, a resident of Miami, who gave her age as 19, visited a Spanish-language website "Mundo de Magia y Amor" and solicited a free premium that was being offered there. The site is a lonely hearts club but she left no messages there that would indicate that she was soliciting companionship of any kind on the internet at that time. Assuming that she is the Yamilet López whom Oscar Corral propositioned on Friday night last — and everything appears to indicate so — then she is of Cuban-origin, probably Cuban-born and a recent immigrant, as her e-mail address would indicate, which is partially "cubana4[for]lif[e]."

Of course it is possible that she exaggerated her age in 2004. If she is really 18 now, she would have been 14-15 then. It is tragic to think, of course, that someone who abandons her homeland for a better life in America, having suffered all the deprivations of home, should end up, whether at 18 or 21, on the streets of Miami selling her favors to Belén's pampered elite for the necessities of life. Corral's conduct is no different from that of the sexual tourists who travel to our country to satisfy their depravity at the expense of Cuba's younger generation, female and male, teenagers and children, with the sanction and protection of the Castro regime.

Oscar Corral's Alleged Homosexuality: Slander or Libel?

Rick of South of the Palmetto has suggested that Henry Gómez might be guilty of slander for observing on his blog Herald Watch that Oscar Corral's partner in vice was of an "undetermined sex." At the moment Henry said it, this was entirely true. Henry vigorously defended himself against the charge of slander, correctly pointing out that something which is unknown is certainly open to speculation. I would also point out, though I did not myself engage in such speculations, that, under the circumstances, it is a legitimate question. The prostitute had to have a sex, one or the other. Ignoring that fact only implies that it would have been a greater offense if the prostitute had been male rather than female, which, of course, legally, it wouldn't have been.

But Rick and Henry both got one thing wrong, the same thing in fact. If Henry had personally told Rick that Alex had consorted with a male prostitute, then Henry would have been guilty of slander. But if Henry had published that allegation as a fact, as Rick accused him, then Henry would have been guilty of libel, not slander.

It is remarkable, I think, that neither of them knew the difference between slander and libel. They are certainly well-matched. We should look forward to their future contests.

Regarding Val Prieto's "Public Service Announcement"

We suspect that this a plot to destroy this blog by making himself a (bigger) laughingstock and making this blog superfluous.

We will say no more. It would be beneath us.

http://www.babalublog.com/archives/005798.html

The Worst Babalú [Faux] Radio Hour to Date

Ah, the awful responsibility of guiding the thinking of the loony Babalunians is begins to wear me down. It is almost as if I had them all on a string and was their puppet master, or they were characters in a novel I was writing (no such waste of time for me). Last week, I mentioned in my review of The Babalu "Faux" Radio Hour that George Moneo cannot speak Spanish, because Val, who doesn't read books, recommended to George the autobiography of Reinaldo Arenas in the Spanish edition. This week George, who had only seen the film, informed the twelve listeners of the B[F]RH that he had paid a visit to La Moderna Poesía, a Miami bookstore, to buy the Spanish edition of Before Night Falls. He said it was not available. If he had walked a couple of blocks down the street to Salvat's Libreria Universal, Miami's best-stocked Cuban bookstore, he would have found it. But George had never been in a Spanish bookstore before much as I've never been in a Bulgarian one. I had no cause to and neither did George until my comments sent him there.

And Henry, who was in California being brainwashed at some New Age advertising conference for the 800 Brightest non-creative ad-office managers in the country (isn't that all there is, 800?), also recalled, via transcontinental hook-up (a joke), that in a review of an earlier edition of the B[F]RH I had observed that Henry had adopted at long last my pronunciation of BUCL as "buckle" (surrender), and so was careful this time to avoid the embarrassing name, instead spelling it out several times: B-U-C-L. He announced that he was going to incorporate the defunct organization. Another waste of $100. One of them even used "erstwhile," a favorite word of mine, at least in writing, though even I don't have the "pompousiness" [i.e. pomposity] to use it in conversation.

The subject of Oscar Corral was hardly touched upon and only as an opportunity for all of them to express how sorry they were for his recent meretricious troubles, one was sorry for Corral himself and his wife and children (Val), another for his wife and children (Henry), and one for just his children (George.) Consider this a scale of hypocrisy: Val scored the highest. George obviously needs to hone-up on his hypocrisy.

Overall it was the dullest Babalú [Faux] Radio Hour to date, although Val seems to be perfecting his imitation of Dean Martin and can now slur his words very convincingly. If this were faux television, I am sure we would see him stumbling all over the faux studio.

Frankly, the B[F]RH is getting to be no fun for me. On this week's show, George repeated the hackneyed definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. That is the B[F]RH in a nutshell. Even I can't make something sound interesting week in and week out that isn't.

Oscar Corral Deletes Comments Critical of Him at "Miami's Cuban Connection"

Oscar Corral has been deleting comments like a madman at Miami's Cuban Connection, his Herald blog. His blog, which he abandoned long ago and now resembles a ghost town, yesterday experienced a brief resurgence in traffic and comments when the news broke that he had been arrested for soliciting the services of a teenage prostitute on Friday night in a police sweep of a crime-ridden Miami neighborhood.

What always distinguished Corral in the past was his absolute indifference to his blog; for a time, he even allowed it to become a covert for NAMBLA; nothing was ever too outrageous for him because he never bothered to read his own blog. Every month or so he would throw a bone (post, that is) at his readers, but that was the extent of his involvement with it. In the aftermath of his libellous "Miami Moonlighters" story, Corral instituted moderation to shield himself from the avalanche of criticism which his flawed reportage merited. When the storm had finally subsided, he got rid of preemptive censorship (i.e. moderation) and forget again that he hosted a blog for The Herald.

He remembered yesterday, as did a lot of other people.

The only comment that he did not dare to delete was a letter from Paul Crespo, one of the journalists fired because of Corral's lies. Here it is (before he thinks better of it and deletes it, too):


I was amazed (but not surprised) by your coverage of the arrest of Oscar Corral, one of your "intrepid" and controversial reporters. As the self-styled sole arbiters of professional ethics in Miami, The Herald is displaying its own lack of ethics and professionalism in this case. In contrast to the ridiculous front-page coverage you provided Mr. Corral's thoroughly flawed smear against me, and several other journalists in 2006, your microscopic coverage of Corral's recent arrest for soliciting a prostitute was hidden on page three of the Metro section. That small-type, one-paragraph note was in a small sidebar just above a one-paragraph story about some dogs. Worse yet, the tiny headline made no mention that the reporter arrested was from The Miami Herald. You should be ashamed. You couldn't have done a better job of covering it up, other than by ignoring it totally.

Regarding the front-page hit-piece by Mr. Corral about our free-lancing for TV Marti, your own Ombudsman, Clark Hoyt, found numerous flaws in Corral's reporting. Among the many critiques in his scathing report on Corral's article, Mr. Hoyt stated that Mr. Corral's story's "hard and accusatory tone and the large and breathless headline suggested something more sinister than the story actually reported." What a difference between your piece against us and this minimalist coverage of your reporter who wrote that smear.

In the TV Marti story case The Herald also immediately fired two Nuevo Herald journalists mentioned in the story without any due process, or chance for explanation, for allegedly violating Herald policy and some debatable ethical norms regarding conflicts of interest. Those reporters were quickly rehired when it was discovered they had done nothing wrong and had been treated harshly and unfairly by The Herald.

Oscar Corral hasn't just violated ethical and moral norms by soliciting prostitutes, he clearly broke the law. While legally he may be innocent till proven guilty, he already is a disgrace to The Herald and the profession of journalism. Will The Herald fire him as quickly as it fired the others? Judging from your coverage it seems you hope not to, and hope no one notices as you sweep the tawdry affair under the rug in the Metro section. But Mr. Corral is not fit to cover this community. He needs to be fired.

Paul Crespo
Coral Gables


POSTSCRIPT:

The [Chicago] Tribune Company visited the RCAB at 1:32:04am. My readers will recall that The Miami Herald just barely managed to beat out the Chicago Tribune on the Moonlighters' story. In fact, it was because The Herald feared that it would be scooped that it rushed the story to press back on Sept. 8, 2006 without verifying a single item in it. I guess payback is coming from that quarter as well.


POSTSCRIPT 2:

A desperate Oscar Corral, overwhelmed by criticism of him, has re-instituted moderation on his Herald blog, Miami's Cuban Connection. Since he is allowed to do so, we must presume that The Herald is content to authorize all means fair or foul that will contain this story and protect their reporter from obloquy. The Herald has thus far published no "Letters to the Editor" critical of Corral, though doubtless it has been flooded with them. Apparently, the newspaper is in crises mode and all the wagons have encircled Corral for his protection.


POSTSCRIPT 3:

A heavily edited (read censored) version of Paul Crespo's letter was published in The Miami Herald today (9 August). It is remarkable that Oscar Corral did not dare to delete Crespo's letter from his Herald blog, much less re-write it, but The Herald itself had no compulsion about doing so. To libel and try to silence Crespo last year was not enough. Now, when he complains of that treatment and contrasts it to that accorded to The Herald's meretricious Oscar Corral, Crespo is again denied his full say.

Here is Paul Crespo's letter to the editor as printed in The Herald:

"I was amazed -- but not surprised -- by your coverage of the arrest of Miami Herald reporter Oscar Corral. As the self-styled arbiter of ethics in Miami, The Miami Herald is displaying its own lack of ethics and professionalism in this case. In contrast to your front-page coverage of several Cuban-American journalists (including me) in 2006, your microscopic coverage of Corral's recent arrest for allegedly soliciting a prostitute was hidden on page three of the Metro section.

Regarding the front-page story by Corral about our freelancing for TV Marti, your own ombudsman, Clark Hoyt, found numerous flaws in Corral's reporting. Among the many critiques in his report on Corral's article, Hoyt stated that the story's ''hard and accusatory tone and the large and breathless headline suggested something more sinister than the story actually reported.'' What a difference between your piece against us and this minimal coverage of your reporter who wrote it."

So far, Crespo's letter is the only one to be printed in The Herald on this subject, although this was the most important and popular story of the week, despite being limited to 90 words and relegated to the most inconspicuous place in the newspaper.

Re Oscar Corral: Is Prostitution a "Victimless Crime?"

In response to Oscar Corral's arrest for propositioning a teenaged prostitute for sex, some bloggers have contended that prostitution is a "victimless crime." I suppose that this is how these losers show that they are sophisticated men of the world.

If they mean that both parties are degraded in the transaction and that their mutual degradation equates the parties and erases all distinctions between them, they are wrong. If they claim it's a consensual act, then they are wrong also: one party contracts for his own degradation and the other "consents" to it because she has no other choice (or at least thinks so). Never, unless you believe in nymphomania, as Castro does, do women sell themselves because they "like sex."

Whether prostitution is a "victimless crime" is a question that can be tackled in many different ways: as an ethical question, as a moral question, as a theological question, as a sociological question, as a human rights question, as a feminist question, as a psychological question, indeed, the lines of inquiry are almost limitless.

But I think that a concrete case is more effective than any learned speculation. The following story appeared in the New York Daily News on July 24th, in a very small box at the bottom of p. 7, which shows also how immuned Americans (and certainly New Yorkers) have become to such stories:

Ma Let Kids Be Raped
by Scott Shifrel

A QUEENS MOM who pimped her 10- and 11-year-old daughters to feed a drug habit pleaded guilty yesterday to allowing the girls to be raped.

The woman, whose name the Daily News is withholding to protect the identity of the children, admitted in Queens Supreme Court that she helped prostitute the girls beginning in 2001. She had earlier told prosecutors that she did it for the drug money.

The case was a family secret for years until one of the girls told a social worker earlier this year.

The plea was in exchange for an 11-year prison sentence.

If the girls are now 10- and 11 years of age and have been prostituted since 2001 (for six years), their hellish ordeal started when they were 4 and 5 respectively.

So much for prostitution being a "victimless crime."

Oscar Corral and the Divine Finger

No man, at age 32, suddenly "discovers" prostitutes. This has probably been Oscar Corral's preferred sexual outlet for a long time, and if Miami were a two-newspaper town, we would be reading now about his sexual escapades with prostitutes going back at least a decade, maybe even to his Belén days. Perhaps others knew about his propensities and used that information to blackmail him into doing their bidding. That would explain why Oscar's indifference turned into vindictive rage almost overnight last year when he libelled his fellow Cuban-American journalists at The Miami Herald and elsewhere, and it would explain, also, his refusal to condemn Castro in his recent interview with the Sun Post's Rebecca Wakefield. If such is the case then his arrest for solicitation may be the best thing that ever happened to Oscar Corral, because it has broken the blackmailer's hold on him, supposing such exists. Now is the time for him to come clean if he wishes to salvage what remains of his professional reputation (not much). His personal reputation is beyond repair.

***

Oscar's friend and erstwhile protector Tom Fiedler, who lost his job ("retired" it was called) at The Herald in part because of the fallout from his fanatical support for Corral — Fiedler went so far as to accuse Corral's critics of being "chihuahuas" guilty of a "blood libel" — was himself famous for peeking inside another man's drawers, specifically, Gary Hart's, whose tryst in Bimini Fiedler exposed, putting an end to Hart's presidential aspirations even though Hart was a bachelor and had every right to do whatever he pleased with whomever he pleased. I can't help but wonder what Fiedler's advice would have been in this case to his ace reporter, who, in effect, "Biminied" himself.

***

I do not think that it was The Herald that delayed the news of Corral's arrest three days, as some have suggested. More likely it was Corral himself who didn't come clean with The Herald for two days. Perhaps he thought that he might be able to elude detection; certainly men in a desperate situation have an infinite capacity for self-delusion. Or perhaps he was just afraid; so much about him points in that direction. It must not have been easy for him to accept his fate. One day he's the poster boy for manly resistance to the Cuban-American establishment in Miami and the next day the poster boy is wagging his wiener at what he thinks is some of recepticle of pestilence that turns out to be instead the establishment itself.

We might almost feel pity for his warped nature if he had himself ever shown any to those whose lives he attempted to destroy and whose clean reputations he tarnished. It is impossible not to think that the Divine Finger has balanced the scales of justice in time for the upcoming anniversary of his September 8, 2006 hatchet job on the Miami Moonlighters. But the Divine Finger had nothing to do with it. Some other appendage did Corral in and he has sole control of it.

"In Miami's Fair City/Where the Girls Are So Pretty..."

...Oscar Corral got busted for soliciting a whore.

At 8:46:13AM the Review of Cuban-American Blogs was visited by The Times Publishing Company, which had googled the search words "Oscar Corral Miami Herald" and been directed to the post Oscar Corral the Man Without Principles. At 8:55:22AM, the RCAB was visited by the Miami-Police.org, which had googled "Oscar Corral" and also been directed to our post Oscar Corral the Man Without Principles.

We knew that Oscar Corral was in trouble. We had supposed another kind of trouble: the kind of trouble that one would expect a voicebox for the Castro regime in the employ of The Miami Herald to get into.

In the past, we had referred to Oscar many times as a sad and pathetic milquetoast. But nothing can be sadder or more pathetic than a man (and a young man at that) who has to buy pussy in Miami.

What "American-Cuban" Bloggers Really Think About "Eliana"

[I have always contended that many Cuban-American (or "American-Cuban" bloggers) do not ever deliver themselves of their real opinions on Cuban issues on their own blogs, but go elsewhere to do it, anonymously. Their real opinions are far more more extreme, dangerous and heartless than they would ever dare to acknowledge publicly, though their own secret agenda does inform their avowed opinions and can be detected even through their self-censorship and dissimulation on their own blogs. You simply have to know them; and if you do know, you will have no difficulty in detecting the continuation and radicalization of those opinions on other blogs. This well-written, if cowardly and unreasoned opinion, was posted by a certain "A" on a Miami Herald opinion forum. For "A," the "Eliana" case is all about our "image" as Cuban-Americans; it doesn't in the least have to do with saving a little girl's life. It is precisely this opinion which I refuted in my penultimate post. I will not "out" the author here. Those who care to will be able to fill in the dots themselves]:


"Here we go again....Let me first begin by saying i'm a Cuban American. I honestly think this could become another Elian-like scenario all orchestrated by Castro. Are we going to allow Castro to win again as we did with Elian and hurt the Miami Cuban image by playing this game? People let's pick our battles - THIS ISN'T ONE OF THEM. Whether we like it or not, the biological father has every right to reclaim his daughter since her mother is unfit to raise her. Let's put our political beliefs and passion on the side right now and think clearly about this issue. This isn't politics. This is a child whose father did sign the consent form to let her leave with the biological mother...however, since the mother cannot raise her appropriately, he has every right to take her back. YES - most likely the Cuban Government is financially supporting him here in the U.S. (that's obvious). Let's take a moment and reflect on the consequences we as a people face if we decide to make this a political battle. Look what happened with Elian and the credibility we lost as a people. Cubans in Miami lets wake up and pick out the right battles...let's attack Castro on real issues that impact Cuba and not play his little game and fall victims to his plow that will eventually end in failure. To the eyes of the world we will be seen as ruthless and immature for not allowing a girl to live with her father. It's his choice to decide what to do...if he is brave enough, which I doubt, he will publicly inform the press he was paid by the government and risk his family back home to uncover the truth...but I doubt he will do that and I don't blame him. Let's stop allowing Castro to win these stupid battles and attack him with more credible reasons such as the fate of the two Cuban boxers who simply because they wanted to defect and were deported to Cuba face prison, family persecution and the loss of their professional athletic careers - just to mention one case. This is already well documented as the coach already mentioned in Brazil that their careers are "dead". There are numerous issues we can certainly use to attack Castro and uncover the real truth and show the world his true colors. This isn't one of them. For those in Miami and elsewhere who look at any Cuban issue as a way to simply bash Cubans and Cuban Americans, I think you have to question yourselves and your personal hatred or jealousy and stop attacking a group of people simply because you cannot stand the fact that the Cuban community is one of the most successful migrant groups in the U.S. History. However, that's not the point here and honestly, your ignorant insults just make me laugh and just show your true colors and the issues you have. Having that sort of hatred won't lead you anywhere and you will just be losers forever. It's attitude people. Back to the issue...Cubans wake up and let's move on...this is not an issue we should stir up and allow the real issues to get clouded over parental rights. The world is watching...let's not make a sequel to Elian."

Posted by: A
8/6/2007 5:03 PM

The Poor Little Cuban Girl that They Call "Eliana"

While visiting a concentration camp, Heydrich Himmler became enamoured of a Jewish boy who looked as if he had stepped off a poster for the Hitler Youth. The boy with the steel blue eyes and chiselled features was standing on a line leading to the gas chambers. Himmler stopped to inquire about his parentage and whether a mistake had been made (perhaps he had been "stolen" by his Jewish parents from a Christian family or had "Aryan" ancestors in his past). The boy replied that his parents were Jews and that he had no "Aryan" connections, whereupon Himmler said he was sorry for it and moved on.

The Jewish boy reminds me of the 4-year-old Cuban refugee girl whose mother physically abused her for most of her short life, both in Cuba and in this country, before being confined to a mental institution and surrendering custody of her daughter to the State of Florida.

As in the Elián case, non-Cubans are overwhelmingly in support of returning the child to Cuba to live, ostensibly, with her biological father (her mother's sometime boyfriend). They say that she belongs with and to her father. What they really mean is that she belongs anywhere but here. If they were actually able to see a photograph of the little Cuban girl it might move their hearts; for their hearts are not entirely petrified. They do still love their daughters and granddaughters and have the capacity to feel empathy for those who resemble them. Her blue eyes, blonde hair and pale skin — so uncommon in their conception of Cubans — might cause them to reassess their position, which, very simply stated, is that Hispanics, whatever their claims to our pity, should be ejected from the United States regardless of whether they have legal claims to be here beyond those founded on pity. This child was granted legal admission to the U.S. and has as much right to be here as anyone. When her mother surrendered custody, the child did not forfeit that right and it is that right which is now her only hope of living a normal life.

Being returned to Cuba and that system's tender mercies, even if, unlike Elián, she is not obliged to grow-up on abuelito Fidel's knee, is to me a comparable fate to being "saved" by Himmler or shoved into a gas oven. At 4, she has already known torture at the hands of her own mother and received no protection from her father, but even worse awaits her in Cuba, which will be a concentration camp in all but name for her and in a more intense degree than it is for other Cubans. A normal childhood is impossible in Cuba because there the state, not the parents, have the final say in raising a child. In most cases, however, this interest is not exercised to the full extent that its so-called laws allow, though sufficiently to mar the childhood of every Cuban child. In her case, as in Elián's, the State will control every facet of her life for the remainder of her childhood and beyond, not merely marring but obliterating it altogether as was done to Elián. The vacant stare that is his will be hers also, a stare that seeks a horizon that is not there; the internalized pain that radiates from within and is reflected in his face, will also be her set expression.

If life had not done enough to her by giving her an abusive mother, it also gave her a biological father who was indifferent to her abuse in Cuba, as were the authorities there, and consented to allow her crazed mother to take her to the U.S. — in fact, relinquished his parental rights to make it possible — and who now, suddenly feeling "parental" again at Castro's orders, is endeavoring with the full backing of the Cuban regime to recover custody of his daughter in order that Castro might have a matched set of juvenile political pawns. When one's own child's life is at stake no man has a right to be a coward. No intimidation is too great; no torture is too painful; no death is too horrible. This man is now on U.S. soil, as Elián's father was once. So, in addition to all else, there is no excuse for his cowardice; no attenuation; no forgiveness, ever.

No one, it seems, who has had any say in her short but painful life thus far, ever had her best interests at heart, except the loving Coral Gables couple who adopted her 12-year old half-brother and now wish to adopt her, creating the family that neither her mother nor father provided her with. Even the judge charged with deciding her fate shares the same prejudices as most of her countrymen. A few years ago Circuit Court Judge Jeri B. Cohen stated in open court, while hearing another case, that if all Cubans were repatriated to the island this country would be the better for it. I was the first to reveal that fact (before The Miami Herald or any other newspaper) on Babalú blog in March of this year.

The Florida Department of Children & Family, though perhaps well-intentioned, is nonetheless mishandling this case by refusing to recognize that this is more than just a standard custody battle. The political ramifications of this case are 75% of the case. A request is not being made to transfer custody from Florida to Georgia but from a democratic state to a Stalinist one. The father's standing here will not be his standing in Cuba. The child's fate here will not be her fate in Cuba. If these facts are ignored, then there is no case — the girl will be given to the father who consented to her abuse in the past and will be complicit in her abuse in the future. But these facts cannot be ignored because they are at the center of this case and are what makes it compelling and unique. Whatever other grounds there may be to exclude the father should not be ignored; but the principal grounds for denying him custody — that he is the willing proxy of a criminal consortium to which he has pimped his child should not be ignored. It was because that fact about Juan González was ignored that Elián was kidnapped at gunpoint and returned to Cuba.

The greatest threat to the safety of this child is not posed by the bigotted judge, the clueless Department of Children & Families, Ira Kurzban or the regime's other hired guns, not even by her cowardly and cowered father. Her greatest enemies are those who pretend that her case is different from Elián's, who deny her their support and indeed wish her to disappear. They care more about The Miami Herald making capital with her story than they do with the Cuban regime savaging her life. They will literally throw her down a well without a moment's remorse if they are spared the trauma of reliving the Elián case. They do not want to be reminded of how much their Anglo neighbors disdain them or how embarrassing it is to represented by those whom they in turn disdain. But this case is not about them and their identity crisis. It is about a little girl who has been tortured for most of her young life and who faces even more torture if she is returned to Communist Cuba. It is really that simple and that transcendental.

Henry Gómez at the Review of Cuban-American Blogs

Can this possibly be right? Just nine (9) posts dedicated exclusively to Henry Gomez out of a total of 200 to date? Henry could have sworn that it was at least 600. Of course, every post at The Review of Cuban American Blogs is inspired by and has at least a little bit to do with Val & Henry; the cumulative effect is what makes it seem more.

Henry Explains Fred Thompson to Us

The BUCL Belt: Henry's Imagination Strikes Again

"Henry, Henry Aldrich!"

Henry's Grapes of Wrath

Is There Anything At All in Henry's Mind On Any Day?

BUCL Leader Henry Gómez to Vanquish the Real Academia Today

Henry Gómez Accuses Spaniards of "Exploding Cubans"

Henry Gómez Comes to Posada's Defense (Sort Of)

Henry Gomez Is No Machiavelli

Val Prieto At the "Review of Cuban-American Blogs"

Wow! Only 15 posts out of 200 dedicated exclusively to Val Prieto? "Obsession" should be made of sterner stuff.

Val Asks His Readers to Guess His Position on the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" Policy

Would Val Remodel Sting's 27 Bathrooms?

On the Art of Making Val Prieto Work for Me

"I'm a Cocksucker, Don't Ya Know?" Yes We Do, Val....

Val Praises Fidel's "Charisma" and Moneo Calls Him...

My Favorite Daily Affirmation (by Val Prieto)

Val Prieto's "Apologia Pro Babaloo"

Val Goes After the Younger Generation

Val Visits for a Second Time

Monomania Valentina: Or, How Well Do You Know Val Prieto?

The Real Val Prieto Exposes Himself As Ana Menéndez's Pimp

Babaloo's Waterloos: Val Prieto Philosophizes On the Meaning of Being All Wet

Val and His Shadow Strolling Down the Avenue

Val Prieto Learns and Unlearns His Lesson

The Biggest Cocksucking In Cuban-American Blog History

The RCAB's Proud History: "Babaloo's Waterloos"

[As we approach our 200th post we take proud note of the epic and epoch-making moments in the glorious history of the Review of Cuban-American Blogs. Here we celebrate our trademarked "Babaloo's Waterloos"].

Everybody's favorite feature on The Review of Cuban American Blogs is our continuing series "Babaloo's Waterloos," where we chronicle Babalú blog's lost battles and irredeemable faux pas. Their lost skirmishes are noted in "Babaloo's Boo-Boos," which takes its name from a post at the Babalunian Republic when Henry Gómez publicly confessed to having committed a "boo boo."

Here for your delectation is the entire series to date:

Babaloos' Waterloos: "Some Spaniards Are OK"

Babaloo's Waterloos: Dancing With "The John Birch Society"

Babaloo's Waterloos: Has There Been a Coup at Babalú?

Babaloo's "Boo Boos"

Babaloo's Waterloos: Spain "Forced Religion" on Cubans

Babaloo's Waterloos: Val Prieto Philosophizes On the Meaning of Being All Wet

Babaloo's Waterloos: The Miami Herald Speaks for Henry Gómez on Posada

Babaloo's Waterloos: Raiding the "Enemy's" Camp (A Continuing Series)

The RCAB's Proud History: The Coinage of "Babalunian"

[As we approach our 200th post on the Review of Cuban-American Blogs, it is only right that we recall the epic and epoch-making moments in its glorious history. Here we celebrate the re-baptizing of the erstwhile "Babulusians"].

I am so very proud to have coined the word "Babalunians" to describe the denizens of Babalú blog, also known as "Babalunia" or the "Babalunian Republic." Apparently, according to Google, it is a unique coinage. I want you, my dear readers, to spread its fame near and far, even to the very portals of Babalunia. Use it whenever appropriate on the NET and let the fame of the Babalunians grow till everybody is laughing at them.

http://reviewofcuban-americanblogs.blogspot.com/2007/07/at-birth-of-new-word-babalunian-it-is.html

Words of Reassurance to the Cuban Boxers from Fidel and of Thanks to Brazil

"These citizen boxers need not fear being arrested upon their return to Cuba [what's going to happen to them is much worse], or being subjected to the methods employed by the Americans at Abu Ghraib and Guántanamo [those niggers are going to be "necklaced" with burning tires (a trick that Winnie Mandela taught me) and have cattle prods shoved up their black asses (a trick I learned from Raúl)]. They will be transferred temporarily to a guest house [the houses which I gave them have already been confiscated and their families evicted] and will be given access to their families [who will be released from prison upon their good behavior]. The press will also be allowed to contact them if they wish [after their electro-convulsive treatment and re-programming; it worked for Elian and their brains are at the same level]. They will be offered honorable work in the field of sports which will be in keeping with their knowledge and experience [they will become trainers at 24 and never again fight in their lives, much less leave the country]. The Brazilian authorities [who suck my artificial ass], faced with the inevitable campaigns of our adversaries, can rest assured that Cuba will know how to rise above these circumstances [though Hugo, acting on his own initiative, might liberate Amazonia]. As for myself, I will sleep soundly tonight [in my artificially-induced coma]." — Fidel Castro, Juventud Rebelde

Angels Who Smuggle Men to Freedom

The greatest heroes of the Holocaust, responsible for saving the majority of Jews who were saved, were smugglers. The blacks slaves that were rescued from bondage before Emancipation were delivered to freedom by smugglers. There is nothing dishonorable in being a smuggler if you risk your life and well-being, your freedom and your good name, to save another man and give him a future; and when the man whose life you save (at the risk of your own) is a stranger, then you have shared in the work of God. The saints and the martyrs did no more than this. Christ Himself did no more than this.

The heirs of the abolitionists and the righteous gentiles live among us today and are reviled as they were; persecuted as they were; imprisoned as they were; subjected to calumny and obloquy as they were, and just as right as they were. Some day, they, too, will be honored by the very men who lack the moral compass to follow their example.

The men who risk their lives every day to deliver from bondage our brothers in Cuba are as worthy of our respect and admiration as those who 150 years ago redeemed black men from slavery or saved the Jews from Hitler's gas ovens. Only if you believe that Cubans are less worthy of freedom, humans of a lesser stamp than God's image, can you argue that their rescuers are mercenaries or debased men. Only if you believe that a death which lasts 48 years is preferable to one that comes unexpectedly and quickly, only if you believe that a human life should be wasted, its potential untapped and misery alone be its sole compensation, can you condemn those who would redeem such lives at the peril of their own. Only if you are yourself completely debauched and indifferent completely to the cries of oppressed humanity, and are content to insist that they be patient with tyranny when you yourself or yours were not, can you dismiss the claims or demean the work of those who are their redeemers. You, too, would have welcomed them as your deliverers if you found yourself in their situation now.

Calumny is the only response which lesser men have in the presence of sacrifice, and the greater the sacrifice the greater the calumny. Those who impugn the work of these rescuers of men attribute to them their own base motives and make them the scapegoats of their own materialism because it is only in this light that they can understand them. Their critics demonize in them what they call success in themselves. Their success is selfish and self-centered, extending, at most, within the circle of their own families. Money is not the motivation of those who risk all, including their own freedom, for the freedom of others. If money were what motivated them, there are a thousand other lines of work, legal and illegal, that yield greater profits with fewer risks; and a thousands of things that they could smuggle less conspicuous and fraught with danger than refugees.

Moreover, it well to remember that money also greased the wheels of the Underground Railroad which brought thousands of slaves to freedom in the North and Canada before the Civil War. It was Northern philanthropists that financed this undertaking and even free slaves contributed with their mite to the rescue of their own families. The abolitionists never had a problem paying to smuggle slaves from the South to the North, or even ransoming blacks from their own slavemasters, that is, in effect buying slaves in order to set them free. Both Frederick Douglass and Dred Scott were thus saved.

No Jew escaped the Holocaust in the 1930s without bribing the Nazis; sometimes they themselves paid for their freedom; sometimes their relatives abroad paid; and sometimes international relief groups paid, but everybody had to pay. Hitler's Final Solution was not his first solution. He wanted to sell the Jews to the Western democracies, but they weren't buying. If the nations of Europe had been willing to ransom the Jews as they were given the opportunity to do, most of European Jewry would have been spared, but they too expected the situation in Germany to be "normalized" at some time and didn't believe it would take a world war to do it.

Yes, money, which can be put to so many vile purposes, can also be the instrument of a people's deliverance. Why shouldn't Cuban exiles employ their money to save their relatives and friends? Why should the Communists be able to use their resources to entrap our people but we not be allowed to use our resources to free them?

A traitor to our cause revealed recently that he is currently trying to find a MSM reporter willing to "expose" the Cuban "smugglers'" ties to Castro, which he assumes must exist even in the absence of any corroborating evidence and in the face of much evidence that proves the opposite. Of course, these so-called smugglers, if they were really in cahoots with Castro and shared their profits with him, would not be persecuted as vigoroously by the Cuban Coast Guard as they are by their U.S. counterpart; but they are. And if these so-called "smugglers" were Castro's agents, they would have said so in exchange for clemency when they were convicted in U.S. courts for the "crime" of bringing Cubans to freedom. But although the FBI has attempted to entice them in every way, offering to dismiss charges against them and even give them new identities and safe houses where they could live at government expense, they have resolutely refused to say something that is not true even to save their lives. They respect themselves and what they have done and have no regrets. A Castroite is not cast in this mold. Opportunism is his base metal. These patriotic and humanitarian "smugglers" are not willing to save their skins at the price of dishonor, and this says all that needs be said about them.

At a time when the refugees themselves are vilified, preyed upon and sometimes even killed in this country's territorial waters by those charged with enforcing the president's orders, can we expect their rescuers, who willingly share their fate, not to be vilified also by those who disdain the refugees?

The Real Brazil Shows Its True Colors

During the 1950s sociologists and other peddlers of futurism held up Brazil as the hope of the world. They popularized the myth that Brazilians had conquered racism through amalgamation and that their burnished bronze color was destined to become the universal hue of humanity. To go with its "Brave New World" image a Stalinist architect named Oscar Niemeyer designed a new capital for Brazil, called Brasilia, which was the apogee of modernism and its ripest fruit: it was a lot of things, including the inspiration for the "Jetsons," but mostly it was uninhabitable. The future, then, was uninhabitable, yet the capital and seat of government was moved to this concrete jungle in the midst of a real jungle. If Washington, D.C. had forever remained an infested swamp crowned with colonnades then I think the history of the U.S. would have been very different. Concrete walls do a prison make and Brazil's officialdom has lived in a prison of their own making for 50 years, still trying to exemplify "modernism" in a post-modernist age which only admires its headonism.

If Brazil is the future of humanity, then humanity is doomed. Yes, Brazilians may be "amalgamated" to a large extent, but that has only increased the distinctions between them. Their bronze is parsed into a hundred different shades, which itself is meaningless because only white (or near white) counts. It is a society of empty fascades and emptier stomachs, which by virtue of the size of its territory and its infinite natural wealth, unmatched by any country on earth, should be an inexhaustable horn of plenty for all its inhabitants.

Can it surprise anyone that such a country, run by such men, can be capable of disgracing itself before the world by denying political asylum to those whom they have hosted in their country under the banner of friendship and Pan-American solidarity? Oh, yes, they are quite capable; no people hold human life so cheap.

Brazil is the land of libertinism, which is the cheapest "circus" that rulers can offer their people. Liberty is, of course, another thing. Liberty expands man's horizons; libertinism narrows them. Liberty holds human life dear; libertinism holds nothing dear but the pursuit of pleasure. Libertinism caters to man's animal nature; liberty to everything that distinguishes him from the animals. Liberty is the triumph of the human spirit; libertinism its death. If libertinism (also known animalism) is the future, then Brazil holds the key to it.

It is no surprise, then, that such a country, built upon such a foundation, should turn deaf ears to the pleas of enslaved men, or even connive to return them to slavery, in violation of every principle of international law and — useless even to mention this — of what used to be called sportsmanship.

Boxers Guillermo Rigondeaux (25) and Erislandy Lara (24), both black Cubans, must have believed that a mulatto nation as Brazil would embrace them as brothers. But the reality is otherwise; any white country would have been afraid to deport them to Cuba for fear of appearing racist. Brazil, which does not labor under the white man's burden of guilt though it is ruled by white men, would as lief feed them to the crocodiles as return them to Castro.

The "future" never looked so bad.

[Pictured at the top is Brazil's "Pantheon to Liberty" and below its National Cathedral, both in Brasilia, its aging"futuristic" capital].

George Moneo Proposes to Use Condoms to Kill Off His Blogger Enemies: Me, Alex and ???

"[I] can name three bloggers who could be poster children for parents using condoms..." — George Moneo

George Moneo has become a spokesman for the use of condoms. Or, more precisely, for using them to prevent the birth of those whom he despises most on the blogosphere. He is even now building the Time Machine that will enable him to strap condoms on the dicks of their fathers before they have planted their seed. Personally, I have always despised eugenics as much as abortion. If practiced generally, it would result, for example, in the elimination of dwarfs, among other "imperfect" human beings.

Now, there can be no doubt that I am on George's short list. In fact, I am pretty sure I am at the top. Second is probably Alex from Stuck on the Palmetto, who rebaptized George "The Pitbull" Moneo as "Poodle." I myself thought of calling George a bichon — which is smaller than a poodle but not as "ethnic" as a chihuahua — but the word "bichon" was highly unapplicable for other reasons.

Now, my question is — who is the 3rd blogger?

I suppose we could be charitable and say it's Fidel, whose Granma blog is permanently closed to comments. He gets his "feedback" through a tube, as I elsewhere noted.

But supposing it isn't Fidel, whom would you nominate as the third of George's most hated bloggers?

Insanity, Homoeroticism and Xenophobia on "The Babalú [Faux] Radio Hour"

Part I
I never before heard a man having a nervous breakdown on radio, even faux radio; but the dozen or so listeners to yesterday's Babalu Radio Hour witnessed such a spectable. It was frightful, horrible and unexpected: the emotions poured from him in torrents, at times he seemed on the verge of tears, and at others he raged like a caged madman, becoming inarticulate and then erupting in a barrage of obscenity. There was obviously something troubling this man, some well of despair that had been tapped in him, which flooded every fiber of his being and transformed him into a living caricature of a Botero. It was a pitiful sight to behold: a conscience at war with itself and wrestling for possession of his soul! The only cure for what troubled him was to renounce all ideas that placed him at odds with himself and humanity, with himself and his countrymen. What could bring a man to such a point? Hate. Only hate. Hate of himself and hate of those like him. And what could restore him to sanity? I wouldn't know. Listeners to the show (all 12 of us), you will understand. The rest of you must read this.

Part II
The night's proceedings began with George Moneo playing Otis Rush's "I Can't Quit You Baby." Henry, whose masculinity-meter must have been off that night, observed in a blasé manner quite in keeping with the tenor of his remarks, that Rush's song reminded him of the theme from Brokeback Mountain, "I Can't Quit You," and then proceeded to serenade George with a few bars from the song, which certainly caught George off-guard, as when a drunken friend collapses into your arms telling you that he loves you. An awkward moment, to be sure. But more awkward ones were to follow, courtesy of the invited-host.

Yes, Val is a regular caller to his own show. He was introduced by Henry as "our distinguished editor," which I suppose he did not mean as a joke though it cracked me up. After reminding Henry & George that they had kept him on hold for 20 minutes last week (a merciful release), Val asked George if "that song you played, that Otis Redding thing" — cultural neophyte Val is corrected by George, it's Otis Rush not Otis Redding, all blacks sounding alike to Val — "Did you play that for someone in particular that we all know of?" This is an ongoing joke with them; they dedicate the first segment of their show to me, and then claim that I am "obsessed" with them. George sarcastically denied Val's implication: "No, not at all, why would you say something like that? I just love the blues. I know a lot of people love the blues." Val agreed: "We are all bluesy." No, not "bluesy," but they are certainly pinko in that non-Communist way. The punch line in their little Three Stooges skit is reserved for little Henry: "Since I can't have you baby, then I have to put you down." George recoiled at the idea (but not more than me), saying that "There's a fat chance of that." In view of the tenor and tendency of this discussion, a fat something may be just what these guys want. With three of them, they should be able to sort this matter out.

The banter continued along the same lines. Val mentioned that a recent post at Babalú was accompanied by a photoshop picture of Raúl Castro looking like Popeye in drag. A gay commenter had objected to it as homophobic and Val assured him and his audience that he was not opposed to the gay lifestyle. To prove his contention, Val alluded to the persecution of gays in Cuba and George brought up Reinaldo Arenas, the noted Cuban homosexual author who died of AIDS (which Arenas blamed on Castro). George said that he had seen the movie Before Night Falls, which is based on Arenas' memoirs. The book, however, he had not read. Val opined that the book is so much better than the film (the world's most hackneyed observation) and stated his preference for the original Spanish edition. This is doubly ironic, since Val does not read books and George doesn't speak Spanish. The conversation then swerved to Johnny Depp, who played the "Che" character in the film. Many ruminations about how Depp can be pro-Che and at the same time deliver a critical portrait of him in the film. Quick answer: He's an actor. Did they think that Christopher Reeve was "Superman?"

Having devoted half the show already to "the love that dare not speak its name" — although on The Babalú Radio Hour it does not seem to be able to shut up — I next expected "the guys" from "Queer Eye on Cuba" to embark on a discussion of how meaningful the tv series "Flipper" had been in their lives. But they moved from the fictional "Che" to the real "Che," the homoerotic idol of the left.

Part III
The Babalunians' obsession with "Che" Guevara is well-known. I do not understand why a man who's been dead 40 years consumes so much of their time and passion. They have on many, many ocassions ignored the active struggle against Castro to pursue "Che" Guevara's ghost. "Che's" ghost is his so-called "legend." Personally, I could care less if they plaster his image on everything from oven mits to toilets. In fact, I consider it poetic justice that his posthumous fame is as a tee-shirt icon, that is, as a poster boy of materialism, homoeroticism and radical chic: it is exactly what this posseur and failure deserves.

Sadly, no one lives more in the shadow of "Che" Guevara than do the Babalunians, who are determined to remove his effigy from the face of the earth, much as the ancients effaced the images of the old gods not because they didn't believe in their power anymore but because they did.

In their radio show they discussed at length their efforts, sometimes successful, sometimes not, to convince, pressure or boycott stores that carry merchandise with his image, as if that would bring us even one minute closer to Cuba's freedom. And how they preen themselves on these pyrrhic victocies: The Battle of Target; the Battle of Burlington Coat Factory; the Battle of the New York Public Library, etc. Recently, however, they have sustained two defeats that have halted their glorious march across the malls of America: they have lost the Battle of Ebay and the Battle of the Smithsonian.

Val and George also revealed on the show that they had lost numerous "skirmishes" closer to home. It appears that all of Miami is plastered with wall-size stencils of "Che" Guevara. An incredulous Henry was unaware of this fact, and George and Val had quite a time trying to convince him that it was true. If Henry had known this earlier, he might have made the elimination of these murals his first BUCL campaign. He is now threatening to vandalize them, which, in any case, would be more constructive than their campaign against Spain or their campaign to turn a Marxist Sting into a human being. No one can ever accuse them of choosing their battles carefully or imaginatively. Still, while their hometown of Miami has been converted into a virtual shrine to "Che" Guevara, they glance about the country choosing whatever targets of opportunity present themselves, completely blind to what happens at a 90-yard distance from their homes much less at a remove of 90 miles.

The ajusticiamiento of "Che" Guevara was a victory for the forces of freedom. Cuban exiles hunted him down, corralled him and brought him to justice. This was perhaps our greatest victory in the struggle against Castroism. But the Babalunians can't or won't accept that victory and must cite "Che" Guevara's ghost to other battlefields.

Part IV

Val was very reticent to discuss the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" over blog radio. He said so several times and very forcibly too. In case you haven't heard, thirteen years after the fact, unasked and without a clue, Val is preparing a White Paper on the subject and doesn't want anyone to "steal" his ideas [oh brother!] His ideas are indeed very "novel" as are Henry's, who is also in the vanguard of the struggle to tighten the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy or abolish the Cuban Adjustment Act (1966) (both would be acceptable outcomes for them but they would rather eliminate the latter since that would take care of the former as well). To state their position as as simply as possible: Val & Henry don't want another Cuban ever to come to this country of his own volition again. More prosaically: "Cubans stay home."

According to Val, Cubans are lucky to have the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy in place because they don't have to worry about the passage immigration reform in Congress; their status is secure. Yes, if they can penetrate the cordon sanitaire set up by the U.S. and Cuban Coast Guards and are not drowned or eaten by sharks in the world's most dangerous water, and can actually set foot on land without being beaten back into the ocean with clubs, then they are in like Flynn. Rather than count the number of dead that have been occasioned by this inhumane policy, Val asks us instead to consider how many lives have been saved. By making it almost impossible for Cubans to seek asylum in this country, as is their legal right under the Cuban Adjustment Act (1966), Val believes that the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy has actually saved lives. But has it really? We know it has deprived Cubans of what little autonomy remained in their lives (that is, the freedom to flee), but has it "saved" them? Are not the rafters or would-be rafters the most desperate of Cuba's desperate, ready to sacrifice their lives or even the lives of their children for freedom? Would remaining trapped in Cuba increase or decrease their desperation? These are the people that account for the fact that Cuba has the world's highest suicide rate precisely among the age group that is most likely to attempt to flee the country by sea (those between the age of 18-35).

Henry is even more cynical and heartless than Val on this issue (he usually is on every issue, though Val is playing catch-up now). He compares the liberation of Cuban refugees by so-called "smugglers" to the trans-shipment of drugs through Cuba. The refugees, Henry believes, are as dangerous and toxic to this country as the drugs and must be dealt with in the same manner (hopefully not by incineration). He is in favor of employing satellite technology to track the refugees so that not even one can evade detection by the Coast Guard. Although conceding that it may be wrong to repatriate them to Castro's Cuba, Henry believes that "the U.S. government has no other choice." Of course, it has an infinite number of choices short of repatriation, but for Henry this is the right choice. It's just a question of "geopolitics" to him, or as he puts it, "this one issue is not the world, it's not even the biggest item on our plate." Well, we can be sure it's not the biggest item on his plate, anyway.

Henry believes, wrongly, that Cubans are issued 20,000 visas per year under the Clinton-Castro Migratory Accord, which he actually praised on the program. Well, at least he has something good to say about Clinton: he admires the most despicable act of his presidency and the one that has most adversely impacted the Cuban people. Over the life of that accord the U.S. has failed to meet the agreed quota of 20,000 more times than it has been reached. For many years it allowed just 10 percent of that number to enter the U.S. Last year, it allowed 50 percent. Never has it completely filled the quota with immigrants from the island. But Henry claims nonetheless that for every Cuban that is sent back to the island under the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy, 200 are giving asylum here under the Clinton-Castro Migratory Accord. Just this week 97 Cubans were returned to Cuba. By Henry's calculation (200:1), another 19,400 were admitted this week. But how could that be if the total allowed to Cuba for any given year is 20,000 and the U.S. has actually admitted only 10,000 over the last year?

A constant refrain throughout the show was "We don't get what we want, we get what we need." Of course, they were not referring to themselves or their families: they got what they wanted when the red carpet was laid out for them 40 years ago. It's the hapless Cuban people who must settle for whatever Henry and Val determine are their needs. And they, of course, don't see that they have any needs that can be addressed by immigration. They are quite content to have them live and die as slaves on the island, fodder for their "pressure cooker."

I could not address, even at this length, all the bufoonery that they managed to squeeze into that hour. That is the kindest word that I can find to characterize these proceedings. It is a consolation, though, that they are so abysmally stupid about every subject. Let us hope that being stupid they will also be ineffectual.

Finis

Important Alert: Announcement Forthcoming

FLASH!!!

After having the Babalunians guess his position on the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" Policy for 124 comments over 2 days — a puzzle that would have stumped the Sphinx — Val Prieto, thirteen years and thousands of interdictions after the fact, promises to publicly reveal his real, true, honest to goodness position on it. Having already taken every imaginable position except opposing it, it will remain anybody's guess what he might come up with. We can only be sure of two things: that whatever position Val takes will be the most deleterious to Cubans on the island, and that Val will write not a single word of his "screed" until he has anticipated every objection that I might raise and tried his best to sweep them under the rug. This is going to take forever; but regardless, I promise to deconstruct every word of the finished product: the most thorough analytical vivisection in history. Let that be an additional incentive for him to do his best (not that it will matter).

We will keep you apprised of any announcements from the mountain top.

A Debate Over "Cojones" At Babalú

There's a debate over "cojones" at Babalú. Yeah, it's like pigs sizing up their wings. On account of "cojones," Val & Henry are theatening another expulsion from Babalú, the blog that supposedly wants to bring democracy to Cuba but won't itself practice it. This time their target is tango, whose ostensible offense is to have used the word "cojones," which long ago passed into the common parlance in this country, like, well, balls.

Ever the gracious host, Val warns tango:

"[T]his is my house and we play by my rules. If you cant accept that and respect my house, kindly go somewhere else."
Posted by: Val Prieto at August 1, 2007 11:00 AM

Yet, on July 1, 2005, Val devoted a whole post to "cojones" and another on July 27 of the same year. A year later, on July 17, 2006, pototo and Val were comparing "cojones" in the same context that tango used the word. Pototo commented that "We should consider something when we refer to the cojones of those on the island. We need to look at our own." To which Val heartily concurred: "[At] mine as well." There are 219 other instances of the use of "cojones" at Babalú going back to the earliest days of the blog and continuing to this day. But now tango is being shown the door because he followed Val and everybody else's example: a vulgarian amonst vulgarians, at worst.

Yet only two days ago tango was Val's darling as one of the few to support Val's take on the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" post. He endorsed, essentially, Val & Henry's pressure cooker theory, only in more colorful and offensive language:

"Cubans, prefer to get on a boat face the sharks instead of going to the streets to ask for their civil rights as eastern europeans did. Cubans always wanted the easy way out, or that the marines fix their problems. I think in spanish is call, Les faltan cojones y los castristas si los tiene. With exception, as Dr Biscet."
Posted by: Tango_1250 at July 31, 2007 09:02 AM

Rather than rebuke tango for insulting the manhood of Cubans, Val chose to object to his use of the word "cojones." Val admonished him that "there is no need to insult anyone to get your point across." Tango's point — i.e. that Cubans are cowards — should be made without using colorful language, but in the "socratic" way that Val does. Insulting their manhood, as Val does without reference to "cojones," is obviously acceptable at Babalú. The word itself (now) is not.

It is very appropriate, though, that this discussion should take place in a post dedicated to Wayne Smith, who is acquainted with cojones at chin-level, and undoubtedly knows more about them than he does about Cuba.


POSTSCRIPT:

Here's the secret that neither Val nor Henry knows: "tango" is their "friend" fantomas!