Featuring the creations of Castro's own designer and the "Alicia Alonso" of Cuban Haute Couture
I didn't know there was a "National Day of Cuban Culture" in Jamaica. The idea itself is not incongruous; the two Caribbean islands share a long and complex history, though their roots and colonial experiences are not identical. At the center are two of the most important figures in Cuban history — José Martí, who journeyed to Jamaica to solicit the support of Cuban expatriates and Jamaicans for Cuba's war of independence; and Maceo's mother, Mariana Grajales, who died and was buried there. Many Cuban blacks also trace their roots to Jamaica. Their ancestors migrated to Cuba to cut the sugar cane and stayed. Their English last names still distinguish them from the rest of the Cuban population as do the French surnames of 19th century creole refugees from the Haitian Revolution (1801). Yes, Cuba was a place of asylum for the region's needy as well as for Europe's throughout Cuba's history, that is, until 1959, when it became a place that produced refugeees rather than received them.
A "Cuban National Day in Jamaica," therefore, makes the greatest sense to those acquainted with the shared history of our two islands: Cuba, the largest Spanish-speaking island in the Caribbean; and Jamaica, the largest English-speaking one.
The celebration of this holiday did take a rather unexpected twist this year. The focus of the festivities was a fashion show which featured the latest innovations from Cuba's so-called "fashion industry." Now, the island's chancletera aristocracy has never been obsessed with dressing to the nines. There is nary an Evita Perón among them. On the contrary, though their confiscated pre-Castro mansions have the latest appliances from K-Mart and their larders may be stocked with precious delicacies from a typical American Dollar Store, their wardrobes are not noted for great extravagance. Just as Cuban elites would never be featured on a local version of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," neither would they parade before the proles in the latest Paris fashions, though they may exhibit them in Paris itself. Proletarian drab is still the preferred attire of Cuba's "haves" in order not to inspire resentment among the "have nots." In a society where these are so clearly delineated, it is best for the "haves" to maintain a low profile outside their protected sanctuaries.
Nor is Jamaica the place to exhibit that side of the Revolution. The Cuban fashions featured at the show were aimed at an audience prosperous enough to afford the simple Cuban creations and sophisticated enough to see something chic or even trendy in wearing the Cuban version of the Mao jacket (wait till you see what that is!) The Jamaica Gleaner (founded, 1834) described the show as "short and spicy" (the "short" no doubt being provided by the designers and the "spicy" by the Cuban musicians who entertained the audience). The show was hosted by Castro's ambassador to the island, Gisela García Rivera, who said that it was intended to showcase "Cuba's culture and history." What a novel concept, fashion as propaganda.
The show featured the work of two designers — Carmen Fiol and Emiliano Nelson. No doubt there are many conceptual fashion designers in Cuba, that is, those who doodle designs which are never produced for lack of materia prima or official sponsorship. This show was not about them, but Cuba's recognized designers (that is, recognized by the government). In Cuba, of course, if you want to be an approved (that is, a published) writer you must belong to the "Writers Union;" or if an artist to the "Artists Union" or journalist to the "Journalists Union" (there are no real unions in Cuba because all are governmental entities); and, of course, to design clothes in Cuba you must also have official approval or patronage although there is no official union to enforce revolutionary concepts of fashion technology.
Described as a veteran of Cuba's "fashion industry" with 20 years experience, Nelson boasts such glamorous clients as Fidel Castro and Prince Albert of Monaco. That's it. It would have been interesting to see either of them in one of Nelson's crochet creations. Yes, crochet, which is perfect for the tropics and highly ventilated as climactic conditions dictate, also, all those little spaces greatly economize on yarn. I won't go into elaborate details, but it seems Nelson has designed a crochet bush jacket, something that both mighty white hunters (Fidel and Prince Albert) must sport on safaris.
The other designer is named Carmen Fiol, who, at 83, is the Alicia Alonso of Cuba's so-called fashion industry. Her creations were described as "highly practical," which I take to mean drab and nearly corrugated. Her stuff must really have been awful beyond all description. The Gleaner's politic reviewer was even forced to acknowledge that "the most striking thing about Carmen Fiol is not necessarily her designs but that she still manages to design at her age," much as the most striking thing about Alicia Alonso nowadays is certainly not her dancing but her ability to stand up. Fiol's main attraction was an "all white" line of clothing, which included many free-flowing dresses. Her boldest design were khaki capris with a matching sequined blouse. Bet Prince Albert grabbed those.
"The models," The Gleaner assured its readers, "were just as outstanding as the designs." At this moment, I started replaying in my mind that old tv commercial about a Soviet fashion show, where the models were all huge and stolid and wore the same identical dress, which was transformed into evening wear with the addition of a flashlight and beachwear with a beach ball. But, surely Cuba, at least, still produces beautiful people that could make rags look good, right? I mean, Cuba could match and surpass the protruding bones, hollowed stomachs and prominent cheekbones of the world's most famous models without the necessity of recoursing to anorexia or bulimia. I am surprised that Cuba's models have not been conscripted into service for the fatherland as have its doctors and teamsters, etc. I suppose the models are needed for Cuba's sex tourism industry.
POSTSCRIPT:
Anonymous says ...
I attended this show. I have covered fashion shows for the past 23 years. The designs from All three designers one Jamaican and 2 Cubans showcased high fashions which were sexy, sophisticated, alluring and elegant.
This blogger who relies on second hand information from the Gleaner has the temerity to present his opinions as facts and accuse the Cubans of using fashion as propaganda. He just hates the idea that there are nations outside of the USA who beleive in the peaceful coexistence of nations and peoples.
11/01/2007 5:24 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Anonymous:
Ah, you're funny, do stick around. Our resident jester, fantomas, essentially agrees with me on everything except on my approach to other Cuban-American bloggers. But you, rara avis, seem to be the genuine article — an unreconstructed Stalinist, and they are so few nowadays that we must tend to each as an endangered species.
First, let me refer to your snobbism: the Jamaica Gleaner is not a good enough source for an event that took place in Jamaica. I get it, the colonials are not to be trusted. I used the word "colonials," but you, of course, are thinking of something else. A Jamaican designer did indeed exhibit his creations at the show, but as my article was about the Cuban fashion industry, he had no place in it.
Our opinions may differ about the quality of these utilatarian-proletarian fashions (the Gleaner reviewer did say they were practical); but that disagreement is only superficial. The real difference between us is that you do not find it in the least ironic that a regime which allows the Cuban people to buy only one pair of underwear per year could still claim to have a fashion industry. But why not? That same regime cuts off the milk ration to children at age 7 and still claims that Cuba's children are the special concern of the state.
The "peaceful coexistence of nations and peoples" is just fine, but what you actually mean is the peaceful coexistence of tyrannies and democracies as a means of preserving the former.
http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20071031/ent/ent3.html
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Notable & Reprehensible: Liberty Is Not for All, Says Ron Paul
Libertarian Candidate for President
"Let's stop the hysterics about the freedom of Cubans – which is not our government's responsibility – and consider freedom of the American people, which is. Americans want the freedom to travel and trade with their Cuban neighbors, as they are free to travel and trade with Vietnam and China. Those Americans who do not wish to interact with a country whose model of governance they oppose are free to boycott." — Ron Paul, Libertarian candidate for president and mountebank, quoted approvingly on Stuck on the Palmetto by Rick, October 29, 2007
Quite a few Cuban bloggers are self-avowed libertarians. I suppose many regard it as some kind of compromise between being a Democrat and Republican, which it is not. "Libertarianism" is derived from the word "liberty" and that fact may have fooled others into believing that liberty in the collective is what libertarians want. It is not. They are interested only in their own personal liberty, not their neighbor's across the street or across an ocean except where it impacts their own. Therefore, it should surprise no one that Ron Paul doesn't care if Cubans are free so long as they are available for his diversion. Slavery doesn't concern the libertarian unless it infrinches on his own personal freedom. A libertarian may complain about seeing a man whipped because it causes him stress not because it pains the man. This is why libertarianism will always be a fad with no practical applications. Where there is no fellow feeling for others there can be no fellowship, and without fellowship you can't found a church or a party, much less a state. Communism is itself a more restricted variant of libertarianism. In Communist society, the libertarians are the party elite, who enjoy rights and privileges in a vaccum and at the expense of those not as favorably situated. Ultimately, a libertarian government — were such a thing possible — would also tend towards tyranny, since the maximum freedom for some will always mean a minimum of freedom for most.
"Let's stop the hysterics about the freedom of Cubans – which is not our government's responsibility – and consider freedom of the American people, which is. Americans want the freedom to travel and trade with their Cuban neighbors, as they are free to travel and trade with Vietnam and China. Those Americans who do not wish to interact with a country whose model of governance they oppose are free to boycott." — Ron Paul, Libertarian candidate for president and mountebank, quoted approvingly on Stuck on the Palmetto by Rick, October 29, 2007
Quite a few Cuban bloggers are self-avowed libertarians. I suppose many regard it as some kind of compromise between being a Democrat and Republican, which it is not. "Libertarianism" is derived from the word "liberty" and that fact may have fooled others into believing that liberty in the collective is what libertarians want. It is not. They are interested only in their own personal liberty, not their neighbor's across the street or across an ocean except where it impacts their own. Therefore, it should surprise no one that Ron Paul doesn't care if Cubans are free so long as they are available for his diversion. Slavery doesn't concern the libertarian unless it infrinches on his own personal freedom. A libertarian may complain about seeing a man whipped because it causes him stress not because it pains the man. This is why libertarianism will always be a fad with no practical applications. Where there is no fellow feeling for others there can be no fellowship, and without fellowship you can't found a church or a party, much less a state. Communism is itself a more restricted variant of libertarianism. In Communist society, the libertarians are the party elite, who enjoy rights and privileges in a vaccum and at the expense of those not as favorably situated. Ultimately, a libertarian government — were such a thing possible — would also tend towards tyranny, since the maximum freedom for some will always mean a minimum of freedom for most.
Oscar Biscet Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom
It is heartening to know that Ileana Ros Lehtinen does have some influence with the president after all. One would suppose that she would have a great deal of influence, since her constituency is responsible for making George Bush president, as he has acknowledged. Her influence and that of the other Cuban congressmen is not enough to get the president to rescind Clinton's "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy. It is not enough for him to offer the Cuban people more than empty platitudes which most of his predecessor could have uttered and many did. It did suffice, however, to get Dr. Oscar Biscet the Presidential Medal of Freedom at Ros Lehtinen's recommendation. We have discussed that recommendation already; in it she calls Biscet the new "Titan de Bronce" [Maceo], which is pretty much giving with one hand and taking with the other. Still, even if the Presidential Medal has been degraded by past recipients, which include Mandela [terrorist], Robert McNamara [traitor], Robert Baldwin [Communist] , Jesse Jackson [con-man], Jimmy Carter [shill for tyrants], it still retains enough symbolism and cachet to be worth receiving; certainly the award to Biscet will restore some of its lost luster. I can't help observing, however, that if past recipients had the right to blackball new recipients, poor Biscet wouldn't have a chance of joining the confraternity.
Still, it's irksome that even in the last days of his administration, when he literally has nothing to lose — having already lost everything including honor — Bush will not go beyond a symbolic gesture when it comes to Cuba. In the end as in the beginning, we get words, honeyed words, spirited words, even martial words, but, ultimately, just words, words, words; and our beleagured countrymen, or at least one of them, gets a medal. Not much to show for nearly 8 years of unconditional fealty to Bush, but still as much as we have ever gotten from any American president.
The Medal may also provide additional protection to Biscet (though not as much as Gore's Nobel would have). The Castro regime may think twice before imprisoning him again because of the additional publicity. Or not. It depends on their whims, as do the lives of all our countrymen. In the last seven years those lives have not been improved in any way because George Bush was president.
Still, it's irksome that even in the last days of his administration, when he literally has nothing to lose — having already lost everything including honor — Bush will not go beyond a symbolic gesture when it comes to Cuba. In the end as in the beginning, we get words, honeyed words, spirited words, even martial words, but, ultimately, just words, words, words; and our beleagured countrymen, or at least one of them, gets a medal. Not much to show for nearly 8 years of unconditional fealty to Bush, but still as much as we have ever gotten from any American president.
The Medal may also provide additional protection to Biscet (though not as much as Gore's Nobel would have). The Castro regime may think twice before imprisoning him again because of the additional publicity. Or not. It depends on their whims, as do the lives of all our countrymen. In the last seven years those lives have not been improved in any way because George Bush was president.
Judge Jeri B. Cohen Stopped Dead in Her Tracks By Appellate Court
The party is over for Judge Jeri B. Cohen; she'll have to find another Cuban child to victimize: her attempt to resurrect Dred Scott and apply it to the youngest Cuban refugee has backfired in the worst possible way for her future prospects as a judge or dogcatcher. Miami's Third District Court of Appeals, in a ruling which The Miami Herald described as "terse" and which we will translate as devastating, held that Judge Cohen could not resume deliberations in the Elenita case, as she intended to do on Monday while the Appellate Court was still considering whether to vacate her decision in the first phase of the custody trial, where she found Rafael Izquierdo a marginally-fit father and set the stage for Elenita's return to him and eventual repatriation to Cuba.
The last time the lawless judge delivered herself of an opinion on this case it was to excoriate the Florida Department of Children and Families for having "misled" her in requesting that the trial be put on hold while the Appellate Court reviewed Judge Cohen's holding. But a week or so away from the spotlight was more than she could bear, and even though you can't restart the clock while the referees are in the field debating a play, she nonetheless challenged the authority of her superiors in order to reinstate her own in this case. She's probably berating herself as we speak because she did not make a summary judgment granting Izquierdo custody while she could.
Having set herself up a long time ago as an antagonist of the Cuban community, she obviously believes that it is as such that she will carry Janet Reno's banner in Florida. But it was not be. Her credentials as a Cuban-hater, however, are still formidable and it is not unlikely that she will she seek and obtain preferment now, if not from the voters at least from President Hillary Clinton. Judge Cohen is the kind of woman Hillary admires: she has no scrupples and a vulture's eye for the main chance (didn't I use that phrase to describe Val Prieto recently? No matter, it fits Cohen better).
The second phase of the case, called an endangerment hearing, will not proceed if the Appellate Court reverses Cohen's bootless decision that Rafael Izquierdo did not abandon or contribute to the abuse of his daughter. The evidence is so overwhelming that he did that it is inconceivable that the judges on the appellate court will be unanimous in their indifference to that fact. A rebuke from the appellate court is what Judge Cohen feared most. Time time and time again she justified her deficient magistracy by asserting that she was determined to do nothing that would cause an appeals court to overturn her findings. Clearly, it was never about doing what was in Elenita's bests interest, but, rather, what most served Judge Cohen's. The appellate court will, hopefully, redress that balance. It has started to do so already by rebuking Judge Cohen for her latest assault on the Constitution.
The last time the lawless judge delivered herself of an opinion on this case it was to excoriate the Florida Department of Children and Families for having "misled" her in requesting that the trial be put on hold while the Appellate Court reviewed Judge Cohen's holding. But a week or so away from the spotlight was more than she could bear, and even though you can't restart the clock while the referees are in the field debating a play, she nonetheless challenged the authority of her superiors in order to reinstate her own in this case. She's probably berating herself as we speak because she did not make a summary judgment granting Izquierdo custody while she could.
Having set herself up a long time ago as an antagonist of the Cuban community, she obviously believes that it is as such that she will carry Janet Reno's banner in Florida. But it was not be. Her credentials as a Cuban-hater, however, are still formidable and it is not unlikely that she will she seek and obtain preferment now, if not from the voters at least from President Hillary Clinton. Judge Cohen is the kind of woman Hillary admires: she has no scrupples and a vulture's eye for the main chance (didn't I use that phrase to describe Val Prieto recently? No matter, it fits Cohen better).
The second phase of the case, called an endangerment hearing, will not proceed if the Appellate Court reverses Cohen's bootless decision that Rafael Izquierdo did not abandon or contribute to the abuse of his daughter. The evidence is so overwhelming that he did that it is inconceivable that the judges on the appellate court will be unanimous in their indifference to that fact. A rebuke from the appellate court is what Judge Cohen feared most. Time time and time again she justified her deficient magistracy by asserting that she was determined to do nothing that would cause an appeals court to overturn her findings. Clearly, it was never about doing what was in Elenita's bests interest, but, rather, what most served Judge Cohen's. The appellate court will, hopefully, redress that balance. It has started to do so already by rebuking Judge Cohen for her latest assault on the Constitution.
Notable & Quotable: A Message to Al Gore
"You do not deserve the [Nobel] Peace Prize. The Ladies in White in Cuba do, the Monks in Burma do. Learn some humility from them and RETURN the prize already." — Charlie Bravo, "My Message to Al Gore," Black Sheep of Exile, October 13, 2007
I never asked Al Gore to return his Nobel Peace Prize; but now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense. An isolated act does not make an honorable man. Still, he has to start somewhere and it's late in the game. This gesture, at least, would show the world that he respects human suffering more than he does his own whining, and values humans themselves more than his father the tree. Those who confuse abstractions for truths will in time forget what truth is and fasten their hopes to the abstractions. If such a thing as global warning exists, there would be no more reason to consider it a threat than a blessing. In fact, life tends to prosper where warmth prevails and decline where cold does. One of the world's oldest jokes is the Vikings' name for the huge frozen island atop Denmark — Greenland. Yet the joke is not so funny anymore. In fact, it is no joke at all anymore. We are living in the age of the greening of Greenland. If this is any indication of what the future holds, global warming, supposing such a thing exists, could be the greatest boon that ever befell this planet. Nevertheless, Gore and his co-religionists have evolved their own brand of secular Christian Science and Seventh-Day Adventism which is at heart a millenarian cult for the New Age. 30 years ago Gore and his ilk thought that the planet would die from overpopulation: too few resources and too many mouths at the table. These even breaker Malthusians were wrong. What happened, on the contrary, at least in the places they inhabited — that is, the West — was a precipitous drop in the birth rate which threatens to wipe out within another 50 years the tribe of Goths and Huns, indeed, most of Western Europe. Too worried about Indians and Chinese reproducing, they stopped reproducing themselves; the Arabs and Africans took up the slack in their very countries and now democratic Europe will belong to them in 50 years if Europe remains democratic. What was forestalled at Lepanto has been consummated without wars or unacceptable levels of social upheaval in three generations. Bush is refighting the Crusades when the demographic war has already been lost and the crusaders are in full retreat. If ever there was a scenario that invited Westerners to "Make Love Not War," this is it.
So, no, Al Gore's fantasies about the earth are no more tenable than any other Utopian's conceptions of the future. Gore is a Utopian, too, but his dream, like the superannuated dream of the Marxists, cannot be realized except by turning the world on its head and the consequent headache is likely to last for decades while the world again sorts out the eternal verities.
Spare the world the trouble, Al Gore, and renounce your ridiculous pretensions to relevancy; decline the award, or, at least, dedicate it to those like the Cuban dissidents who actually believe that peace is possible, that a better world is possible; not those, like yourself, who are actually counting on the destruction of the world through climactic changes as a vindication of your improvisations on a "Brave New World."
Al Gore has until December 10, 2007, the date of the Awards Ceremony, to reconsider whether he should decline the Nobel Peace Prize. Too bad the Nobel Committee doesn't have until then to re-consider its award.
I never asked Al Gore to return his Nobel Peace Prize; but now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense. An isolated act does not make an honorable man. Still, he has to start somewhere and it's late in the game. This gesture, at least, would show the world that he respects human suffering more than he does his own whining, and values humans themselves more than his father the tree. Those who confuse abstractions for truths will in time forget what truth is and fasten their hopes to the abstractions. If such a thing as global warning exists, there would be no more reason to consider it a threat than a blessing. In fact, life tends to prosper where warmth prevails and decline where cold does. One of the world's oldest jokes is the Vikings' name for the huge frozen island atop Denmark — Greenland. Yet the joke is not so funny anymore. In fact, it is no joke at all anymore. We are living in the age of the greening of Greenland. If this is any indication of what the future holds, global warming, supposing such a thing exists, could be the greatest boon that ever befell this planet. Nevertheless, Gore and his co-religionists have evolved their own brand of secular Christian Science and Seventh-Day Adventism which is at heart a millenarian cult for the New Age. 30 years ago Gore and his ilk thought that the planet would die from overpopulation: too few resources and too many mouths at the table. These even breaker Malthusians were wrong. What happened, on the contrary, at least in the places they inhabited — that is, the West — was a precipitous drop in the birth rate which threatens to wipe out within another 50 years the tribe of Goths and Huns, indeed, most of Western Europe. Too worried about Indians and Chinese reproducing, they stopped reproducing themselves; the Arabs and Africans took up the slack in their very countries and now democratic Europe will belong to them in 50 years if Europe remains democratic. What was forestalled at Lepanto has been consummated without wars or unacceptable levels of social upheaval in three generations. Bush is refighting the Crusades when the demographic war has already been lost and the crusaders are in full retreat. If ever there was a scenario that invited Westerners to "Make Love Not War," this is it.
So, no, Al Gore's fantasies about the earth are no more tenable than any other Utopian's conceptions of the future. Gore is a Utopian, too, but his dream, like the superannuated dream of the Marxists, cannot be realized except by turning the world on its head and the consequent headache is likely to last for decades while the world again sorts out the eternal verities.
Spare the world the trouble, Al Gore, and renounce your ridiculous pretensions to relevancy; decline the award, or, at least, dedicate it to those like the Cuban dissidents who actually believe that peace is possible, that a better world is possible; not those, like yourself, who are actually counting on the destruction of the world through climactic changes as a vindication of your improvisations on a "Brave New World."
Al Gore has until December 10, 2007, the date of the Awards Ceremony, to reconsider whether he should decline the Nobel Peace Prize. Too bad the Nobel Committee doesn't have until then to re-consider its award.
Monday, October 29, 2007
More Horrible Than You Imagined: The Poetry of Jimmy Carter
We shall not offer you much of it. That would be cruel, and public sinners interested in expiating their crimes can recourse to Carter's books, poetical or prosaic, and administer as much tonic as will purge their minds of evil thoughts and replace them with blessed vacuity. The presidential poet (or should that be poetical president) has writing 7 books of verse, which can best be described as the musings of Dr. Seuss in a serious mode. Our personal favorite is "Of Possum and Fatback," but the following is undoubtedly his masterpiece. The payoff is in the last line (but don't read it till the end):
Considering the Void
When I behold the charm
of evening skies, their lulling endurance;
the patterns of stars with names
of bears and dogs, a swan, a virgin;
other planets that the Voyager showed
were like and so unlike our own,
with all their diverse moons,
bright discs, weird rings, and cratered faces;
comets with their streaming tails
bent by pressure from our sun;
the skyscape of our Milky Way
holding in its shimmering disc
an infinity of suns
(or say a thousand billion);
knowing there are holes of darkness
gulping mass and even light,
knowing that this galaxy of ours
is one of multitudes
in what we call the heavens,
it troubles me. It troubles me.
***
This is one of our Jimmy Carter filler posts, which we insert when we are going to proceed from a light to a serious subject. Expect a very serious post forthcoming.
Considering the Void
When I behold the charm
of evening skies, their lulling endurance;
the patterns of stars with names
of bears and dogs, a swan, a virgin;
other planets that the Voyager showed
were like and so unlike our own,
with all their diverse moons,
bright discs, weird rings, and cratered faces;
comets with their streaming tails
bent by pressure from our sun;
the skyscape of our Milky Way
holding in its shimmering disc
an infinity of suns
(or say a thousand billion);
knowing there are holes of darkness
gulping mass and even light,
knowing that this galaxy of ours
is one of multitudes
in what we call the heavens,
it troubles me. It troubles me.
This is one of our Jimmy Carter filler posts, which we insert when we are going to proceed from a light to a serious subject. Expect a very serious post forthcoming.
Notable & Quotable: A Hipster Blasts Val & Henry
"Having Henry or Val speak for the hardliner ideology is comparable to having 50 Cent represent rap music... there may be an important message there but the messenger is intellectually incapable of delivering it in a proper manner. Hardliners desperately need someone who can take the high road and articulate their position without resorting to the scatological attacks that those two inevitably resort to when discussing the issues. That alone would add some credibility to their views and opinions." Alfredo, Stuck on the Palmetto, October 28, 2007
"Saint Louis" Redux
If you have not read enough already about the St. Louis, the famous "ship of the damned" by FDR, the thread has increased exponentially since you last visited it, as have the insults and acrimonious air of the discussion. Cuba's detractors cannot and will never get the better of me in an argument, but that doesn't stop them from trying.
Here a sample from a recent exchange at Klotz As In Blood:
Sean Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 9:13 am
The whole thrust of the Nurenberg trials was that “just following orders” is an insufficient justification for commiting immoral acts. If the excuse offered above that President Bru is innocent of evil because all he was doing was following orders — presumably from the United States — then I fear he comes out the worse, not exonerated.
When it comes to handling the woes of European Jews, my people (the Irish) behaved no better than anybody else in this episode. At one time or another we are all guilty of something, lads, and in this sordid affair we share the shame. Manuel A Tellechea seems unable to own up to it, which sadly reflects on his grasp of the lesson.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Sean:
The Archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland ordered all church bells to be rung in Ireland when the news of Hitler’s death was announced over German Radio. Hitler, after all, was a Catholic leader and enemy of perfidious Albion. The Archbishop later regretted it — not because Hitler was Hitler but because Hitler was a suicide.
P.S.: Sean, if Cuban President Laredo Bru was guilty of following Roosevelt’s orders, then whose orders was Roosevelt following? Hitler’s?
Here a sample from a recent exchange at Klotz As In Blood:
Sean Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 9:13 am
The whole thrust of the Nurenberg trials was that “just following orders” is an insufficient justification for commiting immoral acts. If the excuse offered above that President Bru is innocent of evil because all he was doing was following orders — presumably from the United States — then I fear he comes out the worse, not exonerated.
When it comes to handling the woes of European Jews, my people (the Irish) behaved no better than anybody else in this episode. At one time or another we are all guilty of something, lads, and in this sordid affair we share the shame. Manuel A Tellechea seems unable to own up to it, which sadly reflects on his grasp of the lesson.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 29th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Sean:
The Archbishop of Armagh and primate of Ireland ordered all church bells to be rung in Ireland when the news of Hitler’s death was announced over German Radio. Hitler, after all, was a Catholic leader and enemy of perfidious Albion. The Archbishop later regretted it — not because Hitler was Hitler but because Hitler was a suicide.
P.S.: Sean, if Cuban President Laredo Bru was guilty of following Roosevelt’s orders, then whose orders was Roosevelt following? Hitler’s?
The Voyage of the "St. Louis" (1939): FDR's "Hour of Infamy" (Among Many)
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Notable & Quotable: George Bush's Contribution to Bilingual Education
"I've enjoyed a lot your Bushisms, and I certainly use them in my everyday conversation just to spice it up a tad, and for that I am grateful, since they have served to mask my mistakes in English. At this point, I don't pretend to speak the King's English anymore, I am versed and fluent in the English of the President." — Charlie Bravo, "Presidential Advice" [Letter to George W. Bush], Killcastro blog, October 28, 2007
Na, Charlie, you could teach GW quite a few things about English. Remember, no child left behind.
http://killkasstro.blogspot.com/2007/10/presidential-advice.html
Na, Charlie, you could teach GW quite a few things about English. Remember, no child left behind.
http://killkasstro.blogspot.com/2007/10/presidential-advice.html
First Cuban Martyr, Fray José López Piteira, Beatified In Rome Today
Along with 498 other martyrs for the faith in Spain's Civil War (1936-39).
A Catholic bishop in Holland recently proposed in all seriousness that Christians refer to God as "Allah," which he thinks would work wonders in Christian-Islamic relations, and he is right, of course. Facing Mecca while praying five times a day would work more wonders still and formal conversion to Islam would be the greatest wonder of all. Reconciliation can always be effected if one party capitulates to the other because there can be no contention where one party declines to contend. This is contingent, of course, on one party having nothing to contend over. Apparently, in the eyes of its harshest critics, the Catholic Church shouldn't contend about anything, least of all matters of faith; but become all-inclusive even if, in the process, it ends up representing nothing.
Leftists in Rome were protesting today the beautification of 498 Spanish martyrs (one Cuban by birth) who were murdered by the Spanish Republicans in the Civil War (1936-39). Why were they protesting? You would scarely believe it.
Every side in every war is permitted to have its own martyrs and honor them in the way it thinks best. The Catholics honor their martyrs by elevating them to sainthood; beautification being the next to last step in that process (canonization is the last).
So guess what the upholders of the Stalinist side in the Spain's Civil War want? Yes, they want the Church to honor the Stalinist "martyrs," to make them Catholic saints too. If it were not so arrogant and non-sensical, their presumptiousness would actually be amusing. Yet they are in deadly earnest, which shows that the world we inherited from our fathers is definitely not the world that we will pass on to our sons.
So what does the future hold? Beliefs will count for nothing. All that will matter is equal representation. Rather than a heaven and a hell, there will be only a place equally heaven and hell, not the old purgatory but the new laboratory; and rather than saints and sinners there will only be victims of God to whom God is beholden to provide a better world regardless of their merits.
Moral relativism is the greatest threat facing the Church — not the contest between good and evil, but the nullification of that contest. In short, the end of civilization and the beginning of what could be called "The Counter-Civilization."
A Catholic bishop in Holland recently proposed in all seriousness that Christians refer to God as "Allah," which he thinks would work wonders in Christian-Islamic relations, and he is right, of course. Facing Mecca while praying five times a day would work more wonders still and formal conversion to Islam would be the greatest wonder of all. Reconciliation can always be effected if one party capitulates to the other because there can be no contention where one party declines to contend. This is contingent, of course, on one party having nothing to contend over. Apparently, in the eyes of its harshest critics, the Catholic Church shouldn't contend about anything, least of all matters of faith; but become all-inclusive even if, in the process, it ends up representing nothing.
Leftists in Rome were protesting today the beautification of 498 Spanish martyrs (one Cuban by birth) who were murdered by the Spanish Republicans in the Civil War (1936-39). Why were they protesting? You would scarely believe it.
Every side in every war is permitted to have its own martyrs and honor them in the way it thinks best. The Catholics honor their martyrs by elevating them to sainthood; beautification being the next to last step in that process (canonization is the last).
So guess what the upholders of the Stalinist side in the Spain's Civil War want? Yes, they want the Church to honor the Stalinist "martyrs," to make them Catholic saints too. If it were not so arrogant and non-sensical, their presumptiousness would actually be amusing. Yet they are in deadly earnest, which shows that the world we inherited from our fathers is definitely not the world that we will pass on to our sons.
So what does the future hold? Beliefs will count for nothing. All that will matter is equal representation. Rather than a heaven and a hell, there will be only a place equally heaven and hell, not the old purgatory but the new laboratory; and rather than saints and sinners there will only be victims of God to whom God is beholden to provide a better world regardless of their merits.
Moral relativism is the greatest threat facing the Church — not the contest between good and evil, but the nullification of that contest. In short, the end of civilization and the beginning of what could be called "The Counter-Civilization."
Blog Review: Claudia4Liberty
It would be true to say that Claudia Fanelli's blog, Claudia4Liberty, is the best new blog about Cuba written by a non-Cuban, but that would do her a great injustice; first, because her blog is as good as any Cuban-American blog and better than most; and, secondly, because in her devotion to Cuba she is as pure and disinterested as any Cuban blogger. If there were more Americans like Claudia, there would be no need for more Cubans like me. That is, Cubans who feel dutybound as myself to pull out the thousand knives that the U.S. has stuck in Cuba's back over the last 200 years and especially over the last 48.
I commend her blog to your attention, and Ms. Fanelli herself to the special place in our hearts where Cubans hold "El Inglesito" (General Henry Reeve) and all Americans like Reeve who have selflessly aided us in the conquest of our liberty and independence when their government would not.
***
For more information on Blooklyn-born Cuban General Henry Reeve (1850-1876), see "Comments" section.
http://claudia4libertad.typepad.com/
I commend her blog to your attention, and Ms. Fanelli herself to the special place in our hearts where Cubans hold "El Inglesito" (General Henry Reeve) and all Americans like Reeve who have selflessly aided us in the conquest of our liberty and independence when their government would not.
For more information on Blooklyn-born Cuban General Henry Reeve (1850-1876), see "Comments" section.
http://claudia4libertad.typepad.com/
RCAB News: We are #1 in France
... Chelles, Ile-de-France; Colmar, Alsace; Charenton-le-Pont, Ile-de-France; Rennes, Bretagne; Albi, Midi-Pyranees; Coudebec-Is-Elbeuf, Haute Normandie; Nennecy, Iler-de-France; Paris, Ile-de-France; Melun, Ile-de-France; Rambouillet, Picardie; Roboix, Nord-Pas-de-Calais ... and that's only within the last hour at midday on a Sunday. In the wee-morning hours, Frenchmen are the mainstay of this blog.
With such a deluge of visitors from France, the Review of Cuban-American Blogs has caught on there like Edgar Allan Poe or Jerry Lewis.
I've yet to figure out why. But the trend is already months old.
In any case,
Vive la France!
With such a deluge of visitors from France, the Review of Cuban-American Blogs has caught on there like Edgar Allan Poe or Jerry Lewis.
I've yet to figure out why. But the trend is already months old.
In any case,
Vive la France!
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Why Father Félix Varela Has Not Been Elevated to Sainthood and Never Will Be
515 years after the introduction of Catholism in Cuba, there is still no Cuban saint, or, rather, the Catholic Church has yet to conclude officially that a single Cuban has met all requisites of sainthood. Since the pope recently eliminated purgatory (or limbo) that leaves only one other place for departed Cubans to moor. Of course, the Church herself admits that she does not know the identity of all her saints nor could canonize all if she did. So it is conceivable, indeed, even probable, that there might be a Cuban or two in the heavenly legions whose recognition has escaped the Church.
The most famous Cuban postulant for sainthood is the Venerable Father Félix Varela, who deserves to be not only a saint but a doctor of the Church. On his visit to Cuba in 1998 Pope John Paul II prayed before the urn containing Varela's ashes in the Great Hall of Havana University but did not canonize him. This was highly unusual because the culmination of papal visits to foreign countries was always the canonization of a native son. Cuba, which had no native saint and could have used one after decades of official atheism, was denied its most fervent wish to embrace Varela as that saint. John Paul II sprinkled the world liberally with saints, creating more in his pontificate than all previous popes in the 2000-year history of the Church. Most of the new saints were Italian (as usual), followed closely by Poles (a coincidence, no doubt) and Spaniards. John Paul II even managed to elevate 300 Japanese martyrs to sainthood, which was probably every Japanese Catholic who ever lived (we exaggerate to make a point).
But no Cuban was judged worthy of saintly investiture, not even Varela, especially not Varela, because he thought too much and wrote too much. His ashes, remember, are at the University of Havana, not the Cathedral of Havana. The Catholic Church prefers saints that don't leave a paper trail. Fray José López Pitiera, who will become the first Cuban to be beatified tomorrow in St. Peter's Square, was martyred at 25 and left behind not a single letter or note and scarcely a signature; everything was consumed in the Spanish Civil War with his life. Such a candidate is the ideal candidate for sainthood, literally heaven sent. Blind faith always trumps informed faith. That is one of the lessons of the New Testament which the Church takes most to heart.
Varela's faith and pity are beyond question, as is the heroic virtue he displayed throughtout his life. His writings have been picked apart for decades by theologians who have never been able to find even one line that deviated from Catholic dogma. He may have been canonical but he was also a humanist, and, dare I say, a freethinker. Varela was as much a child of the Enlightenment as he was a Scholastic, a patriot the same as a churchman, a Cuban no less than a Catholic. And there, as they say, is the rub. The patriot cancels out the priest. He must have been a very great patriot indeed to cancel out the exemplary priest.
Exiled from Cuba and sentenced to death by Spain for having voted at the Cortes (Spanish parlement) to depose the pig-king Ferdinand VII, Varela fled to New York, the first Cuban exile. There he eventually became Vicar General of the New York Diocese. His special apostolate was to New York's recently arrived Irish immigrants, who were as detested and persecuted in the 19th century as Hispanics are today in this country. Varela built the first Catholic schools for them (open to both sexes, for the first time); the first mutual aid society; the first orphanages; and the first parish to cater to their spiritual and material needs, in the notorious Five Corners section were most of them lived. The Irish clamored for Varela to be their bishop, but Spain vetoed his selection because Varela continued to agitate for Cuba's independence from New York, creating, through his patriotic writings, a distinctive Cuban consciousness and nationality. Martí himself journeyed to Varela's grave, then in St. Augustine, FL, to pay homage to "the man who taught us to think" and consecrate his work of liberation to him.
Some believe that it is the Spanish hierarchy which is now blocking Varela's elevation to sainthood as it once vetoed him as bishop of New York. The former home of the Inquisition could not forgive the Cuban priest who thundered against it in parlement until it was abolished; nor the relentless champion of emancipation, which would have threatened the interests of the Church in Cuba, where it was the largest private landholder. Varela wanted to purify Spain, its politics and its religion. Only if he had attacked bullfighting would he have made himself more odious to Spaniards. All these bones of contention have long been buried and forgotten. But not the animus which they provoked in reactionary elements in the Church.
So it appears that whether it is because he is too wise, too liberal, too unlike those who opposed him in life and now oppose him in death, Félix Varela will never be canonized. In short, he is too great to be a saint. Perhaps it is just as well. His country and his church must be worthy of him before they can claim him.
POSTSCRIPT:
Mi Tres Cubano said...
The most famous Cuban postulant for sainthood is the Venerable Father Félix Varela, who deserves to be not only a saint but a doctor of the Church. On his visit to Cuba in 1998 Pope John Paul II prayed before the urn containing Varela's ashes in the Great Hall of Havana University but did not canonize him. This was highly unusual because the culmination of papal visits to foreign countries was always the canonization of a native son. Cuba, which had no native saint and could have used one after decades of official atheism, was denied its most fervent wish to embrace Varela as that saint. John Paul II sprinkled the world liberally with saints, creating more in his pontificate than all previous popes in the 2000-year history of the Church. Most of the new saints were Italian (as usual), followed closely by Poles (a coincidence, no doubt) and Spaniards. John Paul II even managed to elevate 300 Japanese martyrs to sainthood, which was probably every Japanese Catholic who ever lived (we exaggerate to make a point).
But no Cuban was judged worthy of saintly investiture, not even Varela, especially not Varela, because he thought too much and wrote too much. His ashes, remember, are at the University of Havana, not the Cathedral of Havana. The Catholic Church prefers saints that don't leave a paper trail. Fray José López Pitiera, who will become the first Cuban to be beatified tomorrow in St. Peter's Square, was martyred at 25 and left behind not a single letter or note and scarcely a signature; everything was consumed in the Spanish Civil War with his life. Such a candidate is the ideal candidate for sainthood, literally heaven sent. Blind faith always trumps informed faith. That is one of the lessons of the New Testament which the Church takes most to heart.
Varela's faith and pity are beyond question, as is the heroic virtue he displayed throughtout his life. His writings have been picked apart for decades by theologians who have never been able to find even one line that deviated from Catholic dogma. He may have been canonical but he was also a humanist, and, dare I say, a freethinker. Varela was as much a child of the Enlightenment as he was a Scholastic, a patriot the same as a churchman, a Cuban no less than a Catholic. And there, as they say, is the rub. The patriot cancels out the priest. He must have been a very great patriot indeed to cancel out the exemplary priest.
Exiled from Cuba and sentenced to death by Spain for having voted at the Cortes (Spanish parlement) to depose the pig-king Ferdinand VII, Varela fled to New York, the first Cuban exile. There he eventually became Vicar General of the New York Diocese. His special apostolate was to New York's recently arrived Irish immigrants, who were as detested and persecuted in the 19th century as Hispanics are today in this country. Varela built the first Catholic schools for them (open to both sexes, for the first time); the first mutual aid society; the first orphanages; and the first parish to cater to their spiritual and material needs, in the notorious Five Corners section were most of them lived. The Irish clamored for Varela to be their bishop, but Spain vetoed his selection because Varela continued to agitate for Cuba's independence from New York, creating, through his patriotic writings, a distinctive Cuban consciousness and nationality. Martí himself journeyed to Varela's grave, then in St. Augustine, FL, to pay homage to "the man who taught us to think" and consecrate his work of liberation to him.
Some believe that it is the Spanish hierarchy which is now blocking Varela's elevation to sainthood as it once vetoed him as bishop of New York. The former home of the Inquisition could not forgive the Cuban priest who thundered against it in parlement until it was abolished; nor the relentless champion of emancipation, which would have threatened the interests of the Church in Cuba, where it was the largest private landholder. Varela wanted to purify Spain, its politics and its religion. Only if he had attacked bullfighting would he have made himself more odious to Spaniards. All these bones of contention have long been buried and forgotten. But not the animus which they provoked in reactionary elements in the Church.
So it appears that whether it is because he is too wise, too liberal, too unlike those who opposed him in life and now oppose him in death, Félix Varela will never be canonized. In short, he is too great to be a saint. Perhaps it is just as well. His country and his church must be worthy of him before they can claim him.
POSTSCRIPT:
Mi Tres Cubano said...
Well, it is not so much that he had a paper trail, but his paper trail was highly politicized and applicable for today. Whereas San Antonio María Claret, who was the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, left a tremendous paper trail but was careful about leaving too much of his political thoughts around.
A canonization of Varela is possible. And I pray his novena when I can, as well as pray for his beatification. The problem is that so long as Varela is used as a political weapon (particularly against castro) the Vatican will use caution in pushing his cause. Not so much because they are for or against castro, but rather, it is done to keep the focus and motive for the canonization clear. Chances are, we may see a San [Félix] Varela only after a Cuba Libre.
It is this same political weight that I bet is slowing the process for JPII down as well.
10/29/2007 2:11 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
A canonization of Varela is possible. And I pray his novena when I can, as well as pray for his beatification. The problem is that so long as Varela is used as a political weapon (particularly against castro) the Vatican will use caution in pushing his cause. Not so much because they are for or against castro, but rather, it is done to keep the focus and motive for the canonization clear. Chances are, we may see a San [Félix] Varela only after a Cuba Libre.
It is this same political weight that I bet is slowing the process for JPII down as well.
10/29/2007 2:11 AM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
mi tres cubano:
So what you are saying, in effect, is that the Vatican does not want Varela to be used as a "weapon" to win Cuba's freedom. In that case, nothing has changed in 175 years. Claret had a great advantage over Varela: he was Queen Isabel's II confessor. He was also a Spaniard. His ministry in Cuba was heroic and beneficial to the Cuban people, but he was not born in Cuba and was never really embraced by Cubans as a native saint. The same may happen with Blessed Fray José López Pitiera, who although born in Cuba returned to Spain with his parents at age 5 and never saw Cuba again. Of course, if he had returned to Cuba or availed himself of his Cuban citizenship, he would not be a martyr.
I disagree with you in respect to John Paul II's canonization. He is definitely on the "fast track." In his case, the Church does want to use his popularity on her own behalf. If Princess Diana had been a Catholic (which, of course, was legally impossible as the wife of the heir apparent to the British throne), she may just have beaten the late pope to sainthood. After all, there are now more Catholics in England and Scotland than Anglicans for the first time since Henry VIII split the Church.
As for John Paul II, I hope the Vatican will consider his praise of "Che" Guevara when debating his cause. Of course, they never took into consideration Mother Teresa's praise of Castro.
While declining to beatify Varela, John Paul II did beatify Pope Pius IX, who blessed the Spanish troops that fought against the mambises and called theirs (the Spaniards') a "holy cause."
John Paul gave a "push" to practically all his immediate papal predecessors on the road to sainthood except the one who was unquestionably a saint and wellspring of miracles — Pope Pope Pius XII. Although John Paul II believed in Pius XII's cause above all others, he did not have the moral courage to advance it and confront so such calumny and vilification. The sun left its orbit in Pius XII's presence but that was not enough to overcome the world's obliquity.
Sainthood today has become a funtion (or weapon) of Vatican politics. Maybe it always was.
So what you are saying, in effect, is that the Vatican does not want Varela to be used as a "weapon" to win Cuba's freedom. In that case, nothing has changed in 175 years. Claret had a great advantage over Varela: he was Queen Isabel's II confessor. He was also a Spaniard. His ministry in Cuba was heroic and beneficial to the Cuban people, but he was not born in Cuba and was never really embraced by Cubans as a native saint. The same may happen with Blessed Fray José López Pitiera, who although born in Cuba returned to Spain with his parents at age 5 and never saw Cuba again. Of course, if he had returned to Cuba or availed himself of his Cuban citizenship, he would not be a martyr.
I disagree with you in respect to John Paul II's canonization. He is definitely on the "fast track." In his case, the Church does want to use his popularity on her own behalf. If Princess Diana had been a Catholic (which, of course, was legally impossible as the wife of the heir apparent to the British throne), she may just have beaten the late pope to sainthood. After all, there are now more Catholics in England and Scotland than Anglicans for the first time since Henry VIII split the Church.
As for John Paul II, I hope the Vatican will consider his praise of "Che" Guevara when debating his cause. Of course, they never took into consideration Mother Teresa's praise of Castro.
While declining to beatify Varela, John Paul II did beatify Pope Pius IX, who blessed the Spanish troops that fought against the mambises and called theirs (the Spaniards') a "holy cause."
John Paul gave a "push" to practically all his immediate papal predecessors on the road to sainthood except the one who was unquestionably a saint and wellspring of miracles — Pope Pope Pius XII. Although John Paul II believed in Pius XII's cause above all others, he did not have the moral courage to advance it and confront so such calumny and vilification. The sun left its orbit in Pius XII's presence but that was not enough to overcome the world's obliquity.
Sainthood today has become a funtion (or weapon) of Vatican politics. Maybe it always was.
Anyone Leary of Jimmy Carter's "Leary UFO?"
President Jimmy Carter reported that he saw a UFO above Leary, Ga., in 1969. He filed a report about the sighting to the International UFO Bureau and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena in 1973 [click on picture to view actual report].
If this had been known in 1976, Jimmy Carter would not have been elected president.
Today, it helps to explain everything.
If this had been known in 1976, Jimmy Carter would not have been elected president.
Today, it helps to explain everything.
This is one of our Jimmy Carter filler posts, which we insert when we are going to proceed from a light to a serious subject. Expect a very serious post forthcoming.
Friday, October 26, 2007
Of "Che" Guevara's Hair and Napoleon's Penis
Gustavo Villoldo has had his payday at long last and I couldn't be happier for him. If everything else has been commercialized about "Che" Guevara, why not his goldilocks? The old freedom fighter will receive $100,000 (minus commission) for a tress of "Che" Guevara's hair which Villoldo snipped 40 years ago before burying the serial killer. The hair was offered by Heritage Auctions of Dallas, TX, which said there had been only one bidder for "Che's" hair, who won it at the reserve price. It's good to know that there is only one person in this world fool enough to bid for it. "Che's" greatest dupe is a Dallas bookseller named Bill Butler (there goes your 15 seconds). There's a sucker born every minute and since 1963 spawning suckers has been Dallas' major industry. Well, enjoy the hair, Bill. Villoldo will enjoy the 100,000 bills. He can also tell you, for a price, where the head to which the hair was once attached is buried, and it isn't in "Che" Guevara's mausoleum in Santa Clara, Cuba. If you are interested, Bill. Personally, I wouldn't mind having "Che's" skull on my desk. Although I don't smoke, I would take up the habit in his honor. I can also think of other uses less decorous than an ashtray. The people who would call me a monster — but would never call "Che" one — don't read this blog.
Pity Villoldo wasn't more creative. He might be taking home a million dollar check rather than $100,000. There was so much more that he could have snipped from the corpse of "Che" Guevara, who, contrary to his statement upon being apprehended, was worth more to his captors dead than alive.
The priest who administered last rites to Napoleon, Abbé Vignoli, snipped (or purloined) the "Little Corporal's" penis (that's all I'll say on the subject) in the course of the autopsy practiced on him by his personal physician, Dr. Francesco Antomarcchi. Napoleon's manservant, Ali, admitted in his Memoirs, published in the Revue de mondes, in 1852, that Vignoli and him had removed "bits of Napoleon" during his autopsy as "souvenirs." What a souvenir! "Look, do you see that in my curio cabinet, it's Napoleon's penis, really!" The appendage was been compared to a maltreated piece of leather shoelace or a shrivelled eel (defenders of the Imperial honor contend that only a part of it was removed).
Napoleon's dessicated penis was sold by Vignoli's heirs for $2000 in 1916 to a Philadelphia bibliophile, A.S.W. Rosenbach, who displayed it for years at the Museum of French Art, in New York. It was last put under the gavel (so to speak) at a Paris auction house in 1977. The winning bidder was John Kingsley Lattimer, professor emeritus and former chairman of the department of urology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He paid $38,000 for Napoleon's pride.
Professor Lattimer had an interesting history himself. He was the attending physician to the defendents at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. He also owned Lincoln's bloodstained collar and the glass ampoule that contained the dose of cyanide used by Hermann Goring to cheat the hangman (if Goring's penis is missing, they know where to look). He authored books on Lincoln's assassination and JFK's. His interest in Napoleon's penis was not merely professional; he believed that Napoleon, too, had been assassinated, poisoned by his personal physician at the orders of his British jailers (I wonder if they used cyanide too; no, probably arsenic).
The distinguished Dr. Lattimer, who discovered a cure for renal tuberculosis and is the father of pediatric urology, died earlier this year at the age of 92. Napoleon's penis is now owned by the doctor's daughter. It is the first time since Napoleon's death that a woman has owned Napoleon's penis. This unique item of napoleona now resides with its owner in Englewood, N.J.
The largest collection of Napoleon artifacts, sans the imperial penis, was assembled by the Cuban sugar magnate Julio Lobo, a Jewish-Cuban who admired the French emperor because he had enfranchised the Jews. His collection was confiscated by Fidel Castro at the triumph of the Revolution. It now is exhibited (what's left of it) at Havana's Napoleonic Museum. Napoleon's personal pistols, perhaps the most valuable item in the collection, were presented by Fidel Castro to Leonid Brezhnev.
Pity Villoldo wasn't more creative. He might be taking home a million dollar check rather than $100,000. There was so much more that he could have snipped from the corpse of "Che" Guevara, who, contrary to his statement upon being apprehended, was worth more to his captors dead than alive.
The priest who administered last rites to Napoleon, Abbé Vignoli, snipped (or purloined) the "Little Corporal's" penis (that's all I'll say on the subject) in the course of the autopsy practiced on him by his personal physician, Dr. Francesco Antomarcchi. Napoleon's manservant, Ali, admitted in his Memoirs, published in the Revue de mondes, in 1852, that Vignoli and him had removed "bits of Napoleon" during his autopsy as "souvenirs." What a souvenir! "Look, do you see that in my curio cabinet, it's Napoleon's penis, really!" The appendage was been compared to a maltreated piece of leather shoelace or a shrivelled eel (defenders of the Imperial honor contend that only a part of it was removed).
Napoleon's dessicated penis was sold by Vignoli's heirs for $2000 in 1916 to a Philadelphia bibliophile, A.S.W. Rosenbach, who displayed it for years at the Museum of French Art, in New York. It was last put under the gavel (so to speak) at a Paris auction house in 1977. The winning bidder was John Kingsley Lattimer, professor emeritus and former chairman of the department of urology at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. He paid $38,000 for Napoleon's pride.
Professor Lattimer had an interesting history himself. He was the attending physician to the defendents at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. He also owned Lincoln's bloodstained collar and the glass ampoule that contained the dose of cyanide used by Hermann Goring to cheat the hangman (if Goring's penis is missing, they know where to look). He authored books on Lincoln's assassination and JFK's. His interest in Napoleon's penis was not merely professional; he believed that Napoleon, too, had been assassinated, poisoned by his personal physician at the orders of his British jailers (I wonder if they used cyanide too; no, probably arsenic).
The distinguished Dr. Lattimer, who discovered a cure for renal tuberculosis and is the father of pediatric urology, died earlier this year at the age of 92. Napoleon's penis is now owned by the doctor's daughter. It is the first time since Napoleon's death that a woman has owned Napoleon's penis. This unique item of napoleona now resides with its owner in Englewood, N.J.
The largest collection of Napoleon artifacts, sans the imperial penis, was assembled by the Cuban sugar magnate Julio Lobo, a Jewish-Cuban who admired the French emperor because he had enfranchised the Jews. His collection was confiscated by Fidel Castro at the triumph of the Revolution. It now is exhibited (what's left of it) at Havana's Napoleonic Museum. Napoleon's personal pistols, perhaps the most valuable item in the collection, were presented by Fidel Castro to Leonid Brezhnev.
Picture: not Napoleon's penis, but claimed as Rasputin's.
Fierce and Fiery Me
From The Not Silent blog:
Belated thanks to Manuel Tellechea
Manuel is a fierce and fiery Cuban-American blogger who isn't afraid to tell it like he sees it, no matter who he's talking about. His blog has alienated some elements of we the exile community, but I as a Libertarian truly appreciate his concern first and foremost with the will of the Cuban people still stranded on the island.
It was with surprise that I realized that he wrote up my post on Joe Cubas from a few weeks ago and gave me some nice props. That was cool, especially since I mostly blog to get my music to people. But I had to rant about that one issue.
Gracias, Mr. T.
Posted by Julio Rey at 12:55 PM, October 25, 2007
Thank-you, Julio. "Honrar, honra," as Baltasar Gracián said (Martí was quoting him).
I am "fierce and fiery" with the enemies of our country and those who serve their interests, knowingly or not; but kind and gentle with Castro's victims, especially the youngest among them. Yes, that is me. And, although, as Julio Rey correctly says in his thank-you note, my "blog has alienated some elements of the exile community," I don't aim to be everybody's darling: the fact that they are wrong and I am right is enough for me.
I invite you visit Julio Rey's blog, especially if music is any part of your life. Julio is one of the few Cuban bloggers to have defended Elenita and deserves everybody's thanks for it.
http://juliorey.blogspot.com/
Belated thanks to Manuel Tellechea
Manuel is a fierce and fiery Cuban-American blogger who isn't afraid to tell it like he sees it, no matter who he's talking about. His blog has alienated some elements of we the exile community, but I as a Libertarian truly appreciate his concern first and foremost with the will of the Cuban people still stranded on the island.
It was with surprise that I realized that he wrote up my post on Joe Cubas from a few weeks ago and gave me some nice props. That was cool, especially since I mostly blog to get my music to people. But I had to rant about that one issue.
Gracias, Mr. T.
Posted by Julio Rey at 12:55 PM, October 25, 2007
Thank-you, Julio. "Honrar, honra," as Baltasar Gracián said (Martí was quoting him).
I am "fierce and fiery" with the enemies of our country and those who serve their interests, knowingly or not; but kind and gentle with Castro's victims, especially the youngest among them. Yes, that is me. And, although, as Julio Rey correctly says in his thank-you note, my "blog has alienated some elements of the exile community," I don't aim to be everybody's darling: the fact that they are wrong and I am right is enough for me.
I invite you visit Julio Rey's blog, especially if music is any part of your life. Julio is one of the few Cuban bloggers to have defended Elenita and deserves everybody's thanks for it.
http://juliorey.blogspot.com/
Notable & Stupid: Did You Know "Granma" Ignores the Opposition?
"On TV, 15 minutes worth of the speech were aired followed by 45 minutes of criticism of it. In print, all of the coverage is of course negative toward the president's remarks. Notice that they don't quote Guillermo Fariñas or Martha Beatriz Roque in Granma." — Henry Gómez, commenting on the state media's coverage of President Bush's speech on Cuba, Babalú blog, October 26, 2007
You don't say! They don't quote Fariñas or Roque in Granma? Who would have thought it!
You don't say! They don't quote Fariñas or Roque in Granma? Who would have thought it!
Notable & More Delusional Still: "Patrick Henry" Prieto Rides Again
"Freedom isn't going to knock on [the Cubans'] doors and ask to come in. It isn't going to arrive in a package from Hialeah or in the suitcase of a family member coming from abroad. Freedom is going to hide behind hunger. It's going to hide behind pain, it's going to hide behind sacrifice. It's going to hide behind bruises and in a pool of blood. And it's only going to be found when it is painstaking[ly] sought after, sought after with extreme hunger and empty bellies, with broken bones and bloody hands and with sheer desperation. There are 11 million people in Cuba, yet you see merely a handful standing firm in their convictions and against their government. Until that handful exponentially increases, not a damned thing will change." — Val Prieto, judging the Cuban people and passing sentence on them, Babalu blog, October 25, 2007
The rhetoric is worthy of Patrick Henry; the sentiments are not. Patrick Henry said: "Give me liberty or give me death." Val Prieto says: "Give me liberty or give them death." The "them" are the Cuban people.
While starving Cubans "with broken bones and bloody hands" are heroically confronting an enemy with its guns, tanks and bomber planes, Val Prieto will, no doubt, be blogging about it with bloody stumps for fingers. He may even decline an extra beer (although that may be taking patriotism too far).
Meanwhile, the Cuban people are a perpetual source of disappointment to Val. He believes himself to be deserving of another people, a braver people, a better people; one willing to throw themselves into the void in order that he may cross it.
I, on the other hand, am of the opposite opinion. I believe the Cuban people are deserving of a better Val. This Val has no right to judge them.
POSTSCRIPT:
Response to an Anonymous Commenter
I always try to fit what I write to the occasion. I did so when I wrote this post. The presumptiousness and arrogance of Val's comments on the courage (or, rather, the lack of courage) of the Cuban people deserved and received the response it got. 4000 Americans died in the American Revolution. More than a half-million Cubans died in Cuba's 19th-century wars of independence. To suggest that the descendents of the mambises lack courage is a canard. What they lack is opportunity. Two superpowers connived to enslave them for 30 years, and now a lunatic vent on succeeding Castro underwrites his machinery of repression. A people cannot rise in arms that has no arms; nor can they oppose tanks with fists. It was tried in Budapest in 1956; in Prague in 1968; and Tiananmen Square in 1989. It didn't work. In the past, Communism has been defeated in only 4 ways: a military mutiny as in the case of Spain (1936-39) and Chile (1973); direct U.S. intervention as in Greece (1948) and the Dominican Republic (1965); indirect U.S. intervention as in Central America and Afghanistan (1980s); or the internal implosion of the Communist system.
No mass uprising against a Communist regime has ever succeeded in a vacuum. It was the collapse of the Soviet Union that allowed the Eastern bloc countries to challenge their satraps and recover their long-lost freedom and independence. Without the collapse of the Soviet Union, Solidarity and Pope John Paul II would have been as helpless in the face of a Soviet invasion as their ancestors were in 1939 when the Polish cavalry gallantly (and hopelessly) charged Stalin's and Hitler's tanks.
This is what makes the present situation so difficult for Cubans to overcome. The regional hagemon (the U.S.) is perfectly content with Communism in Cuba; it reached an accomodation with Castro a long time ago and fears a post-Castro Cuba more than it does the Castro regime. Any regime, Communist or not, that can contain its citizens within its own borders has the nominal support of the U.S., and it appears that for now and the foreseeable future, only Castro will be able to be America's policeman in Cuba as the U.S. is his policeman on the high seas. The repatriation at gunpoint of fleeing refugees under the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy has literally brought that fact home to all Cubans.
The Cuban people, who are given too little credit by Val & Co., know their neighbor well and will not so much as throw a stone until they are sure that the U.S. is no longer the guarantor of Communism in Cuba as it has been since the days of the Kennedy-Khrushchev Pact (1962). It was not the Soviet Union that was an obstacle to freedom in Cuba. That is obvious now. It could not have saved its backwater client-state at such a remove from it, or under the nose of the U.S. were the U.S. disinclined to allow it. The real obstacle to Cuban freedom is and has always been the United States.
If the U.S. ever decides to stop propping up Castro, dispenses with the empty rhetoric and confronts the enemy within its doors — the long-announced and now consummated spread of Castroism to South America — then and only then will the Cuban people be prepared to sacrifice as their forebears sacrificed to obtain the freedom of which they were robbed in 1959 and not just by Castro.
The rhetoric is worthy of Patrick Henry; the sentiments are not. Patrick Henry said: "Give me liberty or give me death." Val Prieto says: "Give me liberty or give them death." The "them" are the Cuban people.
While starving Cubans "with broken bones and bloody hands" are heroically confronting an enemy with its guns, tanks and bomber planes, Val Prieto will, no doubt, be blogging about it with bloody stumps for fingers. He may even decline an extra beer (although that may be taking patriotism too far).
Meanwhile, the Cuban people are a perpetual source of disappointment to Val. He believes himself to be deserving of another people, a braver people, a better people; one willing to throw themselves into the void in order that he may cross it.
I, on the other hand, am of the opposite opinion. I believe the Cuban people are deserving of a better Val. This Val has no right to judge them.
POSTSCRIPT:
I always try to fit what I write to the occasion. I did so when I wrote this post. The presumptiousness and arrogance of Val's comments on the courage (or, rather, the lack of courage) of the Cuban people deserved and received the response it got. 4000 Americans died in the American Revolution. More than a half-million Cubans died in Cuba's 19th-century wars of independence. To suggest that the descendents of the mambises lack courage is a canard. What they lack is opportunity. Two superpowers connived to enslave them for 30 years, and now a lunatic vent on succeeding Castro underwrites his machinery of repression. A people cannot rise in arms that has no arms; nor can they oppose tanks with fists. It was tried in Budapest in 1956; in Prague in 1968; and Tiananmen Square in 1989. It didn't work. In the past, Communism has been defeated in only 4 ways: a military mutiny as in the case of Spain (1936-39) and Chile (1973); direct U.S. intervention as in Greece (1948) and the Dominican Republic (1965); indirect U.S. intervention as in Central America and Afghanistan (1980s); or the internal implosion of the Communist system.
No mass uprising against a Communist regime has ever succeeded in a vacuum. It was the collapse of the Soviet Union that allowed the Eastern bloc countries to challenge their satraps and recover their long-lost freedom and independence. Without the collapse of the Soviet Union, Solidarity and Pope John Paul II would have been as helpless in the face of a Soviet invasion as their ancestors were in 1939 when the Polish cavalry gallantly (and hopelessly) charged Stalin's and Hitler's tanks.
This is what makes the present situation so difficult for Cubans to overcome. The regional hagemon (the U.S.) is perfectly content with Communism in Cuba; it reached an accomodation with Castro a long time ago and fears a post-Castro Cuba more than it does the Castro regime. Any regime, Communist or not, that can contain its citizens within its own borders has the nominal support of the U.S., and it appears that for now and the foreseeable future, only Castro will be able to be America's policeman in Cuba as the U.S. is his policeman on the high seas. The repatriation at gunpoint of fleeing refugees under the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy has literally brought that fact home to all Cubans.
The Cuban people, who are given too little credit by Val & Co., know their neighbor well and will not so much as throw a stone until they are sure that the U.S. is no longer the guarantor of Communism in Cuba as it has been since the days of the Kennedy-Khrushchev Pact (1962). It was not the Soviet Union that was an obstacle to freedom in Cuba. That is obvious now. It could not have saved its backwater client-state at such a remove from it, or under the nose of the U.S. were the U.S. disinclined to allow it. The real obstacle to Cuban freedom is and has always been the United States.
If the U.S. ever decides to stop propping up Castro, dispenses with the empty rhetoric and confronts the enemy within its doors — the long-announced and now consummated spread of Castroism to South America — then and only then will the Cuban people be prepared to sacrifice as their forebears sacrificed to obtain the freedom of which they were robbed in 1959 and not just by Castro.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Notable & More Delusional: George Bush Is the Greatest "Cuban" Patriot
"So, you can criticize the President of the United States for dedicating a 40-minute speech to Cuba and not mentioning certain things, but, if you're going to do that, you better start at home first, brother. Because from where I stand, President Bush has done more up to right now for the freedom of the Cuban people than most of the Cuban people have done themselves." — Val Prieto, Babalú blog, October 25, 2007
Oh, my god, GW has replaced Gloria Estefan as the greatest Cuban patriot. You will all remember that Val Prieto said 7 months ago that the Estefans have done more for Cuban freedom than any of us ever has or will. That, of course, was before Val allowed them to be called "traitors" on Babalú blog because Emilio had not followed up on an invitation to "do lunch." Well, now Val has another candidate for super Cuban patriot uber alles, and he isn't even Cuban except in his mighty Cuban-loving heart — President George Bush II, who, in Val's estimation, "has done more up to right now for the freedom of the Cuban people than most of the [11 million] Cuban people have done themselves." Wow. Perhaps we should all fall at his feet as the Aztecs fell at Cortez's. Wait, Val already has.
Oh, my god, GW has replaced Gloria Estefan as the greatest Cuban patriot. You will all remember that Val Prieto said 7 months ago that the Estefans have done more for Cuban freedom than any of us ever has or will. That, of course, was before Val allowed them to be called "traitors" on Babalú blog because Emilio had not followed up on an invitation to "do lunch." Well, now Val has another candidate for super Cuban patriot uber alles, and he isn't even Cuban except in his mighty Cuban-loving heart — President George Bush II, who, in Val's estimation, "has done more up to right now for the freedom of the Cuban people than most of the [11 million] Cuban people have done themselves." Wow. Perhaps we should all fall at his feet as the Aztecs fell at Cortez's. Wait, Val already has.
Notable & Delusional: "How Rare Was Your Presidency, George Bush II"
"Yes, he [Bush II] spent too much in his first term; yes, he had steel tariffs in place for about two seconds; yes, the prescription-drug benefit is sketchy; yes, there have been mistakes on the war; yes, Harriet Miers — etc., etc. But do you realize how rare this president is? If you don’t now — I have a feeling you will later." — Val Prieto, reacting to President Bush's speech on Cuba, Babalú blog, October 25, 2000
Yes, yes, yes, Bush has been a rare president from Day 1, America's first illiterate president (despite a Yale education or maybe because of it). But he sure can give a mean speech about Cuba on the eve of another election if the hard words are spelt phonetically. But words are meaningless (even when pronounced correctly) if they are not backed by the right actions. And, in respect to Cuba, Bush's actions have all been detrimental to Cuban freedom, from enforcing Clinton's "Wet Foot/ Dry Foot" policy (which he could have rescinded by presidential fiat) to gutting the embargo on the Cuban regime while instituting a new embargo against the Cuban people, denying them the assistance of their relatives and seeking further to separate the Cuban family. These are things that only Castro did in the past.
Val, of course, has always worshipped at the burning Bush. Yes, he has strayed on a few occasions lately, but it takes very little to bring him back to the fold: an invitation to a conference call from the White House, or a few honeyed words and empty symbolism are enough to convince him that no American president ever understood the Cuban people better or cared more about them. The same was once said about Ronald Reagan. And then we found out that he sent General Vernon Waters on a secret mission to Cuba to promote détente with the Castro regime while (successfully) repudiating détente with the Soviet Union. Maybe that's the reason that Russia is free today and Cuba is not. I wonder how many special missions Bush II has sent to Cuba with the same directive. We will find out shortly. When he leaves office.
Yes, yes, yes, Bush has been a rare president from Day 1, America's first illiterate president (despite a Yale education or maybe because of it). But he sure can give a mean speech about Cuba on the eve of another election if the hard words are spelt phonetically. But words are meaningless (even when pronounced correctly) if they are not backed by the right actions. And, in respect to Cuba, Bush's actions have all been detrimental to Cuban freedom, from enforcing Clinton's "Wet Foot/ Dry Foot" policy (which he could have rescinded by presidential fiat) to gutting the embargo on the Cuban regime while instituting a new embargo against the Cuban people, denying them the assistance of their relatives and seeking further to separate the Cuban family. These are things that only Castro did in the past.
Val, of course, has always worshipped at the burning Bush. Yes, he has strayed on a few occasions lately, but it takes very little to bring him back to the fold: an invitation to a conference call from the White House, or a few honeyed words and empty symbolism are enough to convince him that no American president ever understood the Cuban people better or cared more about them. The same was once said about Ronald Reagan. And then we found out that he sent General Vernon Waters on a secret mission to Cuba to promote détente with the Castro regime while (successfully) repudiating détente with the Soviet Union. Maybe that's the reason that Russia is free today and Cuba is not. I wonder how many special missions Bush II has sent to Cuba with the same directive. We will find out shortly. When he leaves office.
Notable & Quotable: When Popularity Supplants Humanity
"There have always been people willing to trade their best level as performers for their lowest level as human beings." — Alex of Stuck on the Palmetto, from "A Bigot Finds her Ratings," October 25, 2007.
I wonder if Alex was thinking of Rick.
Rick is no different from Fort Lauderdale radio show host Joyce Kaufman, the real subject of Alex's post. Both are after the ratings. An increase in listeners translates into more dollars for Kaufman. An increase in visitors to his blog translates into a bigger ego for Rick. At least Kaufman gets something tangible for selling her soul to the xenophobes. Rick is satisfied with a vigorous rubbing to his ego.
Alex forgets to mention that the bigotted Kaufman is herself Hispanic. Her mother is Puerto Rican. At least Rick hates outside of his ethnic group.
I wonder if Alex was thinking of Rick.
Rick is no different from Fort Lauderdale radio show host Joyce Kaufman, the real subject of Alex's post. Both are after the ratings. An increase in listeners translates into more dollars for Kaufman. An increase in visitors to his blog translates into a bigger ego for Rick. At least Kaufman gets something tangible for selling her soul to the xenophobes. Rick is satisfied with a vigorous rubbing to his ego.
Alex forgets to mention that the bigotted Kaufman is herself Hispanic. Her mother is Puerto Rican. At least Rick hates outside of his ethnic group.
The Last Quackeries of a Lame Duck President
If you are interested in a dissection of Bush's speech yesterday on Cuba, Charlie Bravo has provided an excellent one at Killcastro and Henry Gómez an absolutely appalling one at Babalú. Take your pick.
As for me, I refuse to comment on the last quackeries of a lame duck president who has done nothing in the course of 7 years to advance the cause of Cuban freedom, and, by enforcing the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy longer even than Clinton, turned back the clock on the Civil War and turned this country again into a slaver and scourge of men.
Let him be forgotten; or, rather, remembered as the worst president in this country's history, excepting JFK and Carter.
As for me, I refuse to comment on the last quackeries of a lame duck president who has done nothing in the course of 7 years to advance the cause of Cuban freedom, and, by enforcing the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy longer even than Clinton, turned back the clock on the Civil War and turned this country again into a slaver and scourge of men.
Let him be forgotten; or, rather, remembered as the worst president in this country's history, excepting JFK and Carter.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Notable & Stupefying: Antonio Maceo Demoted to Colonel by Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen
"Just as Colonel Antonio Maceo battled tirelessly for Cuba’s independence against the Spaniards, Dr. Biscet is the “Titan de Bronze” of our generation of freedom fighters against the Castro regime. No longer wielding the machetes of Colonel Maceo’s time, Dr. Biscet has replaced physical force with peaceful strength, yet the battle remains the same." — Congresswoman Iliana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), petition nominating Cuban human rghts activist Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, National Review Online, October 24, 2007
Credit goes to our friend Charlie Bravo of Killcastro blog for discovering this gem. There are moments in life when heaven sends down a lightning bolt that illuminates everything for us. This is such a moment. If we fail to see what Charlie is pointing out to us we shall deserve whatever fate befalls us in the future:
Yes, Antonio Maceo was once a Colonel. He rose through the ranks quickly, with heroism and gallantry, with the chilvalry of men of honor in arms. Antonio Maceo earned his General's stars during the first independence war exactly in 1873, before he was knicknamed "El Titán de Bronce" [the Colossus of Bronze] by the Cubans and "El León Mayor" [the Lion of the Pride] by the Spaniards. Comparing Dr. Biscet to Antonio Maceo could seem like a great idea. But though both men are examples of bravery and dedication to the freedom of Cuba, the comparison is simply not just for either of them. There was only one Antonio Maceo y Grajales and there is only one Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet. Each one is unique, each one is a unique a representative of two different struggles, with the common objective of the liberation of Cuba [...]. I hope she reads a Cuban history book, and I hope she calls President Bush to reject and eliminate the unjust "Dry Foot/ Wet Foot" policy, and to order the Coast Guard to assist and rescue the Cuban refugees on the high seas, instead of becoming an extension of the Cuban Coast Guard and be the ones used by Castro for offshoring and outsourcing his repressive ways."
Bravo, Charlie!
Is there any other Cuban above the age of 5 who doesn't know that Maceo was a general? And the woman is hardly a child.
Why does she compare Maceo to Biscet? Why not to Martí? Biscet is not a warrior. Neither was Martí. No doubt Biscet would become a soldier, as Martí did, to defend his country in the hour of her redemption. But Biscet is not in any way a military man, much less the military genius that Maceo was. And, honestly, much as we admire and support Dr. Biscet, he is not and should never be expected to be another Maceo. Such a comparison is not a compliment; no man, not even Biscet, can withstand it, and I am sure that Biscet himself would be the first to reject it. Such a man as Maceo is sui generis; beyond comparison, and, indeed, had he not actually lived, beyond imagining.
The only reason Ros-Lehtinen compared the two is because they are both men of color, the worst reason to compare them. What does that have to do with anything? What an embarrassment, ignoring the essential and focusing on the superficial, and, in the process, disrespecting both men.
Really, words fail before such an enormity.
But words must be found.
No one with such an abysmal ignorance of our history should be allowed to represent our interests in Washington, or anywhere else; much less have any imput in deciding the future of our country (I mean Cuba), which as a U.S. congressman she should not presume to do in any case. There will be men and woman enough to be the future leaders of our country who know whom Antonio Maceo was and what he represents to our people, alongside Martí, the highest peaks of our nationality, a natural phenomenon that cannot be repeated in our country or any country: el lugarteniente.
Blessed Fray José López Piteira, Catholic Martyr and Cuban
On Sunday, October 28, 2007, in Vatican Square, the first native born Cuban will be beatified by Pope Benedict XVI, the last step on the road to sainthood and the fartherest that any Cuban has ever gotten on that road. His name is José López Piteira, born on February 2, 1912, in the town of Jatibonico, Camaguey Province. He was ordained a deacon on September 8, 1935, the feast of Our Lady of Charity, patroness of Cuba. He died a martyr for the faith at the hands of the Communists, killed not in Cuba but in Spain, during its Civil War (1936-39). He was 24 years old, the youngest of 50 Augustinian monks from the El Escorial Monastery to be executed at the orders of Santiago Carrillo, the political commissar of Madrid personally responsible for the murder of 3000 priests, nuns and other religious. They were variously crucified, burnt at the stake, or, as in the case of Fray José and his companions, shot by firing squad, at Paracuellos de Jarama, November 30, 1936. Yes, in the 20th century; within living memory; only 70 years ago. He did not have to die. He was a Cuban citizen and could have saved himself by invoking his nationality, but he refused to abandon his brothers in Christ and insisted on sharing their fate.
His last words, all too familiar to another generation of Cubans, were ¡Viva Cristo Rey!
His last words, all too familiar to another generation of Cubans, were ¡Viva Cristo Rey!
Fray José will be beatified along with 495 other martyrs of the Spanish Civil War. This will be the largest beatification in the 2000-year history of the Church. Although the pope does not personally officiate at beatifications anymore, he will do so this time to punctuate the importance of this occasion and the Church's displeasure with the historical revisionism of Spain's governing Socialist Party, political allies and heirs to the killers of Blessed Fray José López Piteira and the other martyrs for the faith.
The declaration by the pope as head of the Church that one of its communicants has lived a saintly life as a believer or died a heroic death as a martyr and is dwelling in the happiness of heaven. (Yes, there is now a Cuban in heaven!). Those who have been declared Blessed are entitled to veneration by the faithful. Prayers may be raised to them; their images may be placed in churches and their feast days celebrated, especially in localities and orders associated with their lives. The difference between saints and the blessed is that saints are not merely entitled to local veneration, but must be venerated by the Universal Church. For one who is Blessed to be canonized (declared a saint) two miracles must be attributed to his intercession. God willing, perhaps the first miracle that Blessed Fray José will perform will be the liberation of Cuba from Communism.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
The Voyage of the "St. Louis" (1939): FDR's "Hour of Infamy" (Among Many)
[If you are wondering what I've been doing today, I have been fighting demons at Klotz As In Blood, where a discussion on the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy and whether Mexicans can pass as Cubans (watch Cane for the answer) suddenly metamorphosed into a "serves them right" argument against Cuban refugees because 68 years ago their Jewish counterparts on the "St. Louis" were denied entry to Cuba. Very few nations in the 1930s welcomed refugees. It was a time of worldwide depression and immigrants were regarded as just more mouths at a barren table. Imagine, if you will, the rabid xenophobia which Mexicans endure in this country today at a time of relative prosperity and multiply that one-hundred fold and you will get some faint idea of the hostility with which most immigrants were met in the pre-war period. One group of refugeees, the Jews, were literally escaping for their lives. The U.S. government and the media, however, did not acknowledge that fact. The New York Times, for example, did not report on the Holocaust until the first concentration camp was liberated. Even then it never apologized for failing to report the plight of the Jews when it was still possible to save their lives. And The Times' owners, the Ochs-Sulzbergers, of course, were Jews. The plight of the Jews, in fact, was not appreciated in its true dimensions by anyone. They were regarded as indescript immigrants requiring no special dispensation, or, indeed, consideration.
One of the few nations to open its doors to Jewish refugees in the pre-war period was Cuba. Most came to Cuba because it was easier to be admitted to Cuba than to the United States, and also because there was no better conduit to the United States than Cuba. Thousands arrived on the island before 1939. It was with that expectation that the beleaguered passengers of the "St. Louis" sailed to Cuba in 1939. Their journey, however, was to be like no other before or since ...]
Dave Says:
October 18th, 2007 at 6:41 am
... In the 1940s [1939] a whole shipload of Jews were sent back by Havana to Germany [to Europe, not Germany] to their most certain death [more than two-thirds survived World War II]. Every country on this planet has sent back refugees to horrific situations without any remorse. Why is anyone surprised?
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Dave:
It wasn’t the Cubans who sent the Jewish refugees on the St. Louis back to Europe and an uncertain future in countries soon to be overrun by Hitler. It was FDR. He refused to allow the ship to dock in the U.S.; in fact, he turned it away when it tried. Knowing that its Jewish passengers would use Cuba as a conduit to enter the U.S., FDR ordered the Cuban government not to accept them either. FDR was then running for his 3rd term and he did not want to antagonize the xenophobes and Jew-haters which at that time constituted a sizable percentage (perhaps a majority) of both parties.
Prior to the St. Louis, Cuba had admitted more refugees from Fascism than had any other country in the Western Hemisphere, a total of more than 300,000. CUBA WITH A POPULATION OF LESS THAN 5 MILLION ADMITTED IN RAW NUMBERS MORE REFUGEES DURING THE 1930s THAN DID THE U.S. WITH A POPULATION OF 170 MILLION. Most of these refugees were Spaniards fleeing Fascism or Communism during the Spanish Civil War, but the total also included 8000 Jewish refugees from Naziism.
Bang Bang Lulu Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 3:35 pm
There goes Tellechea rewriting history to soothe his fascist soul. FDR had nothing to do with what happened to the St. Louis in Cuba. There was a scam run by the immigration czar, Manuel Benitez, that cleaned out whatever little resources the desperate refugees had. After they stole what they could, they sent the ship to hell.
FDR, caving in to isolationists and anti-immigration forces in the US, didn’t intervene even when the St Louis approached Florida. He came up small.
If Tellechea can point me to evidence that FDR was behind the atrocious Cuban conduct in this international scandal, I’ll read it. Otherwise it’s just some little apologist ducking responsibility for unforgivable and in this case racist behavior, which the Cubans are pretty good at.
Wire Pallladin Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:24 pm
I thought the St. Louis set out for Cuba as its original destination, not the US. It was only after Cuba refused to let it land that it headed for Florida, where it was also refused. That story in #6 is just wrong. Typical Castro-type distortion.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:14 am
Bang-Bang:
Your stupidity, Bang-Bang, is a shining beacon to Wire Paladin (the 2 extra “Ls” which you use in your moniker are unnecessary).
I don’t think that anyone with any knowledge of Cuban history would dispute the fact that FDR had the final say in this matter, not the Cubans. If he had told President Laredo Bru or Colonel Batista to let the Jews in, they would have done that. If he had told them not to let them, they would have done that.
He certainly could have taken the humanitarian course by ordering the Cubans to admit the Jews, which would have opened the door of the U.S. to them without offending too much the xenophobes, Jew-haters and isolationists. But he did not. Not only that he actually turned the Jews away himself when the St. Louis moored off the coast of Florida. Yeah, Bang Bang, FDR “came up small.” He did nada to aid the Jews either before Kristallnacht or afterwards.
What strikes me as funny is that Bang-Bang and his ilk will be the first to say that before the Revolution Cuban presidents were puppets of the U.S. who did its bidding. In the case of the St. Louis, however, they contend that Cuba was a superpower and the Cuban president not only independent of the U.S. but the equal of the U.S. president.
Finally, why did the Jews sail to Cuba in the first place?
Because no European country would admit them. This was before they had been invaded by Germany.
If you are going to blame Cuba (the most innocent party in this affaire), spread the blame around.
Blame Canada, for example, which also refused the Jews, and, after the outbreak of war, confined all Germans (including Jews!) in internment camps for the duration.
And while you are passing out the blame, don’t forget the Jewish owners of The New York Times, which didn’t even report on the Holocaust until the concentration camps were liberated.
And don’t forget Fidel Castro.
Before 1959, there were 30,000 Cuban Jews in Cuba. Castro did to them exactly what Hitler had done to them: he stripped them of their rights and their property (as he did to all other Cubans). For Cuban Jews, however, it was the second such displacement in 20 years. Today there are less than 100 Jews in Cuba. Even Hitler did not make Germany a “Jewish-free territory” to the extent that Castro has Cuba.
Does anybody care to condemn Castro for it? Or for sponsoring the “Zionism Is Racism” Resolution at the United Nations in 1975? Or for allowing the PLO to have training camps in Cuba? Or for lending military assistance to the Arab states in the Yom Kippur War?
Wire Palladin Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:38 am
Only one extra l, Manuel. Bad typist.
Look — the fact that the Cubans piled on to screw the Jews doesn’t excuse them or anybody else. Those Jews and the captain of the St. Louis anticipated a safe haven when they arrived, but got fucked over instead. (Just as later on the Cubans expected air cover from JFK, and got fucked over, too. People get fucked over all the time. It’s how the world runs.) Stop making excuses for inexcusable behavior. In the incident we’re talking about, the Cubans fucked a boatload of Jews. Period.
Bang Bang Lulu Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:52 am
If you are going to blame Cuba (the most innocent party in this affaire), spread the blame around. — Tellechea
That’s the first sensible thing you ever said, Tellechea. There’s plenty to spread around, and a whole lot for Cuba. You mean the president of the United States ordered the Cuban immigrant director to cook up a scam to cheat the St. Louis’s passengers before the they were cut adrift?
Find me evidence that FDR ordered them out of port and I’ll believe you. Otherwise, I consider this just another apologist’s lies from the losers corner trying to make his side look a little worse.
My people — not Jews — have been fucked over and over, even by themselves. Nobody ever stands up and takes responsiblity, let alone apologizes. Cubans like you are just as bad.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:49 am
Bang-Bang:
Yes, there are Cubans like you who enjoy fucking their people “over and over again” as you are doing right now.
Ok, you don’t believe that Roosevelt ordered the St. Louis out of a Cuban port. Do you believe that he did not allow them into an American port?
In fact, while the St. Louis was circling Cuba, Roosevelt ordered the U.S. Coast Guard to trail it lest it try to make for land in the U.S.
The Jews on the St. Louis were not interested in settling in Cuba. They just wanted to stay their till their U.S. immigration quota numbers came up. Their admission posed no kind of problem for Cuba. Thousands of other Jews had used Cuba as a conduit to the U.S. before and after them. The reason that these particular Jews were not able to do so was because of the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. Roosevelt and Morgenthau, the Jewish Secretary of the Treasury, both agreed that it was more important for Roosevelt to win a third term than it was to save a boatload of Jews. The American Jewish Relief Committee even offered President Laredo Bru a $125,000 "bribe" (later hiked to $500,000) to let the Jewish refugees land in Cuba. He refused. The Cuban president had his orders from Roosevelt and had to obey.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Wire Paladin:
Actually, paladin has only one “L” not 2.
Cuba saved more Jews from the Holocaust than any nation in the Western Hemisphere.
My country has every reason to feel proud of its generosity to these immigrants, especially when you consider that Cubans (and Americans, for that matter) did not know the full extent of the persecution of the Jews in Germany because the U.S. government and (media) purposefully concealed it so that it would have to do nothing about it.
I am sure that if Laredo Bru had known what Roosevelt knew, he would have disobeyed Roosevelt’s orders and admitted the Jews even if that meant another landing of the Marines in Cuba.
Bang Bang Lulu Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I’m not a Cuban, Tellechea, and I’m not fucking over any either. No, I don’t believe that Roosevelt intervened the way you say he did. I believe the corrupt Cuban government wanted to extort more money to line its own pockets that the passengers and their friends in the States could produce. That simple, and that’s what the research states… [do] you have something else besides your own bed time stories? Show me. Your account is a typical sneaky self-serving revision practiced by apologists for tyranny the world over from time immemorial.
Save it for the kids and the true believers, Tellechea. I’m not buying.
Wire Palladin Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Palladin is my name, dickwad. Don’t tell me how to spell it.
Here’s your statement: “Cuba saved more Jews from the Holocaust than any nation in the Western Hemisphere.”
I think maybe there were 25,000 Jews, tops, in Cuba at any one time; 15,000 in the early 50s. More than that passed through New York every year leading up to WWII, despite the quotas. This is from the Holocaust Museum:
By September 1939, approximately 282,000 Jews had left Germany and 117,000 from annexed Austria. Of these, some 95,000 emigrated to the United States, 60,000 to Palestine, 40,000 to Great Britain, and about 75,000 to Central and South America, with the largest numbers entering Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Bolivia. More than 18,000 Jews from the German Reich were also able to find refuge in Shanghai, in Japanese-occupied China.
I don’t know what joy you derive from making up self-aggrandizing facts and figures, but to those of us who know something about this, it smacks of anti-Semitism or just plain ignorance. Next will you deny the holocaust?
Hose B Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Hey! What about the Jewbans?
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Palladin (or whatever):
If “Palladin” is your real name, you come from a long line of misspellers. In English, at least, it’s paladin. But so be it. You can call yourself whatever you want so long as it’s not fair.
I see that the only way you have of winning an argument is with non-sequiturs such as “next you will deny the Holocaust.” Idiot.
Let’s see: Cuba in 1939 had a population of not quite 5,000,000. If it saved a total of 25,000 (or 15,000 or 8,000) Jews then it saved more Jews proportionally than you claim were saved by the United States with a population of 170,000,000. Cuba admitted one Jew per 200 of its inhabitants. For the U.S. to have done as much as Cuba did, it would have to have admitted 850,000 Jews. In fact, it admitted only 95,000.
In addition to the Jews, Cuba admitted 300,000 refugees from Spain’s Civil War between 1931-1940 These refugees, of course, were escaping from both Communism and Fascism.
In fact, on second consideration, I should have said that Cuba was the world’s most generous haven for refugees in the pre-war years.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Bang-Bang:
I have given you the facts. Now you can believe whatever you want. The fate of the Jews is of no interest to you. All that matters to you is bashing Cubans. Ditto for Pal[l]idin.
Wire Palladin Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:04 pm
That’s what you mean when you write “Cuba saved more Jews from the Holocaust than any nation in the Western Hemisphere.” More Jews proportionately? So the 4 Latin American nations named that actually sheltered more (many remain) count for less?
That’s hilariously moronic. I rest my case. Go away.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Pal[l]adin:
In raw numbers, Cuba sheltered more refugees than the 4 cited South American nations put together. Cuba is not mentioned on that list because bigots like yourself, by continually harping on the tragedy of the St. Louis, have obscured Cuba’s role in saving Jewish lives. The man most American Jews regarded as their idol [FDR] was personally responsible for the fate of the passengers of the St. Louis.
Here’s what the U.S. Jewish Holocaust Museum has to say on the subject:
Sailing so close to Florida that they could see the lights of Miami, passengers on the St. Louis cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge. Roosevelt never answered the cable. The State Department and the White House had already decided not to let them enter the United States. A State Department telegram sent to a passenger stated that the passengers must “await their turns on the waiting list and then qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States.” Quotas set out in the 1924 Immigration Act strictly limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted to the United States each year. In 1939, the annual combined German-Austrian immigration quota was 27,370 and was quickly filled. In fact, there was a waiting list of at least several years. Visas could have been granted to the passengers only by denying them to the thousands of German Jews who had already applied for them. President Roosevelt could have issued an executive order to admit additional refugees, but chose not to do so for a variety of political reasons.
Bang Bang Lulu Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Oh, look, Palladin’s a bigot, too. He doesn’t agree with Blowhard Tellechea. That’s why Cuba isn’t on the list. Bigots. Like Palladin. That proves it.
Look how Tellechea can go find some research about FDR refusing to intervene in one matter, but he can’t find anything about FDR intervening in Cuban affairs. He just won’t accept the obvious: that Cuba’s filthy government extorted Jewish money from desperate refugees and sent them back to Europe for extermination.
There’s no heroes in this story Tellechea. By twisting the facts and telling bedtime stores you just make it worse.
I’m done this with til you produce some proof.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Bang-Bang:
No one “extorted Jewish money” from the refugees. President Laredo Bru in fact refused $500,000 from the U.S. Jewish Relief Commitee to admit the Jews. Why? Because Roosevelt would not allow him to admit them. Perhaps if their American sponsors had agreed to donate that half-million to FDR’s electoral campaign, FDR might have relented.
Is the Holocaust Museum telling a “bedtime story” also? Their “story” certainly makes Roosevelt look a lot worse than mine does.
Stop using euphemisms. Roosevelt didn’t just “refuse to intervene.” It was he who sent the St. Louis passengers back to Europe.
Bang Bang Lulu Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:55 pm
You can keep saying “Roosevelt would not allow him" all you please, Tellechea, but you can’t cite an authority to prove it. You’re full of shit. You’re telling tales.
As for nobody extorting money from refugees, here’s a cut from the same source you cited about FDR refusing to take the cable:
In Cuba in early 1939, Decree 55 had passed which drew a distinction between refugees and tourists. The Decree stated that each refugee needed a visa and was required to pay a $500 bond to guarantee that they would not become wards of Cuba. But the Decree also said that tourists were still welcome and did not need visas. The director of immigration in Cuba, Manuel Benitez, realized that Decree 55 did not define a tourist nor a refugee. He decided that he would take advantage of this loophole and make money my selling landing permits which would allow refugees to land in Cuba by calling them tourists. He sold these permits to anyone who would pay $150. Though only allowing someone to land as a tourist, these permits looked authentic, even were individually signed by Benitez, and generally were made to look like visas. Some people bought a large group of these for $150 each and then resold them to desperate refugees for much more. Benitez himself had made a small fortune in selling these permits as well as receiving money from the cruise line. Hapag had realized the advantage of being able to offer a package deal to their passengers, a permit and passage on their ship.
The President of Cuba, Frederico Laredo Bru, and his cabinet did not like Benitez making a great deal of money - that he was unwilling to share - on the loophole in Decree 55. Also, Cuba’s economy had begun to stagnate and many blamed the incoming refugees for taking jobs that otherwise would have been held by Cubans.
On May 5, Decree 937 was passed which closed the loophole. Without knowing it, almost every passenger on the S.S. St. Louis had purchased a landing permit for an inflated rate but by the time of sailing, had already been nullified by Decree 937.
There’s your god damn cursed extortion Tellechea, right where you got the other quote. You’re a fraud and a liar and a sneak.
Steve Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:11 pm
All done guys? Safe to come out?
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Bang-Bang:
Months before the St. Louis sailed for Cuba, President Laredo Bru signed a decree requiring every immigrant to post a $500 bond to guarantee that they would not become wards of the state during a time of depression. Perfectly reasonable. The U.S. required immigrants to have sponsors who agreed to assume financial responsibility for them for 7 years before it would allow them into the country. Since few Jews had relatives in Cuba, the (refundable) bond was the only means to accommodate them.
Most of the passengers on the St. Louis chose, instead, to attempt to enter the country as tourists for a fee of $150. Thousands of Jews had done so before them. Benítez had actually saved refugees millions by passing them through immigration as tourists. Clearly, however, they were not tourists and this ruse would eventually be discovered.
Decree 937 closed that loophole. Still, all the passengers on the St. Louis would have been admitted on posting bond. The Jewish Relief Committee offered to do so for the 1000 who could not (26 individuals who posted bond themselves were admitted immediately).
The total bond for the 1000 immigrants was $500,000. American Jews offered $125,000 instead. Eventually, though, they agreed to the stipulated sum, but by then it was too late. Roosevelt had already decided that the passengers should not be admitted to Cuba and had communicated that fact to President Laredo Bru, who consequently declined the $500,000. If this had been a “bribe,” it would not have been declined. But Laredo Bru could not accept it even if it had been a bribe because Roosevelt forbid him to (accept the Jews, that is).
The Jewish passengers of the St. Louis then cabled Roosevelt begging him to intercede on their behalf and he didn’t even answer them. He wanted nothing to do with these Jews whose admission could have cost him his re-election in the isolationist xenophobic climate of the times.
Benítez, incidentally, should be declared a “Righteous Gentile” because he saved the lives of thousands of Jews and tried his best to have the St. Louis passengers admitted as tourists to Cuba. Did he personally profit from his exertions as his detractors claim? Well, so did Oskar Schindler.
Your “god damn cursed extortion” is a fiction and the only “fraud, liar and sneak” here is you.
Steve Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Still going, I see.
Manny: I checked Lulu’s source (Holocaust Museum) and that account differs from yours. Both Wire Palladin and Lulu asked for some kind of source to compare your account with the ones they cite on-line. I’m open — what can you share with us? Where’s the authority, the 3rd party confirmation, for your account of what the Holocaust Museum clearly presents as extortion and exploitation, particularly by Benitez?
I agree with you that the one who comes out looking worst in this is FDR, but frankly, I always thought that, and this sordid little tale, no matter whose version is accurate, doesn’t change my opinion.
Rick Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 6:08 am
Wow. That request for proof sort of stopped things dead in its tracks, didn’t it, Steve?
This whole thread is vintage Tellechea. Make up “facts,” wrap them in articulate language, and throw them out there for people to disprove. Hell, the guy went around masquerading as a 90-year-old Cuban immigrant for years until someone finally produced a late ’90’s newspaper interview of Manny by Liz Balmeseda who said he was in his late 30’s at the time of the interview.
And people fall for it every time. Which really doesn’t surprise me as much as the fact that he is provided a forum for his crap here on this blog. Your BS Meter is usually a lot better, Steve.
BTW, George Bush is a drug addict and is cheating on Laura. Don’t believe me?
Prove it.
Steve Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 9:18 am
Now, now Rick — Manny is at the very least entertaining, and while his take on certain topics differs diametrically from mine (and plenty of others), I enjoy his presentation. Almost as much as I enjoy the head-butting with (e.g.) Lulu, Palladin, Pierre, and others whose buttons he pushes.
Right, guys?
Besides, when it comes to pure BS around here, nobody tops Rufus Leeking M.D. Except Rollo Nickels. Or maybe even me.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Rick:
Ah, still the spurned blogger! Remember when I was, to quote your words, “the beloved Manuel A. Tellechea, Stuck on the Palmetto’s favorite?” Now that I’ve turned my back on SotP you just can’t stand it. Yes, Rick, you will never see Sitemeter numbers like those again. Get over it, buddy. Move on (no pun intended).
For the millionth time: As to the telephone interview to which you refer, I never said that I was in my 30s to Liz Balmeseda or anybody else. She assumed that I was 38 because I state in the prologue to my translation of José Martí’s Versos sencillos/Simple Verses, which she was reviewing, that I was 38 at the time the translation was completed. Of course, there is no reason to assume that the translation was published immediately upon my completing it. I could just as well have finished the translation in Cuba 50 years ago and published it here in 1997.
It doesn’t matter whether I’m 50 or 100. What matters, at least to you, is that you will never be the writer I am at 50 or 100.
But why pick on me? There are millions of better writers than you. Steve, for one.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Steve:
Thank God that you will never bite the goose that lays the golden eggs, or something to that effect.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 10:14 am
“George Bush is a drug addict and is cheating on Laura. Don’t believe me? Prove it.” — Rick
I thought all that had already been proved.
Rollo Nickels Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 10:51 am
I resemble that remark. I call Bullshit, remember? You’re the asshole who shovels it out. I love ya anyway.
Kent Standit Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
I didn’t learn anything from this exchange, but the insults were amusing. Happens quite a but around here.
Manuel A.T.: Klotz is more likely to lay the goose that bites the golden eggs that the other way ’round.
Rick Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Manny Tellechea:It doesn’t matter whether I’m 50 or 100.
It does when you tell everyone you’re the latter. It’s called being a liar. Look it up, T.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Rick:
It should not matter to you. But you are obsessed about my age. It’s called being an ass.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
P.S.: And, no, you don’t have to look that up.
Steve Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 6:45 am
Sorry Rollo…..I think I mixed you up with B.F.D. Hard to tell the inmates apart without reading the wrist bracelets.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 7:09 am
Is anybody here too stupid to realize that in 1939 Cuba could have made no decision in respect to the St. Louis without consulting the U.S., and that if the U.S. objected to any decision the Cubans made, the U.S. position would have prevailed in the end? Well, Roosevelt did object. He didn’t want the refugees in the U.S. and admitting them to Cuba would have amounted to the same thing. Shall I also prove to you that the earth is not flat or that Rick is a narcissist? Some things should be obvious.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 7:22 am
The Roosevelt administration even chastised the St. Louis passengers for using a circuitous route to get around the U.S. quota system and “elbow their way” to the front of the immigrant line! To Roosevelt they were “cheaters” who were unwilling to wait for their number to come up in Europe as their world crashed around them and they were led like sheep to slaughter by the Nazis.
Wire Palladin Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Can’t say if “anybody here is too stupid” to accept Castro Tellechea’s account. I do see that 3 of us, me included, keep asking C.T. to prove it, not keep saying it over and over. I see the horseshit. Where’s the beef?
For what it’s worth, here’s an account by a scholar who says the exact opposite.
http://www.savingthejews.com/html/carterlibraryspeech.htm
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Wire Pal[l]adin:
Very poor show.
You are citing the Carter Institute as a source? As a source for what? Jimmy Carter’s anti-Semitism?
The author of the article on the Saint Louis concludes:
“The Roosevelt Administration had done all it could.”
Really?
How about admitting the passengers of the St. Louis to the United States?
It could have done that.
Wire Palladin Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Disparage the scholarship all you please, Castro Tellechea. Where’s YOURS to back up YOUR position?
Like I said before, this whole issue is news to me. That chapter gave me some background, presented an argument, and offered evidence. You show me how it’s wrong other than by belittling Carter (who had nothing to do with it, I’ll believe it. But you don’t.
Who’s your buddy “Rick”? Maybe he’s right about you, C.T.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Wire Pal[l]adin:
My scholarship, Pal[l]adin, obviously flies above your limited radar.
Jimmy Carter is now the world’s preeminent anti-Semite. Ask the Jews (if you know any). Nothing that his Carter Center disseminates about Israel or the Jews can be believed.
Rosen’s book seeks to exculpate FDR of all blame for the Holocaust. Of course he blames the Cubans; he blames everybody except Roosevelt, then as now the idol of liberal Jews.
You and Rick could be great friend; you both hate Cubans and don’t know a whit about us.
Payot Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Mr Tallechea:
As a Jew I’m upset about some of Jimmy Carter’s recent remarks, written and printed, about Israel and the Palestinians, but calling him the ‘world’s preeminent anti-Semite’ is just ignorant. The scholarship in the book referenced is quite good. As a student of Jewish history, I’m satisfied as to its overall accuracy, as are most others of my acquaintance.
He doesn’t ‘blame the Cubans,’ he locates responsibility on the president and a handful of corrupt officials. There is a big difference, just as there is today.
As for FDR and the St Louis, he erred, and certainly realized it soon afterwards. Cuba’s conduct in the affair was only marginally worse, in my judgment, although one must remember how widespread anti-Jewish sentiment was at the time. Too, clearly the Nazis had a hand in stirring the pot of hatred.
The details of the St Louis incident can be found in many accounts, including on the site of the Holocaust Museum: http://www.ushmm.org. There is plenty of blame to go around.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Mr. Payot:
Well-known and credible Jews have called Jimmy Carter much worse than “the world’s preeminent anti-Semite.” You know that.
As a student of Jewish history, you must also know that prior to World War II Cuba saved the lives of thousands of Jews by granting them asylum when the U.S. would not because of its quota system.
Yet the only time that Cuba is referenced in respect to the Jews fleeing Hitler’s persecution is when the “St. Louis” incident is held against my country.
Well, my country happens to be blameless in this matter. The regional hagemon called the shots and Cuba obeyed. It would no doubt have been more noble to disobey Roosevelt’s orders. Unfortunately, Cuba was not in a position to do that in 1939.
I’m glad that you realize that FDR “erred” in respect to the St. Louis. That’s more than Rosen does. His book is an apologia for Roosevelt. Or didn’t you notice?
Rick Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Heh. You got nuthin’, Manny.
Nada.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Rick:
If this were a battlefield, I would be standing alone. The powerful and irrefutable evidence I have presented is of no use to you because you lack the logic to process it and the historical background to understand it. These I cannot supply, nor if I could would they suffice to overcome your ingrained animus towards Cubans which makes it impossible for you to judge us fairly.
Bang Bang Lulu Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Still going on, Tellechea? Other than your own hot air, what ‘irrefutable evidence’ have you shown us? I see whole bunches from other people — some of them actually know what they’re talking about. You should try that yourself. Maybe you wouldn’t look so goddam stupid.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Bang Bang:
The only facts in this entire debate have been supplied by me. Sadly, Bang Bang, my presence anywhere, although I don’t intend it, does tend to make other people look stupid. You, of course, don’t need my help.
Wire Palladin Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 11:22 am
“The only facts in this entire debate have been supplied by me.” Castro Tellechea
Had I been aware that CT was as delusional and, well, stuffed with shit as he obviously is, I wouldn’t have bothered to enter the discussion. However,in fairness, by following through to some of the research cited (none of it, not a scrap, provided by Castro T) I do come away with some insights about this SS St Louis affair I didn’t have before.
Also, as Payot points out, singling out Cuba for bad behavior doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because the whole world was acting crazy at the time. Castro Tellechea doesn’t seem to appreciate Peyot’s point, all he wants to do is whine about how Cuba never gets credited for the good it does, just blamed for bad.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Wire Pa[l]adin:
The problem is that you keep quitting this discussion in a huff and then, after you have managed to convince yourself yet again that all is not lost, you return to bury yourself even deeper in syllogisms and non sequiturs.
I will accept no blame whatever for my country in this matter, and the more it is unfairly blamed, the more strenuously will I argue its innocence.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 27th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
An article in Time Magazine dated June 12, 1939 states that on May 5 Cuban President Fedérico Laredo Bru sighed a decree “requir[ing] specific permission of the [U.S.] Departments of State, Labor and the Treasury” for the St. Louis passengers (or any others) to land in Cuba whose ultimate destination was the United States. No such permission having been granted to the passengers of the St. Louis, the ship was turned away turned away as per Roosevelt’s orders.
Time Magazine fails to mention that the passengers of the St. Louis had cabled President Roosevelt begging for asylum and that he refused even to answer their cable. No such cable was ever sent to President Laredo Bru because the St. Louis passengers knew, even if all of you don’t, that Roosevelt would determine their fate, not a Cuban president.
The Time article also mentions that Cuba had received 5000 Jewish refugee in Havana over the last year and that there were a total of 25,000 Jews there already.
It also reports that “in a half-dozen harbors in the Western Hemisphere … the St. Louis drama was being repeated.” At Veracruz, Mexico, German Jews on the Ondre were turned back, and at Buenos Aires, Argentina the Jewish refugeees on the Caporte, the Monte Olivia and the Mendoza were sent back to Germany.
Of course, none of these ships is a byword for indifference to the plight of Jews escaping the Holocaust. Just the St. Louis. And it is the innocent Cuban people who are blamed, not Roosevelt or the leaders of any country.
And as a final insult to the Cuban people when lists are compiled of countries that helped to rescue Jews, Cuba is always left out (see above) though proportionally it it did more than any other country on earth to save them.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 27th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
What about the U.S. Congress? What did it do to save the passengers on the St. Louis?
Congress, controlled in both chambers by the Democrats, killed in committee the Wagner-Rogers Bill (1939) which would have saved the St. Louis passengers and an additional 20,000 Jewish orphans from extermination. This was the same Congress that repeatedly refused to pass an Anti-Lynching law.
Know your own country’s history before you presume to criticize mine.
Payot Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
The Time Magazine article referred to is here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,762382-1,00.html
I encourage everybody interested in this exchange to read it, not only for its specific content, but also to appreciate exactly how Mr. Tallechea has distorted its contents through omissions, selective quotes, and, perhaps most disturbingly, fabrication.
Mr Tallechea writes “An article in Time Magazine dated June 12, 1939 states that on May 5 Cuban President Fed‚rico Laredo Bru sighed a decree ‘requir[ing] specific permission of the [U.S.] Departments of State, Labor and the Treasury’ for the St. Louis passengers (or any others) to land in Cuba whose ultimate destination was the United States.”
Note that he places brackets around “U.S.” This is because the Time article makes no mention whatsoever of the US in this context. The exact unedited quote: “…and on May 5, nine days before the St. Louis sailed, hard-faced President Federico Laredo Bru had decreed that Cuba required specific permission of the Departments of State, Labor and the Treasury.” Given the context, why would those be American rather than components of the Cuban government?
Mr Tallechea writes “The Time article also mentions that Cuba had received 5000 Jewish refugee in Havana over the last year and that there were a total of 25,000 Jews there already.” In fact, the article makes no mention of the 25,000 number at all. It is a highly inflated estimate: most research points to a maximum of 15,000 Jews living in Cuba at any one time.
In his comment, Mr Tellechea does NOT include this passage from the same article:
“The rumors whispered of a longstanding dispute between the Hamburg-American Line and the Cuban Government, of a growth of Cuban anti-Semitism due to the landing of 5,000 refugees in Havana during the past year.”
I find these kinds of distortions quite disturbing on several levels. As a Jew and a student of Jewish history, I am familiar with many incidents where tyrants, racists, and their apologists in the media and academia distort the facts of science and history to serve their purpose and gain favor with the population. Jews are one of the persecuted groups that have been victims of this behavior for centuries.
I do not fault today’s Cubans (or Cuban Americans) for the conduct of a handful of their government officials almost 70 years ago, any more than I fault today’s Germans for their Nazi past. But I do fault those who would today deny the repugnant actions of those who came before us, and seek to whitewash their morally deficient conduct to suit their own ends, whatever they are.
I also note that throughout this sometimes heated exchange, which clearly involves parties who have locked horns previously, Mr Tellechea has steadfastly refused to provide sources for his statements, preferring instead to simply repeat himself. (Perhaps his abuse of this Time article explains why.) This is a well-known technique by tyrants the world over. While most of the world has seen the damage such conduct creates, I fear Mr. Tellechea has been left behind.
On final note: as Mr. Tellechea properly points out, Roosevelt and the US government behaved very badly in this affair, as did most other nations at the time. There are many reasons offered, none morally acceptable in my opinion. Still, poor conduct by one entity or government does nothing to justify another’s. That lesson remains true today.
Wire Palladin Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Peyot: you have this exactly right. Thank you. Castro Tellechia cherry-picks what he likes, ignores what he doesn’t, and makes up the rest. Then he bangs on his chest about what a hero he is. It is intellectually dishonest and morally despicable.
And for what? To make the actions of a 70 year old long-gone corrupt government look better than those of the United States? Everybody reviewing this matter can agree that the whole world acted terribly, singly and jointly.
Tellechia: you’re a fraud, exposed for all to see.
Thank you, Peyot.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Mr. Payot:
It is you who have distorted and maliciously misrepresented the content of the Time article in order to calumniate me personally and the Cuban people in general, which you may deny is your intent but which the thrust of your argument clearly betrays as your sole objective.
“Omissions” and “selective” quotations” because I did not quote the entire article or those passages that you wished me quote? As for “fabrications,” it is you who have misconstrued by the muted light of your ignorance or malice every quoted passage in the Time article, to wit:
“President Fedérico Laredo Bru had decreed that Cuba required specific permission of the Departments of State, Labor and the Treasury” to admit the refugees.
Why would President Laredo Bru require the “specific permission” of his own Departments of State, Labor and Treasury to admit the refugees? He is, after all, the president of Cuba, and, as in the U.S. and every other country, it is the cabinet secretaries who must obtain the president’s permission before acting in his name, not the other way around. Clearly, Laredo Bru’s Decree requires that Cuba obtain the “specific permission” of the U.S. Departments of State, Labor and Treasury before admitting the St. Louis refugees whose ultimate destination is the United States. That permission, given the outcome, was obviously not granted.
“The Time article also mentions that Cuba had received 5000 Jewish refugee in Havana over the last year and that there were a total of 25,000 Jews there already.”
This is exactly true. The Time article does in fact mention the 25,000 figure as the total number of Jews in Cuba in 1939. Read it again. And why, Payot, are you so personally invested in the “15,000″ figure? Why does it seem to upset you that Cubans saved 10,000 more Jews than you had creditted them with? Here your animus against Cubans is most transparent.
“The rumors [are] whispered of a longstanding dispute between the Hamburg-American Line and the Cuban Government, of a growth of Cuban anti-Semitism due to the landing of 5,000 refugees in Havana during the past year.”
I do not credit unsubstantiated “rumors” (”whispered” or not) or conclusions which are not based on evidence. On what basis does Time conclude that there has been a “growth of anti-Semitism in Cuba?” It does not say. For a country with a population of less than 5 million to have accepted 25,000 Jewish refugees would indicate that Cuba was in fact remarkably free of anti-Semitism and generous beyond its means.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Wire Pal[l]idin:
Your champion, Payot, is a paper tiger. You had better look for another as you seem unable to defend your own positions.
One of the few nations to open its doors to Jewish refugees in the pre-war period was Cuba. Most came to Cuba because it was easier to be admitted to Cuba than to the United States, and also because there was no better conduit to the United States than Cuba. Thousands arrived on the island before 1939. It was with that expectation that the beleaguered passengers of the "St. Louis" sailed to Cuba in 1939. Their journey, however, was to be like no other before or since ...]
Dave Says:
October 18th, 2007 at 6:41 am
... In the 1940s [1939] a whole shipload of Jews were sent back by Havana to Germany [to Europe, not Germany] to their most certain death [more than two-thirds survived World War II]. Every country on this planet has sent back refugees to horrific situations without any remorse. Why is anyone surprised?
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:27 pm
Dave:
It wasn’t the Cubans who sent the Jewish refugees on the St. Louis back to Europe and an uncertain future in countries soon to be overrun by Hitler. It was FDR. He refused to allow the ship to dock in the U.S.; in fact, he turned it away when it tried. Knowing that its Jewish passengers would use Cuba as a conduit to enter the U.S., FDR ordered the Cuban government not to accept them either. FDR was then running for his 3rd term and he did not want to antagonize the xenophobes and Jew-haters which at that time constituted a sizable percentage (perhaps a majority) of both parties.
Prior to the St. Louis, Cuba had admitted more refugees from Fascism than had any other country in the Western Hemisphere, a total of more than 300,000. CUBA WITH A POPULATION OF LESS THAN 5 MILLION ADMITTED IN RAW NUMBERS MORE REFUGEES DURING THE 1930s THAN DID THE U.S. WITH A POPULATION OF 170 MILLION. Most of these refugees were Spaniards fleeing Fascism or Communism during the Spanish Civil War, but the total also included 8000 Jewish refugees from Naziism.
Bang Bang Lulu Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 3:35 pm
There goes Tellechea rewriting history to soothe his fascist soul. FDR had nothing to do with what happened to the St. Louis in Cuba. There was a scam run by the immigration czar, Manuel Benitez, that cleaned out whatever little resources the desperate refugees had. After they stole what they could, they sent the ship to hell.
FDR, caving in to isolationists and anti-immigration forces in the US, didn’t intervene even when the St Louis approached Florida. He came up small.
If Tellechea can point me to evidence that FDR was behind the atrocious Cuban conduct in this international scandal, I’ll read it. Otherwise it’s just some little apologist ducking responsibility for unforgivable and in this case racist behavior, which the Cubans are pretty good at.
Wire Pallladin Says:
October 22nd, 2007 at 8:24 pm
I thought the St. Louis set out for Cuba as its original destination, not the US. It was only after Cuba refused to let it land that it headed for Florida, where it was also refused. That story in #6 is just wrong. Typical Castro-type distortion.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:14 am
Bang-Bang:
Your stupidity, Bang-Bang, is a shining beacon to Wire Paladin (the 2 extra “Ls” which you use in your moniker are unnecessary).
I don’t think that anyone with any knowledge of Cuban history would dispute the fact that FDR had the final say in this matter, not the Cubans. If he had told President Laredo Bru or Colonel Batista to let the Jews in, they would have done that. If he had told them not to let them, they would have done that.
He certainly could have taken the humanitarian course by ordering the Cubans to admit the Jews, which would have opened the door of the U.S. to them without offending too much the xenophobes, Jew-haters and isolationists. But he did not. Not only that he actually turned the Jews away himself when the St. Louis moored off the coast of Florida. Yeah, Bang Bang, FDR “came up small.” He did nada to aid the Jews either before Kristallnacht or afterwards.
What strikes me as funny is that Bang-Bang and his ilk will be the first to say that before the Revolution Cuban presidents were puppets of the U.S. who did its bidding. In the case of the St. Louis, however, they contend that Cuba was a superpower and the Cuban president not only independent of the U.S. but the equal of the U.S. president.
Finally, why did the Jews sail to Cuba in the first place?
Because no European country would admit them. This was before they had been invaded by Germany.
If you are going to blame Cuba (the most innocent party in this affaire), spread the blame around.
Blame Canada, for example, which also refused the Jews, and, after the outbreak of war, confined all Germans (including Jews!) in internment camps for the duration.
And while you are passing out the blame, don’t forget the Jewish owners of The New York Times, which didn’t even report on the Holocaust until the concentration camps were liberated.
And don’t forget Fidel Castro.
Before 1959, there were 30,000 Cuban Jews in Cuba. Castro did to them exactly what Hitler had done to them: he stripped them of their rights and their property (as he did to all other Cubans). For Cuban Jews, however, it was the second such displacement in 20 years. Today there are less than 100 Jews in Cuba. Even Hitler did not make Germany a “Jewish-free territory” to the extent that Castro has Cuba.
Does anybody care to condemn Castro for it? Or for sponsoring the “Zionism Is Racism” Resolution at the United Nations in 1975? Or for allowing the PLO to have training camps in Cuba? Or for lending military assistance to the Arab states in the Yom Kippur War?
Wire Palladin Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:38 am
Only one extra l, Manuel. Bad typist.
Look — the fact that the Cubans piled on to screw the Jews doesn’t excuse them or anybody else. Those Jews and the captain of the St. Louis anticipated a safe haven when they arrived, but got fucked over instead. (Just as later on the Cubans expected air cover from JFK, and got fucked over, too. People get fucked over all the time. It’s how the world runs.) Stop making excuses for inexcusable behavior. In the incident we’re talking about, the Cubans fucked a boatload of Jews. Period.
Bang Bang Lulu Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:52 am
If you are going to blame Cuba (the most innocent party in this affaire), spread the blame around. — Tellechea
That’s the first sensible thing you ever said, Tellechea. There’s plenty to spread around, and a whole lot for Cuba. You mean the president of the United States ordered the Cuban immigrant director to cook up a scam to cheat the St. Louis’s passengers before the they were cut adrift?
Find me evidence that FDR ordered them out of port and I’ll believe you. Otherwise, I consider this just another apologist’s lies from the losers corner trying to make his side look a little worse.
My people — not Jews — have been fucked over and over, even by themselves. Nobody ever stands up and takes responsiblity, let alone apologizes. Cubans like you are just as bad.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:49 am
Bang-Bang:
Yes, there are Cubans like you who enjoy fucking their people “over and over again” as you are doing right now.
Ok, you don’t believe that Roosevelt ordered the St. Louis out of a Cuban port. Do you believe that he did not allow them into an American port?
In fact, while the St. Louis was circling Cuba, Roosevelt ordered the U.S. Coast Guard to trail it lest it try to make for land in the U.S.
The Jews on the St. Louis were not interested in settling in Cuba. They just wanted to stay their till their U.S. immigration quota numbers came up. Their admission posed no kind of problem for Cuba. Thousands of other Jews had used Cuba as a conduit to the U.S. before and after them. The reason that these particular Jews were not able to do so was because of the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. Roosevelt and Morgenthau, the Jewish Secretary of the Treasury, both agreed that it was more important for Roosevelt to win a third term than it was to save a boatload of Jews. The American Jewish Relief Committee even offered President Laredo Bru a $125,000 "bribe" (later hiked to $500,000) to let the Jewish refugees land in Cuba. He refused. The Cuban president had his orders from Roosevelt and had to obey.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Wire Paladin:
Actually, paladin has only one “L” not 2.
Cuba saved more Jews from the Holocaust than any nation in the Western Hemisphere.
My country has every reason to feel proud of its generosity to these immigrants, especially when you consider that Cubans (and Americans, for that matter) did not know the full extent of the persecution of the Jews in Germany because the U.S. government and (media) purposefully concealed it so that it would have to do nothing about it.
I am sure that if Laredo Bru had known what Roosevelt knew, he would have disobeyed Roosevelt’s orders and admitted the Jews even if that meant another landing of the Marines in Cuba.
Bang Bang Lulu Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I’m not a Cuban, Tellechea, and I’m not fucking over any either. No, I don’t believe that Roosevelt intervened the way you say he did. I believe the corrupt Cuban government wanted to extort more money to line its own pockets that the passengers and their friends in the States could produce. That simple, and that’s what the research states… [do] you have something else besides your own bed time stories? Show me. Your account is a typical sneaky self-serving revision practiced by apologists for tyranny the world over from time immemorial.
Save it for the kids and the true believers, Tellechea. I’m not buying.
Wire Palladin Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Palladin is my name, dickwad. Don’t tell me how to spell it.
Here’s your statement: “Cuba saved more Jews from the Holocaust than any nation in the Western Hemisphere.”
I think maybe there were 25,000 Jews, tops, in Cuba at any one time; 15,000 in the early 50s. More than that passed through New York every year leading up to WWII, despite the quotas. This is from the Holocaust Museum:
By September 1939, approximately 282,000 Jews had left Germany and 117,000 from annexed Austria. Of these, some 95,000 emigrated to the United States, 60,000 to Palestine, 40,000 to Great Britain, and about 75,000 to Central and South America, with the largest numbers entering Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Bolivia. More than 18,000 Jews from the German Reich were also able to find refuge in Shanghai, in Japanese-occupied China.
I don’t know what joy you derive from making up self-aggrandizing facts and figures, but to those of us who know something about this, it smacks of anti-Semitism or just plain ignorance. Next will you deny the holocaust?
Hose B Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Hey! What about the Jewbans?
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Palladin (or whatever):
If “Palladin” is your real name, you come from a long line of misspellers. In English, at least, it’s paladin. But so be it. You can call yourself whatever you want so long as it’s not fair.
I see that the only way you have of winning an argument is with non-sequiturs such as “next you will deny the Holocaust.” Idiot.
Let’s see: Cuba in 1939 had a population of not quite 5,000,000. If it saved a total of 25,000 (or 15,000 or 8,000) Jews then it saved more Jews proportionally than you claim were saved by the United States with a population of 170,000,000. Cuba admitted one Jew per 200 of its inhabitants. For the U.S. to have done as much as Cuba did, it would have to have admitted 850,000 Jews. In fact, it admitted only 95,000.
In addition to the Jews, Cuba admitted 300,000 refugees from Spain’s Civil War between 1931-1940 These refugees, of course, were escaping from both Communism and Fascism.
In fact, on second consideration, I should have said that Cuba was the world’s most generous haven for refugees in the pre-war years.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:50 pm
Bang-Bang:
I have given you the facts. Now you can believe whatever you want. The fate of the Jews is of no interest to you. All that matters to you is bashing Cubans. Ditto for Pal[l]idin.
Wire Palladin Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:04 pm
That’s what you mean when you write “Cuba saved more Jews from the Holocaust than any nation in the Western Hemisphere.” More Jews proportionately? So the 4 Latin American nations named that actually sheltered more (many remain) count for less?
That’s hilariously moronic. I rest my case. Go away.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:18 pm
Pal[l]adin:
In raw numbers, Cuba sheltered more refugees than the 4 cited South American nations put together. Cuba is not mentioned on that list because bigots like yourself, by continually harping on the tragedy of the St. Louis, have obscured Cuba’s role in saving Jewish lives. The man most American Jews regarded as their idol [FDR] was personally responsible for the fate of the passengers of the St. Louis.
Here’s what the U.S. Jewish Holocaust Museum has to say on the subject:
Sailing so close to Florida that they could see the lights of Miami, passengers on the St. Louis cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge. Roosevelt never answered the cable. The State Department and the White House had already decided not to let them enter the United States. A State Department telegram sent to a passenger stated that the passengers must “await their turns on the waiting list and then qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States.” Quotas set out in the 1924 Immigration Act strictly limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted to the United States each year. In 1939, the annual combined German-Austrian immigration quota was 27,370 and was quickly filled. In fact, there was a waiting list of at least several years. Visas could have been granted to the passengers only by denying them to the thousands of German Jews who had already applied for them. President Roosevelt could have issued an executive order to admit additional refugees, but chose not to do so for a variety of political reasons.
Bang Bang Lulu Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:01 pm
Oh, look, Palladin’s a bigot, too. He doesn’t agree with Blowhard Tellechea. That’s why Cuba isn’t on the list. Bigots. Like Palladin. That proves it.
Look how Tellechea can go find some research about FDR refusing to intervene in one matter, but he can’t find anything about FDR intervening in Cuban affairs. He just won’t accept the obvious: that Cuba’s filthy government extorted Jewish money from desperate refugees and sent them back to Europe for extermination.
There’s no heroes in this story Tellechea. By twisting the facts and telling bedtime stores you just make it worse.
I’m done this with til you produce some proof.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:30 pm
Bang-Bang:
No one “extorted Jewish money” from the refugees. President Laredo Bru in fact refused $500,000 from the U.S. Jewish Relief Commitee to admit the Jews. Why? Because Roosevelt would not allow him to admit them. Perhaps if their American sponsors had agreed to donate that half-million to FDR’s electoral campaign, FDR might have relented.
Is the Holocaust Museum telling a “bedtime story” also? Their “story” certainly makes Roosevelt look a lot worse than mine does.
Stop using euphemisms. Roosevelt didn’t just “refuse to intervene.” It was he who sent the St. Louis passengers back to Europe.
Bang Bang Lulu Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 5:55 pm
You can keep saying “Roosevelt would not allow him" all you please, Tellechea, but you can’t cite an authority to prove it. You’re full of shit. You’re telling tales.
As for nobody extorting money from refugees, here’s a cut from the same source you cited about FDR refusing to take the cable:
In Cuba in early 1939, Decree 55 had passed which drew a distinction between refugees and tourists. The Decree stated that each refugee needed a visa and was required to pay a $500 bond to guarantee that they would not become wards of Cuba. But the Decree also said that tourists were still welcome and did not need visas. The director of immigration in Cuba, Manuel Benitez, realized that Decree 55 did not define a tourist nor a refugee. He decided that he would take advantage of this loophole and make money my selling landing permits which would allow refugees to land in Cuba by calling them tourists. He sold these permits to anyone who would pay $150. Though only allowing someone to land as a tourist, these permits looked authentic, even were individually signed by Benitez, and generally were made to look like visas. Some people bought a large group of these for $150 each and then resold them to desperate refugees for much more. Benitez himself had made a small fortune in selling these permits as well as receiving money from the cruise line. Hapag had realized the advantage of being able to offer a package deal to their passengers, a permit and passage on their ship.
The President of Cuba, Frederico Laredo Bru, and his cabinet did not like Benitez making a great deal of money - that he was unwilling to share - on the loophole in Decree 55. Also, Cuba’s economy had begun to stagnate and many blamed the incoming refugees for taking jobs that otherwise would have been held by Cubans.
On May 5, Decree 937 was passed which closed the loophole. Without knowing it, almost every passenger on the S.S. St. Louis had purchased a landing permit for an inflated rate but by the time of sailing, had already been nullified by Decree 937.
There’s your god damn cursed extortion Tellechea, right where you got the other quote. You’re a fraud and a liar and a sneak.
Steve Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:11 pm
All done guys? Safe to come out?
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:32 pm
Bang-Bang:
Months before the St. Louis sailed for Cuba, President Laredo Bru signed a decree requiring every immigrant to post a $500 bond to guarantee that they would not become wards of the state during a time of depression. Perfectly reasonable. The U.S. required immigrants to have sponsors who agreed to assume financial responsibility for them for 7 years before it would allow them into the country. Since few Jews had relatives in Cuba, the (refundable) bond was the only means to accommodate them.
Most of the passengers on the St. Louis chose, instead, to attempt to enter the country as tourists for a fee of $150. Thousands of Jews had done so before them. Benítez had actually saved refugees millions by passing them through immigration as tourists. Clearly, however, they were not tourists and this ruse would eventually be discovered.
Decree 937 closed that loophole. Still, all the passengers on the St. Louis would have been admitted on posting bond. The Jewish Relief Committee offered to do so for the 1000 who could not (26 individuals who posted bond themselves were admitted immediately).
The total bond for the 1000 immigrants was $500,000. American Jews offered $125,000 instead. Eventually, though, they agreed to the stipulated sum, but by then it was too late. Roosevelt had already decided that the passengers should not be admitted to Cuba and had communicated that fact to President Laredo Bru, who consequently declined the $500,000. If this had been a “bribe,” it would not have been declined. But Laredo Bru could not accept it even if it had been a bribe because Roosevelt forbid him to (accept the Jews, that is).
The Jewish passengers of the St. Louis then cabled Roosevelt begging him to intercede on their behalf and he didn’t even answer them. He wanted nothing to do with these Jews whose admission could have cost him his re-election in the isolationist xenophobic climate of the times.
Benítez, incidentally, should be declared a “Righteous Gentile” because he saved the lives of thousands of Jews and tried his best to have the St. Louis passengers admitted as tourists to Cuba. Did he personally profit from his exertions as his detractors claim? Well, so did Oskar Schindler.
Your “god damn cursed extortion” is a fiction and the only “fraud, liar and sneak” here is you.
Steve Says:
October 23rd, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Still going, I see.
Manny: I checked Lulu’s source (Holocaust Museum) and that account differs from yours. Both Wire Palladin and Lulu asked for some kind of source to compare your account with the ones they cite on-line. I’m open — what can you share with us? Where’s the authority, the 3rd party confirmation, for your account of what the Holocaust Museum clearly presents as extortion and exploitation, particularly by Benitez?
I agree with you that the one who comes out looking worst in this is FDR, but frankly, I always thought that, and this sordid little tale, no matter whose version is accurate, doesn’t change my opinion.
Rick Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 6:08 am
Wow. That request for proof sort of stopped things dead in its tracks, didn’t it, Steve?
This whole thread is vintage Tellechea. Make up “facts,” wrap them in articulate language, and throw them out there for people to disprove. Hell, the guy went around masquerading as a 90-year-old Cuban immigrant for years until someone finally produced a late ’90’s newspaper interview of Manny by Liz Balmeseda who said he was in his late 30’s at the time of the interview.
And people fall for it every time. Which really doesn’t surprise me as much as the fact that he is provided a forum for his crap here on this blog. Your BS Meter is usually a lot better, Steve.
BTW, George Bush is a drug addict and is cheating on Laura. Don’t believe me?
Prove it.
Steve Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 9:18 am
Now, now Rick — Manny is at the very least entertaining, and while his take on certain topics differs diametrically from mine (and plenty of others), I enjoy his presentation. Almost as much as I enjoy the head-butting with (e.g.) Lulu, Palladin, Pierre, and others whose buttons he pushes.
Right, guys?
Besides, when it comes to pure BS around here, nobody tops Rufus Leeking M.D. Except Rollo Nickels. Or maybe even me.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 10:08 am
Rick:
Ah, still the spurned blogger! Remember when I was, to quote your words, “the beloved Manuel A. Tellechea, Stuck on the Palmetto’s favorite?” Now that I’ve turned my back on SotP you just can’t stand it. Yes, Rick, you will never see Sitemeter numbers like those again. Get over it, buddy. Move on (no pun intended).
For the millionth time: As to the telephone interview to which you refer, I never said that I was in my 30s to Liz Balmeseda or anybody else. She assumed that I was 38 because I state in the prologue to my translation of José Martí’s Versos sencillos/Simple Verses, which she was reviewing, that I was 38 at the time the translation was completed. Of course, there is no reason to assume that the translation was published immediately upon my completing it. I could just as well have finished the translation in Cuba 50 years ago and published it here in 1997.
It doesn’t matter whether I’m 50 or 100. What matters, at least to you, is that you will never be the writer I am at 50 or 100.
But why pick on me? There are millions of better writers than you. Steve, for one.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 10:11 am
Steve:
Thank God that you will never bite the goose that lays the golden eggs, or something to that effect.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 10:14 am
“George Bush is a drug addict and is cheating on Laura. Don’t believe me? Prove it.” — Rick
I thought all that had already been proved.
Rollo Nickels Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 10:51 am
I resemble that remark. I call Bullshit, remember? You’re the asshole who shovels it out. I love ya anyway.
Kent Standit Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
I didn’t learn anything from this exchange, but the insults were amusing. Happens quite a but around here.
Manuel A.T.: Klotz is more likely to lay the goose that bites the golden eggs that the other way ’round.
Rick Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
Manny Tellechea:It doesn’t matter whether I’m 50 or 100.
It does when you tell everyone you’re the latter. It’s called being a liar. Look it up, T.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 10:53 pm
Rick:
It should not matter to you. But you are obsessed about my age. It’s called being an ass.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 24th, 2007 at 10:56 pm
P.S.: And, no, you don’t have to look that up.
Steve Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 6:45 am
Sorry Rollo…..I think I mixed you up with B.F.D. Hard to tell the inmates apart without reading the wrist bracelets.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 7:09 am
Is anybody here too stupid to realize that in 1939 Cuba could have made no decision in respect to the St. Louis without consulting the U.S., and that if the U.S. objected to any decision the Cubans made, the U.S. position would have prevailed in the end? Well, Roosevelt did object. He didn’t want the refugees in the U.S. and admitting them to Cuba would have amounted to the same thing. Shall I also prove to you that the earth is not flat or that Rick is a narcissist? Some things should be obvious.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 7:22 am
The Roosevelt administration even chastised the St. Louis passengers for using a circuitous route to get around the U.S. quota system and “elbow their way” to the front of the immigrant line! To Roosevelt they were “cheaters” who were unwilling to wait for their number to come up in Europe as their world crashed around them and they were led like sheep to slaughter by the Nazis.
Wire Palladin Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Can’t say if “anybody here is too stupid” to accept Castro Tellechea’s account. I do see that 3 of us, me included, keep asking C.T. to prove it, not keep saying it over and over. I see the horseshit. Where’s the beef?
For what it’s worth, here’s an account by a scholar who says the exact opposite.
http://www.savingthejews.com/html/carterlibraryspeech.htm
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 11:50 am
Wire Pal[l]adin:
Very poor show.
You are citing the Carter Institute as a source? As a source for what? Jimmy Carter’s anti-Semitism?
The author of the article on the Saint Louis concludes:
“The Roosevelt Administration had done all it could.”
Really?
How about admitting the passengers of the St. Louis to the United States?
It could have done that.
Wire Palladin Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Disparage the scholarship all you please, Castro Tellechea. Where’s YOURS to back up YOUR position?
Like I said before, this whole issue is news to me. That chapter gave me some background, presented an argument, and offered evidence. You show me how it’s wrong other than by belittling Carter (who had nothing to do with it, I’ll believe it. But you don’t.
Who’s your buddy “Rick”? Maybe he’s right about you, C.T.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Wire Pal[l]adin:
My scholarship, Pal[l]adin, obviously flies above your limited radar.
Jimmy Carter is now the world’s preeminent anti-Semite. Ask the Jews (if you know any). Nothing that his Carter Center disseminates about Israel or the Jews can be believed.
Rosen’s book seeks to exculpate FDR of all blame for the Holocaust. Of course he blames the Cubans; he blames everybody except Roosevelt, then as now the idol of liberal Jews.
You and Rick could be great friend; you both hate Cubans and don’t know a whit about us.
Payot Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 4:39 pm
Mr Tallechea:
As a Jew I’m upset about some of Jimmy Carter’s recent remarks, written and printed, about Israel and the Palestinians, but calling him the ‘world’s preeminent anti-Semite’ is just ignorant. The scholarship in the book referenced is quite good. As a student of Jewish history, I’m satisfied as to its overall accuracy, as are most others of my acquaintance.
He doesn’t ‘blame the Cubans,’ he locates responsibility on the president and a handful of corrupt officials. There is a big difference, just as there is today.
As for FDR and the St Louis, he erred, and certainly realized it soon afterwards. Cuba’s conduct in the affair was only marginally worse, in my judgment, although one must remember how widespread anti-Jewish sentiment was at the time. Too, clearly the Nazis had a hand in stirring the pot of hatred.
The details of the St Louis incident can be found in many accounts, including on the site of the Holocaust Museum: http://www.ushmm.org. There is plenty of blame to go around.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
Mr. Payot:
Well-known and credible Jews have called Jimmy Carter much worse than “the world’s preeminent anti-Semite.” You know that.
As a student of Jewish history, you must also know that prior to World War II Cuba saved the lives of thousands of Jews by granting them asylum when the U.S. would not because of its quota system.
Yet the only time that Cuba is referenced in respect to the Jews fleeing Hitler’s persecution is when the “St. Louis” incident is held against my country.
Well, my country happens to be blameless in this matter. The regional hagemon called the shots and Cuba obeyed. It would no doubt have been more noble to disobey Roosevelt’s orders. Unfortunately, Cuba was not in a position to do that in 1939.
I’m glad that you realize that FDR “erred” in respect to the St. Louis. That’s more than Rosen does. His book is an apologia for Roosevelt. Or didn’t you notice?
Rick Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 9:10 pm
Heh. You got nuthin’, Manny.
Nada.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 25th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Rick:
If this were a battlefield, I would be standing alone. The powerful and irrefutable evidence I have presented is of no use to you because you lack the logic to process it and the historical background to understand it. These I cannot supply, nor if I could would they suffice to overcome your ingrained animus towards Cubans which makes it impossible for you to judge us fairly.
Bang Bang Lulu Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Still going on, Tellechea? Other than your own hot air, what ‘irrefutable evidence’ have you shown us? I see whole bunches from other people — some of them actually know what they’re talking about. You should try that yourself. Maybe you wouldn’t look so goddam stupid.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 9:46 am
Bang Bang:
The only facts in this entire debate have been supplied by me. Sadly, Bang Bang, my presence anywhere, although I don’t intend it, does tend to make other people look stupid. You, of course, don’t need my help.
Wire Palladin Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 11:22 am
“The only facts in this entire debate have been supplied by me.” Castro Tellechea
Had I been aware that CT was as delusional and, well, stuffed with shit as he obviously is, I wouldn’t have bothered to enter the discussion. However,in fairness, by following through to some of the research cited (none of it, not a scrap, provided by Castro T) I do come away with some insights about this SS St Louis affair I didn’t have before.
Also, as Payot points out, singling out Cuba for bad behavior doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because the whole world was acting crazy at the time. Castro Tellechea doesn’t seem to appreciate Peyot’s point, all he wants to do is whine about how Cuba never gets credited for the good it does, just blamed for bad.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 26th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
Wire Pa[l]adin:
The problem is that you keep quitting this discussion in a huff and then, after you have managed to convince yourself yet again that all is not lost, you return to bury yourself even deeper in syllogisms and non sequiturs.
I will accept no blame whatever for my country in this matter, and the more it is unfairly blamed, the more strenuously will I argue its innocence.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 27th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
An article in Time Magazine dated June 12, 1939 states that on May 5 Cuban President Fedérico Laredo Bru sighed a decree “requir[ing] specific permission of the [U.S.] Departments of State, Labor and the Treasury” for the St. Louis passengers (or any others) to land in Cuba whose ultimate destination was the United States. No such permission having been granted to the passengers of the St. Louis, the ship was turned away turned away as per Roosevelt’s orders.
Time Magazine fails to mention that the passengers of the St. Louis had cabled President Roosevelt begging for asylum and that he refused even to answer their cable. No such cable was ever sent to President Laredo Bru because the St. Louis passengers knew, even if all of you don’t, that Roosevelt would determine their fate, not a Cuban president.
The Time article also mentions that Cuba had received 5000 Jewish refugee in Havana over the last year and that there were a total of 25,000 Jews there already.
It also reports that “in a half-dozen harbors in the Western Hemisphere … the St. Louis drama was being repeated.” At Veracruz, Mexico, German Jews on the Ondre were turned back, and at Buenos Aires, Argentina the Jewish refugeees on the Caporte, the Monte Olivia and the Mendoza were sent back to Germany.
Of course, none of these ships is a byword for indifference to the plight of Jews escaping the Holocaust. Just the St. Louis. And it is the innocent Cuban people who are blamed, not Roosevelt or the leaders of any country.
And as a final insult to the Cuban people when lists are compiled of countries that helped to rescue Jews, Cuba is always left out (see above) though proportionally it it did more than any other country on earth to save them.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 27th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
What about the U.S. Congress? What did it do to save the passengers on the St. Louis?
Congress, controlled in both chambers by the Democrats, killed in committee the Wagner-Rogers Bill (1939) which would have saved the St. Louis passengers and an additional 20,000 Jewish orphans from extermination. This was the same Congress that repeatedly refused to pass an Anti-Lynching law.
Know your own country’s history before you presume to criticize mine.
Payot Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 4:51 pm
The Time Magazine article referred to is here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,762382-1,00.html
I encourage everybody interested in this exchange to read it, not only for its specific content, but also to appreciate exactly how Mr. Tallechea has distorted its contents through omissions, selective quotes, and, perhaps most disturbingly, fabrication.
Mr Tallechea writes “An article in Time Magazine dated June 12, 1939 states that on May 5 Cuban President Fed‚rico Laredo Bru sighed a decree ‘requir[ing] specific permission of the [U.S.] Departments of State, Labor and the Treasury’ for the St. Louis passengers (or any others) to land in Cuba whose ultimate destination was the United States.”
Note that he places brackets around “U.S.” This is because the Time article makes no mention whatsoever of the US in this context. The exact unedited quote: “…and on May 5, nine days before the St. Louis sailed, hard-faced President Federico Laredo Bru had decreed that Cuba required specific permission of the Departments of State, Labor and the Treasury.” Given the context, why would those be American rather than components of the Cuban government?
Mr Tallechea writes “The Time article also mentions that Cuba had received 5000 Jewish refugee in Havana over the last year and that there were a total of 25,000 Jews there already.” In fact, the article makes no mention of the 25,000 number at all. It is a highly inflated estimate: most research points to a maximum of 15,000 Jews living in Cuba at any one time.
In his comment, Mr Tellechea does NOT include this passage from the same article:
“The rumors whispered of a longstanding dispute between the Hamburg-American Line and the Cuban Government, of a growth of Cuban anti-Semitism due to the landing of 5,000 refugees in Havana during the past year.”
I find these kinds of distortions quite disturbing on several levels. As a Jew and a student of Jewish history, I am familiar with many incidents where tyrants, racists, and their apologists in the media and academia distort the facts of science and history to serve their purpose and gain favor with the population. Jews are one of the persecuted groups that have been victims of this behavior for centuries.
I do not fault today’s Cubans (or Cuban Americans) for the conduct of a handful of their government officials almost 70 years ago, any more than I fault today’s Germans for their Nazi past. But I do fault those who would today deny the repugnant actions of those who came before us, and seek to whitewash their morally deficient conduct to suit their own ends, whatever they are.
I also note that throughout this sometimes heated exchange, which clearly involves parties who have locked horns previously, Mr Tellechea has steadfastly refused to provide sources for his statements, preferring instead to simply repeat himself. (Perhaps his abuse of this Time article explains why.) This is a well-known technique by tyrants the world over. While most of the world has seen the damage such conduct creates, I fear Mr. Tellechea has been left behind.
On final note: as Mr. Tellechea properly points out, Roosevelt and the US government behaved very badly in this affair, as did most other nations at the time. There are many reasons offered, none morally acceptable in my opinion. Still, poor conduct by one entity or government does nothing to justify another’s. That lesson remains true today.
Wire Palladin Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Peyot: you have this exactly right. Thank you. Castro Tellechia cherry-picks what he likes, ignores what he doesn’t, and makes up the rest. Then he bangs on his chest about what a hero he is. It is intellectually dishonest and morally despicable.
And for what? To make the actions of a 70 year old long-gone corrupt government look better than those of the United States? Everybody reviewing this matter can agree that the whole world acted terribly, singly and jointly.
Tellechia: you’re a fraud, exposed for all to see.
Thank you, Peyot.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Mr. Payot:
It is you who have distorted and maliciously misrepresented the content of the Time article in order to calumniate me personally and the Cuban people in general, which you may deny is your intent but which the thrust of your argument clearly betrays as your sole objective.
“Omissions” and “selective” quotations” because I did not quote the entire article or those passages that you wished me quote? As for “fabrications,” it is you who have misconstrued by the muted light of your ignorance or malice every quoted passage in the Time article, to wit:
“President Fedérico Laredo Bru had decreed that Cuba required specific permission of the Departments of State, Labor and the Treasury” to admit the refugees.
Why would President Laredo Bru require the “specific permission” of his own Departments of State, Labor and Treasury to admit the refugees? He is, after all, the president of Cuba, and, as in the U.S. and every other country, it is the cabinet secretaries who must obtain the president’s permission before acting in his name, not the other way around. Clearly, Laredo Bru’s Decree requires that Cuba obtain the “specific permission” of the U.S. Departments of State, Labor and Treasury before admitting the St. Louis refugees whose ultimate destination is the United States. That permission, given the outcome, was obviously not granted.
“The Time article also mentions that Cuba had received 5000 Jewish refugee in Havana over the last year and that there were a total of 25,000 Jews there already.”
This is exactly true. The Time article does in fact mention the 25,000 figure as the total number of Jews in Cuba in 1939. Read it again. And why, Payot, are you so personally invested in the “15,000″ figure? Why does it seem to upset you that Cubans saved 10,000 more Jews than you had creditted them with? Here your animus against Cubans is most transparent.
“The rumors [are] whispered of a longstanding dispute between the Hamburg-American Line and the Cuban Government, of a growth of Cuban anti-Semitism due to the landing of 5,000 refugees in Havana during the past year.”
I do not credit unsubstantiated “rumors” (”whispered” or not) or conclusions which are not based on evidence. On what basis does Time conclude that there has been a “growth of anti-Semitism in Cuba?” It does not say. For a country with a population of less than 5 million to have accepted 25,000 Jewish refugees would indicate that Cuba was in fact remarkably free of anti-Semitism and generous beyond its means.
Manuel A. Tellechea Says:
October 28th, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Wire Pal[l]idin:
Your champion, Payot, is a paper tiger. You had better look for another as you seem unable to defend your own positions.
Continue the debate at:
Judge Jeri B. Cohen Seeks the Spotlight Again
Never in her soon-to-end judicial career has Judge Jeri B. Cohen enjoyed herself more than in the Elenita custody case. Anyone who has ever witnessed her courtroom antics, which go far beyond the usual histrionics indulged in by most judges, cannot but be struck by her relentless, even compulsive, seeking of the spotlight. If Elenita had ever been permitted to be present at the star-chamber proceedings that will decide her future (or, rather, whether she will have any future at all), no doubt she would have been placed at the judge's orders far outside camera view, ostensibly to protect her privacy but really to prevent her from upstaging the judge. It is, rather odd, by the way, that children in this country have privacy rights but not the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That right must be contested in a courtroom on an individual basis and at great public expense. But no matter; if we start to chronicle again the irregularities of this case, or, more disturbing still, the irregularities of this judge, we would literally have to start from the beginning, and we have been here from the beginning anyway.
Judge Cohen is dissatisfied that the Third Court of Appeals has taken a week so far to consider her previous holding that Rafael Izquierdo is a marginally-fit father, especially after her dramatic plea last week: "I'm begging the Third District Court of Appeals on my hands and knees. I'm begging them to hear this on an expedited basis. There has got to be an end in sight." We are surprised, too, that the appellate court hasn't ruled yet because there is nothing in the evidence that would lead an impartial judge to conclude that Izquierdo is a fit-father on the basis of the evidence presented in Cohen's courtroom much less the evidence which she capriciously barred in arriving at her decision. Still, protocal demands that a circuit judge not presume to dictate to an appellate court how it should handle the cases referred to it on appeal. The vice-president, after all, doesn't tell the president what to do (bad example). In any case, her maudlin plea to the appellate court last week to act with all deliberate speed has not been heeded. So a petulent Judge Cohen has, in effect, uttered the judicial equivalent of "Fuck You!" and decided to resume the case, on her own authority, while she waits for the appellate court to decide whether her finding in "Phase 1" of these proceedings shall be upheld or reversed. Here's a better comparison: she has decided to resume, unilaterally, the game during time out while the referee decides a disputed call.
As is pro forma, Judge Cohen stayed the custody case last week while the appellate court decided the appeal. This was not only in conformity with established law, but also was the logical thing to do. How can she advanced from "Phase 1" to "Phase 2" if "Phase 2" depends on the outcome of "Phase 1"? If the appellate court reverses her decision that Rafael Izquierdo is a a fit father, then "Phase 2" becomes a moot point. If the appellate court rules Izquierdo an unfit father, what would be the point of adjudicating whether it would be in Elenita's best interests to have custody given to him?
But logic and precedent have never prevented Judge Cohen from having her own way in her courtroom. Against the advisement of the Department of Children and Family Services, which appealed her initial decision, and in order, once again, to hog the spotlight, Judge Cohen has decided that she is not going to stay the case while she awaits the Third Appellate Court's decision but proceed with this judicial farce anyway. She made her decision, in her own words, "based on my years of experience [and] I did a little research on my own." Well, I guess that settles the matter. Her "years of experience" and "a little research of [her] own" trumps logic and judicial precedent. We have said it before: Judge Cohen is a law unto herself and the magistracy practiced in her courtroom has more in common with Judge Judy's than what is mandated by established law.
Her decision to resume the case will no doubt be subject to yet another appeal. Meanwhile, the judge set testimony in "Phase 2" of the trial to begin on Monday. This phase of the trial is known as the endangerment hearing where the DFC will argue that the child will be emotionally-damaged if returned to the custody of the father who abandoned her and consented to her abuse at the mother's hands. Of course, Judge Cohen has already held the father to be a marginally-fit parent, which, as I've previously observed, is certainly as good as a marginally-fit spouse, a marginally-fit doctor or a marginally-fit judge. On that basis Izquierdo's attorteys, Kurzban and Montiel-Davis, are also appealing the constitutionality of the endangerment hearing arguing that a marginally-fit parent does not pose any danger to his child.
And so, the farce continue.
POSTSCRIPT:
It may be wrong to suggest that Judge Cohen's judicial career may soon be over. Yes, it is unlikely that she will be re-elected as circuit judge if she's foolish enough to decide that notoriety equals popularity and runs again in 2008. Not only her conduct in the Elenita case but her previous remark in another case, which we were the first to report and relate to the present case, that crime in Florida would cease if all Cubans were deported, will effectively end her judicial career in Miami-Dade. Of course, President Hillary Clinton could appoint her a district or appellate judge. Or even Attorney General.
Judge Cohen is dissatisfied that the Third Court of Appeals has taken a week so far to consider her previous holding that Rafael Izquierdo is a marginally-fit father, especially after her dramatic plea last week: "I'm begging the Third District Court of Appeals on my hands and knees. I'm begging them to hear this on an expedited basis. There has got to be an end in sight." We are surprised, too, that the appellate court hasn't ruled yet because there is nothing in the evidence that would lead an impartial judge to conclude that Izquierdo is a fit-father on the basis of the evidence presented in Cohen's courtroom much less the evidence which she capriciously barred in arriving at her decision. Still, protocal demands that a circuit judge not presume to dictate to an appellate court how it should handle the cases referred to it on appeal. The vice-president, after all, doesn't tell the president what to do (bad example). In any case, her maudlin plea to the appellate court last week to act with all deliberate speed has not been heeded. So a petulent Judge Cohen has, in effect, uttered the judicial equivalent of "Fuck You!" and decided to resume the case, on her own authority, while she waits for the appellate court to decide whether her finding in "Phase 1" of these proceedings shall be upheld or reversed. Here's a better comparison: she has decided to resume, unilaterally, the game during time out while the referee decides a disputed call.
As is pro forma, Judge Cohen stayed the custody case last week while the appellate court decided the appeal. This was not only in conformity with established law, but also was the logical thing to do. How can she advanced from "Phase 1" to "Phase 2" if "Phase 2" depends on the outcome of "Phase 1"? If the appellate court reverses her decision that Rafael Izquierdo is a a fit father, then "Phase 2" becomes a moot point. If the appellate court rules Izquierdo an unfit father, what would be the point of adjudicating whether it would be in Elenita's best interests to have custody given to him?
But logic and precedent have never prevented Judge Cohen from having her own way in her courtroom. Against the advisement of the Department of Children and Family Services, which appealed her initial decision, and in order, once again, to hog the spotlight, Judge Cohen has decided that she is not going to stay the case while she awaits the Third Appellate Court's decision but proceed with this judicial farce anyway. She made her decision, in her own words, "based on my years of experience [and] I did a little research on my own." Well, I guess that settles the matter. Her "years of experience" and "a little research of [her] own" trumps logic and judicial precedent. We have said it before: Judge Cohen is a law unto herself and the magistracy practiced in her courtroom has more in common with Judge Judy's than what is mandated by established law.
Her decision to resume the case will no doubt be subject to yet another appeal. Meanwhile, the judge set testimony in "Phase 2" of the trial to begin on Monday. This phase of the trial is known as the endangerment hearing where the DFC will argue that the child will be emotionally-damaged if returned to the custody of the father who abandoned her and consented to her abuse at the mother's hands. Of course, Judge Cohen has already held the father to be a marginally-fit parent, which, as I've previously observed, is certainly as good as a marginally-fit spouse, a marginally-fit doctor or a marginally-fit judge. On that basis Izquierdo's attorteys, Kurzban and Montiel-Davis, are also appealing the constitutionality of the endangerment hearing arguing that a marginally-fit parent does not pose any danger to his child.
And so, the farce continue.
POSTSCRIPT:
It may be wrong to suggest that Judge Cohen's judicial career may soon be over. Yes, it is unlikely that she will be re-elected as circuit judge if she's foolish enough to decide that notoriety equals popularity and runs again in 2008. Not only her conduct in the Elenita case but her previous remark in another case, which we were the first to report and relate to the present case, that crime in Florida would cease if all Cubans were deported, will effectively end her judicial career in Miami-Dade. Of course, President Hillary Clinton could appoint her a district or appellate judge. Or even Attorney General.
Monday, October 22, 2007
An Art Exhibit Worth Seeing
Another pleasant surprise for me at Babalú. There have been quite a few of those lately and it worries me. Have they found at long last the gag to silence me? Which, of course, would be to adopt all my positions. Really, it was so easy that I am surprised it took them so long to figure it out. Well, not too surprised.
After ignoring Posada Carriles when he needed them most (I even saved an old e-mail from Henry asking me if he was really a "terrorist" as Castro says), Babalú's newest co-editor, Alberto de la Cruz, who is free of the original sin, posted an announcement for an exhibit of the paintings of the noted Cuban patriots Luís Posada Carriles and José Dionisio Suárez.
The date of the exhibit is October 24, between 5:00 PM and 10:00 PM, at the lobby of the Big 5 Club, 600 S.W. 92nd Street, Miami, FL.
I urge all who can to attend. It would be an ennobling experience to commune with the spirits of these brave men who are the truest living representatives of our glorious mambises. Their lives of selfless dedication to our country and the cause of freedom are examples of the highest art, which is practiced with blood and with deeds.
After ignoring Posada Carriles when he needed them most (I even saved an old e-mail from Henry asking me if he was really a "terrorist" as Castro says), Babalú's newest co-editor, Alberto de la Cruz, who is free of the original sin, posted an announcement for an exhibit of the paintings of the noted Cuban patriots Luís Posada Carriles and José Dionisio Suárez.
The date of the exhibit is October 24, between 5:00 PM and 10:00 PM, at the lobby of the Big 5 Club, 600 S.W. 92nd Street, Miami, FL.
I urge all who can to attend. It would be an ennobling experience to commune with the spirits of these brave men who are the truest living representatives of our glorious mambises. Their lives of selfless dedication to our country and the cause of freedom are examples of the highest art, which is practiced with blood and with deeds.
Castro and Stalin: Parallel Lives
I am reading right now Simon Sebag Montefiore's Young Stalin. In The New York Review of Books, Orlando Figes nicely summarizes the book in the title of his notice: "Rise of a Gangster." Stalin's revolutionary career prior to 1917 consisted of murdering enemies and rivals, industrial sabotage, kipnapping children for ransom, million-ruple bank robberies, counterfeiting, extorsion and protection rackets. Montefiore likens Stalin to an "effective godfather of a small, useful and moderately successful Mafia family." Imprisoned briefly by the Tsarist government, Stalin became the boss of the jail "dominating his friends, terrorizing the intellectuals, suborning the guards and befriending the criminals." Anyone acquainted with Castro's own gangster youth, which included killing three rivals on separate occasions by shooting them in the back — the first when Castro and the victim were teenagers — as well as dozens of indescript killings during the Bogotazo; anyone familiar with Castro's own conduct during his brief imprisonment under Batista, cannot fail to see that Castro and Stalin lived parallel lives before reaching power (and, of course, afterwards).
In fact, Fidel Castro may justly claim to be the world's last Stalinist leader. There are others, such as Kim Il Sung and Robert Mugabe, who belong to his lineage; but Castro alone came to prominence as a gangster and political agitator while Stalin still lived, conducted a revolution which was connected to Moscow from the first and joined his country's fate to it once he came to power, transforming Cuba into the Soviet Union's first ultra-continental satellite and the only one never to break from it. So faithful was Castro to Stalin's construct of the USSR than even when it fell and was dismantled he attempted to revive it by conspiring with the Old Communists (i.e. the Stalinists) to overthrow the Yeltsin government and restore Communist rule in the former Soviet Union. This may be the only instance in the history of Communism where the satrap attempted to rescue his master -- the "master" being, of course, the legacy of totalitarianism bequeathed to Russia by Castro's real mentor, Joseph Stalin.
Having failed to restore Communism in the old Soviet Union, Castro attempted to vindicate that legacy as embodied in Stalin. In a world where Stalinism has become a byword for Communist "excesses" -- in truth, it should be a more potent synonym for state-sponsored savagery and inhumanity than even Hitlerism -- Fidel Castro, in 1992, standing amid its smouldering ruins, indeed, perched on the ashcan of history, attempted one last time to vindicate Stalin. Whatever private opinion one may entertain about the erstwhile "Great Helmsman," it is doubtful that any other head of state will ever defend again or choose to identify himself publicly with Stalin.
Castro did so in an interview with Tomás Borge in Managua's El Nuevo Diario, on January 3, 1992. He no doubt felt more secure because of the venue and the interviewer, who, to simplify matters, may be likened to a Sandinista "Che" Guevara in his penchant for blood. It was Borge who introduced the subject of Stalin, sensing, perhaps, that Castro needed to vent on the subject. Or, just as likely, the interview was staged for that purpose; it is difficult to know. In fact, neither the place nor date of the interview was given.
First, Borge congratulated Castro on keeping Cuba a communist state after the fall of the Soviet Union. Castro, who did not flinch at cutting rations in half to his slaves in order to withstand the onslaught of freedom, agreed that it was quite an accomplishment for the copy to have survived the model: "The mere fact that Cuba has decided to keep going forward and face the dangers and the challenges following the collapse of the socialist bloc and the disappearance of the USSR is a significant event in history."
Borge, who, like Gladstone, knows when to slop it on with a trowel, asked if "the Cuban revolution is the beginning of a resurrection of a socialist option at the world level?" Yes, Castro agreed, Cuba is the last and best hope for the triumph of "certain principles that are immensely, extraordinarily valuable at a moment of confusion in the world." The "moment of confusion" was the dawn of freedom in the Communist world.
Borge next asked Castro what he was prepared to do if that awful specter reared its head in Cuba? Castro once answered that question in another interview by saying that he would prefer the island to sink into the ocean. In his reply to Borge, however, he said that Cubans would defend Communism even if Cuba became a "lonely island." What he actually meant, of course, was an empty island. He clarified that point immediately when he confessed that if the island were invaded "it would be necessary to exterminate millions of men determined to fight." Even then, he was sure that the "empire would not prevail." Apparently, "exterminating millions of Cubans" out of a total population of 10 million did not signify defeat to Castro: "If we were invaded and were capable of resisting until the end, that would have great value." The lives of millions of Cubans have no value but the sacrifice of their lives in order to uphold an evil ideology would have "great value."
Borge, reminding Castro that he had recently said that the USSR was "assassinated, stabbed in the back," asked Castro if Gorbachev was in on the "conspiracy of daggers that killed socialism?" Castro exculpated Gorbachev whom he said "intended to fight to improve socialism in the USSR." He even claimed, after the fact, that he approved of Gorbachev's reforms. Well, yes, Gorbachev was a true believer, and he only wanted to tinker with Communism, not implode it. His "mistake," from Castro's and Gorbachev's viewpoint, was to try to rearrange a house of cards.
Well, if not Gorbachev, who destroyed socialism and dismantled the USSR? Fidel resolutely refused to name names. He was only willing to say that it "self-destructed" and that "imperialism would not have been able to disintegrate the Soviet Union had the Soviets not destroyed it themselves." "Destroying themselves," apparently, means being unwilling to "exterminate millions" in order to save Communism. And, of course, Fidel would not be Fidel if he did not also claim that he "saw it all coming from the beginning."
Borge then suggested an unexpected culprit for the fall of Communism: "Fidel, for most Latin American revolutionary leaders, the current crisis of socialism has a mastermind: Josef Stalin."
The obvious answer would have been that Communism not only survived Joseph Stalin but expanded (to Cuba, for example, and Nicaragua) after Stalin's death.
Castro, instead, availed himself of this opportunity to expound on the merits and failures of Stalin, a subject which he affirmed he had "never discussed with any journalist or on any other occasion." No wonder.
"Blaming Stalin for everything that occurred in the Soviet Union would be a historical simplism, because no man by himself could have created certain conditions. It would be the same as giving Stalin all the credit for what the USSR once was. That is impossible!"
Castro then proceeded to blame Stalin for "violations of the legal framework (the purges?), abuses of power, failure to develop a progressive process to socialize land" — in short, all of Castro's own crimes in Cuba. As he had once championed, after the fact, the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary, Castro now repudiated, after the fact, the Hitler-Stalin Pact, which, of course, was the precursor of the equally craven but vastly more successful (for Castro) Kennedy-Khrushchev Pact. He also criticized Stalin for purging his generals on the eve of World War II (which is what Castro himself had done to Arnaldo Ochoa and the La Guardia brothers on the verge of the collapse of Communism). Finally, with unexpected and blood-curdling candor, he faulted Stalin for "placing Communists — who were great friends of the USSR — in a very difficult position by having to support each one of those episodes" [that is, the Hitler-Stalin Pact and subsequent invasion of Poland and Finland]. Yes, it is very inconsiderate of a bloodthirsty dictator to make his apologists abroad defend all his predations.
Borge should have left well enough alone. But his curiosity got the better of him. Castro had said that Stalin shouldn't be blamed for the collapse of Communism and then he proceeded to judge him with a rod by which surely he would not want to be judged himself, since he has committed all of Stalin's "mistakes" for twice as long as did Stalin.
Then came the question: "What do you believe were Stalin's merits?"
And Castro tells him:
"He established unity in the Soviet Union. He consolidated what Lenin had begun: party unity. He gave the international revolutionary movement a new impetus. The USSR's industrialization was one of Stalin's wisest actions, and I believe it was a determining factor in the USSR's capacity to resist. I believe Stalin led the USSR well during the war. According to many generals, Zhukov and the most brilliant Soviet generals, Stalin played an important role in defending the USSR and in the war against Nazism. They all recognized it. I think there should be an impartial analysis of Stalin. Blaming him for everything that happened would be historical simplism."
For someone who is very fond of historical simplisms himself, Castro won't allow Stalin to be crushed under the weight of them. He blames Stalin for what he himself copied in Cuba (the purges and a catastrophic alliance) and praises him for what he failed to accomplish in Cuba (industrialization). Castro praised him also for his defense of the Soviet motherland. What he admires, of course, is the fact that Stalin defended his power to his dying day and died in his own bed. It is a feat that Castro himself wishes to emulate, and, which, in all likelihood he will, alas.
In fact, Fidel Castro may justly claim to be the world's last Stalinist leader. There are others, such as Kim Il Sung and Robert Mugabe, who belong to his lineage; but Castro alone came to prominence as a gangster and political agitator while Stalin still lived, conducted a revolution which was connected to Moscow from the first and joined his country's fate to it once he came to power, transforming Cuba into the Soviet Union's first ultra-continental satellite and the only one never to break from it. So faithful was Castro to Stalin's construct of the USSR than even when it fell and was dismantled he attempted to revive it by conspiring with the Old Communists (i.e. the Stalinists) to overthrow the Yeltsin government and restore Communist rule in the former Soviet Union. This may be the only instance in the history of Communism where the satrap attempted to rescue his master -- the "master" being, of course, the legacy of totalitarianism bequeathed to Russia by Castro's real mentor, Joseph Stalin.
Having failed to restore Communism in the old Soviet Union, Castro attempted to vindicate that legacy as embodied in Stalin. In a world where Stalinism has become a byword for Communist "excesses" -- in truth, it should be a more potent synonym for state-sponsored savagery and inhumanity than even Hitlerism -- Fidel Castro, in 1992, standing amid its smouldering ruins, indeed, perched on the ashcan of history, attempted one last time to vindicate Stalin. Whatever private opinion one may entertain about the erstwhile "Great Helmsman," it is doubtful that any other head of state will ever defend again or choose to identify himself publicly with Stalin.
Castro did so in an interview with Tomás Borge in Managua's El Nuevo Diario, on January 3, 1992. He no doubt felt more secure because of the venue and the interviewer, who, to simplify matters, may be likened to a Sandinista "Che" Guevara in his penchant for blood. It was Borge who introduced the subject of Stalin, sensing, perhaps, that Castro needed to vent on the subject. Or, just as likely, the interview was staged for that purpose; it is difficult to know. In fact, neither the place nor date of the interview was given.
First, Borge congratulated Castro on keeping Cuba a communist state after the fall of the Soviet Union. Castro, who did not flinch at cutting rations in half to his slaves in order to withstand the onslaught of freedom, agreed that it was quite an accomplishment for the copy to have survived the model: "The mere fact that Cuba has decided to keep going forward and face the dangers and the challenges following the collapse of the socialist bloc and the disappearance of the USSR is a significant event in history."
Borge, who, like Gladstone, knows when to slop it on with a trowel, asked if "the Cuban revolution is the beginning of a resurrection of a socialist option at the world level?" Yes, Castro agreed, Cuba is the last and best hope for the triumph of "certain principles that are immensely, extraordinarily valuable at a moment of confusion in the world." The "moment of confusion" was the dawn of freedom in the Communist world.
Borge next asked Castro what he was prepared to do if that awful specter reared its head in Cuba? Castro once answered that question in another interview by saying that he would prefer the island to sink into the ocean. In his reply to Borge, however, he said that Cubans would defend Communism even if Cuba became a "lonely island." What he actually meant, of course, was an empty island. He clarified that point immediately when he confessed that if the island were invaded "it would be necessary to exterminate millions of men determined to fight." Even then, he was sure that the "empire would not prevail." Apparently, "exterminating millions of Cubans" out of a total population of 10 million did not signify defeat to Castro: "If we were invaded and were capable of resisting until the end, that would have great value." The lives of millions of Cubans have no value but the sacrifice of their lives in order to uphold an evil ideology would have "great value."
Borge, reminding Castro that he had recently said that the USSR was "assassinated, stabbed in the back," asked Castro if Gorbachev was in on the "conspiracy of daggers that killed socialism?" Castro exculpated Gorbachev whom he said "intended to fight to improve socialism in the USSR." He even claimed, after the fact, that he approved of Gorbachev's reforms. Well, yes, Gorbachev was a true believer, and he only wanted to tinker with Communism, not implode it. His "mistake," from Castro's and Gorbachev's viewpoint, was to try to rearrange a house of cards.
Well, if not Gorbachev, who destroyed socialism and dismantled the USSR? Fidel resolutely refused to name names. He was only willing to say that it "self-destructed" and that "imperialism would not have been able to disintegrate the Soviet Union had the Soviets not destroyed it themselves." "Destroying themselves," apparently, means being unwilling to "exterminate millions" in order to save Communism. And, of course, Fidel would not be Fidel if he did not also claim that he "saw it all coming from the beginning."
Borge then suggested an unexpected culprit for the fall of Communism: "Fidel, for most Latin American revolutionary leaders, the current crisis of socialism has a mastermind: Josef Stalin."
The obvious answer would have been that Communism not only survived Joseph Stalin but expanded (to Cuba, for example, and Nicaragua) after Stalin's death.
Castro, instead, availed himself of this opportunity to expound on the merits and failures of Stalin, a subject which he affirmed he had "never discussed with any journalist or on any other occasion." No wonder.
"Blaming Stalin for everything that occurred in the Soviet Union would be a historical simplism, because no man by himself could have created certain conditions. It would be the same as giving Stalin all the credit for what the USSR once was. That is impossible!"
Castro then proceeded to blame Stalin for "violations of the legal framework (the purges?), abuses of power, failure to develop a progressive process to socialize land" — in short, all of Castro's own crimes in Cuba. As he had once championed, after the fact, the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary, Castro now repudiated, after the fact, the Hitler-Stalin Pact, which, of course, was the precursor of the equally craven but vastly more successful (for Castro) Kennedy-Khrushchev Pact. He also criticized Stalin for purging his generals on the eve of World War II (which is what Castro himself had done to Arnaldo Ochoa and the La Guardia brothers on the verge of the collapse of Communism). Finally, with unexpected and blood-curdling candor, he faulted Stalin for "placing Communists — who were great friends of the USSR — in a very difficult position by having to support each one of those episodes" [that is, the Hitler-Stalin Pact and subsequent invasion of Poland and Finland]. Yes, it is very inconsiderate of a bloodthirsty dictator to make his apologists abroad defend all his predations.
Borge should have left well enough alone. But his curiosity got the better of him. Castro had said that Stalin shouldn't be blamed for the collapse of Communism and then he proceeded to judge him with a rod by which surely he would not want to be judged himself, since he has committed all of Stalin's "mistakes" for twice as long as did Stalin.
Then came the question: "What do you believe were Stalin's merits?"
And Castro tells him:
"He established unity in the Soviet Union. He consolidated what Lenin had begun: party unity. He gave the international revolutionary movement a new impetus. The USSR's industrialization was one of Stalin's wisest actions, and I believe it was a determining factor in the USSR's capacity to resist. I believe Stalin led the USSR well during the war. According to many generals, Zhukov and the most brilliant Soviet generals, Stalin played an important role in defending the USSR and in the war against Nazism. They all recognized it. I think there should be an impartial analysis of Stalin. Blaming him for everything that happened would be historical simplism."
For someone who is very fond of historical simplisms himself, Castro won't allow Stalin to be crushed under the weight of them. He blames Stalin for what he himself copied in Cuba (the purges and a catastrophic alliance) and praises him for what he failed to accomplish in Cuba (industrialization). Castro praised him also for his defense of the Soviet motherland. What he admires, of course, is the fact that Stalin defended his power to his dying day and died in his own bed. It is a feat that Castro himself wishes to emulate, and, which, in all likelihood he will, alas.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Notable & Delusional: Jimmy Carter Could Have Done for Cuba What He did for North Korea
"When I got back from Cuba and George W. Bush was in office, he just tightened up restraints on dealing with the Cuban people. On the other hand, when I came back from North Korea, I shared what I had done with Bill Clinton, and he and Madeleine Albright adopted what I had done and put it into an official agreement [with North Korea]." — Jimmy Carter, interview in The Indianapolis Star, Oct. 21, 2007.
If what Carter "had done" in North Korea led to an agreement which gave Kim Il Sung the opportunity to develop nuclear weapons while receiving billions in bribes for not doing so, we can't even imagine what might have happened in Cuba if George W. had adopted Carter's recommendations whatever they may have been.
We are surprised that Carter is not in Cuba right now certifying its one-party elections and proclaiming them fairer than the 2000 U.S. presidential elections.
If what Carter "had done" in North Korea led to an agreement which gave Kim Il Sung the opportunity to develop nuclear weapons while receiving billions in bribes for not doing so, we can't even imagine what might have happened in Cuba if George W. had adopted Carter's recommendations whatever they may have been.
We are surprised that Carter is not in Cuba right now certifying its one-party elections and proclaiming them fairer than the 2000 U.S. presidential elections.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
"Miranda Returns:" Hugo Chávez's Debut as a Sponsor of the Cinematic Arts
Chávez Is Also Producing a Film on the Life of Posada Carriles
What we find most striking about Hugo Chávez is his nonchalance about aping every idiotic idea that ever entered another despot's head regardless of whether it serves any purpose at all other than bringing him closer to absolute power. Being irrational is also a means to be original, the only means open to Chávez. His latest stunt is to finance at the people's expense the production of films and television series intended to popularize the chavista take on Venezuela's past. As Cuba did in 1959, Venezuela at the time of Chavez's ascent had the largest television industry in Latin America, which produced programs that were aired throughout the region as well as Europe (their soap operas were wildly popular in Spain). This was not enough for Chávez, or, rather, it was too much. The wrong Venezuelan culture was being exhibited to an appreciative world. He had to purify and revolutionize the national media in order to project his vision of Venezuelan history and culture to the world. "There is no revolution if we don't recover our culture, our own values," Chavez said. "It's part of the fight against (U.S.) imperial hegemony." On more practical grounds, having already taken over the nation's largest broadcasting network because he objected to its coverage of his regime, Chávez had to provide something for Venezuelans to watch other than his own execrable television show, "Alo, presidente."
The first fruit of his artistic vision has just been revealed. Of course, his artistic vision has a lot in common — in concept if not execution — with Hitler's and Stalin's. Just as they bankrolled the wartime production of patriotic biopics about their respective heroes, Ivan the Terrible and Frederick the Great, Chávez, too, has sought to cloak himself with the mantle of his country's epic prohombres.
The first film released by the state-run Villa del Cine [Cinema Town] studio, entitled Miranda Regresa [Miranda Returns], is dedicated to the life of Francisco Miranda, known in Venezuela as the "Precursor" because his efforts to free his country from Spanish rule predated Bolívar's. Miranda was a Venezuelan-born general in the Spanish army who switched sides during the French Revolution and become a general in Napoleon's army. He wanted to liberate the South American continent and attempted, unsuccessfully, to secure the help of everyone from William Pitt to George Washington. Meanwhile, Bolivar, on the ground in Venezuela, started the revolution that Miranda had hoped to lead. The Liberator invited Miranda to join him, which he did (this is to the credit of both). Placed at the head of his own army, Miranda, without advising Bolívar or any of the other generals, immediately negotiated an armistice with the Spanish. Repudiated by Bolívar, who thought him a traitor, Miranda was captured and handed over to the Spanish, who, ignoring their "armistice," shipped him in chains to Spain, where he died on the anniversary of Bastille Day in a Cádiz prison in 1816. This proved, at least, that he was not a traitor, though a very poor judge of men. Miranda's lofty ideals for the region were never realized because of his low opinion of his countrymen, whom he did not trust sufficiently to lead into battle. Bolívar would lead the Venezuelans to victory but would, in the end, become as disillusioned with them as Miranda did. His last words were either "The two biggest dolts in the universe, Jesus Christ and me" or "I have ploughed the seas."
The moral to be derived from this story is that while Miranda and Bolívar found the Venezuelan people ungovernable, that is, too unenlightened for the Enlightenment, Chávez, their self-styled organic successor, has found a way to govern them according to their merits. The Indian has bested the patricians while laying claim to their legacy, and Chávez wants Venezuelans and the world to know it.
The film, incidentally, features Danny Glover as a Haitian supporter of Miranda's, not at all unusual since in his many peregrinations Miranda had lived in Haiti, except that he met this fictional Haitian in New York. If you are thinking of an 18th century Starsky and Hutch you are not far from what this movie aims at. The soap opera star who portrays Miranda, 25-year old Jorge Reyes, ages in the film from age 18 to 66, the kind of transformation one hasn't seen on the big screen since Little Big Man. Miranda Regresa was filmed in Venezuela, Cuba (a stand-in for Haiti) and the Czech Republic (a stand-in for France). The budget was $2.3 million and for that they even managed to stage grand battle scenes.
Villa del Cine's next production is to be a film on the life of Luis Posada Carriles, the well-known Cuban freedom fighter with connections to Venezuela. We suppose that he will not be given the hagiographic treatment. I haven't figured it out yet, but I am sure that there will be a part in the film for Danny Glover and I can't wait to see whom they choose to play Fidel Castro.
What we find most striking about Hugo Chávez is his nonchalance about aping every idiotic idea that ever entered another despot's head regardless of whether it serves any purpose at all other than bringing him closer to absolute power. Being irrational is also a means to be original, the only means open to Chávez. His latest stunt is to finance at the people's expense the production of films and television series intended to popularize the chavista take on Venezuela's past. As Cuba did in 1959, Venezuela at the time of Chavez's ascent had the largest television industry in Latin America, which produced programs that were aired throughout the region as well as Europe (their soap operas were wildly popular in Spain). This was not enough for Chávez, or, rather, it was too much. The wrong Venezuelan culture was being exhibited to an appreciative world. He had to purify and revolutionize the national media in order to project his vision of Venezuelan history and culture to the world. "There is no revolution if we don't recover our culture, our own values," Chavez said. "It's part of the fight against (U.S.) imperial hegemony." On more practical grounds, having already taken over the nation's largest broadcasting network because he objected to its coverage of his regime, Chávez had to provide something for Venezuelans to watch other than his own execrable television show, "Alo, presidente."
The first fruit of his artistic vision has just been revealed. Of course, his artistic vision has a lot in common — in concept if not execution — with Hitler's and Stalin's. Just as they bankrolled the wartime production of patriotic biopics about their respective heroes, Ivan the Terrible and Frederick the Great, Chávez, too, has sought to cloak himself with the mantle of his country's epic prohombres.
The first film released by the state-run Villa del Cine [Cinema Town] studio, entitled Miranda Regresa [Miranda Returns], is dedicated to the life of Francisco Miranda, known in Venezuela as the "Precursor" because his efforts to free his country from Spanish rule predated Bolívar's. Miranda was a Venezuelan-born general in the Spanish army who switched sides during the French Revolution and become a general in Napoleon's army. He wanted to liberate the South American continent and attempted, unsuccessfully, to secure the help of everyone from William Pitt to George Washington. Meanwhile, Bolivar, on the ground in Venezuela, started the revolution that Miranda had hoped to lead. The Liberator invited Miranda to join him, which he did (this is to the credit of both). Placed at the head of his own army, Miranda, without advising Bolívar or any of the other generals, immediately negotiated an armistice with the Spanish. Repudiated by Bolívar, who thought him a traitor, Miranda was captured and handed over to the Spanish, who, ignoring their "armistice," shipped him in chains to Spain, where he died on the anniversary of Bastille Day in a Cádiz prison in 1816. This proved, at least, that he was not a traitor, though a very poor judge of men. Miranda's lofty ideals for the region were never realized because of his low opinion of his countrymen, whom he did not trust sufficiently to lead into battle. Bolívar would lead the Venezuelans to victory but would, in the end, become as disillusioned with them as Miranda did. His last words were either "The two biggest dolts in the universe, Jesus Christ and me" or "I have ploughed the seas."
The moral to be derived from this story is that while Miranda and Bolívar found the Venezuelan people ungovernable, that is, too unenlightened for the Enlightenment, Chávez, their self-styled organic successor, has found a way to govern them according to their merits. The Indian has bested the patricians while laying claim to their legacy, and Chávez wants Venezuelans and the world to know it.
The film, incidentally, features Danny Glover as a Haitian supporter of Miranda's, not at all unusual since in his many peregrinations Miranda had lived in Haiti, except that he met this fictional Haitian in New York. If you are thinking of an 18th century Starsky and Hutch you are not far from what this movie aims at. The soap opera star who portrays Miranda, 25-year old Jorge Reyes, ages in the film from age 18 to 66, the kind of transformation one hasn't seen on the big screen since Little Big Man. Miranda Regresa was filmed in Venezuela, Cuba (a stand-in for Haiti) and the Czech Republic (a stand-in for France). The budget was $2.3 million and for that they even managed to stage grand battle scenes.
Villa del Cine's next production is to be a film on the life of Luis Posada Carriles, the well-known Cuban freedom fighter with connections to Venezuela. We suppose that he will not be given the hagiographic treatment. I haven't figured it out yet, but I am sure that there will be a part in the film for Danny Glover and I can't wait to see whom they choose to play Fidel Castro.
Blog Review: Cuban-American Pundits
We are in the midst of a revolution in the Cuban-American blogosphere, the rare kind of revolution that advances the human condition rather than retards it. I noted earlier this week the remarkable transformation which has been wrought at the 26th Parallel blog, which has regained a distinctive character of its own after a long existence as an indescript appendage to Babalú. It is even more remarkable that this trend has extended to Cuban-American Pundits, which is currently the collaborative effort of Sr. Cohiba, Henry Gómez and John "Songuacassal" (better known as Ziva).
In its original incarnation, also known as its glory days, Cuban-American Pundits also boasted as contributing editors Killcastro and Charlie Bravo, who were founding members along with Henry and Ziva. Charlie left because of a disagreement with Henry over flag-burning, which the "American-Cuban" Henry supported. Killcastro followed in solidarity with Charlie Bravo. The two then started Killcastro blog with Ziva, who would later defect from Killcastro to Babalú. Val Prieto, who has a vulture's eye for the main chance, also grabbed up Henry as a contributor. Assimilating the competition is Val's way of eliminating it.
With the departure of Killcastro and Charlie Bravo, and the drafting of Henry and Ziva by Val Prieto, Cuban-American Pundits, formerly one of the most entertaining of Cuban-American blogs, became an afterthought and a burden. That it was kept going at all must be attributed to early second thoughts on Henry's part about the move to Babalú and the necessity of having a fallback plan if it didn't work out. Of course, it worked out very well, which left CAP very much the worse for it.
When Henry was Henry, not Val & Henry, Cuban American Pundits, although perhaps a little too much addicted to cut and paste, did manage to produce regularly insighful and entertaining posts whose chief charm was their lack of pretentiousness. Those acquainted with Henry's present work at Babalú will find that almost unbelievable. Back then, Henry wrote a credo of sorts which stipulated, among other things, that "[W]hat you won't generally find here [at CAP] is gratuitous name-calling. You won't find wild speculation (unless it's labeled as such) and you won't find unsubstantiated reports (unless they are likewise labeled as such)." This, in itself, makes the old CAP infinitely the superior of Babalú, where all that and worse is found. This Henry didn't claim to be an expert at anything; very different from the current Henry who is an expert at everything. From this period dates some of Henry's best writing, such as his "Message to Mr. or Ms. Leftside," "Letter to John Moscowitz" and "We Get Letters" (about "Che" Guevara). As a respondent to wacky liberal correspondents, in the MSM or his own e-mail, Henry has few peers among Cuban bloggers. From this period, also, dates Henry's 14-chapter novelistic continuation of The Lost City, which, if you could suffer through the movie, you would certainly endure reading, too. Henry also used to publish his original poetry on CAP. I am not cruel enough to quote from it.
Ziva also did excellent work at CAP, although in that regard she has always been consistent. Her lighter pieces, for which she also has a deft hand, were reserved for this period and are almost absent from her present writing. I recall especially her "Caliente, Amargo, Fuerte y [Espeso]" about Cuban coffee and an essay about the typical cubanita. That Ziva would surprise and delight her readers at Babalú, too, if that Ziva were not considered too frivolous for her current lofty endeavors. Perhaps that is the reason that Ziva returned to CAP as a contributing editor earlier this year, just in time to devote a post to the Review of Cuban-American Blogs, which was deleted soon after. And, speaking of deletions, all the early Killcastro and Charlie Bravo material was also deleted from CAP, hence our inability to comment on it.
Nowadays, Henry and Ziva save their best work for Babalú and do not simply link significant posts from their own blog(s) as does, for example, Marc Másferrer. Lately, in fact, the editors at CAP have reduced the volume to such a point that it is almost inaudible, or, rather, they've raised it but not on the political debate but on the delights of our Cuban musical heritage.
The richness of Cuban culture, which, even today, is the extended reflection of Republican culture, is as potent an argument as any, and more irrefutable than most, that civilization reached its apex in Cuba before 1959 and that nothing of value has been added since though much has been lost, through official rejection or indifference, which can be lethal when the government controls the arts.
It is, therefore, also a function of politics to recognize and disseminate the monuments of that culture, which now appears to be CAP's mission through the agency of YouTube. In the last few weeks it has featured performances of the works of such artists as René Touzet; Pérez Prado; Ignacio Cervantes and others. I should like to think that this is not simply filler material, but represents a concerted effort to highlight what culture can achieve when unfettered, and how, when fettered, as in Cuba today, culture becomes, with few exceptions, like the record that is harpooned on one groove and can't move to the next song, or, in this case, the next phase of musical development. It would have been better if they had offered some critical apparatus to accompany the performances besides identifying Lecuona as Cuba's greatest composer or Cervantes as a 19th-century one; on second thought, it is perhaps better to let the work speak for itself.
Cuban-American Pundits has seen better days, but the present, at least, is free of the excesses that are the bane of Babalu's existence. It is not a substitute for the "mother blog" if one wants to know the meanderings of Val & Co., but its decline has at least been gracious and its inoffensiveness remains a merit. If Henry were ever to abandon his plans of waging crusades against entire peoples or seducing superannuated Marxist entertainers like Sting, Cuban-American Pundits remains as a reminder of his better self and a refuge where he can still be relevant and engaging if he still remembers how.
POSTSCRIPT:
As a matter of record, Ziva affirms that she was never involved in any capacity with Cuban-American Pundits.
In its original incarnation, also known as its glory days, Cuban-American Pundits also boasted as contributing editors Killcastro and Charlie Bravo, who were founding members along with Henry and Ziva. Charlie left because of a disagreement with Henry over flag-burning, which the "American-Cuban" Henry supported. Killcastro followed in solidarity with Charlie Bravo. The two then started Killcastro blog with Ziva, who would later defect from Killcastro to Babalú. Val Prieto, who has a vulture's eye for the main chance, also grabbed up Henry as a contributor. Assimilating the competition is Val's way of eliminating it.
With the departure of Killcastro and Charlie Bravo, and the drafting of Henry and Ziva by Val Prieto, Cuban-American Pundits, formerly one of the most entertaining of Cuban-American blogs, became an afterthought and a burden. That it was kept going at all must be attributed to early second thoughts on Henry's part about the move to Babalú and the necessity of having a fallback plan if it didn't work out. Of course, it worked out very well, which left CAP very much the worse for it.
When Henry was Henry, not Val & Henry, Cuban American Pundits, although perhaps a little too much addicted to cut and paste, did manage to produce regularly insighful and entertaining posts whose chief charm was their lack of pretentiousness. Those acquainted with Henry's present work at Babalú will find that almost unbelievable. Back then, Henry wrote a credo of sorts which stipulated, among other things, that "[W]hat you won't generally find here [at CAP] is gratuitous name-calling. You won't find wild speculation (unless it's labeled as such) and you won't find unsubstantiated reports (unless they are likewise labeled as such)." This, in itself, makes the old CAP infinitely the superior of Babalú, where all that and worse is found. This Henry didn't claim to be an expert at anything; very different from the current Henry who is an expert at everything. From this period dates some of Henry's best writing, such as his "Message to Mr. or Ms. Leftside," "Letter to John Moscowitz" and "We Get Letters" (about "Che" Guevara). As a respondent to wacky liberal correspondents, in the MSM or his own e-mail, Henry has few peers among Cuban bloggers. From this period, also, dates Henry's 14-chapter novelistic continuation of The Lost City, which, if you could suffer through the movie, you would certainly endure reading, too. Henry also used to publish his original poetry on CAP. I am not cruel enough to quote from it.
Ziva also did excellent work at CAP, although in that regard she has always been consistent. Her lighter pieces, for which she also has a deft hand, were reserved for this period and are almost absent from her present writing. I recall especially her "Caliente, Amargo, Fuerte y [Espeso]" about Cuban coffee and an essay about the typical cubanita. That Ziva would surprise and delight her readers at Babalú, too, if that Ziva were not considered too frivolous for her current lofty endeavors. Perhaps that is the reason that Ziva returned to CAP as a contributing editor earlier this year, just in time to devote a post to the Review of Cuban-American Blogs, which was deleted soon after. And, speaking of deletions, all the early Killcastro and Charlie Bravo material was also deleted from CAP, hence our inability to comment on it.
Nowadays, Henry and Ziva save their best work for Babalú and do not simply link significant posts from their own blog(s) as does, for example, Marc Másferrer. Lately, in fact, the editors at CAP have reduced the volume to such a point that it is almost inaudible, or, rather, they've raised it but not on the political debate but on the delights of our Cuban musical heritage.
The richness of Cuban culture, which, even today, is the extended reflection of Republican culture, is as potent an argument as any, and more irrefutable than most, that civilization reached its apex in Cuba before 1959 and that nothing of value has been added since though much has been lost, through official rejection or indifference, which can be lethal when the government controls the arts.
It is, therefore, also a function of politics to recognize and disseminate the monuments of that culture, which now appears to be CAP's mission through the agency of YouTube. In the last few weeks it has featured performances of the works of such artists as René Touzet; Pérez Prado; Ignacio Cervantes and others. I should like to think that this is not simply filler material, but represents a concerted effort to highlight what culture can achieve when unfettered, and how, when fettered, as in Cuba today, culture becomes, with few exceptions, like the record that is harpooned on one groove and can't move to the next song, or, in this case, the next phase of musical development. It would have been better if they had offered some critical apparatus to accompany the performances besides identifying Lecuona as Cuba's greatest composer or Cervantes as a 19th-century one; on second thought, it is perhaps better to let the work speak for itself.
Cuban-American Pundits has seen better days, but the present, at least, is free of the excesses that are the bane of Babalu's existence. It is not a substitute for the "mother blog" if one wants to know the meanderings of Val & Co., but its decline has at least been gracious and its inoffensiveness remains a merit. If Henry were ever to abandon his plans of waging crusades against entire peoples or seducing superannuated Marxist entertainers like Sting, Cuban-American Pundits remains as a reminder of his better self and a refuge where he can still be relevant and engaging if he still remembers how.
POSTSCRIPT:
As a matter of record, Ziva affirms that she was never involved in any capacity with Cuban-American Pundits.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Venezuelans Shatter Glass Monument to "Che" Guevara
It Had Been Inaugurated 10 Days Earlier
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For a man who lived in a glass house all his adult life, throwing stones at the innocent until one finally rebounded on him, what could be more appropriate than a monument which invites the re-enactment of his final hour? This is precisely what happened to the glass monument to "Che" Guevara which Hugo Chávez caused to be erected in the state of Mérida, at the highest point in the Venezuelan Andes. The 8 feet (2.4 meter) glass monument, dedicated on October 8 to mark the 40th anniversary of Guevara's death, was shattered by six gunshots 10 days later, on the morning of Oct. 19. The local mayor blamed the act on "outsiders," by which we suppose he means persons living outside his municipality, not "outsiders" in the sense of mercenaries like Guevara himself.
The Páramo Patriotic Front, an anti-Communist clandestine movement, took credit for the monument's destruction. A communiqué left at the scene proclaimed: "We don't want a monument to 'Che' Guevara, who is not an example for our children to emulate: he was Minister of Industry in Cuba and finished off all Cuban industries; he was chancellor and isolated Cuba from the rest of the world; he was chief of the Cuban National Bank and bankrupted the country. So, Jorge Rodríguez [the Venezuelan vice-president who inaugurated the monument] let your sons be like 'Che' and Chávez's too; but as for our children, we don't want them to be anything like 'Che.'"
The monument was erected at the highest elevation in Venezuela, Pico Aguila (Eagle Peak), the name of which was changed earlier this year by the local legislature to "El Collado del Cóndor" (Hill of the Condor), since the eagle (bald or not) has fallen out of favor among the chavistas. The guest of "honor" at the inauguration ceremony had been Cuba's ambassador to Venezuela, Germán Sánchez Otero, who declared that "'Che' belongs today to all Venezuelans, because he was undoubtedly the most outstanding Bolivarian of the 20th century, and, with Fidel, he was the initiator of the Bolivarian and Martinian Revolution which is now being heroically fought on this Continent."
Venezuelans, apparently, don't want to have anything to do with this peculiar "Bolivarian-Martinian" Revolution which negates the life and work of Simón Bolívar and José Martí.
POSTSCRIPT:
I reproduced the communiqué from the Páramo Patriotic Front as printed yesterday in the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal. In the unattributed version quoted in the Comments, the final clause of the anathema of Guevara reads "and he was a cold-blooded murderer." Now the indictment sounds right and is complete. The author, who obviously has a good grasp of Cuban history and Guevara's role in it, would surely not have failed to mention the real basis of "Che's" fame and consummation of his career as an internationalist terrorist.
In omitting that clause from the published communiqué, El Universal may have recoursed to self-censorship, but, more likely, it was the local authorities in Mérida, fearful of reprisals, who did not dare release the full version of the communiqué.
I should not be surprised if Mérida's 8-foot monument were to be rebuilt as an 80 feet or even an 800-feet one. Chávez's idea to build "stations of the cross" to "Che" wherever he set foot in Venezuela, or whizzed by on his motorcycle, reminds me of Idi Amin's monument to Adolph Hitler in Uganda, which, since Germany (and much less Hitler) came nowhere near Uganda in World War II, he was obliged to place at a site traversed by some German troops in World War I.
Chávez's monument to "Che" shares something else with Idi Amin's monument to Hitler: it will be just as ephemeral no matter how many times he erects it.
Expect the next one, by the way, to have a 24-hour "honor" guard.
For a man who lived in a glass house all his adult life, throwing stones at the innocent until one finally rebounded on him, what could be more appropriate than a monument which invites the re-enactment of his final hour? This is precisely what happened to the glass monument to "Che" Guevara which Hugo Chávez caused to be erected in the state of Mérida, at the highest point in the Venezuelan Andes. The 8 feet (2.4 meter) glass monument, dedicated on October 8 to mark the 40th anniversary of Guevara's death, was shattered by six gunshots 10 days later, on the morning of Oct. 19. The local mayor blamed the act on "outsiders," by which we suppose he means persons living outside his municipality, not "outsiders" in the sense of mercenaries like Guevara himself.
The Páramo Patriotic Front, an anti-Communist clandestine movement, took credit for the monument's destruction. A communiqué left at the scene proclaimed: "We don't want a monument to 'Che' Guevara, who is not an example for our children to emulate: he was Minister of Industry in Cuba and finished off all Cuban industries; he was chancellor and isolated Cuba from the rest of the world; he was chief of the Cuban National Bank and bankrupted the country. So, Jorge Rodríguez [the Venezuelan vice-president who inaugurated the monument] let your sons be like 'Che' and Chávez's too; but as for our children, we don't want them to be anything like 'Che.'"
The monument was erected at the highest elevation in Venezuela, Pico Aguila (Eagle Peak), the name of which was changed earlier this year by the local legislature to "El Collado del Cóndor" (Hill of the Condor), since the eagle (bald or not) has fallen out of favor among the chavistas. The guest of "honor" at the inauguration ceremony had been Cuba's ambassador to Venezuela, Germán Sánchez Otero, who declared that "'Che' belongs today to all Venezuelans, because he was undoubtedly the most outstanding Bolivarian of the 20th century, and, with Fidel, he was the initiator of the Bolivarian and Martinian Revolution which is now being heroically fought on this Continent."
Venezuelans, apparently, don't want to have anything to do with this peculiar "Bolivarian-Martinian" Revolution which negates the life and work of Simón Bolívar and José Martí.
POSTSCRIPT:
I reproduced the communiqué from the Páramo Patriotic Front as printed yesterday in the Venezuelan newspaper El Universal. In the unattributed version quoted in the Comments, the final clause of the anathema of Guevara reads "and he was a cold-blooded murderer." Now the indictment sounds right and is complete. The author, who obviously has a good grasp of Cuban history and Guevara's role in it, would surely not have failed to mention the real basis of "Che's" fame and consummation of his career as an internationalist terrorist.
In omitting that clause from the published communiqué, El Universal may have recoursed to self-censorship, but, more likely, it was the local authorities in Mérida, fearful of reprisals, who did not dare release the full version of the communiqué.
I should not be surprised if Mérida's 8-foot monument were to be rebuilt as an 80 feet or even an 800-feet one. Chávez's idea to build "stations of the cross" to "Che" wherever he set foot in Venezuela, or whizzed by on his motorcycle, reminds me of Idi Amin's monument to Adolph Hitler in Uganda, which, since Germany (and much less Hitler) came nowhere near Uganda in World War II, he was obliged to place at a site traversed by some German troops in World War I.
Chávez's monument to "Che" shares something else with Idi Amin's monument to Hitler: it will be just as ephemeral no matter how many times he erects it.
Expect the next one, by the way, to have a 24-hour "honor" guard.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Blog Review: The "26th Parallel"
If I were to institute a "Most Improved Babalunian Satellite" Award, I should bestow it on Robert Molleda's 26th Parallel blog. Although I am not known for economizing on words, I shall put is very simply: It was lousy and now it's not. So detached was Robert from his subject (that is, from Cuba) that I presumed once that he wasn't Cuban. By "detached" I do not mean indifferent, but, rather, dispassionate and antiseptic. He's not anymore — indifferent, that is. How this metamorphosis was brought about is a mystery to me. There is nothing to explain it externally: no new contributors to shake and reconfigure the mix; no few features to add variety and expand the content; no announced or unannounced changes in its lay-out or editorial policy. Yet there has been a change, and since all else remains the same, it is obviously the author himself who has changed and for the better. This, believe it or not, is heartening to me. The cause d'etre of the Review of Cuban-American Blogs is the regeneration of Babalú and its satellites. Never did I wish them to disappear, or even to become clones of this blog (as if that were possible).
All that I ever wanted was for them to stop the regimen of arbitrary censorship and abuse of dissenting opinions which had come to characterize them individually and as a group and which contrasted starkly with their expressed wishes for a Free Cuba; to stop kow-towing at every opportunity to the prejudices of their Anglo neighbors and judges; to stop supporting anti-Hispanic bigots such as Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson, who wish none of us well and who do not and never have exempted Cuban-Americans from their racist presumptions and calculations; to stop sacrificing innocent children to Castro because they do not want to be reminded of the lessons of 4/22 (more valuable to us as Cubans than the lessons of 9/11) — to wit, that American democracy is imperfect and the American people too ill-served by the mainstrean media to be anything but impervious to our suffering; to stop making excuses for the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy, the repeal of which most of them opposed because they think that there are already enough Cubans in Miami and fear what another Mariel might do to their battered reputation as the "good immigrants;" to stop fomenting hate campaigns against entire nations because their leaders are inimical to our cause and to stop courting with bathetic desperation celebrities who don't give a damn about us and never have; and, finally, to stop being shills for George Bush and the Republicans (without switching allegiance to Hillary Clinton and the Democrats).
A tall order indeed, since if you eliminate all of these various fixations and core beliefs, you are left with little else of substance besides the primal concept that Castro is not good for Cuba.
It was, therefore, both a surprising and welcome development when the 26th Parallel began to move away from the common Babalunian verities and stake for itself an independent position or two. Since it was one of the more calcified of Babalú's petrified progeny, it was nothing short of a miracle to see it suddenly come to live and struggle to find its bearings.
What first alerted me to this evolution at the 26th Parallel was Robert's masterful takedown of Rick of Stuck of the Palmetto, something which both Val and Henry had attempted unsuccessfully. Not that Rick is Henry's or even Val's superior, but their real and confessed hatred for him makes it hard for them to engage him in anything but a street brawl. For this, at least, I cannot really blame them. Still, it was Robert who demolished Rick's peculiar take on the Cuban health care system — that the miserable care available for free to the average Cuban is somehow offset or balanced by the excellent care provided for dollars to foreigners and the party elite. Someone who would think in those terms is really beyond human agency and ignoring him is the best rebuke. But if he must be answered, then Robert has provided a good answer (so far, unchallenged).
In another recent post, Robert demonstrates that he has gained a new perspective on the Elenita case, as, indeed, have most of his Babalunian colleagues, who, at one time, following Henry's lead, proclaimed that the custody case was just a trap set by The Miami Herald to ensnare us into "Elián, the Sequel" and that we should not fall for it even if a thousand Cuban children had to be sacrificed to the new Molloc. Well, the fact that it was Joe Cubas — a celebrity and one greatly respected by his fellow Cuban exiles — who was the standard bearer in this battle against Castro appears to have been the catalyst for the Babalunians to rethink their position. They might be persuaded to support a celebrity in his quest to save an innocent child; another Lázaro González, never. Well, even if snobbery filled the place of common humanity, in this instance, at least, they evolved in the right direction. I am too humble to claim any credit myself for changing their minds. You are free to think so, however.
In the six months since I founded the Review of Cuban-American Blogs, there have been improvements, great and small, towards the eradication of many of the self-defeating tendencies I have outlined. The only area where there has been no discernable change is in what Martí called "yankofilia," which betrays a latent but consistent neo-annexionism — after Castroism, the greatest threat to the future of our country. The day that Babalú or its satellites actually disavow this treason I shall close this blog because my work will be done.
All that I ever wanted was for them to stop the regimen of arbitrary censorship and abuse of dissenting opinions which had come to characterize them individually and as a group and which contrasted starkly with their expressed wishes for a Free Cuba; to stop kow-towing at every opportunity to the prejudices of their Anglo neighbors and judges; to stop supporting anti-Hispanic bigots such as Newt Gingrich and Fred Thompson, who wish none of us well and who do not and never have exempted Cuban-Americans from their racist presumptions and calculations; to stop sacrificing innocent children to Castro because they do not want to be reminded of the lessons of 4/22 (more valuable to us as Cubans than the lessons of 9/11) — to wit, that American democracy is imperfect and the American people too ill-served by the mainstrean media to be anything but impervious to our suffering; to stop making excuses for the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy, the repeal of which most of them opposed because they think that there are already enough Cubans in Miami and fear what another Mariel might do to their battered reputation as the "good immigrants;" to stop fomenting hate campaigns against entire nations because their leaders are inimical to our cause and to stop courting with bathetic desperation celebrities who don't give a damn about us and never have; and, finally, to stop being shills for George Bush and the Republicans (without switching allegiance to Hillary Clinton and the Democrats).
A tall order indeed, since if you eliminate all of these various fixations and core beliefs, you are left with little else of substance besides the primal concept that Castro is not good for Cuba.
It was, therefore, both a surprising and welcome development when the 26th Parallel began to move away from the common Babalunian verities and stake for itself an independent position or two. Since it was one of the more calcified of Babalú's petrified progeny, it was nothing short of a miracle to see it suddenly come to live and struggle to find its bearings.
What first alerted me to this evolution at the 26th Parallel was Robert's masterful takedown of Rick of Stuck of the Palmetto, something which both Val and Henry had attempted unsuccessfully. Not that Rick is Henry's or even Val's superior, but their real and confessed hatred for him makes it hard for them to engage him in anything but a street brawl. For this, at least, I cannot really blame them. Still, it was Robert who demolished Rick's peculiar take on the Cuban health care system — that the miserable care available for free to the average Cuban is somehow offset or balanced by the excellent care provided for dollars to foreigners and the party elite. Someone who would think in those terms is really beyond human agency and ignoring him is the best rebuke. But if he must be answered, then Robert has provided a good answer (so far, unchallenged).
In another recent post, Robert demonstrates that he has gained a new perspective on the Elenita case, as, indeed, have most of his Babalunian colleagues, who, at one time, following Henry's lead, proclaimed that the custody case was just a trap set by The Miami Herald to ensnare us into "Elián, the Sequel" and that we should not fall for it even if a thousand Cuban children had to be sacrificed to the new Molloc. Well, the fact that it was Joe Cubas — a celebrity and one greatly respected by his fellow Cuban exiles — who was the standard bearer in this battle against Castro appears to have been the catalyst for the Babalunians to rethink their position. They might be persuaded to support a celebrity in his quest to save an innocent child; another Lázaro González, never. Well, even if snobbery filled the place of common humanity, in this instance, at least, they evolved in the right direction. I am too humble to claim any credit myself for changing their minds. You are free to think so, however.
In the six months since I founded the Review of Cuban-American Blogs, there have been improvements, great and small, towards the eradication of many of the self-defeating tendencies I have outlined. The only area where there has been no discernable change is in what Martí called "yankofilia," which betrays a latent but consistent neo-annexionism — after Castroism, the greatest threat to the future of our country. The day that Babalú or its satellites actually disavow this treason I shall close this blog because my work will be done.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Judge Jeri B. Cohen Awaits Her Report Card
The Cubas-Izquierdo custody case is now just a torn page in the history of judicial malfeasance. The decision by the Florida Department of Children & Families to challenge Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen's holding that Rafael Izquierdo was at the least a marginally fit parent, has removed the case for the present from her jurisdiction to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which shall decide for itself whether Izquierdo abandoned his daughter or condoned her abuse. The second phase of the trial, which would have determined what was in Elenita's best interest, whether to stay with the foster parents with whom she had bonded or be returned to her marginally-fit father and marginally-inhabitable country, has been automatically stayed pending the appellate court's decision. If it upholds Judge Cohen, the case will be returned to her courtroom for further adjudication. If, however, the higher court rules that Izquierdo does not meet the definition of a marginal father, then the second phase of the trial is unnecessary. This is Elenita's best hope. However, even if the Appellate court upholds Judge Cohen's flawed decision, this does not necessarily mean that Izquierdo (or, rather, Castro) has prevailed. There still remains the hearing to decide what is in the best interest of the child. Kurzban and Montiel-Davis are arguing that reunification with a birth parent is always in the child's best interest if the parent is at least marginally fit, as Judge Cohen proclaimed Izquierdo to be. What needs to be decided this time is whether wishing to consign his own daughter to slavery is sufficient grounds to consider Izquierdo an unfit parent. That, of course, can't be done unless one considers the nature of the place to which he wants to take her. Judge Cohen's proscription against the use of the "C-word" (as she called it) in her courtroom, made such an assessment impossible.
We have carefully outlined in more than 20 posts the reasons that we believe Judge Cohen's courtroom was the setting, and the judge herself the instrument, for the greatest custody fraud ever perpetrated in an American courtroom. All the defense witnesses perjured themselves at the urging and with the connivance of their own attorneys, and confessed to it in open court without being held in contempt. Kurzban and Montiel-Davis were shown to make soborned perjury at the very least, and orquestrated a campaign of deception and legerdemain that would have amounted to obstruction of justice in any other courtroom but Judge Cohen's.
One of the judge's favorite mantras — there were several — was that she was not going to do anything that might lead to the reversal of her decision. In other words, she admitted not once but a hundred times that she was playing to the royal boxes. She saw this case as one that would advance her career. She is right insofar as a great number of her constituents can now put a face to her hood and even jurisdictions outside of Florida are now acquainted with Miami-Dade's version of Judge Judy (or is that an oxymoron?). But publicity is not enough for advancement. She must also exhibit judicial probity and the appellate court would be the sole judge of that. Rather than do her best and be judged accordingty, Judge Cohen has strained for the last 6 months to divine the appellate court's wisdom in this matter, hoping that by second-guessing them she won't herself be second-guessed.
Well, she's going to get her long-awaited report card. In fact, she even begged her judges to act quickly and deliberately in rendering what she hopes will be the highest grades. It would not surprise us if she were disappointed in her expectations. Then we would have to add ignorance of the law to all her other judicial shortcomings. It is doubtful whether her career can survive a reversal. It is one thing to act like an ass and quite another to be certified as an ass. She forgets that there is another audience that will be judging her — her constituents. The comings and goings of other politicians are mostly inscrutable. A politician-judge's actions are all a matter of record and open for public view.
Anything that takes Judge Cohen out of the picture, potentially forever and certainly for a very long time, will benefit Elenita's chances of remaining in this country without the threat posed to her life and liberty by her birth parents.
We have carefully outlined in more than 20 posts the reasons that we believe Judge Cohen's courtroom was the setting, and the judge herself the instrument, for the greatest custody fraud ever perpetrated in an American courtroom. All the defense witnesses perjured themselves at the urging and with the connivance of their own attorneys, and confessed to it in open court without being held in contempt. Kurzban and Montiel-Davis were shown to make soborned perjury at the very least, and orquestrated a campaign of deception and legerdemain that would have amounted to obstruction of justice in any other courtroom but Judge Cohen's.
One of the judge's favorite mantras — there were several — was that she was not going to do anything that might lead to the reversal of her decision. In other words, she admitted not once but a hundred times that she was playing to the royal boxes. She saw this case as one that would advance her career. She is right insofar as a great number of her constituents can now put a face to her hood and even jurisdictions outside of Florida are now acquainted with Miami-Dade's version of Judge Judy (or is that an oxymoron?). But publicity is not enough for advancement. She must also exhibit judicial probity and the appellate court would be the sole judge of that. Rather than do her best and be judged accordingty, Judge Cohen has strained for the last 6 months to divine the appellate court's wisdom in this matter, hoping that by second-guessing them she won't herself be second-guessed.
Well, she's going to get her long-awaited report card. In fact, she even begged her judges to act quickly and deliberately in rendering what she hopes will be the highest grades. It would not surprise us if she were disappointed in her expectations. Then we would have to add ignorance of the law to all her other judicial shortcomings. It is doubtful whether her career can survive a reversal. It is one thing to act like an ass and quite another to be certified as an ass. She forgets that there is another audience that will be judging her — her constituents. The comings and goings of other politicians are mostly inscrutable. A politician-judge's actions are all a matter of record and open for public view.
Anything that takes Judge Cohen out of the picture, potentially forever and certainly for a very long time, will benefit Elenita's chances of remaining in this country without the threat posed to her life and liberty by her birth parents.
Castro's Peon Wants to Rewrite U.S. Laws to Favor the Purposes of Tyranny
Rafael Izquierdo is getting a civics lesson from those two great constitutionalists, Ira Kurzban and Magda Montiel-Davis, his Fidel-appointed lawyers. In his name they are now seeking to overturn a state law mandating that in custody cases the child's best interests be held uppermost, contending, instead, that the parent's right to his human chattel be the sole basis for determining custody.
Quite a little man is Rafael Izquierdo. Why he's been in this country less than a year en passant and he's already challenging in court the constitutionality of American laws!
Try doing that in Cuba, guajiro de mi tierra, and see what it gets you. My guess is 15 years. Yes, try it in Cuba, the country where you intend to return your long-suffering daughter that she might suffer even more. And they call you a marginal father? I guess that to reach "unmarginality" one must actually kill a child in front of the judge, well, this judge anyway.
Quite a little man is Rafael Izquierdo. Why he's been in this country less than a year en passant and he's already challenging in court the constitutionality of American laws!
Try doing that in Cuba, guajiro de mi tierra, and see what it gets you. My guess is 15 years. Yes, try it in Cuba, the country where you intend to return your long-suffering daughter that she might suffer even more. And they call you a marginal father? I guess that to reach "unmarginality" one must actually kill a child in front of the judge, well, this judge anyway.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Notable and Ominous: Cuba and Venezuela Melding
"Carlos Lage said once that Cuba had two presidents, and then I just said in Cuba that Venezuela has two presidents too, but we are one single government. We are headed for the [José] Martí-style, Caribbean, South American Confederation of Bolivarian Republics." — Hugo Chávez, on his weekly television show, Alo, Presidente, aired from Santa Clara, Cuba, October 14, 2007
Poor Martí! Surely it was not this that he envisioned as he stood weeping in front of Bolívar's statue in Caracas, where he headed immediately on arriving in that city in 1880. Yes, Martí's dream, Bolívar's dream — the dream of every progressive 19th century Hispanic-American statesman — was to unite all the countries of "Our America" into a grand confederation of states. Thank God, that dream was deferred.
Each of our republics has enough problems without taking on the problems of all the other republics. Our political evolution is compatible but only in those points where compatibility is hardly desirable. Our histories coincide in the period of Spanish despotism and then break off abruptly at the time of independence never to converge in any meaningful way again. Many of the peoples of Central and South America cordially or not so cordially despise one another and harbor old resentments and feuds that hark back to the time of independence, indeed, to the time of the Conquest. The only times in history that they have managed to unite briefly was when they did so to attack a neighbor. Yes, it is true that Europe with its festering immemorial hatreds and rivaries has managed an economic and political consolidation of sorts. Perhaps all their hatreds and resentments were played out in World War II. This is far from the case in Latin America today and it was even more unlikely in Martí's day, when some of the Latin republics actually had hopes of a bright future.
I can prove that Martí wasn't a Communist because he wasn't, but I can't prove that he wasn't a pan-americanist: "When speaking of Latin America, we speak of a people and not of "peoples" intentionally because it does not seem to me that there is more than one from the Rio Grande to Patagonia." He left hundreds of invocations in his writings urging the union of all Hispanic countries. He could be poetic about it: "My fondest wish is to see the people of Latin America, which now live side by side, living soul by soul and hand in hand." Or speak idealistically of "a great Latin nation, not a conqueror like Rome." He even wanted to "equip peaceful armies to march under one banner from the Rio Grande to the Arauco."
Martí believed, of course, that such a union would seal Latin America's independence and frustrate the designs which the U.S. and European powers had on the region in general and Cuba in particular. He never imagined, because his great love for us caused him to idealize and misjudge us, that such a union, far from providing for our mutual defense, might condemn us all to share the same despotic fate; he never saw that we were a greater danger to each other than all the imperialist powers that covetted our lands but disdained our peoples. He never realized that such a union would multiply our vices without multiplying our virtues. Like all who love greatly, he loved us blindly.
Now, as Hugo Chávez said, Martí's dream seems on the verge of being realized, but I do not think that he would approve. Martí has been killed a thousand times since his death by the errors committed both by his own countrymen and the inhabitants of his "greater Hispanic homeland." His legacy has been distorted, his opinions have been falsified and he has been used as a tool by the most ruthless regime ever to exist in the history of the hemisphere modern or ancient. But the union of two tyrannies under the auspices of pan-americanism, and, supposedly, in obedience to his teachings, would be more than he could endure. If it were possible for him to charge the line of artillery one more time on his white steed, he would. This is not what Martí wanted. Or Bolívar. Or any of our prohombres.
Martí would argue that this type of pan-americanism is the negation of his dream, and it is. But it is also the only type of pan-americanism that was ever likely in the first place: despotic nation with despotic nation; mendicant nation with rich nation; insular nation with continental nation (so that the "union" doesn't have to be that tight). Martí should have intuited this. Did he not say that "Countries that do not share common means, though they may have identical ends, cannot pursue together the same object." It follows, then, that nations with common means and identical ends can pursue the same object. Such as Castro's Cuba and Chávez's Venezuela.
Ironically, the only country that could save us from this mutual suicide pact is the United States, which Martí always regarded (not without justification) as "the other," not to say the enemy. "Two condors may live together or two lambs," he observed apropos of the two Americas, "but never a condor and a lamb." Well, now the condor may have to save the lambs, but the condor has no interest whatever in the lambs. It has eyes only for Araby as a continental alliance between the insane and the opportunistic takes shape which promises to destroy every vestige of freedom and democracy in the Americas for the next 100 years.
Poor Martí! Surely it was not this that he envisioned as he stood weeping in front of Bolívar's statue in Caracas, where he headed immediately on arriving in that city in 1880. Yes, Martí's dream, Bolívar's dream — the dream of every progressive 19th century Hispanic-American statesman — was to unite all the countries of "Our America" into a grand confederation of states. Thank God, that dream was deferred.
Each of our republics has enough problems without taking on the problems of all the other republics. Our political evolution is compatible but only in those points where compatibility is hardly desirable. Our histories coincide in the period of Spanish despotism and then break off abruptly at the time of independence never to converge in any meaningful way again. Many of the peoples of Central and South America cordially or not so cordially despise one another and harbor old resentments and feuds that hark back to the time of independence, indeed, to the time of the Conquest. The only times in history that they have managed to unite briefly was when they did so to attack a neighbor. Yes, it is true that Europe with its festering immemorial hatreds and rivaries has managed an economic and political consolidation of sorts. Perhaps all their hatreds and resentments were played out in World War II. This is far from the case in Latin America today and it was even more unlikely in Martí's day, when some of the Latin republics actually had hopes of a bright future.
I can prove that Martí wasn't a Communist because he wasn't, but I can't prove that he wasn't a pan-americanist: "When speaking of Latin America, we speak of a people and not of "peoples" intentionally because it does not seem to me that there is more than one from the Rio Grande to Patagonia." He left hundreds of invocations in his writings urging the union of all Hispanic countries. He could be poetic about it: "My fondest wish is to see the people of Latin America, which now live side by side, living soul by soul and hand in hand." Or speak idealistically of "a great Latin nation, not a conqueror like Rome." He even wanted to "equip peaceful armies to march under one banner from the Rio Grande to the Arauco."
Martí believed, of course, that such a union would seal Latin America's independence and frustrate the designs which the U.S. and European powers had on the region in general and Cuba in particular. He never imagined, because his great love for us caused him to idealize and misjudge us, that such a union, far from providing for our mutual defense, might condemn us all to share the same despotic fate; he never saw that we were a greater danger to each other than all the imperialist powers that covetted our lands but disdained our peoples. He never realized that such a union would multiply our vices without multiplying our virtues. Like all who love greatly, he loved us blindly.
Now, as Hugo Chávez said, Martí's dream seems on the verge of being realized, but I do not think that he would approve. Martí has been killed a thousand times since his death by the errors committed both by his own countrymen and the inhabitants of his "greater Hispanic homeland." His legacy has been distorted, his opinions have been falsified and he has been used as a tool by the most ruthless regime ever to exist in the history of the hemisphere modern or ancient. But the union of two tyrannies under the auspices of pan-americanism, and, supposedly, in obedience to his teachings, would be more than he could endure. If it were possible for him to charge the line of artillery one more time on his white steed, he would. This is not what Martí wanted. Or Bolívar. Or any of our prohombres.
Martí would argue that this type of pan-americanism is the negation of his dream, and it is. But it is also the only type of pan-americanism that was ever likely in the first place: despotic nation with despotic nation; mendicant nation with rich nation; insular nation with continental nation (so that the "union" doesn't have to be that tight). Martí should have intuited this. Did he not say that "Countries that do not share common means, though they may have identical ends, cannot pursue together the same object." It follows, then, that nations with common means and identical ends can pursue the same object. Such as Castro's Cuba and Chávez's Venezuela.
Ironically, the only country that could save us from this mutual suicide pact is the United States, which Martí always regarded (not without justification) as "the other," not to say the enemy. "Two condors may live together or two lambs," he observed apropos of the two Americas, "but never a condor and a lamb." Well, now the condor may have to save the lambs, but the condor has no interest whatever in the lambs. It has eyes only for Araby as a continental alliance between the insane and the opportunistic takes shape which promises to destroy every vestige of freedom and democracy in the Americas for the next 100 years.
Fidel & Hugo: Two Song and Dance Men
The tyrant has reappeared as a sideshow attraction on Hugo Chávez's travelling circus of the absurd, which he took to Santa Clara, Cuba this week-end in honor of the 40th anniversary of "Che" Guevara's ajusticiamiento (bringing to justice).
In what must have been a foretaste of hell for him, Castro was visited for 4 hours by his putative heir, who serenaded him with revolutionary songs and assured him over and over again that he would always live in the air, the land and the sea, which, of course, is just what every dying man wants to hear. Castro took all this in stride. I guess the only time he feels relevant any more is when he is allowed to commune with foreign leaders, who are advised beforehand to pay no heed to anything he says. For foreign dignitaries, an interview with Fidel is the Cuban equivalent of a trip to Madame Tussaud's Museum, except that there is only one wax figurine on display.
Chávez also presented Castro with a painting he had made while imprisoned for his aborted coup in the 1990s. It was described as a "dark-colored painting that showed the bars of his cell and a night scene beyond, with a full red moon and a guard tower in the distance." The description alone makes one cringe. Castro, of course, could not have been more pleased if he had received a Goya: "No one knows the merit that this has, that you did this!" This is exactly what one would tell a 5-year old who just presented you with his latest crayon composition. Castro also had his pretensions in his youth, which proved very costly for the Cuban people to sustain later; but, at least, art never interested him except as booty.
Chávez's painting was instructive, however, as an example of the lengths to which democracies will go to placate their bitterest foes even when they are behind bars. I think it need hardly be said that none of the 2 million prisoners who have passed through Castro's jails in the last 48 years has ever been allowed to paint landscapes in his cell, much less been provided with easel and paints, not even those who were actually artists. Not since Castro himself was incarcerated by Batista and allowed a suite of rooms in prison, his own library, a courtyard for his private use, and all the provisions he requested, including Serrano hams, calamari and H. Upmann cigars, was any prisoner in Cuba indulged as Castro was during his brief confinement, which he himself compared to a stay at a luxury resort.
If Castro had been of an artistic vent, he would no doubt have been provided with painting supplies as well. But his talents were strictly histrionic, and a full-length mirror was all that he required to entertain himself for hours mouthing the speeches of Primo de Rivera and Benito Mussolini while copying their every gesture. Too bad these ephemeral "self-portraits" vanished immediately into the second-dimension, a gallery of madness, in its incipient stages, which it was impossible to exhibit to an incredulous world.
Castro also made a live call to Chávez's television show "Alo, Presidente," and stayed on the line for the full hour. This was certainly distressing since before this appearance he had either been time-delayed or heavily edited. The fact that "cut and paste" wasn't necessary in this instance bespeaks more than just borderline lucidity. But this indication of mental progress was in part offset by his appearance in the official photographs with Chávez, which showed that physically, at least, there is no improvement. It is, and has always been, a matter of time.
In what must have been a foretaste of hell for him, Castro was visited for 4 hours by his putative heir, who serenaded him with revolutionary songs and assured him over and over again that he would always live in the air, the land and the sea, which, of course, is just what every dying man wants to hear. Castro took all this in stride. I guess the only time he feels relevant any more is when he is allowed to commune with foreign leaders, who are advised beforehand to pay no heed to anything he says. For foreign dignitaries, an interview with Fidel is the Cuban equivalent of a trip to Madame Tussaud's Museum, except that there is only one wax figurine on display.
Chávez also presented Castro with a painting he had made while imprisoned for his aborted coup in the 1990s. It was described as a "dark-colored painting that showed the bars of his cell and a night scene beyond, with a full red moon and a guard tower in the distance." The description alone makes one cringe. Castro, of course, could not have been more pleased if he had received a Goya: "No one knows the merit that this has, that you did this!" This is exactly what one would tell a 5-year old who just presented you with his latest crayon composition. Castro also had his pretensions in his youth, which proved very costly for the Cuban people to sustain later; but, at least, art never interested him except as booty.
Chávez's painting was instructive, however, as an example of the lengths to which democracies will go to placate their bitterest foes even when they are behind bars. I think it need hardly be said that none of the 2 million prisoners who have passed through Castro's jails in the last 48 years has ever been allowed to paint landscapes in his cell, much less been provided with easel and paints, not even those who were actually artists. Not since Castro himself was incarcerated by Batista and allowed a suite of rooms in prison, his own library, a courtyard for his private use, and all the provisions he requested, including Serrano hams, calamari and H. Upmann cigars, was any prisoner in Cuba indulged as Castro was during his brief confinement, which he himself compared to a stay at a luxury resort.
If Castro had been of an artistic vent, he would no doubt have been provided with painting supplies as well. But his talents were strictly histrionic, and a full-length mirror was all that he required to entertain himself for hours mouthing the speeches of Primo de Rivera and Benito Mussolini while copying their every gesture. Too bad these ephemeral "self-portraits" vanished immediately into the second-dimension, a gallery of madness, in its incipient stages, which it was impossible to exhibit to an incredulous world.
Castro also made a live call to Chávez's television show "Alo, Presidente," and stayed on the line for the full hour. This was certainly distressing since before this appearance he had either been time-delayed or heavily edited. The fact that "cut and paste" wasn't necessary in this instance bespeaks more than just borderline lucidity. But this indication of mental progress was in part offset by his appearance in the official photographs with Chávez, which showed that physically, at least, there is no improvement. It is, and has always been, a matter of time.
Notable & Quotable: What Spaniards Really Think About "Che" Guevara
[The following post, which was published in the Spanish blog En Defensa de Occidente (In Defense of the West) and which we have translated here, reflects accurately the true sentiments of real Spaniards towards Communism in Cuba, and, in particular, the lionizing of the Argentine filibuster Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Its description of Guevara's cravenly conduct in his last hours is especially noteworthy. When young and in possesion of their faculties, if not in possession of themselves, and about to face death prematurely, men will synthesize their entire lives in their last few hours of concentrated living. There is no better example of this than "Che" Guevara. He died like the coward that he was and always had been, begging for his life like a woman, indeed, as few women who have found themselves in his position ever have, stopping short only of offering his body for the gratification of his captors (although if he had, surely they would not have said so). We might note here that the author does not mention the most notorious instance of Guevara's cowardice before his Bolivian misadventure -- when he shot himself in the head with his own rifle on first hearing the news that the "Yanquis" had landed in the Bay of Pigs. It was claimed at the time that this was an "accident." But even the worst marksman would find it difficult to shoot himself accidentally in the head with his own rifle.
Of especial interest to Hispanophobes at Babalú blog and past adherents of BUCL's "Campaign Against Spain," should be the fact that Spaniards share their fascination with "Che" merchandise, except that far from being offended by it they correctly regard it as a posthumuous and well-deserved repudiation of the man and everything he stood for, which bolsters in them, as it should in everyone, the hope that perfect justice is not a perfect fiction. — MAT]
Forty Years After Justice Was Done, Or the Empire of the T-Shirts
40 years ago, a humble Bolivian soldier, who lived honestly from the work of protecting his country's sovereignty, fired two shots at an Argentine psychopath and racist whose objective had been to foster genocide in the soldier's country in order to create there the same "utopia" that he had founded in Cuba also through genocide. Ernesto Guevara murdered with his own hands 200 Cubans whom he did not know but nonetheless executed as a means to control by terror a people who were not his people and whom he didn't know either. Guevara was a coward in battle; the anti-Batista guerrillas who survived Castro's purges after Batista's overthrow remember Guevara hiding or disappearing at the most dangerous moments. He only "fought" in earnest when his enemies were tied to posts and about to be executed; then and only then, did the assassin take out his gun, point it and proceed to "make Revolution."
Guevara went to Africa to defend the interests of a sinister warlord; he was to be the "white face" of his movement. His innate racism made him believe that the little "pickininnies" would worship him as a living god; but the truth was that the Africans soon saw what a coward he was when he dove under a table at the sound of gunfire. His constant whining at such times was just too audible and they used him for the only thing he was good for — to harangue and indoctrinate the soldiers. Eventually they tired of his interminable chatter and put him on a plane back to the Castroite paradise. "How very ungrateful those negroes," he pronounced them in Havana.
Only one thing meant more to him than shooting his victims in the back of the neck, and that was his ego. The monomaniac was not content to rest, and so he set out for Bolivia, which to him was an exotic land filled with puny Indians who were also going to fall at his feet because he was "white and intelligent." He placed himself in the very heart of Bolivia with a foco of guerrillas, all of them very white. The result? A disaster. The inhabitants of the area quickly tired of the Argentine psychopath's threats and tantrums and decided to reveal his whereabouts to the Army, which had been looking for him.
Guevara had been spotted everywhere and it was hard to fix his location; finally, the peasants ascertained where he was and presented themselves at the local barracks to let the Army know where they could find "the white devil" who had tormented and threatened them with his endless harangues, so that the soldiers could finish him off before they did.
The Bolivian Army sent a patrol on reconnaisance to the area and found them exactly where the Indians had indicated. In a direct attack on the guerrillas they quickly apprehended the "children of Che." Because of his position as "Che" Guevara and the fact that he considered himself irreplaceable, Ernesto surrendered immediately without resistance, informing his captors of his identity and how he was more valuable to them alive than dead. He was detained and jailed in a much more comfortable cell and with better food than what Cuban prisoners were afforded in their last hours. A coward who wanted only to elude the consequences of his actions, he spent all night trying to bribe the humble soldiers: "Fidel would pay whatever you asked for me;" "I have many friends in Moscow who would gladly compensate you;" "My family in Argentina has considerable assets and loves me very much... they would do anything for me." But it was unavailing, and as the hours passed he began to scream hysterically: "You are going to find out who I am!;" "Don't dare to lay a finger on me!" and, later, unmanned and sobbing incontrollably, he pleaded for his life: "You can't kill me... I am a defenseless human being... please don't kill me..."
The same humble Bolivian soldier who captured Guevara was accorded the honor of executing him. Without thinking it twice, he did. The rabid dog was dead and his body was put on public display, as they did in the Old West with notorious criminals. A hundred peasants filed pass his remains, relieved no doubt to see that the menace who had threatened them was dead.
His death was the end of him but the beginning of one of the important industries to emerge in the last 40 years. "El Che" has proved to be a lucrative franchise for the marketting of all types of merchandise: first, it was posters with the psychopath's image; then T-shirts became a real boom, and eventually, everything else — berets, keychains, cigarette lighters, sneakers, swimsuits, towels, beachballs, flags, ashtrays, underwear, diapers, beers, colognes... everything. If you can imagine it, they can make it. Untold millions of euros are generated annually by the "Che" franchise. At 22 euros ($50) per T-shirt, tell me, how could anyone lose his shirt?
The only thing that they have not been able to turn to good account is his theoretical books, which have never sold well much less been read outside of Cuba, where reading them is obligatory. Of course, this is understandable since something so soporific has no commercial possibilities, especially when he is the same embezzler in his books that he was in life, going so far as to steal even the phrase "It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees," which does not belong to him. That phrase belongs to Emiliano Zapata, but it was attributed to him by the merchandisers because it sold more T-shirts, posters, toilet paper, condoms, plungers and I don't know what else.
Since his death, Ernesto Guevara has become a kind of MacDonald's of novelty goods. From an enemy of capitalism, the Argentine psychopath devolved into its stooge — "The King of Novelty Merchandise."
[Correction: The Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata did not say it; neither did Spain's "La Pasionaria," who made it famous. Of course, the words are Martí's].
http://endefensadeoccidente.blogia.com/2007/100902-hace-40-anos-se-hizo-justicia-o-el-imperio-de-las-camisetas-del-che.php#comentarios
Of especial interest to Hispanophobes at Babalú blog and past adherents of BUCL's "Campaign Against Spain," should be the fact that Spaniards share their fascination with "Che" merchandise, except that far from being offended by it they correctly regard it as a posthumuous and well-deserved repudiation of the man and everything he stood for, which bolsters in them, as it should in everyone, the hope that perfect justice is not a perfect fiction. — MAT]
Forty Years After Justice Was Done, Or the Empire of the T-Shirts
40 years ago, a humble Bolivian soldier, who lived honestly from the work of protecting his country's sovereignty, fired two shots at an Argentine psychopath and racist whose objective had been to foster genocide in the soldier's country in order to create there the same "utopia" that he had founded in Cuba also through genocide. Ernesto Guevara murdered with his own hands 200 Cubans whom he did not know but nonetheless executed as a means to control by terror a people who were not his people and whom he didn't know either. Guevara was a coward in battle; the anti-Batista guerrillas who survived Castro's purges after Batista's overthrow remember Guevara hiding or disappearing at the most dangerous moments. He only "fought" in earnest when his enemies were tied to posts and about to be executed; then and only then, did the assassin take out his gun, point it and proceed to "make Revolution."
Guevara went to Africa to defend the interests of a sinister warlord; he was to be the "white face" of his movement. His innate racism made him believe that the little "pickininnies" would worship him as a living god; but the truth was that the Africans soon saw what a coward he was when he dove under a table at the sound of gunfire. His constant whining at such times was just too audible and they used him for the only thing he was good for — to harangue and indoctrinate the soldiers. Eventually they tired of his interminable chatter and put him on a plane back to the Castroite paradise. "How very ungrateful those negroes," he pronounced them in Havana.
Only one thing meant more to him than shooting his victims in the back of the neck, and that was his ego. The monomaniac was not content to rest, and so he set out for Bolivia, which to him was an exotic land filled with puny Indians who were also going to fall at his feet because he was "white and intelligent." He placed himself in the very heart of Bolivia with a foco of guerrillas, all of them very white. The result? A disaster. The inhabitants of the area quickly tired of the Argentine psychopath's threats and tantrums and decided to reveal his whereabouts to the Army, which had been looking for him.
Guevara had been spotted everywhere and it was hard to fix his location; finally, the peasants ascertained where he was and presented themselves at the local barracks to let the Army know where they could find "the white devil" who had tormented and threatened them with his endless harangues, so that the soldiers could finish him off before they did.
The Bolivian Army sent a patrol on reconnaisance to the area and found them exactly where the Indians had indicated. In a direct attack on the guerrillas they quickly apprehended the "children of Che." Because of his position as "Che" Guevara and the fact that he considered himself irreplaceable, Ernesto surrendered immediately without resistance, informing his captors of his identity and how he was more valuable to them alive than dead. He was detained and jailed in a much more comfortable cell and with better food than what Cuban prisoners were afforded in their last hours. A coward who wanted only to elude the consequences of his actions, he spent all night trying to bribe the humble soldiers: "Fidel would pay whatever you asked for me;" "I have many friends in Moscow who would gladly compensate you;" "My family in Argentina has considerable assets and loves me very much... they would do anything for me." But it was unavailing, and as the hours passed he began to scream hysterically: "You are going to find out who I am!;" "Don't dare to lay a finger on me!" and, later, unmanned and sobbing incontrollably, he pleaded for his life: "You can't kill me... I am a defenseless human being... please don't kill me..."
The same humble Bolivian soldier who captured Guevara was accorded the honor of executing him. Without thinking it twice, he did. The rabid dog was dead and his body was put on public display, as they did in the Old West with notorious criminals. A hundred peasants filed pass his remains, relieved no doubt to see that the menace who had threatened them was dead.
His death was the end of him but the beginning of one of the important industries to emerge in the last 40 years. "El Che" has proved to be a lucrative franchise for the marketting of all types of merchandise: first, it was posters with the psychopath's image; then T-shirts became a real boom, and eventually, everything else — berets, keychains, cigarette lighters, sneakers, swimsuits, towels, beachballs, flags, ashtrays, underwear, diapers, beers, colognes... everything. If you can imagine it, they can make it. Untold millions of euros are generated annually by the "Che" franchise. At 22 euros ($50) per T-shirt, tell me, how could anyone lose his shirt?
The only thing that they have not been able to turn to good account is his theoretical books, which have never sold well much less been read outside of Cuba, where reading them is obligatory. Of course, this is understandable since something so soporific has no commercial possibilities, especially when he is the same embezzler in his books that he was in life, going so far as to steal even the phrase "It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees," which does not belong to him. That phrase belongs to Emiliano Zapata, but it was attributed to him by the merchandisers because it sold more T-shirts, posters, toilet paper, condoms, plungers and I don't know what else.
Since his death, Ernesto Guevara has become a kind of MacDonald's of novelty goods. From an enemy of capitalism, the Argentine psychopath devolved into its stooge — "The King of Novelty Merchandise."
[Correction: The Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata did not say it; neither did Spain's "La Pasionaria," who made it famous. Of course, the words are Martí's].
http://endefensadeoccidente.blogia.com/2007/100902-hace-40-anos-se-hizo-justicia-o-el-imperio-de-las-camisetas-del-che.php#comentarios
Spaniards in Solidarity With Cuba
Contrary to the expectations of Hispanophobes, the "solidarity" announced in the logo of the Solidaridad con Cuba blog is from young Spaniards for a free and democratic Cuba:
We are a group of young Spaniards who endeavor to show our solidarity with democratic Cubans and their families. Spaniards have cultural and historical ties to Cuba. That sister nation suffers from the worst dictatorship in Hispanic-America. For 46 years [in 2005] Cubans have been victimized by a regime that does not allow them to realize their potential as human beings, and which besides denying them their political rights has also immersed them in economic and moral misery. Dissidents who fight within Cuba for peaceful change find themselves in an especially precarious situation, since in addition to the hardships faced by all Cubans they must also contend with persecution and reprisals at the hands of the government, which often takes the form of being denied employment by the State. Worse still is the predicament of nearly 300 political prisoners and their families, who often live in extreme poverty, denied the presence of their loved ones and forced to travel long distances to see them.
The vast majority of Cubans find themselves in a difficult situation and anything that can be done to help them is a positive contribution. We think that these democrats and their families, who are often forgotten, are most deserving and needful of our solidarity, which, at the same time, will contribute to peaceful democratic change and progress in Cuba.
Ricardo Carreras Lario
Presidente
Juan Fauquier Pina de Morais
Vicepresidente
Let's see how many BUCLers will link to this blog:
We are a group of young Spaniards who endeavor to show our solidarity with democratic Cubans and their families. Spaniards have cultural and historical ties to Cuba. That sister nation suffers from the worst dictatorship in Hispanic-America. For 46 years [in 2005] Cubans have been victimized by a regime that does not allow them to realize their potential as human beings, and which besides denying them their political rights has also immersed them in economic and moral misery. Dissidents who fight within Cuba for peaceful change find themselves in an especially precarious situation, since in addition to the hardships faced by all Cubans they must also contend with persecution and reprisals at the hands of the government, which often takes the form of being denied employment by the State. Worse still is the predicament of nearly 300 political prisoners and their families, who often live in extreme poverty, denied the presence of their loved ones and forced to travel long distances to see them.
The vast majority of Cubans find themselves in a difficult situation and anything that can be done to help them is a positive contribution. We think that these democrats and their families, who are often forgotten, are most deserving and needful of our solidarity, which, at the same time, will contribute to peaceful democratic change and progress in Cuba.
Ricardo Carreras Lario
Presidente
Juan Fauquier Pina de Morais
Vicepresidente
Let's see how many BUCLers will link to this blog:
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Carlos Victoria (1950-2007) RIP
The Cuban novelist and short story writer Carlos Victoria, whom El Figaro called the "Miami Maupassant" — erring only in the "Miami" part — is dead. The tragedy is even greater because he died by his own hand. Of course, it was not Victoria, beset by cancer, who took his own life. Reinaldo Arenas, before his death, named the party that he considered responsible for it. The same malefactor also brought about Victoria's early demise and truncated the lives of countless others. A great writer, a national writer, cannot live without nourishing the roots of his inspiration in his native soil. The spirit dries up and so does the pen. Even Martí felt that emptiness at the end of his life, and the months that he spent in the Cuban countryside before his death in battle were the most intense and rewarding of his life. He went to Cuba to restore his spirit and to die. For Victoria and other Cuban artists, it is a choice that doesn't exist. Create in freedom but rootless, or create without freedom but in one's homeland — neither is the ideal environment but that is the choice that generations of Cuban artists have had to make. After the regime refused not only to publish his works but destroyed all his existing manuscripts, there was nothing for Carlos Victoria to do but leave before it destroyed his mind or ended his life.
One can't know, of course, if the writers that fell afoul of the Castro regime would have achieved as much as they did without having to struggle for every expression of personal and artistic freedom, indeed, for every word. Adversity is also a stimulus to genius. We would have been content to see Arenas, Victoria and their entire generation less brilliant but happier. Posterity, we are sure, however, will not surrender even the smallest part of their legacy.
One can't know, of course, if the writers that fell afoul of the Castro regime would have achieved as much as they did without having to struggle for every expression of personal and artistic freedom, indeed, for every word. Adversity is also a stimulus to genius. We would have been content to see Arenas, Victoria and their entire generation less brilliant but happier. Posterity, we are sure, however, will not surrender even the smallest part of their legacy.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Al Gore Wins Nobel Peace Prize; Cuban Dissidents Again Ignored
Albert Arnold Gore has been awarded the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize. America's national joke is now the Norwegians' paradigm of modernity and savior of the planet. Jerry Lewis must feel relieved that now somebody else represents the cultural divide between the U.S. and Europe. Of course, Lewis actually claimed to be a comedian.
We were surprised that Gore was not credited with the invention of the internet in his citation. What is one more little lie compared to the monumental fraud of global warming, which has just been endorsed by that other dimwit who beat Al Gore to the prize he really wanted in 2000. The Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize are, after all, only consolation prizes; more fame and money for someone who really wants power.
What makes this award especially noxious to me is that no Cuban human rights advocate has ever been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Frauds like Rigoberta Menchú and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, supporters of Fidel Castro and the "Cuban model," have been honored by the Nobel Committee, but never those who have confronted peacefully the world's most savage and longest-ruling dictatorship.
Perhaps if Marta Beatriz Roque adopted the garb of an Arawak maiden or Dr. Darsi Ferrer formed a Cuban committee in solidarity with Mookie Wilson, the Cuban dissidents would rise to the moral greatness of the inventor of dynamite.
The Nobel Peace Prize has become as politicized and craven as the old Stalin Peace Prize, and some day soon it will become just as embarrassing and shameful to be a Nobel laureate as it is to be a Stalin laureate.
We were surprised that Gore was not credited with the invention of the internet in his citation. What is one more little lie compared to the monumental fraud of global warming, which has just been endorsed by that other dimwit who beat Al Gore to the prize he really wanted in 2000. The Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize are, after all, only consolation prizes; more fame and money for someone who really wants power.
What makes this award especially noxious to me is that no Cuban human rights advocate has ever been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Frauds like Rigoberta Menchú and Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, supporters of Fidel Castro and the "Cuban model," have been honored by the Nobel Committee, but never those who have confronted peacefully the world's most savage and longest-ruling dictatorship.
Perhaps if Marta Beatriz Roque adopted the garb of an Arawak maiden or Dr. Darsi Ferrer formed a Cuban committee in solidarity with Mookie Wilson, the Cuban dissidents would rise to the moral greatness of the inventor of dynamite.
The Nobel Peace Prize has become as politicized and craven as the old Stalin Peace Prize, and some day soon it will become just as embarrassing and shameful to be a Nobel laureate as it is to be a Stalin laureate.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Query
Who was it who first conceived the world's most stupid notion — that truth lies in the middle between extremes?
Social Progress Under Castro: The Lie that Will Not Die
I remember when The The New York Times published a story in the mid-Sixties about how Fidel Castro had saved the Spanish language from extinction in Cuba. According to the writer, before the Revolution Cubans spoke a patois similar to Haitian which made works written in correct Castilian inaccessible to most Cubans. This explained, too, why books weren't published in Cuba before 1959, well, that and the fact that most Cubans were illiterate before the Revolution changed that too. Castro's oratory, according to The Times, had restored the purity of Spanish in Cuba and made Cuban literature accessible to the masses for the first time. Supposedly, Cubans would sit by their radios practicing the cadences of Fidel's speech and absorbing his universal culture. The man, in sum, had been a one man rennaisance who, in less than ten years, had ended the Dark Ages in Cuba.
Then there was the article in The Village Voice in the late 70s which purported that before the Revolution it was customary for Cuban women to kill themselves after the deaths of their husbands or if they were abandoned by them, and that their favorite method of self-immolation was setting themselves on fire. Cuba's Socialist Constitution (1975), which required men to help with the housework and child-rearing, had supposedly cured them of this centuries-old habit.
The point: no lie is too big for an American journalist to believe especially if vouchsafed by the heralds of the future: "I have seen the future and it works," declared the famous American muckraker Lincoln Steffins upon his return from a tour of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The legendary American muckraker became a muckswallower in the rarefied atmosphere of the Soviet Union. His heirs in the mainstream media upheld to the very day of its collapse the same specious lies about social progress that Steffins and his ilk had foisted on the American public since the beginning of the Russian Revolution.
By the time Cuba was betrayed into the Soviet camp, the lies had already been well-rehearsed for more than 40 years and with only a few modifications were applied to the new Communist paragon. Most American reporters and editors had never seen Czarist Russia, but a majority were acquainted with pre-Castro Cuba. This did not constrain them, however, from believing the lies that Castro and his agents spoonfed them even if the lies contradicted their firsthand experience. Nor did the overwhelming statistical evidence to the contrary alert them to the fact that they were being duped and turned from journalists into propagandists for the regime. Many, like Herbert Matthews, just didn't care. As the lies were repeated by successive generations of reporters, one depending on the authority of his predecessor and strenthening that authority by invoking it, the lies became fully "documented" by citation and part of the received standard record from which all drew their "facts" and opinions.
I know because I have challenged those lies for decades whenever I was afforded the opportunity, which, of course, was not often. In The Wall Street Journal, The Detroit News, The San Diego Union, and a dozen other newspapers that I don't even remember anymore, on the 20th, the 25th, the 30th, the 35th anniversaries of the Revolution, which was the only time that I could be sure an article on Cuba would be deemed topical and published, I have exploded the myth of social progress under Castro time and time again. More authoritative voices than mine, such as the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Lord Hugh Thomas, all tried to push back the Communist juggernaut of lies, pulled by its trusty agents of influence in the MSM, without ever succeeding in overturning it. Castro's apologists had spread the manure far and wide and before one could even tell the truth it was necessary to sweep clean the accumulated excrementa which blocked every access to the truth. I came to doubt whether that was even possible, as did, I suppose, most critics of Castro in the 1970s and 1980s (before that I don't know what there were any critics of Castro in the MSM). The first to make a direct hit at the regime was the late Nestor Almendros, who exposed in his documentary Improper Conduct Castro's persecution of Cuba's gays. This was something that liberals could not ignore or condone, although most found ways to blame the Cuban people rather than the regime for it. To me, at least, it seemed then that the MSM would never believe the truth about Communist Cuba until a Cuban Khruschev denounced the Cuban Stalin. I am still of that opinion.
The brave and noble attempts which have lately been made to diffuse the truth about health care in Castro's Cuba over network television, though gratifying and important for the historical record, will not alter the present state of affairs because the MSM are too vested in the lie. It's not so much any more that they want to protect the regime as it is that their credibility is tied to the lie. Nearly 50 years of reiterating and expounding on that lie, and, what is worse, dismissing all evidence to the contrary, has placed the MSM in the peculiar position of either defending the lie or denouncing themselves for having perpetrated it for half a century. We are confident that they will never admit, publicly, that being Castro's unquestioning stooges is the mainstream media's longest ongoing tradition, which shows no signs of lapsing any time soon.
Then there was the article in The Village Voice in the late 70s which purported that before the Revolution it was customary for Cuban women to kill themselves after the deaths of their husbands or if they were abandoned by them, and that their favorite method of self-immolation was setting themselves on fire. Cuba's Socialist Constitution (1975), which required men to help with the housework and child-rearing, had supposedly cured them of this centuries-old habit.
The point: no lie is too big for an American journalist to believe especially if vouchsafed by the heralds of the future: "I have seen the future and it works," declared the famous American muckraker Lincoln Steffins upon his return from a tour of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The legendary American muckraker became a muckswallower in the rarefied atmosphere of the Soviet Union. His heirs in the mainstream media upheld to the very day of its collapse the same specious lies about social progress that Steffins and his ilk had foisted on the American public since the beginning of the Russian Revolution.
By the time Cuba was betrayed into the Soviet camp, the lies had already been well-rehearsed for more than 40 years and with only a few modifications were applied to the new Communist paragon. Most American reporters and editors had never seen Czarist Russia, but a majority were acquainted with pre-Castro Cuba. This did not constrain them, however, from believing the lies that Castro and his agents spoonfed them even if the lies contradicted their firsthand experience. Nor did the overwhelming statistical evidence to the contrary alert them to the fact that they were being duped and turned from journalists into propagandists for the regime. Many, like Herbert Matthews, just didn't care. As the lies were repeated by successive generations of reporters, one depending on the authority of his predecessor and strenthening that authority by invoking it, the lies became fully "documented" by citation and part of the received standard record from which all drew their "facts" and opinions.
I know because I have challenged those lies for decades whenever I was afforded the opportunity, which, of course, was not often. In The Wall Street Journal, The Detroit News, The San Diego Union, and a dozen other newspapers that I don't even remember anymore, on the 20th, the 25th, the 30th, the 35th anniversaries of the Revolution, which was the only time that I could be sure an article on Cuba would be deemed topical and published, I have exploded the myth of social progress under Castro time and time again. More authoritative voices than mine, such as the late Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Lord Hugh Thomas, all tried to push back the Communist juggernaut of lies, pulled by its trusty agents of influence in the MSM, without ever succeeding in overturning it. Castro's apologists had spread the manure far and wide and before one could even tell the truth it was necessary to sweep clean the accumulated excrementa which blocked every access to the truth. I came to doubt whether that was even possible, as did, I suppose, most critics of Castro in the 1970s and 1980s (before that I don't know what there were any critics of Castro in the MSM). The first to make a direct hit at the regime was the late Nestor Almendros, who exposed in his documentary Improper Conduct Castro's persecution of Cuba's gays. This was something that liberals could not ignore or condone, although most found ways to blame the Cuban people rather than the regime for it. To me, at least, it seemed then that the MSM would never believe the truth about Communist Cuba until a Cuban Khruschev denounced the Cuban Stalin. I am still of that opinion.
The brave and noble attempts which have lately been made to diffuse the truth about health care in Castro's Cuba over network television, though gratifying and important for the historical record, will not alter the present state of affairs because the MSM are too vested in the lie. It's not so much any more that they want to protect the regime as it is that their credibility is tied to the lie. Nearly 50 years of reiterating and expounding on that lie, and, what is worse, dismissing all evidence to the contrary, has placed the MSM in the peculiar position of either defending the lie or denouncing themselves for having perpetrated it for half a century. We are confident that they will never admit, publicly, that being Castro's unquestioning stooges is the mainstream media's longest ongoing tradition, which shows no signs of lapsing any time soon.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
A Selection of Quotations by José Martí (Translated from the Spanish)
Today marks the 139th anniversary of the Grito de Yara (Battle Cry of Yara), the start of Cuba's Ten Years' War of Independence (1868-1878), which began with the symbolic act of freeing Cuba's slaves. José Martí was 15 at the outbreak of hostilities and was sentenced for his separatist ideas to two years at hard labor in a stone quarry. The banner raised by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes at Yara, on October 10, 1868, would pass to José Martí, who initiated Cuba's second and definitive War of Independence in 1895. Céspedes, Martí and a half-million other Cubans (out of a population of 3 million) died in the struggle to make Cuba a free and sovereign nation. Their legacy was repudiated in 1959 by their antithesis, who banished freedom and the Rule of Law from our country, reintroduced slavery and even transformed Cuba for a time into a Soviet colony, which it ceased to be in 1991 against the tyrant's most fervent wishes.
To honor the founders of our nationality whose work once seemed finished, but now, we realize, has only begun, we offer these translations from the thoughts of José Martí, the universal Cuban. Both Albert Schweitzer and Emil Ludwig observed, independently, that Martí's aphorisms, when collected and translated, would constitute an infallible guide to life for all the world's peoples.
It has been estimated that there are more than 30,000 aphorisms scattered in the 74 volumes of José Martí's Complete Works. I have endeavored to make this selection representative of his ideas and ideals while avoiding the well-know commonplaces so that even those acquainted with Martí's writings will find much here that is unfamiliar to them. Throughout the day, I will be adding hundreds of other aphorisms. — MAT].
***
The most beautiful and vehement expression of love of man is love of country.
God abides in patriotic martyrdom as in all good deeds and in every universal idea of spontaneous generosity.
Our country is something more than the oppression that besets it, something more than patches of land without life or liberty, something more than the right of possession by force. Our country is a community of interests, shared traditions and common ends, the sweet and consoling fusion of all our loves and all our hopes.
A nation is not a collection of active or indifferent men born by accident in a common land, or residing there for a period in order to accumulate in the shortest time the largest sum. It is that closest communion of souls, bound in far-extending ties through the kinship of peoples, through the penetrating annointing of common sorrows, through the exceedingly delicious wine of national glories, bound as the flesh to the bone through all the delicate and formidable ties of history, and through a national soul that is dispersed in the atmosphere, which we breath and is deposited in our entrails.
Our country is the altar on which we intend to leave our lives, not where we hope to find a living.
Every man who dies for his country is a hymn and every living being should be the temple where it is played.
No land feels more solid under a man's feet than that where he was born.
The only thing a man ever owns outright is a place in his country.
He has no roots in this world who has no country over which to extend them.
No man can long exist without a country, nor can any country exist for long without liberty.
We rise for our country, but not above her. To rise above her is to rise against her.
Our country is everyone's joy, everyone's sorrow and everyone's paradise. It is no man's fief or benefice.
Our country belongs to no one, but if it did, it would belong in spirit only, to the man who serves her with the greatest disinterest and intelligence.
Our country is not a heroic toy for epic redeemers to play with, but our very own entrails, which should not be tied to anyone's wagon or wrapped at the feet of anyone's statue. Our country should be bound to what is tenderest in our breasts and warmed to life there.
Some men go blindfolded through life without ever realizing, because they are so entertained by their own egoism, that their country is a stranger.
Our country is not a cabinet to be opened and closed as we see fit; nor is a republic a new means to provide for the proud and lazy who think that a coat-of-arms entitles them to good bed and board at their countrymen's expense, because they see themselves, by the light their own depraved egoism, as the rightful lords and natural burden of an inferior people.
By himself a man is nothing, and what he is, his people have made him.
In vain does Nature grant extraordinary gifts to certain of her sons who will not become one flesh with their people, but choose to be the dust in their eyes and the whips on their backs, when they might have been the voice and arms of their people, and through them seen themselves exalted, as those rare flowers that a mountain will allow to grow at its zenith.
Obscurity is good if in its shadow we can save our country. The best proof of heroism is to curb it. One can be a hero any day of the week: the true hero sacrifices for the good of his country even his heroic impulse.
The truly brave await to be in the right to conquer by the force of right.
A people which has had heroes in the past will have them again.
A people that honors its heroes affirms itself.
Several generations of slaves conclude in a generation of martyrs.
The man of reason must yield his place in times of action to the man of action. He will be spurned or despised, and at best used as an instrument or helper, unless when the time comes to ride, he mounts.
Suffering for one's country does not exempt a man from the worldwide duty of honoring it through the constant exercise of virtue.
In the service of his country a man will go forth naked that the winds may tear the flesh from his bones and wild beasts suck the marrow, until nothing remains of his voluntary sacrifice but a light to guide and embolden his assassins on the path to virtue.
Let no one say of us that because of vainglory, or any other interest, we contributed to our country's affliction precisely when we had an opportunity to save her.
We should love our country with an attachment that can only be compared to the roots of trees, because of how it holds when it takes root and what it overturns when it is uprooted.
The duty of a patriot who sees the truth is to help his countrymen, without pride or anger, to see it.
He is an apostle who, amid the general decay of moral and intellectual forces, finds within himself the wisdom that illuminates and expands, and raises it on high, reverently, for all to see, as the priest does the host.
He that raises his country raises himself.
The vain man looks after his own name while the patriot guards his country's.
To a man who has arrived through no merit of his own but by sheer luck to where ambition, not patriotism, has taken him, it is more important to be first than to save his country.
There are no men more vile than those who see in the needs of their country a means to satisfy their vanity or found a fortune.
When our country is honored, we are all honored; and when she is dishonored, so are we all.
To honor our country is one way to fight for her, just as to dishonor her is to make war on her.
Every man is obligated to honor his country with his private conduct no less than with his public.
Many there are who oppose virtue and triumph; but generally, in order for vice to prosper, it must masquerade as virtue.
Man so loves himself that he makes the very shortcomings of the land where he was born objects of pride and veneration.
It seems that the ordered and constant habit of liberty gives man a certain confidence in his own power which makes violence unnecessary.
A man who is allowed to exercise his will is not be as impatient or blind as one who has never tested his own strength.
A people that is well-formed and vigorous will regard with contempt, and as an imposition even, those whom history places in their way who are misshapen and hardship-prone. We must remain among the well-formed people and teach it to behave more humanely.
Sleepy peoples have backs that beckon to be sat upon and tempting flanks for spur and whip.
With all its shortcomings, there is something divine and moving, and even impalpably beautiful, in the silence of the voting booth.
In a foot soldier pillaging is to be expected, but every attempt against the public order, in one's country or abroad, is a crime in a thinking man.
In the eyes of fanatics, prudence is a crime.
Revolution is the violent product of ill-advised reason.
As the man who promotes a war that can be avoided is a criminal, so too is the man who opposes an inevitable war.
War is the most beautiful and respectable form of human sacrifice.
As a means of evolving and unifying the character of a nation and revealing its strengths and weaknesses, war may benefit a new and heterogenous people more than the partial and repairable disasters of war, the loss of wealth and position, can be said to harm it.
Suffering is the salt of glory.
As great as heroism in war is tolerance in peace.
When he opens a newspaper, the patriot who truly cares for his country will not turn first to the editorials, which show what men are thinking, but to the classifieds, which show what men are doing.
The time will come when the harshness of language will not express well the delicacy of the spirit.
Language is to thought what the brow is to health.
To do for others is the best way to speak to them.
War should never be craved for because of its horror and desolation. But the attentive observer cannot deny that war foments rather than preempts charity and justice among men, who, in the daily and sublime tasks of combat, acquire a knowledge of Nature and of how they may best be served by her, and are taught the practice of unity and the power of improvisation.
To win for the cause a single soul even in the shadows — a soul that cleanses and conquers itself, which has sinned and is determined not to sin again — is more pleasing and valuable to our country than practicing the goosestep or wasting powder in mock simulations of war.
If to have social equality it were necessary to consent, under a democratic system of laws, to the separation, unjust by any measure, of one race from another, and to renounce the beneficial usages of sympathy and convenience, then social justice would be unjust to those who endure it and shameful for those who impose it.
As a good horseman would never let go of his reins, so a freeman should never disdain his vote. For though it is true that it's easier to be guided than to guide, it is also more dangerous.
We live in a world where every man has to be his own father, where there are no certain inheritances, no houses built to last for centuries, and no means of being safe from social upheavals and financial catastrophies.
Since the world is not a university but a place full of hatreds and trials, should not a university teach men how to survive in the world rather than how to succeed at university?
In Latin America, some pursue as a science, and as the principal science even, the minute study of peoples with whom we differ in origins and customs, while remaining in blameworthy and systematic ignorance of the peculiar elements of their own country.
Tyrannies have purged republics of their ignorance of the true elements of their country.
Erudition, when it exceeds talent, diminishes rather than exalts.
Nations are not made with men who are what they ought to be, but with men such as they are.
No revolution would succeed or the lot of any people improve if men waited for human nature to change. We must work in concert with human nature but fight alongside or against men such as we find them.
The tree that grows the best fruit is that which grows on holy ground.
The longest years are those spent far from one's native land.
I have been an exile in my own country and found a country in my exile.
By removing all landmarks, exile affords the expatriate with an opportunity to test his own mettle. In exile men lose their moorings and find their bearings.
There is poetry forged in the mind that when flung at the soul wounds but does not penetrate it. The other kind is made in the heart. It goes from it and returns to it.
One season of piety often suffices to excuse an epoch of crime.
To suffer is more than to savor life: it is truly to live.
The brotherhood of the misfortunate binds men quickly.
Despots are not aware that the people, the long-suffering people, are the true leaders of their revolutions.
It is the demagogue's business to accuse and the patriot's to forewarn.
Liberty is very dear, and we must decide whether we are to live without her in resignation or resign everything in order to have her.
A revolution is just another means of evolution, indispensable in the hour of necessary hostility, for the purification and accommodation of the opposing elements that must coalesce into definitive conditions of life.
Repentance is the back door of virtue.
In the practical world of ideas, authority signifies simply a respect for all manifestations of justice, and a firm resolve against all counsels of cruelty or pride.
If the license of tyranny is monstrous, the tyranny of license is more frightening and disgusting.
He is a coward whom fear would deter from satisfying the cravings of his conscience.
He need have no fear of rulers who teaches them to rule well.
The spectacle of wealth is a stimulus to human effort.
Whenever a profound thought takes root in man, a firm initiative or a noble and legitimate aspiration, even the contours of his body are lost in the vast confines of the idea.
Rights are to be wrested, not requested; seized, not beseeched.
Christianity is beautiful because it allowed man to define in human terms the ideal of god, and for creating, from perhaps the least imposing of deities, the greatest of men.
What is the arrogant man but a herald of the unknown, an echo of the supernatural, a mirror of the eternal, and a copy more or less complete of the world he inhabits?
The first work of man is to reconquer himself.
The inability of human language to express adequately the opinions, affections and designs of man is perfect and absolute proof of the necessity of an afterlife.
To honor the founders of our nationality whose work once seemed finished, but now, we realize, has only begun, we offer these translations from the thoughts of José Martí, the universal Cuban. Both Albert Schweitzer and Emil Ludwig observed, independently, that Martí's aphorisms, when collected and translated, would constitute an infallible guide to life for all the world's peoples.
It has been estimated that there are more than 30,000 aphorisms scattered in the 74 volumes of José Martí's Complete Works. I have endeavored to make this selection representative of his ideas and ideals while avoiding the well-know commonplaces so that even those acquainted with Martí's writings will find much here that is unfamiliar to them. Throughout the day, I will be adding hundreds of other aphorisms. — MAT].
The most beautiful and vehement expression of love of man is love of country.
God abides in patriotic martyrdom as in all good deeds and in every universal idea of spontaneous generosity.
Our country is something more than the oppression that besets it, something more than patches of land without life or liberty, something more than the right of possession by force. Our country is a community of interests, shared traditions and common ends, the sweet and consoling fusion of all our loves and all our hopes.
A nation is not a collection of active or indifferent men born by accident in a common land, or residing there for a period in order to accumulate in the shortest time the largest sum. It is that closest communion of souls, bound in far-extending ties through the kinship of peoples, through the penetrating annointing of common sorrows, through the exceedingly delicious wine of national glories, bound as the flesh to the bone through all the delicate and formidable ties of history, and through a national soul that is dispersed in the atmosphere, which we breath and is deposited in our entrails.
Our country is the altar on which we intend to leave our lives, not where we hope to find a living.
Every man who dies for his country is a hymn and every living being should be the temple where it is played.
No land feels more solid under a man's feet than that where he was born.
The only thing a man ever owns outright is a place in his country.
He has no roots in this world who has no country over which to extend them.
No man can long exist without a country, nor can any country exist for long without liberty.
We rise for our country, but not above her. To rise above her is to rise against her.
Our country is everyone's joy, everyone's sorrow and everyone's paradise. It is no man's fief or benefice.
Our country belongs to no one, but if it did, it would belong in spirit only, to the man who serves her with the greatest disinterest and intelligence.
Our country is not a heroic toy for epic redeemers to play with, but our very own entrails, which should not be tied to anyone's wagon or wrapped at the feet of anyone's statue. Our country should be bound to what is tenderest in our breasts and warmed to life there.
Some men go blindfolded through life without ever realizing, because they are so entertained by their own egoism, that their country is a stranger.
Our country is not a cabinet to be opened and closed as we see fit; nor is a republic a new means to provide for the proud and lazy who think that a coat-of-arms entitles them to good bed and board at their countrymen's expense, because they see themselves, by the light their own depraved egoism, as the rightful lords and natural burden of an inferior people.
By himself a man is nothing, and what he is, his people have made him.
In vain does Nature grant extraordinary gifts to certain of her sons who will not become one flesh with their people, but choose to be the dust in their eyes and the whips on their backs, when they might have been the voice and arms of their people, and through them seen themselves exalted, as those rare flowers that a mountain will allow to grow at its zenith.
Obscurity is good if in its shadow we can save our country. The best proof of heroism is to curb it. One can be a hero any day of the week: the true hero sacrifices for the good of his country even his heroic impulse.
The truly brave await to be in the right to conquer by the force of right.
A people which has had heroes in the past will have them again.
A people that honors its heroes affirms itself.
Several generations of slaves conclude in a generation of martyrs.
The man of reason must yield his place in times of action to the man of action. He will be spurned or despised, and at best used as an instrument or helper, unless when the time comes to ride, he mounts.
Suffering for one's country does not exempt a man from the worldwide duty of honoring it through the constant exercise of virtue.
In the service of his country a man will go forth naked that the winds may tear the flesh from his bones and wild beasts suck the marrow, until nothing remains of his voluntary sacrifice but a light to guide and embolden his assassins on the path to virtue.
Let no one say of us that because of vainglory, or any other interest, we contributed to our country's affliction precisely when we had an opportunity to save her.
We should love our country with an attachment that can only be compared to the roots of trees, because of how it holds when it takes root and what it overturns when it is uprooted.
The duty of a patriot who sees the truth is to help his countrymen, without pride or anger, to see it.
He is an apostle who, amid the general decay of moral and intellectual forces, finds within himself the wisdom that illuminates and expands, and raises it on high, reverently, for all to see, as the priest does the host.
He that raises his country raises himself.
The vain man looks after his own name while the patriot guards his country's.
To a man who has arrived through no merit of his own but by sheer luck to where ambition, not patriotism, has taken him, it is more important to be first than to save his country.
There are no men more vile than those who see in the needs of their country a means to satisfy their vanity or found a fortune.
When our country is honored, we are all honored; and when she is dishonored, so are we all.
To honor our country is one way to fight for her, just as to dishonor her is to make war on her.
Every man is obligated to honor his country with his private conduct no less than with his public.
Many there are who oppose virtue and triumph; but generally, in order for vice to prosper, it must masquerade as virtue.
Man so loves himself that he makes the very shortcomings of the land where he was born objects of pride and veneration.
It seems that the ordered and constant habit of liberty gives man a certain confidence in his own power which makes violence unnecessary.
A man who is allowed to exercise his will is not be as impatient or blind as one who has never tested his own strength.
A people that is well-formed and vigorous will regard with contempt, and as an imposition even, those whom history places in their way who are misshapen and hardship-prone. We must remain among the well-formed people and teach it to behave more humanely.
Sleepy peoples have backs that beckon to be sat upon and tempting flanks for spur and whip.
With all its shortcomings, there is something divine and moving, and even impalpably beautiful, in the silence of the voting booth.
In a foot soldier pillaging is to be expected, but every attempt against the public order, in one's country or abroad, is a crime in a thinking man.
In the eyes of fanatics, prudence is a crime.
Revolution is the violent product of ill-advised reason.
As the man who promotes a war that can be avoided is a criminal, so too is the man who opposes an inevitable war.
War is the most beautiful and respectable form of human sacrifice.
As a means of evolving and unifying the character of a nation and revealing its strengths and weaknesses, war may benefit a new and heterogenous people more than the partial and repairable disasters of war, the loss of wealth and position, can be said to harm it.
Suffering is the salt of glory.
As great as heroism in war is tolerance in peace.
When he opens a newspaper, the patriot who truly cares for his country will not turn first to the editorials, which show what men are thinking, but to the classifieds, which show what men are doing.
The time will come when the harshness of language will not express well the delicacy of the spirit.
Language is to thought what the brow is to health.
To do for others is the best way to speak to them.
War should never be craved for because of its horror and desolation. But the attentive observer cannot deny that war foments rather than preempts charity and justice among men, who, in the daily and sublime tasks of combat, acquire a knowledge of Nature and of how they may best be served by her, and are taught the practice of unity and the power of improvisation.
To win for the cause a single soul even in the shadows — a soul that cleanses and conquers itself, which has sinned and is determined not to sin again — is more pleasing and valuable to our country than practicing the goosestep or wasting powder in mock simulations of war.
If to have social equality it were necessary to consent, under a democratic system of laws, to the separation, unjust by any measure, of one race from another, and to renounce the beneficial usages of sympathy and convenience, then social justice would be unjust to those who endure it and shameful for those who impose it.
As a good horseman would never let go of his reins, so a freeman should never disdain his vote. For though it is true that it's easier to be guided than to guide, it is also more dangerous.
We live in a world where every man has to be his own father, where there are no certain inheritances, no houses built to last for centuries, and no means of being safe from social upheavals and financial catastrophies.
Since the world is not a university but a place full of hatreds and trials, should not a university teach men how to survive in the world rather than how to succeed at university?
In Latin America, some pursue as a science, and as the principal science even, the minute study of peoples with whom we differ in origins and customs, while remaining in blameworthy and systematic ignorance of the peculiar elements of their own country.
Tyrannies have purged republics of their ignorance of the true elements of their country.
Erudition, when it exceeds talent, diminishes rather than exalts.
Nations are not made with men who are what they ought to be, but with men such as they are.
No revolution would succeed or the lot of any people improve if men waited for human nature to change. We must work in concert with human nature but fight alongside or against men such as we find them.
The tree that grows the best fruit is that which grows on holy ground.
The longest years are those spent far from one's native land.
I have been an exile in my own country and found a country in my exile.
By removing all landmarks, exile affords the expatriate with an opportunity to test his own mettle. In exile men lose their moorings and find their bearings.
There is poetry forged in the mind that when flung at the soul wounds but does not penetrate it. The other kind is made in the heart. It goes from it and returns to it.
One season of piety often suffices to excuse an epoch of crime.
To suffer is more than to savor life: it is truly to live.
The brotherhood of the misfortunate binds men quickly.
Despots are not aware that the people, the long-suffering people, are the true leaders of their revolutions.
It is the demagogue's business to accuse and the patriot's to forewarn.
Liberty is very dear, and we must decide whether we are to live without her in resignation or resign everything in order to have her.
A revolution is just another means of evolution, indispensable in the hour of necessary hostility, for the purification and accommodation of the opposing elements that must coalesce into definitive conditions of life.
Repentance is the back door of virtue.
In the practical world of ideas, authority signifies simply a respect for all manifestations of justice, and a firm resolve against all counsels of cruelty or pride.
If the license of tyranny is monstrous, the tyranny of license is more frightening and disgusting.
He is a coward whom fear would deter from satisfying the cravings of his conscience.
He need have no fear of rulers who teaches them to rule well.
The spectacle of wealth is a stimulus to human effort.
Whenever a profound thought takes root in man, a firm initiative or a noble and legitimate aspiration, even the contours of his body are lost in the vast confines of the idea.
Rights are to be wrested, not requested; seized, not beseeched.
Christianity is beautiful because it allowed man to define in human terms the ideal of god, and for creating, from perhaps the least imposing of deities, the greatest of men.
What is the arrogant man but a herald of the unknown, an echo of the supernatural, a mirror of the eternal, and a copy more or less complete of the world he inhabits?
The first work of man is to reconquer himself.
The inability of human language to express adequately the opinions, affections and designs of man is perfect and absolute proof of the necessity of an afterlife.
The grave is a way and not an end.
Human existence would be a repugnant and barbarous invention were it limited to life on earth.
The mind would not conceive of something it was unable to create.
He that would triumph on earth should not live too close to the stars.
No one ultimately triumphs by inspiring fear because nothing can prevail against the instinct of self-preservation.
To view a crime calmly is to commit it.
Everything that can be said has already been said, but things always sound new when sincerely expressed.
The history of a people is not to be found in aeons of barren submission, but in its hour of rebellion.
A despot will yield to anyone who faces him down, and in the only way he knows how to — by disappearing. But to those on bended knee, never.
Tell the truth that you feel with as much art as you can.
The very selfishness that extolls a people brings it down.
Let him first mould men who would a nation make.
When one hasn't a country, money in the end becomes one's country.
To know a people you must study both its apostles and its bandits.
All religions were born of the same roots, have adored the same idols, prospered by the same virtues and succumbed to the same vices.
Religion, which by the light of reason is always false as dogma, is eternally true as poetry.
Men are the pencils God writes with.
Those who don't believe in immortality believe in history.
The people, quick to anger, undiscerning in their appetites and credulous in their moments of want, are infallible in the long run.
Men do not make nations, but nations, in their hour of genesis, may place themselves, vibrant and triumphant, in one man. Sometimes the man is ready but not the nation. Sometimes the nation is ready but the man does not appear.
We should only point out those defects that can be corrected.
Men never forgive those who are recognizably their betters.
Institutions are the bylaws of Nature.
When all noble qualities are obscured in man, he still remains capable of loyalty to a friend. As if to prove that he is not entirely vile his humanity becomes incarnate in this particular virtue.
Fear of a future reckoning will never prevent men from yielding to a current appetite.
Every man is born a king; the problem lies in finding within himself the implements with which a throne is made.
For a man to be preoccupied constantly with himself, even in his greatest acts of daring and self-denial, for him to think of reconciling his personal interests with the public good, serving the former in a way that will favor the latter or not damage it too excessively, is both natural and human.
Once they've begun to decay, social bodies rarely heal completely.
Evil can triumph only when good men are indifferent. [There is no proof that Burke ever said this; but it is documented that Martí did].
Justice first and art later. He is not a man who in these indecorous times entertains himself with the fineries of the imagination and the luxuries of the mind. When one does not enjoy the exercise of liberty, the only case for art, its only reason for being, is at the service of liberty. Everything into the fire, even art, to feed the blaze!
Liberty must be a constant practice or else it will degenerate into a banal formula.
Every man has a little of the lion in him and wants for himself the lion's share in life.
At certain times and among certain people there is nothing like being minor to be considered great.
A nation that is not careful to ennoble its masses is reared for the jackels.
No one is more repulsive than the rich man who becomes obsessed with his wealth. He is undoubtedly a criminal: a criminal by omission. There is only one being as repulsive: the systematic denouncer of all who possess wealth.
Even when they deserve our unrestrained commendation, the powerful should be praised with great discretion, lest simple justice seem solicitation.
Even when the bones of a nation's dead lie exposed on the ground, and its bronze and marble monuments are sheathed in earthen mantles, a nation may yet be saved from obscurity by its arts and sciences.
Isn't it a pity that a newspaper's quest for news often frustrates a government's quest for peace?
National holidays should not go unobserved, for they contain the spirit of a nation, forbode its victories, and are ocassions to display its arts and sciences.
All free countries share a common destiny.
Genius is simply anticipation: the ability to see clearly in outline what others do not perceive even in full lineaments.
Kings bestow titles, but when it comes to ennobling the soul, there is no peerage like that conferred on us by books.
To read one good magazine is like reading dozens of good books.
Poetry can be improvised but not prose; it must come with age.
The bold forget. But those who were least heroic in war, or fought without justice and in fear of victory, never forget.
There is nothing in a nation more real than its government.
A nation may be accounted rich which has many small property owners.
To know how to read is to know your way. To know how to write is to know how to ascend.
Philantrophy is a narcotic, not an effective medicine. It dries the tears on the countenance but does not cure the source of pain.
A man without a country is as a tree in the sea.
There is something of a boat in every exile's house.
The greater the agony in a foreign land, the more we will work to re-claim, quickly, our own.
Fame is a useful myth.
He who suffers has the greatest right to silence.
The state should not propagate the Catholic religion in public schools, nor anti-Catholic religion.
Humanity cannot redeem itself except by a predetermined quantity of suffering, and since some men evade their share, it is necessary that others should accumulate more than their due that we may all be saved.
Only soldiers commit crimes without the loss of honor.
A man capable of doing something worthwhile who dies before his hour, may died contentedly, because in some other place his hour will come. And even if it does not, it is just as well: he is sufficiently great who has the potential to be so.
Unless one is an aristocrat of the intellect, it is impossible to be a perfect democrat.
If the future of nations is to depend on the education of men, then the education of women will guarantee and announce the kind of man we can expect.
When a people divide in two, they die as one.
The archeologist who unearths a lost city is worthier of praise than he who buried it.
There is in sin a certain spirit of independence which makes it ingratiating when not excessive.
One almost always has to crawl one's way to power. But those who get there on their feet — not on their kneees — have the best claim to it.
Books should always be read with pen in hand.
An honest man can render an account of his acts at any moment and should always be ready to do so.
When one writes with the point of a sword on history's page, there is no time or desire to write with pen on paper.
Every generation creates a national holiday that represents and reflects its ideas.
In tyranny men learn the worth of liberty from the want of it.
Men love dangerous truths in secret. Their reluctance to champion these truths before they have been accepted is equalled only by the tenacity and verve with which they will support them when there is no risk involved in their defense.
To waste one's time in barren pursuits when one might do something useful, to opt for the easy task when one has the spirit to attempt the difficult, is to rob talent of its dignity.
The surest way to win the love of your troops is not to risk their lives unnecessarily and always to fight at their head.
He is a coward who fears to satisfy the cravings of his own conscience.
Property should be tended at its roots, which is the security and prestige of the nation where it is found.
Apostles of new ideas in time become slaves to them.
What honor is there in reviling as criminals those we would have acclaimed as heroes but for their defeat?
I am not sufficiently versed in all the world's religions to be able to say that I belong to any of them.
Americans place utility before sentiment. Latins sentiment before utility.
There are many things that one could do in this life! But we have a stomach and that other stomach that hangs, which is wont to have terrible appetites.
Like benevolent angels, sorrows lift the veils of life.
Love has not, to my recollection, given me any supreme moment. Friendship has.
The noise of my words awakens my thoughts.
There is no dessert richer than a slice of bread made with good flour and toasted just right.
We live in feudal times, when a bandit in rebellion against an unjust and odious ruler, can be hailed by a stupid people as a champion of liberty.
There is no such thing as providence. Providence is no more than the logical and precise result of our actions, helped or hindered by the actions of others.
If our tormented homeland could see the care with which her absent children make ready to serve her, if she could see the work which they are doing to redeem her, if she could see the tenderness with which she is loved by them, or could know of their joyous faith in her, she would draw from pride the strength to break once and for all her chains.
Publish, publish. Thread the theme of Cuba through each and every needle. Wars proceed over roads of paper.
Human existence would be a repugnant and barbarous invention were it limited to life on earth.
The mind would not conceive of something it was unable to create.
He that would triumph on earth should not live too close to the stars.
No one ultimately triumphs by inspiring fear because nothing can prevail against the instinct of self-preservation.
To view a crime calmly is to commit it.
Everything that can be said has already been said, but things always sound new when sincerely expressed.
The history of a people is not to be found in aeons of barren submission, but in its hour of rebellion.
A despot will yield to anyone who faces him down, and in the only way he knows how to — by disappearing. But to those on bended knee, never.
Tell the truth that you feel with as much art as you can.
The very selfishness that extolls a people brings it down.
Let him first mould men who would a nation make.
When one hasn't a country, money in the end becomes one's country.
To know a people you must study both its apostles and its bandits.
All religions were born of the same roots, have adored the same idols, prospered by the same virtues and succumbed to the same vices.
Religion, which by the light of reason is always false as dogma, is eternally true as poetry.
Men are the pencils God writes with.
Those who don't believe in immortality believe in history.
The people, quick to anger, undiscerning in their appetites and credulous in their moments of want, are infallible in the long run.
Men do not make nations, but nations, in their hour of genesis, may place themselves, vibrant and triumphant, in one man. Sometimes the man is ready but not the nation. Sometimes the nation is ready but the man does not appear.
We should only point out those defects that can be corrected.
Men never forgive those who are recognizably their betters.
Institutions are the bylaws of Nature.
When all noble qualities are obscured in man, he still remains capable of loyalty to a friend. As if to prove that he is not entirely vile his humanity becomes incarnate in this particular virtue.
Fear of a future reckoning will never prevent men from yielding to a current appetite.
Every man is born a king; the problem lies in finding within himself the implements with which a throne is made.
For a man to be preoccupied constantly with himself, even in his greatest acts of daring and self-denial, for him to think of reconciling his personal interests with the public good, serving the former in a way that will favor the latter or not damage it too excessively, is both natural and human.
Once they've begun to decay, social bodies rarely heal completely.
Evil can triumph only when good men are indifferent. [There is no proof that Burke ever said this; but it is documented that Martí did].
Justice first and art later. He is not a man who in these indecorous times entertains himself with the fineries of the imagination and the luxuries of the mind. When one does not enjoy the exercise of liberty, the only case for art, its only reason for being, is at the service of liberty. Everything into the fire, even art, to feed the blaze!
Liberty must be a constant practice or else it will degenerate into a banal formula.
Every man has a little of the lion in him and wants for himself the lion's share in life.
At certain times and among certain people there is nothing like being minor to be considered great.
A nation that is not careful to ennoble its masses is reared for the jackels.
No one is more repulsive than the rich man who becomes obsessed with his wealth. He is undoubtedly a criminal: a criminal by omission. There is only one being as repulsive: the systematic denouncer of all who possess wealth.
Even when they deserve our unrestrained commendation, the powerful should be praised with great discretion, lest simple justice seem solicitation.
Even when the bones of a nation's dead lie exposed on the ground, and its bronze and marble monuments are sheathed in earthen mantles, a nation may yet be saved from obscurity by its arts and sciences.
Isn't it a pity that a newspaper's quest for news often frustrates a government's quest for peace?
National holidays should not go unobserved, for they contain the spirit of a nation, forbode its victories, and are ocassions to display its arts and sciences.
All free countries share a common destiny.
Genius is simply anticipation: the ability to see clearly in outline what others do not perceive even in full lineaments.
Kings bestow titles, but when it comes to ennobling the soul, there is no peerage like that conferred on us by books.
To read one good magazine is like reading dozens of good books.
Poetry can be improvised but not prose; it must come with age.
The bold forget. But those who were least heroic in war, or fought without justice and in fear of victory, never forget.
There is nothing in a nation more real than its government.
A nation may be accounted rich which has many small property owners.
To know how to read is to know your way. To know how to write is to know how to ascend.
Philantrophy is a narcotic, not an effective medicine. It dries the tears on the countenance but does not cure the source of pain.
A man without a country is as a tree in the sea.
There is something of a boat in every exile's house.
The greater the agony in a foreign land, the more we will work to re-claim, quickly, our own.
Fame is a useful myth.
He who suffers has the greatest right to silence.
The state should not propagate the Catholic religion in public schools, nor anti-Catholic religion.
Humanity cannot redeem itself except by a predetermined quantity of suffering, and since some men evade their share, it is necessary that others should accumulate more than their due that we may all be saved.
Only soldiers commit crimes without the loss of honor.
A man capable of doing something worthwhile who dies before his hour, may died contentedly, because in some other place his hour will come. And even if it does not, it is just as well: he is sufficiently great who has the potential to be so.
Unless one is an aristocrat of the intellect, it is impossible to be a perfect democrat.
If the future of nations is to depend on the education of men, then the education of women will guarantee and announce the kind of man we can expect.
When a people divide in two, they die as one.
The archeologist who unearths a lost city is worthier of praise than he who buried it.
There is in sin a certain spirit of independence which makes it ingratiating when not excessive.
One almost always has to crawl one's way to power. But those who get there on their feet — not on their kneees — have the best claim to it.
Books should always be read with pen in hand.
An honest man can render an account of his acts at any moment and should always be ready to do so.
When one writes with the point of a sword on history's page, there is no time or desire to write with pen on paper.
Every generation creates a national holiday that represents and reflects its ideas.
In tyranny men learn the worth of liberty from the want of it.
Men love dangerous truths in secret. Their reluctance to champion these truths before they have been accepted is equalled only by the tenacity and verve with which they will support them when there is no risk involved in their defense.
To waste one's time in barren pursuits when one might do something useful, to opt for the easy task when one has the spirit to attempt the difficult, is to rob talent of its dignity.
The surest way to win the love of your troops is not to risk their lives unnecessarily and always to fight at their head.
He is a coward who fears to satisfy the cravings of his own conscience.
Property should be tended at its roots, which is the security and prestige of the nation where it is found.
Apostles of new ideas in time become slaves to them.
What honor is there in reviling as criminals those we would have acclaimed as heroes but for their defeat?
I am not sufficiently versed in all the world's religions to be able to say that I belong to any of them.
Americans place utility before sentiment. Latins sentiment before utility.
There are many things that one could do in this life! But we have a stomach and that other stomach that hangs, which is wont to have terrible appetites.
Like benevolent angels, sorrows lift the veils of life.
Love has not, to my recollection, given me any supreme moment. Friendship has.
The noise of my words awakens my thoughts.
There is no dessert richer than a slice of bread made with good flour and toasted just right.
We live in feudal times, when a bandit in rebellion against an unjust and odious ruler, can be hailed by a stupid people as a champion of liberty.
There is no such thing as providence. Providence is no more than the logical and precise result of our actions, helped or hindered by the actions of others.
If our tormented homeland could see the care with which her absent children make ready to serve her, if she could see the work which they are doing to redeem her, if she could see the tenderness with which she is loved by them, or could know of their joyous faith in her, she would draw from pride the strength to break once and for all her chains.
Publish, publish. Thread the theme of Cuba through each and every needle. Wars proceed over roads of paper.
The Communist Party in a Post-Castro Cuba
The question has arisen in various quarters as to whether the Communist Party should have a presence in a post-Castro Cuba. There will be no Communist Party in a democratic Cuba because no one in Cuba believes in Communism, least of all those responsible for it. What must not be allowed is a neo-Castroite party, which need not necessarily be a Communist party. Denazification was accomplished in Germany only by the systematic suppression of the Hitler cult, which was achieved by aggressively punishing those who would revive it. The same must be done in Cuba. No posthumous cult of personality can or should be allowed. Every last vestige of the regime must be eradicated. 50 years of national tragedy is enough.
Ex Post Facto Laws Are Unconstitutional
Even after almost a half-century here, I learn something new about this country every day and almost all of it leaves me despairing about its future. This morning I learned that ex post facto (also known as retroactive) laws and bills of attainder are now being enacted and enforced in this country even though the Constitution specifically forbids them ("No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed"). The news was contained in an article in The Miami Herald about 300,000 immigrants (legal and illegal) which have been deported in the past 20 years because of criminal offenses as trivial as shoplifting after they had already served their sentences. The law, which mandates their deportation without a hearing or consideration of extenuating circumstances, and, sometimes, even when they they have been convicted of no crime, was passed in 1988 and emended in 1996, when its application was made retroactive.
If the Constitution were not clear enough in its wording, the Supreme Court in Calder vs. Bull affirmed the unconstitutionality of ex post facto laws 200 years ago: "Every law that makes criminal an act which was innocent when done, or which inflicts a greater punishment than the law annexed to the crime when committed, is an ex post facto law within the prohibition of the Constitution." If someone committed a crime in, say, 1980 which was not subject to deportation in 1980, he cannot be deported for it in 2007 because that would be a violation of the Constitution's ban on ex post facto laws, even if Congress passed and the president sign a thousand unconstitutional-laws permitting it. The only options open to the government are to stop enforcement of that unconstitutional provision or to amend the Constitution and deprive all Americans of an essential guarantee of their freedom.
Ex post facto laws are not new; they are as old as the oldest tyranny. They are, and have always been, the favorite expedient of despots for criminalizing an entire population. Castro's show trials in 1959, which killed 15,000 Cubans by firing squad, more than died of natural causes in the entire year, were based on ex post facto laws.
So were the Nuremberg trials. Under President Grau San Martín, Cuba, one of the 52 founding states of the United Nations, voted against establishing a "war crimes tribunal" because it was a violation of international law, which had since its inception proscribed ex post facto laws as had all civilized countries up to that time. The United States, although its Constitution forbade such laws at home, voted in the affirmative as did all the major Allied powers. Of course, principle was sacrificed to political expediency and justice was replaced by revenge. The Nazis could have been tried as murderers and accomplices to murder under existing German laws with the same results (as many were after Nuremberg). Instead, the Allied powers created new laws and applied them retroactively to old crimes, denying real justice in order to perpetrate "exemplary" or "divine justice" as a suitable coda to the triumph of Western democracy (and Soviet despotism) in World War II.
It would have been better if Winston Churchill's position had prevailed. He was initially against the war crimes tribunal. He wanted the summary execution of the top Nazis, which at least would not have involved enshrining ex post facto laws as an acceptable legal recourse.
The prohibition against ex post facto laws was one of the sacred precepts of Western jurisprudence, and, indeed, Western civilization before the War. In fact, the war was fought to save it and all other concepts of the Rule of Law. After Nuremberg, the aberration became the norm in international law. But it never became the norm in U.S. law. Whatever U.S. conduct may be outside the U.S. (in Guantánamo, for example), the Constitution does not allow the application of ex post facto laws in this country. And yet, unconstitutional laws which embrace the outlawed principle are being enacted and enforced in this country to achieve, again, a "higher law" than sanctioned in the Constitution.
The deportation bill against legal residents is also a bill of pains and penalties, which is proscribed in the prohibition against bills of attainder (laws passed by Congress against individuals or a specific group where it assumes judicial magistracy, that is, circumvents and nullifies the power of the judiciary for what it deems political necessity or expediency). Such was the case with the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which was sanctioned by the most liberal judge in U.S. history, Earl Warren. Like the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War by Lincoln, many still defend these unconstitutional acts as necessary war measures. (Jefferson Davis, incidentally, didn't suspend habeas corpus in the South). But, clearly, that argument is unapplicable in this case since George Bush's America is not yet at war with the whole world.
***
In case I lost any of you along the way, I explained the inherent unfairness of ex post facto laws in the simplest terms possible in another context and it may clarify some points here as well. Needless to say, it is an infinitely worse situation when the U.S. government adopts ex post facto laws than when a private corporation does:
The firing of the 3 Cuban-American journalists presents us with a case of the retroactive application of rules on ethical practice. Nothing is more odious to any sense of justice than what are known as ex post facto (retroactive) laws. This has always been the favorite tactic of dictatorial regimes for establishing control of the masses. It is the only legal (actually extra-legal) expedient that allows the state to criminalize the whole population and put it at the mercy of its whims and interests, by, in effect, blackmailing the whole nation into compliance.
Let me explain more carefully how ex post facto laws stifle dissent and you will have no difficulty understanding how they pertain to the present case. Suppose that you have no beard and that the government were to decree tomorrow that it was illegal for you and all men not to have beards. You don't have to suppose much because this is exactly what the Taliban did decree in Afghanistan. Now we should all cringe at the arbitrariness of such a disposition; yet even that is not as intolerable as if the government were to decree today that it was illegal for you to go beardless yesterday, or the day before, or even for a single day since puberty.
This is in effect what Castro did in Cuba in 1959. Before Castro came to power, there was no capital punishment in Cuba. Not only did Castro introduce the death penalty but he made it retroactive for offenses committed before 1959. But that's not the worst of it: he created a whole series of new "crimes" subject to the death penalty and proceeded to execute 15,000 Cubans whom he claimed had violated his new "laws" before the activity they engaged-in had been criminalized. To put this in the simplest terms: you walked on the right side of the street yesterday. Tomorrow the government makes it illegal for you to walk on the right side of the street today, tomorrow and yesterday. How can anyone living under such a regime feel safe? Even the perpetual leftside walker must fear that tomorrow his own conduct may be criminalized retroactively and himself thrown in jail alongside the erstwhile rightside walker.
Now let us apply these principles to the case of the 3 journalist fired by The Miami Herald. When they worked for Radio and TV Martí, it was not unethical for them to do so since there was no rule or agreement prohibiting them from doing so. In fact, The Miami Herald was aware of the fact, publicized the fact in their paper and never said or did anything to signify their disapproval with that fact. Then the Knight Ridder corporation sells the Herald to the McClatchy corporation. Shortly thereafter, the new regime decrees that not only will it be a terminable offense to work for U.S.-sponsored broadcasting in the future, but that all (or some) who have been so engaged in the past (even under another regime when it was acceptable) shall be subject to termination. This is what's known as retroactive penalties. Whether they are applied in the public or private sector, such dispositions fly in the face of the most elementary concepts of justice. In fact, even children know better than to apply new rules to old games.
So whether or no the McClatchy corporation is actually trying to appease Castro or following Castro's lead becomes, if not a moot point, then at least a lesser consideration than the fact that it has demonstrably embraced its policies and tactics by adopting workplace policies that are at their root as arbitrary and tyrannical as Castro's "laws." In fact, it has become the very thing that it purports to oppose.
It is not a question of The Herald joining with the enemy; but of The Herald becoming the enemy.
http://www.miamiherald.com/579/story/264949.html
If the Constitution were not clear enough in its wording, the Supreme Court in Calder vs. Bull affirmed the unconstitutionality of ex post facto laws 200 years ago: "Every law that makes criminal an act which was innocent when done, or which inflicts a greater punishment than the law annexed to the crime when committed, is an ex post facto law within the prohibition of the Constitution." If someone committed a crime in, say, 1980 which was not subject to deportation in 1980, he cannot be deported for it in 2007 because that would be a violation of the Constitution's ban on ex post facto laws, even if Congress passed and the president sign a thousand unconstitutional-laws permitting it. The only options open to the government are to stop enforcement of that unconstitutional provision or to amend the Constitution and deprive all Americans of an essential guarantee of their freedom.
Ex post facto laws are not new; they are as old as the oldest tyranny. They are, and have always been, the favorite expedient of despots for criminalizing an entire population. Castro's show trials in 1959, which killed 15,000 Cubans by firing squad, more than died of natural causes in the entire year, were based on ex post facto laws.
So were the Nuremberg trials. Under President Grau San Martín, Cuba, one of the 52 founding states of the United Nations, voted against establishing a "war crimes tribunal" because it was a violation of international law, which had since its inception proscribed ex post facto laws as had all civilized countries up to that time. The United States, although its Constitution forbade such laws at home, voted in the affirmative as did all the major Allied powers. Of course, principle was sacrificed to political expediency and justice was replaced by revenge. The Nazis could have been tried as murderers and accomplices to murder under existing German laws with the same results (as many were after Nuremberg). Instead, the Allied powers created new laws and applied them retroactively to old crimes, denying real justice in order to perpetrate "exemplary" or "divine justice" as a suitable coda to the triumph of Western democracy (and Soviet despotism) in World War II.
It would have been better if Winston Churchill's position had prevailed. He was initially against the war crimes tribunal. He wanted the summary execution of the top Nazis, which at least would not have involved enshrining ex post facto laws as an acceptable legal recourse.
The prohibition against ex post facto laws was one of the sacred precepts of Western jurisprudence, and, indeed, Western civilization before the War. In fact, the war was fought to save it and all other concepts of the Rule of Law. After Nuremberg, the aberration became the norm in international law. But it never became the norm in U.S. law. Whatever U.S. conduct may be outside the U.S. (in Guantánamo, for example), the Constitution does not allow the application of ex post facto laws in this country. And yet, unconstitutional laws which embrace the outlawed principle are being enacted and enforced in this country to achieve, again, a "higher law" than sanctioned in the Constitution.
The deportation bill against legal residents is also a bill of pains and penalties, which is proscribed in the prohibition against bills of attainder (laws passed by Congress against individuals or a specific group where it assumes judicial magistracy, that is, circumvents and nullifies the power of the judiciary for what it deems political necessity or expediency). Such was the case with the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which was sanctioned by the most liberal judge in U.S. history, Earl Warren. Like the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War by Lincoln, many still defend these unconstitutional acts as necessary war measures. (Jefferson Davis, incidentally, didn't suspend habeas corpus in the South). But, clearly, that argument is unapplicable in this case since George Bush's America is not yet at war with the whole world.
In case I lost any of you along the way, I explained the inherent unfairness of ex post facto laws in the simplest terms possible in another context and it may clarify some points here as well. Needless to say, it is an infinitely worse situation when the U.S. government adopts ex post facto laws than when a private corporation does:
The firing of the 3 Cuban-American journalists presents us with a case of the retroactive application of rules on ethical practice. Nothing is more odious to any sense of justice than what are known as ex post facto (retroactive) laws. This has always been the favorite tactic of dictatorial regimes for establishing control of the masses. It is the only legal (actually extra-legal) expedient that allows the state to criminalize the whole population and put it at the mercy of its whims and interests, by, in effect, blackmailing the whole nation into compliance.
Let me explain more carefully how ex post facto laws stifle dissent and you will have no difficulty understanding how they pertain to the present case. Suppose that you have no beard and that the government were to decree tomorrow that it was illegal for you and all men not to have beards. You don't have to suppose much because this is exactly what the Taliban did decree in Afghanistan. Now we should all cringe at the arbitrariness of such a disposition; yet even that is not as intolerable as if the government were to decree today that it was illegal for you to go beardless yesterday, or the day before, or even for a single day since puberty.
This is in effect what Castro did in Cuba in 1959. Before Castro came to power, there was no capital punishment in Cuba. Not only did Castro introduce the death penalty but he made it retroactive for offenses committed before 1959. But that's not the worst of it: he created a whole series of new "crimes" subject to the death penalty and proceeded to execute 15,000 Cubans whom he claimed had violated his new "laws" before the activity they engaged-in had been criminalized. To put this in the simplest terms: you walked on the right side of the street yesterday. Tomorrow the government makes it illegal for you to walk on the right side of the street today, tomorrow and yesterday. How can anyone living under such a regime feel safe? Even the perpetual leftside walker must fear that tomorrow his own conduct may be criminalized retroactively and himself thrown in jail alongside the erstwhile rightside walker.
Now let us apply these principles to the case of the 3 journalist fired by The Miami Herald. When they worked for Radio and TV Martí, it was not unethical for them to do so since there was no rule or agreement prohibiting them from doing so. In fact, The Miami Herald was aware of the fact, publicized the fact in their paper and never said or did anything to signify their disapproval with that fact. Then the Knight Ridder corporation sells the Herald to the McClatchy corporation. Shortly thereafter, the new regime decrees that not only will it be a terminable offense to work for U.S.-sponsored broadcasting in the future, but that all (or some) who have been so engaged in the past (even under another regime when it was acceptable) shall be subject to termination. This is what's known as retroactive penalties. Whether they are applied in the public or private sector, such dispositions fly in the face of the most elementary concepts of justice. In fact, even children know better than to apply new rules to old games.
So whether or no the McClatchy corporation is actually trying to appease Castro or following Castro's lead becomes, if not a moot point, then at least a lesser consideration than the fact that it has demonstrably embraced its policies and tactics by adopting workplace policies that are at their root as arbitrary and tyrannical as Castro's "laws." In fact, it has become the very thing that it purports to oppose.
It is not a question of The Herald joining with the enemy; but of The Herald becoming the enemy.
http://www.miamiherald.com/579/story/264949.html
Monday, October 8, 2007
Christopher Columbus Was a Cuban
Christopher Columbus was Cuban. That is, he was born in Cuba. Not the island he discovered and called "the most beautiful that human eyes have ever gazed upon," but in the rustic Portuguese town of Cuba, in Alentejo Province, which erected a statue to its putative favorite son on the 500th anniversary of his birth last year (practically the only place that noticed). The town of Cuba also claims that the Great Navigator bestowed the name of his hometown on the greatest of his discoveries. There is that small matter about Cuba's aboriginal name having been Cubanacan and that Columbus himself noted in his Journal a variant (not Cuba); but, of course, this could have been either a coincidence or it may have been preordained that the discoverer of one Cuba was born in another Cuba.
Unlike Homer's, Columbus' birthplace has been a matter of contention since before his death. Now a Spanish geneticist, Dr. José A. Lorente, of the University of Granada, may hold the key to this centuries-old mystery. In 2004, Dr. Lorente succeeded in extracting Columbus' DNA from a cache of bones at the Cathedral in Seville. The bones were transported there from the Cathedral of Havana at the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898. The bones had originally been brought to Cuba from Santo Domingo at the time of the Haitian slave revolt. Of course, Cubans contend that the Spaniards repatriated the wrong bones in 1898 and that Columbus' real remains remained in Havana's Cathedral. And Dominicans, for their part, contend that the wrong bones were taken to Cuba from the Cathedral of Santo Domingo, where Columbus died in 1506. In both cases, it is assumed that Columbus' bones were mistaken for those of his son Diego. For purposes of DNA testing, it doesn't really matter whether the bones are the father's or the son's (supposing that Diego was really Columbus' son).
At the moment it appears that the claims of Portugal and Catalonia are being pressed with the most energy. In the 19th century, it was France which contended for a French Columbus. José Martí even wrote an article in which he evaluated their claims. France no longer seems interested in Columbus, who is no longer widely-regarded as a secular saint, agent of civilization or even a real discoverer. The present idea of a discoverer is someone who looks but does not touch (e.g. the explorers of the North and South Poles). It might be argued on Columbus' behalf that everybody knew that the North and South poles existed long before Norwegians and Britons ventured there, whereas nobody knew about the New World until Columbus stumbled there. His having stumbled there by chance, incidentally, does not make him any less of a discoverer because all great discoveries have been pretty much accidental or incidental. Nor is it fair to describe the Discovery as a "meeting of cultures" since the indigenous peoples didn't meet Columbus halfway in the Atlantic. If Columbus had not discovered America, the Arawak wouldn't have discovered Europe.
The Portuguese, Spain's eternal rivals, contend that Columbus is the illegitimate son of Prince Carlos de Viana, onetime heir to the Catalonian throne, with a woman whose last name was Colom. The claimant to the throne of Portugal, the Duke de Braganza, a descendent of Prince Carlos de Viena, has donated his own DNA to be matched to Columbus' as have 225 Portuguese Coloms.
Genoa, and, by extension, Italy (which did not exist at Columbus' birth or for 400 years afterwards), has not loosened its traditional claims to him and DNA has been collected from 100 Genoan Colombos and putative cousins of Cristoforo. There is no question that a Cristoforo Columbo was born in Genoa about the time of Columbus' birth. The archives there document his birth and early life. The problem is that there is nothing to connect him to the historical Columbus.
Columbus himself is responsible for this ambiguity because he purposefully concealed his origins all his life even from his own son. This has led many to presume that whatever his real nationality, Columbus was a Jew, specifically, a cryptic Jews, or marrano. The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, the very year that Columbus sailed from there on a mission of discovery commissioned by the Catholic monarchs. Even a remote Jewish ancestor would have "corrupted his blood" and barred him from receiving the dukedom and other honors that Isabel and Fernando bestowed on him. Columbus had many enemies at court (who would one day transport him from the New World in irons). If there was anything to conceal about his heritage, it was clearly in his interest to conceal it.
This controversy may all prove a moot point because the Genoan Colombos and the Portuguese Coloms are closely-related: in fact Columbus could be the son of a Genoan who moved to Catalonia, or a Catalonian who moved to Genoa. This itself would be a moot point, too, if it were true, as many historians contend, that "Columbus" was an adopted name. And, indeed, if you are serious about concealing your origins, you have to obscure not only your birthplace but your real name.
It seems to us that Peter Dickson, a retired C.I.A. analyst, may have "solved" this seemingly unsolvable puzzle. In a self-published book, Dickson claims that Columbus was part Spanish, part Italian, part French and part Jewish — a product of the New World, as it were, born in The Old.
And, of course, he was born in Cuba [Portugal].
Unlike Homer's, Columbus' birthplace has been a matter of contention since before his death. Now a Spanish geneticist, Dr. José A. Lorente, of the University of Granada, may hold the key to this centuries-old mystery. In 2004, Dr. Lorente succeeded in extracting Columbus' DNA from a cache of bones at the Cathedral in Seville. The bones were transported there from the Cathedral of Havana at the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898. The bones had originally been brought to Cuba from Santo Domingo at the time of the Haitian slave revolt. Of course, Cubans contend that the Spaniards repatriated the wrong bones in 1898 and that Columbus' real remains remained in Havana's Cathedral. And Dominicans, for their part, contend that the wrong bones were taken to Cuba from the Cathedral of Santo Domingo, where Columbus died in 1506. In both cases, it is assumed that Columbus' bones were mistaken for those of his son Diego. For purposes of DNA testing, it doesn't really matter whether the bones are the father's or the son's (supposing that Diego was really Columbus' son).
At the moment it appears that the claims of Portugal and Catalonia are being pressed with the most energy. In the 19th century, it was France which contended for a French Columbus. José Martí even wrote an article in which he evaluated their claims. France no longer seems interested in Columbus, who is no longer widely-regarded as a secular saint, agent of civilization or even a real discoverer. The present idea of a discoverer is someone who looks but does not touch (e.g. the explorers of the North and South Poles). It might be argued on Columbus' behalf that everybody knew that the North and South poles existed long before Norwegians and Britons ventured there, whereas nobody knew about the New World until Columbus stumbled there. His having stumbled there by chance, incidentally, does not make him any less of a discoverer because all great discoveries have been pretty much accidental or incidental. Nor is it fair to describe the Discovery as a "meeting of cultures" since the indigenous peoples didn't meet Columbus halfway in the Atlantic. If Columbus had not discovered America, the Arawak wouldn't have discovered Europe.
The Portuguese, Spain's eternal rivals, contend that Columbus is the illegitimate son of Prince Carlos de Viana, onetime heir to the Catalonian throne, with a woman whose last name was Colom. The claimant to the throne of Portugal, the Duke de Braganza, a descendent of Prince Carlos de Viena, has donated his own DNA to be matched to Columbus' as have 225 Portuguese Coloms.
Genoa, and, by extension, Italy (which did not exist at Columbus' birth or for 400 years afterwards), has not loosened its traditional claims to him and DNA has been collected from 100 Genoan Colombos and putative cousins of Cristoforo. There is no question that a Cristoforo Columbo was born in Genoa about the time of Columbus' birth. The archives there document his birth and early life. The problem is that there is nothing to connect him to the historical Columbus.
Columbus himself is responsible for this ambiguity because he purposefully concealed his origins all his life even from his own son. This has led many to presume that whatever his real nationality, Columbus was a Jew, specifically, a cryptic Jews, or marrano. The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, the very year that Columbus sailed from there on a mission of discovery commissioned by the Catholic monarchs. Even a remote Jewish ancestor would have "corrupted his blood" and barred him from receiving the dukedom and other honors that Isabel and Fernando bestowed on him. Columbus had many enemies at court (who would one day transport him from the New World in irons). If there was anything to conceal about his heritage, it was clearly in his interest to conceal it.
This controversy may all prove a moot point because the Genoan Colombos and the Portuguese Coloms are closely-related: in fact Columbus could be the son of a Genoan who moved to Catalonia, or a Catalonian who moved to Genoa. This itself would be a moot point, too, if it were true, as many historians contend, that "Columbus" was an adopted name. And, indeed, if you are serious about concealing your origins, you have to obscure not only your birthplace but your real name.
It seems to us that Peter Dickson, a retired C.I.A. analyst, may have "solved" this seemingly unsolvable puzzle. In a self-published book, Dickson claims that Columbus was part Spanish, part Italian, part French and part Jewish — a product of the New World, as it were, born in The Old.
And, of course, he was born in Cuba [Portugal].
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Notable & Diabolical: "Che" Compared to St. Francis of Assisi
“For us, "Che" Guevara was a St. Francis of Politics, because he walked away from power in Cuba and starving for justice, he went off into the jungle in Congo and then in Bolivia to try to liberate greater Latin America." — Frei Betto, Quoted in the Tehran Times, October 6, 2007
Who else but Frei Betto, the cassocked heir to the Inquisition and seller of indulgences to the greatest mass murderers that this continent has ever known, would think to compare the most beloved of saints to the most reprobate of sinners?
Who else but Frei Betto, the cassocked heir to the Inquisition and seller of indulgences to the greatest mass murderers that this continent has ever known, would think to compare the most beloved of saints to the most reprobate of sinners?
Cuban Shorts
Castro: Pimp my Ride
Diane Paul of Halifax, Canada and Fort Myers, FL weighs about 500 lbs. and her knees have exploded. She needs to have them replaced with artificial ones but no doctor will perform the operation in Canada or the U.S. unless she sheds at least half of her body weight. Undeterred, she has found another solution than dieting. She's going to Cuba to have the surgery done there. They are probably whittling her new knees even as I write. A Cuban with bone cancer recently had a broomstick inserted in his leg to bridge the gap created when the cancerous bone was removed. New bone is said to be spanning the length of the broomstick. There are surely enough cornices and other architectural elements scattered in the detritus of Havana to provide prostheses for Mrs. Paul's knees and any number of other bone replacements. The patient is looking forward to her operation if not with optimism at least with resignation: "If it's my time to go, it's my time to go." Of course, if that were really her mindset, she wouldn't be going to Cuba. She will be there for the next four weeks, convalescing at a hospital and at a spa. If she had spent 6 months there and lived on Cuban rations, she would have lost the requisite weight and been able to undergo the operation for free in Canada. Instead, she will pay $19,000 from her own pocket to get the '"Castro treatment," where the patient calls the shots and doctors do as they are instructed. If she lives, at least she won't be setting off any alarms at airports with her mahogony knees, although a 500 lb. woman will always doubtless receive undue attention.
Cuban Art at Ringling's
We had hoped that the Ringling Museum of Art would be hosting an exhibit of pre-Castro circus posters. That, at least, would have been a positive contribution to Cuban art. But no; nothing of the kind. Instead, it is presenting "its most ambitious undertaking yet to exhibit visual art within a cultural framework" and, needless to say, the Cuban Avant-Garde exhibit which opens today is their first project to benefit by this new contextual approach to exhibiting art. The exhibition, which consists of 58 contemporary works, was organized by the Samuel P. Harn Museum in Gainsville and the Ringling will be its second venue in a planned 3-year tour. The Ringling has supplemented the exhibit with its own virtual circus, consisting of live dance and musical performances, films, lectures and seminars. None of this supplementary material addresses the lack of artistic freedom in Cuba or of freedom itself. Instead, there will be lectures on Cuban dance, Cuba's natural beauty and Cuban boleros ("journeys into the dark, desperate pleasures of the city at night"). This is the ideal cultural apparatus to enhance the experience for apolitical dilettanti who see Cuba as a vast social laboratory with palm trees, dancing natives and tropical lasciviousness. The Cubans' Cuba, a crucible of the human spirit, where official art is not an anachronism delegated to some dark corner of a museum's basement but the mandate of the State, practiced at its sufferance and for its benefit, will be draped in black curtains and hidden from view.
Britain's "Woman in Havana"
Thirty years ago someone was keeping tabs on Castro's spies, not in the U.S., of course, but in Britain. Her name was Stella Rimington, a middle-ranking MI5 officer then who would one day become its Director General (chosen, we suspect, because she was not a homosexual male). Now retired, Dame Stella took an excursion to Cuba this month and shared her impressions with the readers of The London Times. It is a somewhat surrealistic experience which she recounts, "sitting in the sun, drinking cocktails and arguing [about Castro]," which she calls "one of the joys of a Cuban holiday." Arguing with whom? With herself, we suppose. Even her taxi driver admonished her from the first not to talk about Castro and other Cubans were no less reticent to broach the subject with her. They shouldn't have been since she is a true believer and the perfect vessel for Castroite propaganda. She even castigates herself for having ever thought that Cuba was a threat at the height of the Cold War; now, she writes, "it is difficult to see the threat." We suspect that it was difficult for her then, too. In what is undoubtedly the highest compliment that a Briton can pay to Fidel and "Che" Guevara, Rimington likens them to "Battle of Briton fighters with beards and cigars." She "cannot but reflect that the Revolution is the fun part," that is, the indiscriminate killing and the destruction of civil society." What comes next, she muses, is "the hard part." What came next, of course, was the institutionalization of the killing and destruction. Her other observations are almost as asinine.
The Castro Brothers in Houston, Texas (April 27-28, 1959)
In an article published in November of last year (which we missed then), the Houston Chronicle recalled Fidel and Raúl's overnight visit to that city in 1959 at the invitation of the Texas Jaycees. The newspaper reported at that time that Fidel "swept through Houston in glory bordering on pandemonium." While there he was cheered everywhere he went by a movable mob; parents dressed their children as rebels in his honor; the ranchers, in particular, embraced him as one of their own and on a tour of the Bar JF ranch he was presented with a prized quarter horse. Not even JFK received such a welcome when he visited Texas 4 years later, and Castro, besides, left on his own two feet.
While in Houston, the Castro brothers stayed at the elite (and segregated) Shamrock Hotel, the city's poshest, in contrast to his more publicized sojourn to New York, where he lodged at a hotel in Harlem. It was at the Shamrock that the most memorable event of the trip to Houston transpired, an epic confrontation between Fidel and Raúl, where obscenities were exchanged for hours. It is generally assumed that they were arguing about the course of the Revolution. It is just as likely that it was about a family matter, since, politically, any differences between them, then as now, are the product of the "good cop/bad cop" charade. When asked by reporters whether they had had a falling out, Raul answered "Absurd!" and Fidel "Never!"
Diane Paul of Halifax, Canada and Fort Myers, FL weighs about 500 lbs. and her knees have exploded. She needs to have them replaced with artificial ones but no doctor will perform the operation in Canada or the U.S. unless she sheds at least half of her body weight. Undeterred, she has found another solution than dieting. She's going to Cuba to have the surgery done there. They are probably whittling her new knees even as I write. A Cuban with bone cancer recently had a broomstick inserted in his leg to bridge the gap created when the cancerous bone was removed. New bone is said to be spanning the length of the broomstick. There are surely enough cornices and other architectural elements scattered in the detritus of Havana to provide prostheses for Mrs. Paul's knees and any number of other bone replacements. The patient is looking forward to her operation if not with optimism at least with resignation: "If it's my time to go, it's my time to go." Of course, if that were really her mindset, she wouldn't be going to Cuba. She will be there for the next four weeks, convalescing at a hospital and at a spa. If she had spent 6 months there and lived on Cuban rations, she would have lost the requisite weight and been able to undergo the operation for free in Canada. Instead, she will pay $19,000 from her own pocket to get the '"Castro treatment," where the patient calls the shots and doctors do as they are instructed. If she lives, at least she won't be setting off any alarms at airports with her mahogony knees, although a 500 lb. woman will always doubtless receive undue attention.
Cuban Art at Ringling's
We had hoped that the Ringling Museum of Art would be hosting an exhibit of pre-Castro circus posters. That, at least, would have been a positive contribution to Cuban art. But no; nothing of the kind. Instead, it is presenting "its most ambitious undertaking yet to exhibit visual art within a cultural framework" and, needless to say, the Cuban Avant-Garde exhibit which opens today is their first project to benefit by this new contextual approach to exhibiting art. The exhibition, which consists of 58 contemporary works, was organized by the Samuel P. Harn Museum in Gainsville and the Ringling will be its second venue in a planned 3-year tour. The Ringling has supplemented the exhibit with its own virtual circus, consisting of live dance and musical performances, films, lectures and seminars. None of this supplementary material addresses the lack of artistic freedom in Cuba or of freedom itself. Instead, there will be lectures on Cuban dance, Cuba's natural beauty and Cuban boleros ("journeys into the dark, desperate pleasures of the city at night"). This is the ideal cultural apparatus to enhance the experience for apolitical dilettanti who see Cuba as a vast social laboratory with palm trees, dancing natives and tropical lasciviousness. The Cubans' Cuba, a crucible of the human spirit, where official art is not an anachronism delegated to some dark corner of a museum's basement but the mandate of the State, practiced at its sufferance and for its benefit, will be draped in black curtains and hidden from view.
Britain's "Woman in Havana"
Thirty years ago someone was keeping tabs on Castro's spies, not in the U.S., of course, but in Britain. Her name was Stella Rimington, a middle-ranking MI5 officer then who would one day become its Director General (chosen, we suspect, because she was not a homosexual male). Now retired, Dame Stella took an excursion to Cuba this month and shared her impressions with the readers of The London Times. It is a somewhat surrealistic experience which she recounts, "sitting in the sun, drinking cocktails and arguing [about Castro]," which she calls "one of the joys of a Cuban holiday." Arguing with whom? With herself, we suppose. Even her taxi driver admonished her from the first not to talk about Castro and other Cubans were no less reticent to broach the subject with her. They shouldn't have been since she is a true believer and the perfect vessel for Castroite propaganda. She even castigates herself for having ever thought that Cuba was a threat at the height of the Cold War; now, she writes, "it is difficult to see the threat." We suspect that it was difficult for her then, too. In what is undoubtedly the highest compliment that a Briton can pay to Fidel and "Che" Guevara, Rimington likens them to "Battle of Briton fighters with beards and cigars." She "cannot but reflect that the Revolution is the fun part," that is, the indiscriminate killing and the destruction of civil society." What comes next, she muses, is "the hard part." What came next, of course, was the institutionalization of the killing and destruction. Her other observations are almost as asinine.
The Castro Brothers in Houston, Texas (April 27-28, 1959)
In an article published in November of last year (which we missed then), the Houston Chronicle recalled Fidel and Raúl's overnight visit to that city in 1959 at the invitation of the Texas Jaycees. The newspaper reported at that time that Fidel "swept through Houston in glory bordering on pandemonium." While there he was cheered everywhere he went by a movable mob; parents dressed their children as rebels in his honor; the ranchers, in particular, embraced him as one of their own and on a tour of the Bar JF ranch he was presented with a prized quarter horse. Not even JFK received such a welcome when he visited Texas 4 years later, and Castro, besides, left on his own two feet.
While in Houston, the Castro brothers stayed at the elite (and segregated) Shamrock Hotel, the city's poshest, in contrast to his more publicized sojourn to New York, where he lodged at a hotel in Harlem. It was at the Shamrock that the most memorable event of the trip to Houston transpired, an epic confrontation between Fidel and Raúl, where obscenities were exchanged for hours. It is generally assumed that they were arguing about the course of the Revolution. It is just as likely that it was about a family matter, since, politically, any differences between them, then as now, are the product of the "good cop/bad cop" charade. When asked by reporters whether they had had a falling out, Raul answered "Absurd!" and Fidel "Never!"
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Another Cuban-American Blogger Comes to Elenita's Defense
We are indebted to our friend Charlie Bravo for bringing to our attention another Cuban-American blogger who has embraced Elenita's cause, Julio Rey from The Not Silent Blog.
We can do no less than commend and publicize those few Cuban-American bloggers who listen to the call of justice in their hearts when forming their opinions about this case rather than weighing the bile in other people's and endeavoring with their silence to stem the tide of opprobrium which emits from the racists and xenophobes whenever one more Cuban makes it to these shores, even a helpless and long-suffering child.
Every act that a man commits should affirm his humanity. If he fails to do what his conscience tells him he should do because he is afraid to be unpopular or hopes to avoid thereby the unmerited censure of others; if he stands ready to sacrifice the innocent to placate the guilty, or ignores their claims to justice that injustice might prevail because it is personally convenient and in his perceived interest that it should, such a man has placed himself outside the society of honest men and forfeited their good opinion. The words and actions of such a creature should henceforth be judged in light of his perfidy. Even if he reforms (or appears to) his probation must be for life, because base instincts are rarely uprooted even when all else is weeded out in the human character. Those who are deserving of such obloquy will know who they are.
The honesty and compassion of men like Julio Rey, besides serving the cause of justice, also reminds us of the want of same in persons who pretend without reason to the name of patriot. Patriots they would be if status were a country. But nationality is not an exclusive club that allows its members to blackball anyone. If freedom is the right of every Cuban, then freedom is also Elenita's right. That freedom should not be denied to her by Castro's henchmen (chief among them her own father) or by an American judge who does not understand, or, rather, dismisses the difference between freedom and slavery.
There is much to admire in Rey's post, commencing with the title, which presents through a clever play on words the best summary I have seen of the core issue of this case. He also highlights one aspect of this case which has been generally ignored (including by us): its mirror image.
What if a mother in Cuba were deemed insane (and that, of course, could be simply an excuse to detain a political opponent indefinitely) and her minor child removed from her custody, would the father in the U.S. be able to present himself in Cuba and demand not only custody but the right to take his daughter with him to the U.S.? This is by no means a hypothetical scenario; it must have happened hundreds if not thousands of times over the last 48 years. And surely it did not happen in many more cases because all parties were aware that the Cuban regime would never award custody to the father under any circumstances. In Cuba as in the United States, the Castro regime seeks the same thing: to deprive the child of any chance for freedom. It has the power to enslave in Cuba. Should it also be granted by an American court the right to enslave Cubans in U.S. territory as well?
From: The Not Silent Blog
On Cubas’ Case Versus Cuba’s puppet
The Elian Gonzalez fiasco of 1999 may have been the Cuban government’s finest hour since the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were able to orchestrate the deportation of a child that had become the darling of Little Havana under the guise of “returning a child to his father”. They enjoyed the cooperation and servitude of sympathetic “useful idiots” in the World Council of Churches and the Clinton Administration. And they did it in such a way guaranteed to cause an extreme reaction from we the exile community resulting in a grand heaping of scorn and hatred upon our heads from some unlikely quarters (I actually read of African-Americans protesting alongside Confederate Flag-wavers somewhere in the Redland).
Lost in all the commotion and propaganda is the fact that Elian Gonzalez has become exactly what we warned he would become: a trophy for the Cuban government. His father, the waiter that allegedly just wanted his boy back, has become an olive-clad participant onstage whenever his son is paraded for the proles to gawk at.
Fast forward to now and it’s déjà vu all over again. The case that's been in the papers the last few weeks is simply an attempt by the regime to get back at Joe Cubas for poaching their athletes. The bio-father says he wants his daughter back. I do not believe he's speaking for himself. And his attorneys are not working for him, they are working for the Cuban government.
I'd like to see just one custody case in Cuban soil get media coverage here. If a minor in Cuba goes to live with friends because they support the "Revolution" but his father is a dissident, do you really think the authorities there would fight for his father's rights?
In reality, the family means nothing to the Cuban government. Except when there's hay to be made as in 1999 and today.
Posted by Julio Rey, Sunday, September 23, 2007, 11:03 PM
http://juliorey.blogspot.com/2007/09/on-cubas-case-versus-cubas-puppet.html
We can do no less than commend and publicize those few Cuban-American bloggers who listen to the call of justice in their hearts when forming their opinions about this case rather than weighing the bile in other people's and endeavoring with their silence to stem the tide of opprobrium which emits from the racists and xenophobes whenever one more Cuban makes it to these shores, even a helpless and long-suffering child.
Every act that a man commits should affirm his humanity. If he fails to do what his conscience tells him he should do because he is afraid to be unpopular or hopes to avoid thereby the unmerited censure of others; if he stands ready to sacrifice the innocent to placate the guilty, or ignores their claims to justice that injustice might prevail because it is personally convenient and in his perceived interest that it should, such a man has placed himself outside the society of honest men and forfeited their good opinion. The words and actions of such a creature should henceforth be judged in light of his perfidy. Even if he reforms (or appears to) his probation must be for life, because base instincts are rarely uprooted even when all else is weeded out in the human character. Those who are deserving of such obloquy will know who they are.
The honesty and compassion of men like Julio Rey, besides serving the cause of justice, also reminds us of the want of same in persons who pretend without reason to the name of patriot. Patriots they would be if status were a country. But nationality is not an exclusive club that allows its members to blackball anyone. If freedom is the right of every Cuban, then freedom is also Elenita's right. That freedom should not be denied to her by Castro's henchmen (chief among them her own father) or by an American judge who does not understand, or, rather, dismisses the difference between freedom and slavery.
There is much to admire in Rey's post, commencing with the title, which presents through a clever play on words the best summary I have seen of the core issue of this case. He also highlights one aspect of this case which has been generally ignored (including by us): its mirror image.
What if a mother in Cuba were deemed insane (and that, of course, could be simply an excuse to detain a political opponent indefinitely) and her minor child removed from her custody, would the father in the U.S. be able to present himself in Cuba and demand not only custody but the right to take his daughter with him to the U.S.? This is by no means a hypothetical scenario; it must have happened hundreds if not thousands of times over the last 48 years. And surely it did not happen in many more cases because all parties were aware that the Cuban regime would never award custody to the father under any circumstances. In Cuba as in the United States, the Castro regime seeks the same thing: to deprive the child of any chance for freedom. It has the power to enslave in Cuba. Should it also be granted by an American court the right to enslave Cubans in U.S. territory as well?
From: The Not Silent Blog
On Cubas’ Case Versus Cuba’s puppet
The Elian Gonzalez fiasco of 1999 may have been the Cuban government’s finest hour since the collapse of the Soviet Union. They were able to orchestrate the deportation of a child that had become the darling of Little Havana under the guise of “returning a child to his father”. They enjoyed the cooperation and servitude of sympathetic “useful idiots” in the World Council of Churches and the Clinton Administration. And they did it in such a way guaranteed to cause an extreme reaction from we the exile community resulting in a grand heaping of scorn and hatred upon our heads from some unlikely quarters (I actually read of African-Americans protesting alongside Confederate Flag-wavers somewhere in the Redland).
Lost in all the commotion and propaganda is the fact that Elian Gonzalez has become exactly what we warned he would become: a trophy for the Cuban government. His father, the waiter that allegedly just wanted his boy back, has become an olive-clad participant onstage whenever his son is paraded for the proles to gawk at.
Fast forward to now and it’s déjà vu all over again. The case that's been in the papers the last few weeks is simply an attempt by the regime to get back at Joe Cubas for poaching their athletes. The bio-father says he wants his daughter back. I do not believe he's speaking for himself. And his attorneys are not working for him, they are working for the Cuban government.
I'd like to see just one custody case in Cuban soil get media coverage here. If a minor in Cuba goes to live with friends because they support the "Revolution" but his father is a dissident, do you really think the authorities there would fight for his father's rights?
In reality, the family means nothing to the Cuban government. Except when there's hay to be made as in 1999 and today.
Posted by Julio Rey, Sunday, September 23, 2007, 11:03 PM
http://juliorey.blogspot.com/2007/09/on-cubas-case-versus-cubas-puppet.html
Friday, October 5, 2007
Ready for Some Really Bad News?
It just occurred to me.
Do you know whom Hillary Clinton will select as her running mate and future vice-president?
Hint: there are no term limits on the vice-presidency.
Right.
Al Gore.
And he'll accept.
Maybe he can follow that Clinton into the White House.
Do you know whom Hillary Clinton will select as her running mate and future vice-president?
Hint: there are no term limits on the vice-presidency.
Right.
Al Gore.
And he'll accept.
Maybe he can follow that Clinton into the White House.
Judge Cohen: The Little Girl Is Lying
Children lie, but Magda Montiel-Davis never lies. Nor does she fabricate evidence. Nor suborn perjury. Nor obstruct justice. Her own client and friendly witnesses may attest otherwise, an innocent child also, but Judge Jeri B. Cohen will believe none of it. Not even the forged letters from Izquierdo to his daughter, nor the photographs which he falsely claimed that he requested and received from the mother while in Cuba, both of which it has been established originated with Montiel-Davis, are sufficient to shake Cohen's boundless faith in her friend's integrity. Not even the words of a child are sufficient for her. She prefers to believe a child is lying than credit her words or the only incontrovertible evidence presented in her courtroom — not a shread of evidence that Rafael Izquierdo is a fit father or any kind of father at all, not even a "marginal one," but reams of evidence that Magda Montiel-Davis and her husband Ira Kurzban have broken every law that can be broken in a courtroom from suborning perjury to fabricating evidence, from contempt of court to obstruction of justice.
The latest allegation of wrongdoing against Montiel-Davis was made by Elenita herself. She confided to one of her therapists that her birth father and his common-law wife had told her to say that she wanted to return to Cuba while Montiel-Davis videotaped this odd little family circle. The girl told her therapist that she had made a "mistake" when she complied. Only a helpless child and one who was telling the truth would blame herself for submitting to coercion which she was powerless to resist. The Miami Herald incorrectly reported that it was the Cubases who first brought this matter to the judge's attention. In fact, it was her therapist who testified in court as to what the child had told him.
Judge Cohen, again ignoring the evidence in order to exculpate Montiel-Davis, said she "believes the girl may well have told a story about being forced to speak in front of a camera," but, she added, "I don't believe it happened."
In other words, she believes the child lied. And not only the child but her court-appointed therapist as well. She admits only the possibility that the child "may well have told the story." Of course, by the same token, she might well not have told it either.
Of course, in order to grant custody to the father and return her to Cuba, Judge Cohen must disregard every single word which the girl has uttered and believe every lie that Rafael Izquierdo, who has even less autonomy than Elenita and is kept on a shorter leash by his handlers, tells her. Her courtroom is a vast "Punch and Judy Show" except that it is the adults who are the marionettes and Fidel Castro the puppet master.
The latest allegation of wrongdoing against Montiel-Davis was made by Elenita herself. She confided to one of her therapists that her birth father and his common-law wife had told her to say that she wanted to return to Cuba while Montiel-Davis videotaped this odd little family circle. The girl told her therapist that she had made a "mistake" when she complied. Only a helpless child and one who was telling the truth would blame herself for submitting to coercion which she was powerless to resist. The Miami Herald incorrectly reported that it was the Cubases who first brought this matter to the judge's attention. In fact, it was her therapist who testified in court as to what the child had told him.
Judge Cohen, again ignoring the evidence in order to exculpate Montiel-Davis, said she "believes the girl may well have told a story about being forced to speak in front of a camera," but, she added, "I don't believe it happened."
In other words, she believes the child lied. And not only the child but her court-appointed therapist as well. She admits only the possibility that the child "may well have told the story." Of course, by the same token, she might well not have told it either.
Of course, in order to grant custody to the father and return her to Cuba, Judge Cohen must disregard every single word which the girl has uttered and believe every lie that Rafael Izquierdo, who has even less autonomy than Elenita and is kept on a shorter leash by his handlers, tells her. Her courtroom is a vast "Punch and Judy Show" except that it is the adults who are the marionettes and Fidel Castro the puppet master.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Now Judge Cohen Officially Banishes the Truth from Her Courtroom
The end is near to the mockery of justice that has been playing in Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen's courtroom for the last 6 months. She has, in effect, granted Izquierdo 5/7ths custody of Elenita already, reserving the other 2/5ths for the Cubases. This is an exact reversal of her previous living arrangements whereby she spent weekdays with the Cubases and week-ends with the Izquierdos and brings the helpless child that much closer to the lost of her freedom, which her birth father was sent to the U.S. to facilitate.
Judge Cohen also requested that Rafael Izquierdo not just "snatch up the girl and get on a plane to Cuba" but collaborate in making a "smooth transition" in custody. Since this request strengthened Izquierdo's hand and would not have been made unless Cohen intended to afford him the opportunity to do precisely that at his discretion, Izquierdo was more than pleased to give his word, as if his word meant anything in this case.
The judge does not want Elenita to be told that this new arrangement will lead to her definitive separation from her brother and her foster parents and her removal to Cuba. Although Joe and María Cubas begged the judge to stop telling lies to the child about her future, Cohen refused because the lies are a narcotic that will keep her more or less quiet until the day when the truth is flung at her like a bucket of cold water.
The lie that she is being forced fed for the duration of her stay here and until the moment she is drugged and bundled off to Cuba is that she will not be separated permanently from her brother or foster parents if returned to Cabaiguán. She can tolerate the presence of her birth father in her life only if she is assured that he will not be able wrench her from the family with whom she has bonded, the only real family she has ever known, and the brother who was her protector in both Cuba and the U.S. and the only constant in her life.
But the truth is inconvenient for Judge Cohen's purposes and she is not in the least wary about admitting it.
What the judge does not ask herself is: Why is this lie central to Elenita's emotional well-being? Why is the evolution of her "relationship" with her birth father, such as it is, dependent upon maintaining this lie at all costs?
Elenita will only come near her father if he is separated from him by a protective barrier such as shields us from the animals at the zoo. This protective barrier is her belief that she will not be taken from her brother and foster family. Remove this barrier -- as, in fact, Judge Cohen intends to remove it and soon -- and all you have is a frightened child face to face with a feral animal and reacting to it as anyone would react to a feral animal at close proximity.
Clearly, she is not ready emotionally or in any other way to accept her father if that means severing forever her ties with her brother or the Cubases. The need for a protective barrier from Izquierdo should indicate to Cohen that it is the child's relationship with her brother and foster family which is the most important thing in her life, the island of normality in an all-encompassing sea of disfunctionality on which she was left stranded by her crazy mother and feckless father.
Addressing the Cubases' lawyer Alan Mishael, the judge inveighed that "[i]f we lay a bombshell on [Elenita] and say, 'You know, you're not going back [to the Cubases],' she falls apart" and then "you come back and say, `Look, the child fell apart.' I'm not going to get sucked into that trap. I'm one step ahead of you guys."
For Judge Cohen the truth is a "bombshell" and delicate ears should never have to hear it while palliative lies can assure that the bomb which Cohen intends to plant under her will catch her unawares; for that is Cohen's ultimate goal: to sacrifice her as quietly and with as few embarrassing complications as possible. The lie has only one discernable purpose: to lead rather than drag the lamb to slaughter. If lying to the child achieves this end, Judge Cohen will sanction the lie in order to facilitate the triumph of even bigger lies.
Judge Cohen also requested that Rafael Izquierdo not just "snatch up the girl and get on a plane to Cuba" but collaborate in making a "smooth transition" in custody. Since this request strengthened Izquierdo's hand and would not have been made unless Cohen intended to afford him the opportunity to do precisely that at his discretion, Izquierdo was more than pleased to give his word, as if his word meant anything in this case.
The judge does not want Elenita to be told that this new arrangement will lead to her definitive separation from her brother and her foster parents and her removal to Cuba. Although Joe and María Cubas begged the judge to stop telling lies to the child about her future, Cohen refused because the lies are a narcotic that will keep her more or less quiet until the day when the truth is flung at her like a bucket of cold water.
The lie that she is being forced fed for the duration of her stay here and until the moment she is drugged and bundled off to Cuba is that she will not be separated permanently from her brother or foster parents if returned to Cabaiguán. She can tolerate the presence of her birth father in her life only if she is assured that he will not be able wrench her from the family with whom she has bonded, the only real family she has ever known, and the brother who was her protector in both Cuba and the U.S. and the only constant in her life.
But the truth is inconvenient for Judge Cohen's purposes and she is not in the least wary about admitting it.
What the judge does not ask herself is: Why is this lie central to Elenita's emotional well-being? Why is the evolution of her "relationship" with her birth father, such as it is, dependent upon maintaining this lie at all costs?
Elenita will only come near her father if he is separated from him by a protective barrier such as shields us from the animals at the zoo. This protective barrier is her belief that she will not be taken from her brother and foster family. Remove this barrier -- as, in fact, Judge Cohen intends to remove it and soon -- and all you have is a frightened child face to face with a feral animal and reacting to it as anyone would react to a feral animal at close proximity.
Clearly, she is not ready emotionally or in any other way to accept her father if that means severing forever her ties with her brother or the Cubases. The need for a protective barrier from Izquierdo should indicate to Cohen that it is the child's relationship with her brother and foster family which is the most important thing in her life, the island of normality in an all-encompassing sea of disfunctionality on which she was left stranded by her crazy mother and feckless father.
Addressing the Cubases' lawyer Alan Mishael, the judge inveighed that "[i]f we lay a bombshell on [Elenita] and say, 'You know, you're not going back [to the Cubases],' she falls apart" and then "you come back and say, `Look, the child fell apart.' I'm not going to get sucked into that trap. I'm one step ahead of you guys."
For Judge Cohen the truth is a "bombshell" and delicate ears should never have to hear it while palliative lies can assure that the bomb which Cohen intends to plant under her will catch her unawares; for that is Cohen's ultimate goal: to sacrifice her as quietly and with as few embarrassing complications as possible. The lie has only one discernable purpose: to lead rather than drag the lamb to slaughter. If lying to the child achieves this end, Judge Cohen will sanction the lie in order to facilitate the triumph of even bigger lies.
A Letter to Florida Governor Crist Appealing for Elenita's Life
Alberto Quiroga of the blog Havana 1950-1960 has written an eloquent appeal to Florida Governor Crist on behalf of Elenita (actually Elizabeth), the 5-year Cuban girl whose very life is now at stake in a Florida courtroom. Although labelled a "custody case" (since when is a foreign government a party in a custody case?), this is in fact a capital case whose probable sentence of banishment to Cuba is tantamount to death. The fate of Cuba's children should concern us all; for they are not exempt from the predations practiced by the regime on the citizenry. But Elenita's case is unique because she is free and a legal resident of this country. Returning her to Cuban jurisdiction — for there are no "parental rights" in Cuba — would be tantamount to reviving the Dred Scott Decision (1856). Either all who live in these States are free or they are not. There is no reason that a person's age should be grounds to deny him freedom any more than his color, sex or previous condition of servitude.
Every Cuban exile, Cuban-American or even "American-Cuban" who has an ounce of dignity should either write his own letter to Governor Crist or affix his name to Alberto's eloquent appeal. I am informed that Ziva will also be writing her own letter, which does not surprise me since she has been a consistent advocate on Elenita's behalf from Day 1 (one of the few), as I have noted on occasion.
Really, the day we cease to feel compassion for a helpless child, or consider even one child of our country to be expendable, let our tragedy consume us on that day and finish us off for good; for we shall deserve no better fate:
Dear Governor Crist:
When my parents decided to leave everything behind in Cuba, the month of November 1960, it was because they had heard the rumor — which came to pass not long afterwards — that Cuban parents would lose their right of "patria potestas," that is, their basic human rights as parents over their children. They were willing to sacrifice all they had worked so hard for, in order to save their children — myself, my younger sister, and one on the way, from an abusive "father," the head of Cuba's totalitarian state, the hopefully soon-to-die fidel castro.
In Cuba parents have no rights over their children. Period.
Yet, Miami-Dade Court judge Jeri B. Cohen has assiduously chosen to ignore this un-ignorable fact, gleefully — because her prejudice against anti-Castro Cuban exiles is so blatant that it, too, cannot be ignored — just about awarding custody to a man who had little interest in this child, even if he is the biological father, because supposedly as her father, he has "rights." He would have them, if he were NOT in Cuba.
If that turns out to be the case, this child will be put in an abusive situation, abused by a statist, totalitarian system whose sole purpose is to psychologically mold children's vulnerable minds and turn them into the equivalent of castroite hitler-youth.
As one of my fellow bloggers asked, "Cui bono?" Who benefits here? Certainly not Elenita. In fact, far better arguments against Judge Cohen's unjust decision have been posed here, and I urge you or your staff to examine them: http://reviewofcuban-americanblogs.blogspot.com/
Yes, the emotion comes through... it comes through because to my dying day I will not stop being grateful to my parents, who showed their true love for their children in whisking us away from the claws of a tyrant. They knew what was best for their children, unlike Judge Cohen, who seems to be doing everything possible except look after Elenita's best interests.
I urge — indeed, I implore the State of Florida to do the right thing here and appeal this gross miscarriage of justice.
Sincerely,
Albert Quiroga
N.B.:
Here's the contact information for Governor Charlie Crist:
http://www.flgov.com/contact_form
Every Cuban exile, Cuban-American or even "American-Cuban" who has an ounce of dignity should either write his own letter to Governor Crist or affix his name to Alberto's eloquent appeal. I am informed that Ziva will also be writing her own letter, which does not surprise me since she has been a consistent advocate on Elenita's behalf from Day 1 (one of the few), as I have noted on occasion.
Really, the day we cease to feel compassion for a helpless child, or consider even one child of our country to be expendable, let our tragedy consume us on that day and finish us off for good; for we shall deserve no better fate:
Dear Governor Crist:
When my parents decided to leave everything behind in Cuba, the month of November 1960, it was because they had heard the rumor — which came to pass not long afterwards — that Cuban parents would lose their right of "patria potestas," that is, their basic human rights as parents over their children. They were willing to sacrifice all they had worked so hard for, in order to save their children — myself, my younger sister, and one on the way, from an abusive "father," the head of Cuba's totalitarian state, the hopefully soon-to-die fidel castro.
In Cuba parents have no rights over their children. Period.
Yet, Miami-Dade Court judge Jeri B. Cohen has assiduously chosen to ignore this un-ignorable fact, gleefully — because her prejudice against anti-Castro Cuban exiles is so blatant that it, too, cannot be ignored — just about awarding custody to a man who had little interest in this child, even if he is the biological father, because supposedly as her father, he has "rights." He would have them, if he were NOT in Cuba.
If that turns out to be the case, this child will be put in an abusive situation, abused by a statist, totalitarian system whose sole purpose is to psychologically mold children's vulnerable minds and turn them into the equivalent of castroite hitler-youth.
As one of my fellow bloggers asked, "Cui bono?" Who benefits here? Certainly not Elenita. In fact, far better arguments against Judge Cohen's unjust decision have been posed here, and I urge you or your staff to examine them: http://reviewofcuban-americanblogs.blogspot.com/
Yes, the emotion comes through... it comes through because to my dying day I will not stop being grateful to my parents, who showed their true love for their children in whisking us away from the claws of a tyrant. They knew what was best for their children, unlike Judge Cohen, who seems to be doing everything possible except look after Elenita's best interests.
I urge — indeed, I implore the State of Florida to do the right thing here and appeal this gross miscarriage of justice.
Sincerely,
Albert Quiroga
N.B.:
Here's the contact information for Governor Charlie Crist:
http://www.flgov.com/contact_form
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
The New Republic Takes on Val Prieto
A few observations on Val's appearance today in The New Republic:
First of all, it is not The New Republic magazine, so Val shouldn't rush out and buy every copy in sight. Ms. Barclay's article appears only in the Online Edition so Val will have to distribute it as a broadsheet. He is free, though, to add "Shat Upon by The New Republic (Online)" to his masthead, as this negative recognition tends to flatter and amuse him.
Second, there is the question of categoría. Val not only comes off as second banana to Pérez Hilton but is not even accorded his rightful titles as founder and editor-in-chief of Babalú but is described as "a Miami-based blogger for Babalú." This is unfair since we are sure that the institution will never overshadow the man, nor would Val want it to.
Third, Ms. Barclay quotes a completely ungrammatical sentence from Val's pen:
"Isn't it reasonable to think that the Cuban government, as long as it has dumbasses, useful idiots and [mainstream media] journalists held by the balls, all swallowing the "fidel's ok, here's his latest editorial" bullshit soup, that it will continue to do so unfettered and without consequence?"
Removing all the the sub-clauses, the sentence reads:
"Isn't it reasonable to think that the Cuban government [...] that it will continue to do so unfettered and without consequence?"
Grammatical sentences are actually in the majority in Val's writings, so this must sting. When he writes in his natural style Val can be eloquent; I have said it before. It is when he tries his hand at periodic sentences, such as the one Barclay quotes, that Val loses his way and takes the wrong exit.
Fourth, Eliza Barclay is a stooge for Castro who glories in making the Cuban regime sound rational and stable while depicting Cuban exiles as irrational and unstable. Although we must acknowledge that Val gave her some ammunition, in the contest between the two, my sympathies are with Val. He actually wants Castro dead. He might jump the gun (and did), but at least he would shoot the gun. Barclay never would.
First of all, it is not The New Republic magazine, so Val shouldn't rush out and buy every copy in sight. Ms. Barclay's article appears only in the Online Edition so Val will have to distribute it as a broadsheet. He is free, though, to add "Shat Upon by The New Republic (Online)" to his masthead, as this negative recognition tends to flatter and amuse him.
Second, there is the question of categoría. Val not only comes off as second banana to Pérez Hilton but is not even accorded his rightful titles as founder and editor-in-chief of Babalú but is described as "a Miami-based blogger for Babalú." This is unfair since we are sure that the institution will never overshadow the man, nor would Val want it to.
Third, Ms. Barclay quotes a completely ungrammatical sentence from Val's pen:
"Isn't it reasonable to think that the Cuban government, as long as it has dumbasses, useful idiots and [mainstream media] journalists held by the balls, all swallowing the "fidel's ok, here's his latest editorial" bullshit soup, that it will continue to do so unfettered and without consequence?"
Removing all the the sub-clauses, the sentence reads:
"Isn't it reasonable to think that the Cuban government [...] that it will continue to do so unfettered and without consequence?"
Grammatical sentences are actually in the majority in Val's writings, so this must sting. When he writes in his natural style Val can be eloquent; I have said it before. It is when he tries his hand at periodic sentences, such as the one Barclay quotes, that Val loses his way and takes the wrong exit.
Fourth, Eliza Barclay is a stooge for Castro who glories in making the Cuban regime sound rational and stable while depicting Cuban exiles as irrational and unstable. Although we must acknowledge that Val gave her some ammunition, in the contest between the two, my sympathies are with Val. He actually wants Castro dead. He might jump the gun (and did), but at least he would shoot the gun. Barclay never would.
More Fabricated Evidence Exposed and the "C Word" Banned from Judge Cohen's Courtroom
"I run this courtroom. It's going to be run respectfully, it's going to be run ethically and there's not going to be any professional misconduct in here. And if there is, I will take swift action and I will turn it over to the Florida Bar. And I mean it." — Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen
I
Court is back in session before the scheduled beginning of the second phase of the Izquierdo-Cubas custody trial. Magda is at it again, manufacturing evidence with the collaboration of Rafael Izquierdo. Last time around she produced phony letters for Izquierdo to copy out and Elena Pérez to claim she had received from him in the U.S. Then she tried to do the same thing with photographs, instructing Pérez to say that she had mailed photos of Elenita to Izquierdo which she had not. Now in the latest chapter of suborned perjury and obstruction of justice Montiel-Davis is accused by the little girl herself of making videos in which Izquierdo and his common-law wife prompted the child to say that she wanted to return with them to Cuba.
There really are no limits to this woman's perfidy and flaunting of the law. No limits because Judge Jeri B. Cohen has chosen to set none. The Miami Herald says that Montiel-Davis has "fended off" previous accusations of fabricating evidence. Really? I missed that part of the trial. Montiel-Davis has "fended off" nothing; she and her husband have simply not been penalized by the judge for their blatant contempt of court. Exactly how many pieces of evidence are lawyers allowed to fabricate, how many individuals (including children) can they induce into perjury, before Judge Cohen takes cognizance of their conduct and addresses it? We know already that justice is denied in her courtroom, but are crimes also sanctioned there? Does her "discretion" broadly defined permit her to aid in the commission crimes by holding the criminals immune to prosecution? Ironically, the very enormity of the crimes committed in open court by Kurzban and Montiel-Davis, who are as dirty as one would expect Castro's lawyers to be, seem to have convinced the judge that they could not possibly have committed them; for why would they endanger their lucrative careers by "fixing" the outcome of a supposedly pro bono case? Judge Cohen does not understand that ideologues will do from conviction what they wouldn't do for money, though we have no doubt that money will be an important factor in any case in which the two are involved (if a reporter at The Herald would only follow that trail!).
Judge Cohen's reaction to this latest instance of professional misconduct, at least, and criminal tampering and obstruction of justice, at worst, was to ignore it just as she had looked askance at previous attempts: "I'm not accusing anyone of anything." Of course she's not. By "not accusing anyone" [i.e. not holding anyone responsible] she is ignoring the girl's own accusations, as conveyed in a session with her therapist on Monday, and giving carte blanche again to Izquierdo's legal team to continue unhampered on the same course without so much as an admonishment. Cohen's own judicial misconduct now approaches their own and they are literally in the same boat together.
"I can't get to the truth of what happened here," concluded the judge, "I could sit here all day."
It's not as if it's her job to sit there all day trying to sort out the truth.
II
The word "Cuba" and Judge Cohen don't have a cordial history. The last time she invoked "Cuba" at a trial it nearly cost Cohen her job. That's when she voiced her belief in 2004 that the solution to crime in Florida would be to deport all Cubans to Cuba. Since returning Elenita to Cuba — which is what this case is all about — is perfectly in keeping with her expressed "judicial philosophy," and would, in effect, represent the most egregious case of "judicial advocacy" in history, Judge Cohen is now obliged to deny the very nature of this case by banishing the "C-word" from her courtroom. Yes, she actually called it the "C-word" in her courtroom yesterday.
Although she personally will not tolerate the word to be spoken in her presence and has asked all parties to refrain from using it in her courtroom, the judge is now insisting that the word be thoroughly rubbed in the little girl's face so that she can become acclimated to her impending fate. She has instructed the other therapist on the case — the one who didn't reveal Elenita's loathing of returning to Cuba — to "discuss in concrete terms" with the 5-year-old that ominous prospect, which she is reportedly "in denial about," preferring to take refuge in the "protective fantasy" that she will be allowed to stay here with her brother and foster parents (now called the "caretakers" by The Herald).
It seems to us that Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen is the one "in denial" and living in a "protective fantasy" of her own:
"This issue is not if she's going to Cuba, the issue is whether she's going with her father," said Cohen. "I'm not asking a 5-year-old to make an ideological value judgment on Cuba."
Why ask a 5-year old to do it when she refuses to do it herself?
Without being asked, the 5-year old has made a value judgment about life in Cuba, the kind of "value judgment" that slaves made about the South or Jews about Nazi Germany. It isn't any good for her.
Court is back in session before the scheduled beginning of the second phase of the Izquierdo-Cubas custody trial. Magda is at it again, manufacturing evidence with the collaboration of Rafael Izquierdo. Last time around she produced phony letters for Izquierdo to copy out and Elena Pérez to claim she had received from him in the U.S. Then she tried to do the same thing with photographs, instructing Pérez to say that she had mailed photos of Elenita to Izquierdo which she had not. Now in the latest chapter of suborned perjury and obstruction of justice Montiel-Davis is accused by the little girl herself of making videos in which Izquierdo and his common-law wife prompted the child to say that she wanted to return with them to Cuba.
There really are no limits to this woman's perfidy and flaunting of the law. No limits because Judge Jeri B. Cohen has chosen to set none. The Miami Herald says that Montiel-Davis has "fended off" previous accusations of fabricating evidence. Really? I missed that part of the trial. Montiel-Davis has "fended off" nothing; she and her husband have simply not been penalized by the judge for their blatant contempt of court. Exactly how many pieces of evidence are lawyers allowed to fabricate, how many individuals (including children) can they induce into perjury, before Judge Cohen takes cognizance of their conduct and addresses it? We know already that justice is denied in her courtroom, but are crimes also sanctioned there? Does her "discretion" broadly defined permit her to aid in the commission crimes by holding the criminals immune to prosecution? Ironically, the very enormity of the crimes committed in open court by Kurzban and Montiel-Davis, who are as dirty as one would expect Castro's lawyers to be, seem to have convinced the judge that they could not possibly have committed them; for why would they endanger their lucrative careers by "fixing" the outcome of a supposedly pro bono case? Judge Cohen does not understand that ideologues will do from conviction what they wouldn't do for money, though we have no doubt that money will be an important factor in any case in which the two are involved (if a reporter at The Herald would only follow that trail!).
Judge Cohen's reaction to this latest instance of professional misconduct, at least, and criminal tampering and obstruction of justice, at worst, was to ignore it just as she had looked askance at previous attempts: "I'm not accusing anyone of anything." Of course she's not. By "not accusing anyone" [i.e. not holding anyone responsible] she is ignoring the girl's own accusations, as conveyed in a session with her therapist on Monday, and giving carte blanche again to Izquierdo's legal team to continue unhampered on the same course without so much as an admonishment. Cohen's own judicial misconduct now approaches their own and they are literally in the same boat together.
"I can't get to the truth of what happened here," concluded the judge, "I could sit here all day."
It's not as if it's her job to sit there all day trying to sort out the truth.
The word "Cuba" and Judge Cohen don't have a cordial history. The last time she invoked "Cuba" at a trial it nearly cost Cohen her job. That's when she voiced her belief in 2004 that the solution to crime in Florida would be to deport all Cubans to Cuba. Since returning Elenita to Cuba — which is what this case is all about — is perfectly in keeping with her expressed "judicial philosophy," and would, in effect, represent the most egregious case of "judicial advocacy" in history, Judge Cohen is now obliged to deny the very nature of this case by banishing the "C-word" from her courtroom. Yes, she actually called it the "C-word" in her courtroom yesterday.
Although she personally will not tolerate the word to be spoken in her presence and has asked all parties to refrain from using it in her courtroom, the judge is now insisting that the word be thoroughly rubbed in the little girl's face so that she can become acclimated to her impending fate. She has instructed the other therapist on the case — the one who didn't reveal Elenita's loathing of returning to Cuba — to "discuss in concrete terms" with the 5-year-old that ominous prospect, which she is reportedly "in denial about," preferring to take refuge in the "protective fantasy" that she will be allowed to stay here with her brother and foster parents (now called the "caretakers" by The Herald).
It seems to us that Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen is the one "in denial" and living in a "protective fantasy" of her own:
"This issue is not if she's going to Cuba, the issue is whether she's going with her father," said Cohen. "I'm not asking a 5-year-old to make an ideological value judgment on Cuba."
Why ask a 5-year old to do it when she refuses to do it herself?
Without being asked, the 5-year old has made a value judgment about life in Cuba, the kind of "value judgment" that slaves made about the South or Jews about Nazi Germany. It isn't any good for her.
"Who Is Elenita Going to Sleep With In Cuba?"
Cari said...
Manuel,
I heard on the news this evening that the Cubas' lawyer has filed a complaint against Magda Montiel because the girl told the psychologist that Montiel was filming her dancing with her new "family" and making her say that she wanted to go to Cuba with them.
The poor little girl has been a basket case and broke down and told the psychologist the truth.
Joe Cubas was interviewed yesterday and said that the little girl has been very nervous recently and can't sleep alone. She wants to sleep with her parents and that she's terrified of going back to Cuba.
What do you think is going to happen if she does get sent back... do you think Izquierdo and his wife are going to let Elenita into bed with them?
10/02/2007 11:08 PM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Cari:
Now the poor little girl has to endure the company of Magda Montiel-Davis as Elián had to suffer Janet Reno's. These women should be banned from civil society and not allowed within a mile of any child. They really are toxic (and in Reno's case, lethal) to any child. I can understand why she can't sleep: four witches are far too many to people any child's dreams: her mother; the "lady in the black thing:" Montiel-Davis; and her father's common-law wife (how many of those can a man have in Cuba nowadays?).
Whom could the little girl sleep with in Cuba?
She could sleep with a different mistress of her father's every night. Hopefully not with her own mother, who has said that she will follow Elenita back to Cuba. Izquierdo, as you may recall, has said for his part that it is wrong to keep a child from its mother and that in Cuba Elena Pérez will have free access to her.
So, in effect, the future is going to be precisely the past for Elenita: an abusive mother and an indifferent father. The only difference is that she will not have her brother to protect her.
10/03/2007 4:39 AM
Vana said...
Who will Elenita sleep with? If she's returned to Cuba in about ten years time, she'll be sleeping with anyone, having no future in Cuba, she'll have no choice but to turn to jineterismo, being traumatized as she already is, she'll be looking for love in all the wrong places, her future is a sad one indeed.
Sorry if this sounds cruel, but we all know what the Cuban reality is.
10/03/2007 12:10 PM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Vana:
If her life thus far has not been horrific enough there are still worse torments awaiting her in Cuba, including a thorough brainwashing at a state psychiatric hospital, using the methods perfected by Cuban doctors at the Hanoi Hilton. Elián's lasted 3 months from the day of his return to Cuba. This was the period when he was off limits to the press because he "needed time to readjust."
Mental illness is often hereditary. With the biological legacy of her mother she already has one strike against her. Her life thus far is another strike. And her repatriation to Cuba will provide the third and final one.
What they are doing to this child is murder on the installment plan and most payments have already been made.
10/03/2007 12:21 PM
Manuel,
I heard on the news this evening that the Cubas' lawyer has filed a complaint against Magda Montiel because the girl told the psychologist that Montiel was filming her dancing with her new "family" and making her say that she wanted to go to Cuba with them.
The poor little girl has been a basket case and broke down and told the psychologist the truth.
Joe Cubas was interviewed yesterday and said that the little girl has been very nervous recently and can't sleep alone. She wants to sleep with her parents and that she's terrified of going back to Cuba.
What do you think is going to happen if she does get sent back... do you think Izquierdo and his wife are going to let Elenita into bed with them?
10/02/2007 11:08 PM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Cari:
Now the poor little girl has to endure the company of Magda Montiel-Davis as Elián had to suffer Janet Reno's. These women should be banned from civil society and not allowed within a mile of any child. They really are toxic (and in Reno's case, lethal) to any child. I can understand why she can't sleep: four witches are far too many to people any child's dreams: her mother; the "lady in the black thing:" Montiel-Davis; and her father's common-law wife (how many of those can a man have in Cuba nowadays?).
Whom could the little girl sleep with in Cuba?
She could sleep with a different mistress of her father's every night. Hopefully not with her own mother, who has said that she will follow Elenita back to Cuba. Izquierdo, as you may recall, has said for his part that it is wrong to keep a child from its mother and that in Cuba Elena Pérez will have free access to her.
So, in effect, the future is going to be precisely the past for Elenita: an abusive mother and an indifferent father. The only difference is that she will not have her brother to protect her.
10/03/2007 4:39 AM
Vana said...
Who will Elenita sleep with? If she's returned to Cuba in about ten years time, she'll be sleeping with anyone, having no future in Cuba, she'll have no choice but to turn to jineterismo, being traumatized as she already is, she'll be looking for love in all the wrong places, her future is a sad one indeed.
Sorry if this sounds cruel, but we all know what the Cuban reality is.
10/03/2007 12:10 PM
Manuel A.Tellechea said...
Vana:
If her life thus far has not been horrific enough there are still worse torments awaiting her in Cuba, including a thorough brainwashing at a state psychiatric hospital, using the methods perfected by Cuban doctors at the Hanoi Hilton. Elián's lasted 3 months from the day of his return to Cuba. This was the period when he was off limits to the press because he "needed time to readjust."
Mental illness is often hereditary. With the biological legacy of her mother she already has one strike against her. Her life thus far is another strike. And her repatriation to Cuba will provide the third and final one.
What they are doing to this child is murder on the installment plan and most payments have already been made.
10/03/2007 12:21 PM
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Notable & Delusional: Don't Sully Castro's Pristine Legacy
"If there's something I consider vital for me to do in a future Cuba, [it] will be to help making sure those tendencies hardline groups exhibit here (disrespect for other's opinions, disregard for free speech, demonization politics, radicalization, bullying, etc) don't get imported into Cuba's political debate."
Alex @ Stuck on the Palmetto, 10/2/07, 11:08 AM
Those tendencies need to be imported into Cuba? Where but in Castro's Cuba did they originate?
Alex @ Stuck on the Palmetto, 10/2/07, 11:08 AM
Those tendencies need to be imported into Cuba? Where but in Castro's Cuba did they originate?
The Americanization of Val Prieto
Finally, the mainstream media publish an article that agrees with Val Prieto, and what does Babalú's editor-in-chief do? He attacks it. Not one of his premeditated attacks, thank God; but a casual dismissal. The thrust of the Chicago Tribune article is that the U.S. has acted in bad faith in not fulfilling its obligations under the Clinton-Castro Migration Pact (1995), which requires it to issue 20,000 annual visas to Cuban immigrants in exchange for Castro not unleashing another balsero crisis or Mariel. The U.S. fell short of the quota by one-fourth this fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, because, supposedly, the U.S. Interests Section in Havana is understaffed and cannot handle the volume of visa applications. (Or, perhaps, because an election is looming and the fewer immigrants, legal or otherwise, the better).
Cuban officials accused Washington of intentionally cutting the number of visas in order to "destabilize" the island. Val cannot see that the Castroites are actually agreeing with him and making his argument. Val has long held, as has Henry also, that immigration is a safety valve for the Castro regime which allows it to control dissent, and he has long advocated shutting the safety valve and letting the pressure cooker build up steam and explode (this is his analogy). Now a Castro official says that Val is right, shutting down immigration would destabilize the regime.
Of course, this is nothing but Castroite disinformation. Shutting down the apocryphal "safety valve" wouldn't destabilize the regime. It has been shut down in the past for protracted periods and no destabilization occurred. On the contrary, a reduction or elimination of migration is exactly what the regime does want because it allows it to tell the Cuban people: "Americans don't want you. They will even violate their own laws and agreements to beat you back into the ocean if need be. You have no choice but to cast your lot with the Revolution. It is no use to oppose us or even to try to escape. If we don't get you, the U.S. Coast Guard will fetch you for us; and you'll end up worse than when you started out. Behave and you might survive."
The regime's official extra muros position is the opposite. By claiming (falsely) that cutting migration will destabilize it, it is encouraging the "fight to the last Cuban" types like Val Prieto to support the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy and any and all restrictions on migration to the U.S. Val's pressure cooker, like Castro's rice cooker, won't hold water, though.
Really, I don't know what an anti-Castro exile's reaction should be if Castro's lackeys start singing his song. It has never happened to me and I sincerely doubt that it ever will because, unlike Val, I know what they really think.
Val's reaction was not to embrace the Castro official who confirmed his pet theory or to admit that he was wrong in so long parroting what is apparently the party line. No, it was quite another and we must credit him for the ingenuity in maneuvering his way out of this highly embarrassing situation. He didn't exactly reach for higher ground but at least managed to put some distance between himself and his unexpected and unsought Castroite allies.
When in doubt, take the bigot's way out:
"Here's a clue for Mr. Martinez [the reporter] and the castro regime: as a sovereign nation, the US is not compelled to allow ANY Cubans into the country whatsoever. Assholes."
Actually, the U.S. is compelled to do precisely that under U.S. law. The Cuban Adjustment Act (1966) has never been repealed by Congress and it does compel the U.S. government to admit Cuban refugees into the U.S. Although key provisions have been ignored by both the Clinton and Bush administrations, and despite the fact that the spirit of the Act has been violated repeatedly and all precedent relating to it ignored, the Cuban Adjustment Act is still the law of the land and this sovereign nation must obey its own laws. It is true that no other people enjoy that special dispensation, but that was not decreed by Cubans but by both houses of Congress and the then-president of the United States. It is the law: the only law in the world that benefits Cubans since no Castroite pseudo-law does.
So learn to live with it, Val. It is the reason that you — that all of us — are in this country today. Or do you think that the stork made a mistake by dropping you in Cuba and corrected its mistake by dropping you in Hialeah?
Cuban officials accused Washington of intentionally cutting the number of visas in order to "destabilize" the island. Val cannot see that the Castroites are actually agreeing with him and making his argument. Val has long held, as has Henry also, that immigration is a safety valve for the Castro regime which allows it to control dissent, and he has long advocated shutting the safety valve and letting the pressure cooker build up steam and explode (this is his analogy). Now a Castro official says that Val is right, shutting down immigration would destabilize the regime.
Of course, this is nothing but Castroite disinformation. Shutting down the apocryphal "safety valve" wouldn't destabilize the regime. It has been shut down in the past for protracted periods and no destabilization occurred. On the contrary, a reduction or elimination of migration is exactly what the regime does want because it allows it to tell the Cuban people: "Americans don't want you. They will even violate their own laws and agreements to beat you back into the ocean if need be. You have no choice but to cast your lot with the Revolution. It is no use to oppose us or even to try to escape. If we don't get you, the U.S. Coast Guard will fetch you for us; and you'll end up worse than when you started out. Behave and you might survive."
The regime's official extra muros position is the opposite. By claiming (falsely) that cutting migration will destabilize it, it is encouraging the "fight to the last Cuban" types like Val Prieto to support the "Wet Foot/Dry Foot" policy and any and all restrictions on migration to the U.S. Val's pressure cooker, like Castro's rice cooker, won't hold water, though.
Really, I don't know what an anti-Castro exile's reaction should be if Castro's lackeys start singing his song. It has never happened to me and I sincerely doubt that it ever will because, unlike Val, I know what they really think.
Val's reaction was not to embrace the Castro official who confirmed his pet theory or to admit that he was wrong in so long parroting what is apparently the party line. No, it was quite another and we must credit him for the ingenuity in maneuvering his way out of this highly embarrassing situation. He didn't exactly reach for higher ground but at least managed to put some distance between himself and his unexpected and unsought Castroite allies.
When in doubt, take the bigot's way out:
"Here's a clue for Mr. Martinez [the reporter] and the castro regime: as a sovereign nation, the US is not compelled to allow ANY Cubans into the country whatsoever. Assholes."
Actually, the U.S. is compelled to do precisely that under U.S. law. The Cuban Adjustment Act (1966) has never been repealed by Congress and it does compel the U.S. government to admit Cuban refugees into the U.S. Although key provisions have been ignored by both the Clinton and Bush administrations, and despite the fact that the spirit of the Act has been violated repeatedly and all precedent relating to it ignored, the Cuban Adjustment Act is still the law of the land and this sovereign nation must obey its own laws. It is true that no other people enjoy that special dispensation, but that was not decreed by Cubans but by both houses of Congress and the then-president of the United States. It is the law: the only law in the world that benefits Cubans since no Castroite pseudo-law does.
So learn to live with it, Val. It is the reason that you — that all of us — are in this country today. Or do you think that the stork made a mistake by dropping you in Cuba and corrected its mistake by dropping you in Hialeah?
Monday, October 1, 2007
Elenita's Fairy Tale: Grimm Was Never This Grimm
Suppose a father wanted to raise his child in a sewer; a literal sewer. Should he have the right to do so, and should the government uphold him in the exercise of that right? The waters of the sewer would be unhealthy and malodorous, conveying filth and rottenness of every imaginable kind; it would be inhabited by an army of vermin and an even more dangerous army of bacteria; nothing could thrive in such an environment but all fall prey and become part of the general decomposition. Imagine raising a child in such a place! That would be horrible. But much more horrible would be a magistrate who affirms a father's right to thus abuse his child because the father personally prefers to live in a gilded sewer than breathe the air of the free. Would it be "politics" to contend that a sewer may not be the best place to raise a child, especially one who already knows that there is a better world than a sewer? What kind of society would sanction her return to a "father" who would thus exercise his authority over the child? Three times like the cock this man had forfeited that authority, more interested in evading the responsibility of fatherhood than exercising its rights. What compels him to seek now what he had once spurned, avoided and finally renounced? Well, there is a king in this sewer and the father owes him tribute and hopes to be rewarded for his fealty.
Does the story sound familiar?
I am almost sure that it or some near-varient is a Grimm's fairy tale, but I don't have the stomach to verify it, believing, as I do, that this lore (or, better yet, gore) of the volk is more responsible for Hitler than Wagner's music.
The hapless child in this real tale of horror understands perfectly what is at stake (her life and future). When she first came face to face with her birth father, she had no reaction, so little had Rafael Izquierdo been a part of her life in Cuba. In fact, it was necessary to introduce the child to this stranger who claims the right to raise her. It was when she learned that this man wanted to remove her from the care of her foster family, where, for the first time in her tormented life, she had known love and security, and return her to Cuba, where she had been beaten by her crazed mother and abandoned by the newly-minted father, that she conceived a profound fear and loathing for this man.
Although the child has a nervous breakdown every time she is compelled to be in the same room with this human ogre, and her foster parents have to pick up the pieces of her shattered psyche and reassemble them as best they can every time she visits with him, it was nonetheless decreed by the compassionate judge adjudicating her custody case that she had to undergo this ordeal every week until she "got used" to her father, ogre or not. Compassionate, yes, and infinitely solicitous of the father's mental well-being, but as indifferent to the little girl's as if she had been made of rags was Judge Cohen.
The now 5-year old-girl copes as well with her circumstances as might be expected. One of her court-appointed therapists, Miguel Firpi, testified that "she is trying hard to coat herself with Teflon during the day." At night, however, the demons are impervious to her Teflon-coated mental defenses. Then, "she is besieged by nightmares, sleeping fitfully and gnashing her teeth so forcefully she will have to see a dentist." She has also commenced bedwetting since being introduced to her father.
In order to shield herself from him and make the torment of being in his presence more tolerable, Firpi reports that Elenita has created an elaborate fantasy about her birth father and his family. She believes that they visit Miami on week-ends to meet with her and then return to Cuba for the rest of the week. This fantasy at least allows her to feel save for 5 of the 7 days of the week.
The girl, imbued with the hope, as are all children, that good will conquer evil in the end, has convinced herself that "the lady in the black thing" has decided that she will not return to Cuba with her father but be allowed to remain with her brother and foster parents in Coral Gables. Of course, "the lady in the black thing" (the "black thing" is her heart) intends no such thing.
The judge, who has a vested interest in keeping the child quiet until she hands her over to her tormentor, approved of this fiction, without ever bothering to asked herself why the fiction makes the girl happy while the reality renders her miserable and unable to cope with her life without innoculating herself with the fiction.
As reported in The Miami Herald:
The judge acknowledged that the girl has already had to navigate difficult waters -- and wondered aloud if it would be better to allow her a piece of fiction to hold on to. ''Is this a bad thing that she has built this protective bubble?'' Cohen said. "Because it frees her to build relationships. And if the bubble has to be burst, that won't be a bad thing[?]"
Well, the bubble has to burst at some time and the one who will do the bursting is Judge Cohen. The girl who is now "navigating difficult waters" will soon be drowning in a stagnant pool if the judge's verdict is upheld on appeal. The judge is gratified because this self-induced and now court-sanctioned lie allows the girl not to see her father as a clear and present danger anymore. She hopes that this "frees her to build relationships" with her birth father and his family. This artificial "relationship" will no doubt not survive the moment when the birth father snatches her away from her brother and her foster parents and takes her to Cuba to follow the Via Crucis of Elian's life.
Many of the court-mandated visitations with Rafael Izquierdo, his common-law wife and his other daughter in the Bricknell Avenue condo where they are residing while pursuing this case have been filmed. So horrible and terrifying are the scenes of such reunions that Izquierdo's legal team did not attempt to enter them into evidence at the trial as proof of Izquierdo's "continuing" interest in the child.
Elenita may not be taken out of the Cubas home at the point of a submachine gun but the effect on her psyche will not be the less for it.
Does the story sound familiar?
I am almost sure that it or some near-varient is a Grimm's fairy tale, but I don't have the stomach to verify it, believing, as I do, that this lore (or, better yet, gore) of the volk is more responsible for Hitler than Wagner's music.
The hapless child in this real tale of horror understands perfectly what is at stake (her life and future). When she first came face to face with her birth father, she had no reaction, so little had Rafael Izquierdo been a part of her life in Cuba. In fact, it was necessary to introduce the child to this stranger who claims the right to raise her. It was when she learned that this man wanted to remove her from the care of her foster family, where, for the first time in her tormented life, she had known love and security, and return her to Cuba, where she had been beaten by her crazed mother and abandoned by the newly-minted father, that she conceived a profound fear and loathing for this man.
Although the child has a nervous breakdown every time she is compelled to be in the same room with this human ogre, and her foster parents have to pick up the pieces of her shattered psyche and reassemble them as best they can every time she visits with him, it was nonetheless decreed by the compassionate judge adjudicating her custody case that she had to undergo this ordeal every week until she "got used" to her father, ogre or not. Compassionate, yes, and infinitely solicitous of the father's mental well-being, but as indifferent to the little girl's as if she had been made of rags was Judge Cohen.
The now 5-year old-girl copes as well with her circumstances as might be expected. One of her court-appointed therapists, Miguel Firpi, testified that "she is trying hard to coat herself with Teflon during the day." At night, however, the demons are impervious to her Teflon-coated mental defenses. Then, "she is besieged by nightmares, sleeping fitfully and gnashing her teeth so forcefully she will have to see a dentist." She has also commenced bedwetting since being introduced to her father.
In order to shield herself from him and make the torment of being in his presence more tolerable, Firpi reports that Elenita has created an elaborate fantasy about her birth father and his family. She believes that they visit Miami on week-ends to meet with her and then return to Cuba for the rest of the week. This fantasy at least allows her to feel save for 5 of the 7 days of the week.
The girl, imbued with the hope, as are all children, that good will conquer evil in the end, has convinced herself that "the lady in the black thing" has decided that she will not return to Cuba with her father but be allowed to remain with her brother and foster parents in Coral Gables. Of course, "the lady in the black thing" (the "black thing" is her heart) intends no such thing.
The judge, who has a vested interest in keeping the child quiet until she hands her over to her tormentor, approved of this fiction, without ever bothering to asked herself why the fiction makes the girl happy while the reality renders her miserable and unable to cope with her life without innoculating herself with the fiction.
As reported in The Miami Herald:
The judge acknowledged that the girl has already had to navigate difficult waters -- and wondered aloud if it would be better to allow her a piece of fiction to hold on to. ''Is this a bad thing that she has built this protective bubble?'' Cohen said. "Because it frees her to build relationships. And if the bubble has to be burst, that won't be a bad thing[?]"
Well, the bubble has to burst at some time and the one who will do the bursting is Judge Cohen. The girl who is now "navigating difficult waters" will soon be drowning in a stagnant pool if the judge's verdict is upheld on appeal. The judge is gratified because this self-induced and now court-sanctioned lie allows the girl not to see her father as a clear and present danger anymore. She hopes that this "frees her to build relationships" with her birth father and his family. This artificial "relationship" will no doubt not survive the moment when the birth father snatches her away from her brother and her foster parents and takes her to Cuba to follow the Via Crucis of Elian's life.
Many of the court-mandated visitations with Rafael Izquierdo, his common-law wife and his other daughter in the Bricknell Avenue condo where they are residing while pursuing this case have been filmed. So horrible and terrifying are the scenes of such reunions that Izquierdo's legal team did not attempt to enter them into evidence at the trial as proof of Izquierdo's "continuing" interest in the child.
Elenita may not be taken out of the Cubas home at the point of a submachine gun but the effect on her psyche will not be the less for it.
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