Henry Gómez continues his encouraging evolution. During the entire Posada Carriles trial, Babalú was conspicuous by its silence and its silence was echoed by the other Cuban blogs (yes, apparently silence can be echoed). Although they did not condemn Posada Carriles for the same reason that they didn't defend him (because they were afraid), their failure to stand up for one who has always stood up for Cuba, when he needed their support the most, was really shameful and inexcusable. If you are unwilling to defend the freedom of the most-maligned among us, then why bother to defend anybody else's? If some measure of injustice is acceptable to you, then you are not on the side of justice. If you are content only to fight the easy fights, you may forestall defeat but victory will always elude you.
I wish now that I had answered an e-mail which Henry sent me at the time, asking me if I thought Posada was guilty. I was just too indignant to answer. Was Martí "guilty" or Maceo "guilty?" Only an enemy of Cuban freedom or a complete imbecile would ask such a question. In retrospect, I should have answered him. Perhaps a timely rebuke would have clarified a lot of things for him and spared him many detours on the way to the truth.
Henry got there late but he got there, and as the the old Mexican song goes, "lo que importa es llegar." The ridicule which he heaps on CodePink, the San Francisco-based anti-war group which journeyed to Miami to protest Posada Carriles' freedom (not, of course, the Cuban people's lack of freedom), demonstrates the power of the well-placed adjective in a short sentence: "A pick-up truck draped with pink chiffon and a couple of ugly broads." It also shows, more importantly, that Henry finally got it. Posada Carriles' enemies are our enemies, whether they happen to be in Cuba, Venezuela or Washington, D.C., or obey Castro's, Chávez's or Bush' orders. Posada Carriles represents the right of the Cuban people to fight for their freedom. If that is unacceptable in him, then it is unacceptable in all of us, the struggle is lost and ignominy becomes the birthright of all Cubans in perpetuity. A people that does not reverence its heroes deserves none, and, as Martí put it, "is reared for the jackals."
Medea Benjamín and her ilk, besides being fit objects for Ripley's museum, are the living embodiedment of the moral corruption of our enemies; they literally drip with it and stink of it; you can cover them in pink lace and bathe them in a tub of Florida water and the result will only be more inhuman and offensive.
To hear them speak of freedom of speech, while behaving like performance artists whom you expect at any moment will introduce sundry objects into various orifices, is to experience the banality of evil. The pro-Posada counterprotestors, who witnessed the spectacle of their self-debasement, must have felt uplifted to think that these are our enemies, in the final throes of their satanic carnival (feast of the flesh-eaters).
POSTSCRIPT:
As he did when the racist commenters at Babalú started dumping on Mexican migrants (as if the xenophobes ever made any distinction between a Mexican and a Cuban), Henry came to Posada's defense when Ray and Robert Molleda defamed the old Cuban warrior in the Comments thread. These despicable cowards who wouldn't know dignity if it bit them on the heels as they were fleeing from the duty of defending freedom's champions, called Posada "a liability to the Cuban exile community" and "unstable" because he's supposedly "embarrassed the Bush administration, our congressmen and the late Jorge Más Canosa." In other words, Posada Carriles is not a political whore like they are and like their allies are ("our" congressmen, indeed!). Ziva was the first to point out that we should not abandon Posada because it is politically expedient as that would make us no better than opportunists. Henry agreed: "Posada Carriles is one of the few who has consistently put his life on the line to rid the world of the castro regime. fidel has fucking nightmares about the guy. I'd rather have Posada [on my side] than Cindy Shehan or that Meada bitch." Very true, Henry. May the world catch up with your thinking, or at least the other Babalunians.
Related posts on Posada and Babalú:
Henry Gómez Comes to Posada's Defense (Sort Of)
En Passant
Is Posada Carriles a Hero?
Babaloo's Waterloos: The Miami Herald Speaks for Henry Gómez on Posada
Mr. Prim and Mr. Proper Posada Carriles Is Free
Groundswell of Support for Posada Carriles at Babalú — Dignity Carries the Day
Posada and Oscar Corral:
The Wrong Reporter For the Posada Story
Oscar Corral: The Man Without Principles
Miscellaneous Posada Posts:
An Art Exhibit Worth Seeing
"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)
Humorous:
From Granma: More Toilet Humor
FLASH!!! African Jet with 114 Aboard Crashes
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17 comments:
MAT,
Gee, when you hate somebody you really do hate them, don't you. Compared to Media Benjamin, you may actually like Henry.
Code Pink is about to be evicted from their group house in Capitol Hill, Washington DC. The neighbors are saying that the government would have evicted the KKK very swiftly, and they are not happy that a similar hate group has been allowed to marr their neighborhood for that long. Now they will be
Do not miss the comments at the end of this article the population points out the group real associations and therefore their "nature"....
Anonymous:
There is nothing wrong with hating if you hate the right people. I have never said that I hate Henry. We share most of the same positions; it just takes him longer to reach them.
Charlie:
Where really can they go from here? What lies beyond self-caricature? The day may be fast approaching when their enemies will actually pay them to stage protests against them.
That'd be funny.... I can just imagine that spectacle.... Modern day political planideras....
The reception that the Code Pink protesters received outside of Versailles Restaurant sounds very familiar to those protesters who demonstrated in Havana on Human Rights Day. Only difference is that Code Pink were under a much greater threat of physical harm by the pro-Posada people than those demonstrators in Havana on Himan Rights Day.
I like what Montaner said, "the main difference between Carriles and Che is that Carriles doesn't have a T-Shirt". Or words to that effect. It's easy to judge people without historical context. The post 9/11 world is not the same as the pre 9/11 one in terms of public reaction to certain methods of carrying on a war. What I hope hasn't changed, is the judgment of what the fight is about and who is on what side.
Code Pink, Cyndi Whatshername, et al, have never staged a demonstration to condemn Cuba's human rights violations even though they are well documented and irrefutable, no condemnation of the firing squads, the gulag for reporters, independent librarians and just plain dissidents, so it becomes clear that their efforts are on behalf of the communist dictatorship they adore and not about methods.
curt:
We should be grateful, I suppose, for small favors. Your moral equivalence argument is, of course, ridiculous, although inherent in it is an acknowledgment on your part that what happened on Human Rights Day in Havana was wrong and unacceptable. This is surely going a long way for you. The next step in your evolution will be to acknowledge that victim and victimizer belong to different moral orders and that our reaction to them should vary accordingly.
Everyone in this country has the constitutional right to protest. The state will not repress you if you condemn its policies or those who implement them. On the contrary, it will protect you from those who might try to stop you from exercising that right through violent means.
In Cuba, however, it is Castro's henchmen who intimidate, harass, and brutalize protestors at the orders of State Security, which coordinates their activities in situ. Dissidents will look in vain for protection from these thugs because they act with the regime's sanction, and are, indeed, its plainclothes agents.
I might add that before the Revolution there were almost daily protests by the opposition who did not limit themselves to innocuous placards calling for "Change" but actually denounced Batista by name as a thief and murderer. They did it because they could do it. Cuba then was a country governed by the Rule of Law whose citizens enjoyed the right to heap as much abuse on their leaders as they pleased. Today, of course, there are actually "laws" in Cuba which specifically prohibit the use of similar terms to characterize Castro. The emperor has no clothes and is sufficiently aware of that fact to silence all who would say so.
René:
Montaner is wrong when he says that "the "main difference between Carriles and Che is that Carriles doesn't have a T-Shirt." The main difference is that Posada Carriles is a freedom fighter and "Che" Guevara was an enslaver of men.
I know, however, what Montaner means to imply — i.e. that both men used violent means to obtain their ends. Although Montaner's comparison may help liberals see "Che" in a different light it does nothing for Posada.
We who understand the actions of both men must reject such a comparison as inaccurate and even offensive. It, too, uses moral equivalence to compare two individuals who stand on different moral planes.
Martí and Hitler both recoursed to violent means to achieve their ends, though, of course, they had different ends. Violence itself was Hitler's end; Martí, who weeped at the thought of the violence that would be unleased in his "necessary war," used it as a means to end the systemic violence of a tyrannical regime, not to perpetuate that violence under difference names and through more refined means.
الشريف / جمال طة :
There is more to what you say than meets the eye.
Manuel:
I thought I made the same point in my second paragraph and I do interpret what Montaner said the same way you do. Alas, the hazards of short blog comments...
Fill me in, MAT. The Cubana airlainer... was it a tactical target?
I confess, I don't understand the principles of freedom-fighting. And amid the denials and accusations, I have never read anything on a tactical justification for his alleged actions.
Perhaps someone can explain?
nonee:
I really don't know what you are saying. What does Posada Carriles have to do with any airliner except in the tendentious imaginations of Cuba's enemies? You aren't telling me that you actually believe Castro over Posada? That would be prima facie evidence that even 50 years after his first public lie, and while addlebrained and on his deathbed, Fidel Castro can still fool intelligent men into believing him.
So, the position is that he never did it. Should I wink when I say that?
Listen, I'm not one of those bleeding hearts that frets over innocents lost in the greater war. Life's a bitch. And if he did what he's accused of, and beleived in it, let him say so and be judged by God for it. You can't have it both ways.
I know, however, what Montaner means to imply — i.e. that both men used violent means to obtain their ends.
Did you forget to chide Montaner for his insinuation of Posada as a man of violence? Or were you accepting as given some other violence which Posada undertook?
This is why I ask, MAT. Because you confuse me by suggesting Posada had nothing to do with those actions he is accused of, yet hail him for his resolve in doing violence of some sort. I guess, just not that violence, right?
So, if he didn't blow up that airliner, why all the respect? And if he did, why try to run from what you did? Seems to me his cause is better served by him cowboying up.
He either chews lightning and pisses concertina wire, or he doesn't. Maybe he's just another dude que en Cuba era rico?
Either way, fidel has sold me nothing. But then angain, neither have a lot of people.
And for the record, I don't think he needs to stand trial here, this country's moral stature be damned.
nonee:
Posada's 50-year resistance to tyranny is what I admire. During that time he fought the enemy face to face everywhere that the enemy went on four continents. On one ocassion, in fact, they nearly blew away his face. I am sure that he also gave as good as he got, but he is blameless in the bombing of the airliner. It was the work of a Cuban double-agent named Navarrete, who admitted in a Florida court to the bombing shortly before his death.
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