Val Prieto's "Victory" Over the Cuban People

"What we are hearing from Cubans in Cuba is they don't need money because there's nothing to buy." -- Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutiérrez, at press conference, in Florida, September 17, 2006

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutiérrez has just announced that the Bush administration will not relax for a 90-day period restrictions on travel and remittances to the island in the wake of the recent hurricanes. He fears that a sudden influx of exiles might destabilize the Castro regime (or "cause chaos," as he put it). Nor will be allow any expansion in remittances because "Cubans in Cuba" have supposedly told the secretary that "they don't need money because there's nothing to buy there."

It was not "Cubans in Cuba" who said this but a Cuban from Hialeah who was quoted in those exact words in The New York Times (see below). We can only suppose that a Cuban from Hialeah who came here more than 40 years ago is as close to any Cuban on the island as Secretary Gutiérrez has ever gotten. The other explanation -- that he actually gets his news on Cuba from The New York Times -- is simply too horrible to contemplate.

When Val Prieto declared this falsehood to The Times, which it was more than happy to quote as proof of the beastliness of Cubans exiles, we warned that it would have calamitous consequences for our countrymen on the island and so it has.

Val Prieto has succeeded in his efforts to immerse our country in famine and disease. He is now personally responsible for increasing the suffering of the Cuban people. He has made a name for himself that will long be hateful to all Cubans. His malice and monumental stupidity have resonated in the kindred soul of Secretary Gutiérrez, who is obviously also a proponent of the "Pressure Cooker Theory." The deaths of thousands of Cubans for naught now lie on the heads of these sons of Cubans.

Charlie Bravo broke this story on Black Sheep of Exile and has an excellent take on it:

http://blacksheepofexile.blogspot.com/

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Val Prieto to The New York Times: Cuban Hurricane Survivors Don't Need Money

"What are they [Cubans] going to do with money when there is nothing to buy?" -- Val Prieto, quoted in The New York Times, Sept. 10, 2008

Whenever Val Prieto feels the urge to dump on the Cuban people, the establishment media is more than happy to let him. Last year, when The Wall Street Journal needed an exile blogger to cast doubts on Yoani's motives in an otherwise sympathetic profile, Val was invited to share his unfounded suspicions. And yesterday, when The New York Times required a Cuban-American to assert, in the midst of the greatest natural catastrophe in Cuban history, that the last thing that Cubans needed now was money, Val again was there to make us all look like the monsters which the MSM is fond of portraying us as. Can you imagine any transplanted New Orlenean telling The Times (New York or -Picayune) that the last thing that the victims of Hurricane Katrina needed was money! Did even David Duke oppose the $4000 debit cards that were distributed by the government to the homeless and displaced of New Orleans?

The answer to Val's question is obvious. "What are the Cuban people going to do with the money?" Everything that they can't do without it. They will be able to obtain water, food, medicine, shelter, clothing -- everything which they require to survive this crisis. Val knows very well that far from there being "nothing to buy in Cuba," everything is for sale there if you have the dollars to buy it. Of course you will have to buy it from the "Castro Depot," as Val likes to call it. The "Castro Depot" is the only store in the country. Cuba is, after all, a Communist state run like an antebellum plantation where provisions are available only from the master's larder and the master is by no means generous. If you hope to survive then you must find a way to supplement his scanty fare, whether that means stealing, begging or accepting charity. Whatever you do, of course, will rebound to the slaveholder's benefit. If he is only relieved of the burden of feeding you, then he is that much wealthier. But you, more importantly, are that much stronger because you are less dependent on him. Slavery consists of degrees of dependence and the less that you count on your master the more distance that will be placed between you.

Of course, self-reliance, as understood in a free society, is not an option open to you since your master claims your body and your labor. His authority is absolute because he has the guns and you have the shackles; he has the force of the lynch law on his side and you have only your feet. There is nothing that you alone can do to effect your own freedom that won't almost certainly lead to the grave. Your friends, under such circumstances, are those who would deliver you from your bondage, not those that would bound you over to it forever. Not those who ignore your cries for help, but those who heed them.

A man who sees your despair and is aware that you have no one else to turn to, yet is so denatured as not only to deny you his assistance but to counsel others against helping you, claiming that even money, which supplies his wants well enough and all mankind's besides, will be of no use to you in particular, is no friend to any man but himself and especially no friend to you.

Not even in the days of slavery was it considered a concession to evil to buy a slave's freedom. More slaves obtained their freedom that way than through any other means. Sometimes there is no other way than to bribe evil men to act against their interests and instincts. In the case of the Castro regime, there is in fact no other way to secure the survival of our people. We cannot even speak of freedom because this slave master may consent to let his slaves live but will never consent to their manumission. Freedom will come, nonetheless, but it must not be the freedom of the cemetery, which will be their fate unless we can save them.

The Schism at Babalú Over Remittances

Is it possible for 17 Cubans (and philo-Cubans) to approach the subject of Cuba with perfect conformity of minds? Can the echo chamber be anything but an artificial construct more collegial than real? Still, if the illusion is allowed to replace reality by common assent, does it not then become more real than the truth which it conceals? To put it less philosophically, is Val's cookie cutter calibrated in such a way as to allow no deviation from his model, or do his "cookies" extend their bellies and puff their cheeks to mimic that conformity which falsely passes as unity?

I could evaluate each of Babalú's editors according to his weight and volume (however "settled"), but this is not necessary because, inspite of the artifice required to avoid Val's displeasure, they are in fact individuals and by no means in all cases projections of Val's alter ego except when they choose to be. That this is sometimes not a choice but the price of admission becomes evident when a controversial subject such as remittances, on which there is no general consensus in the community at large, is treated with one voice at Babalú, Val's voice, of course, which happens to represent the most extreme anti-Cuban (as in people not regime) position on the subject.

Can it possibly be that all 17 of Babalú's contributing writers subscribe to the "Founding Editor's" disingenuous contention that Cubans on the island "don't need money," as he recently told The New York Times?

In the face of so much devastation and human suffering, both natural and man-made, and with the regime itself having forsworn all offers of assistance from "non-fraternal" countries despite being neither capable nor inclined to supply the immediate needs of the Cuban people, can anyone who is not positively hostile to them -- and as indifferent to their survival as the regime itself is -- suggest that what needs be done now is nothing? It is Val's position that to feed the Cuban people is to feed the regime. I don't think that any honest person could dispute that. No honest person, however, would use that rationale to starve Castro's victims, either. The regime can survive the starvation of the Cuban people because it has been profiting on their misery for 50 years. The Cuban people, who live hand to mouth, in the most literal meaning of that phrase, cannot.

During World War II, American POWs were allowed to receive their salaries as well as packages from home, as per the terms of the Geneva Convention. Even inmates at concentration camps, at least in the early days, were permitted to receive cash and packages from their relatives (till there were no more relatives left on the outside to send them). No doubt feeding Hitler's victims also fed the Nazi beast, but no one then argued in favor of further starving the POWs or concentration camp inmates in order to encourage them to revolt or punish them if they didn't.

That is Val Prieto's contribution to the struggle against Castroism -- fighting Castro to the last Cuban man, woman and child. His "Pressure Cooker Theory" is not, however, an original idea; nor would we expect it to be, as original ideas, for good or ill, are not to be expected from him. Val's theory was first applied in Weyler's campos de reconcentración, where Cuban non-belligerents (pacíficos) were interred during Cuba's War of Independence from Spain (1895-1898). No provisions of any kind were allowed into the camps which were intended as incubators of starvation and disease. Nearly a half-million Cubans, 20 percent of the island's civilian population, were killed there. Photographs of the few survivors are interchangeable with those of the survivors of Hitler's concentration camps: the same skeletal bodies, the same dehumanized expression in their eyes; and the same immemorial reproach to humanity.

The only difference between Weyler and Prieto is that the Spanish general practiced genocide on Cubans to prevent them from rebelling against their oppressors whereas Val would subject them to the same rigors in order to achieve the opposite effect. Clearly, it is Weyler who was the general. As I have elsewhere demonstrated, men who cannot rise from bed in the morning cannot be expected to rise in arms in the afternoon. Starving a people will not prod them to rebel; only men with full stomachs have the luxury of making revolutions.

While Val was pontificating on the need to tighten the belts of all Cubans in this crisis -- a subject also dear to Raúl, who is, however, more used to loosening them -- his contributing writers maintained a respectful silence: respectful to Val, of course, and, therefore, craven and complicit. This, of course, should surprise no one with even a superficial knowledge of the workings of Babalú; and, certainly, no reader of this blog.

After 5 years and ten thousand posts, no member of Babalú's "magnificent cadre of writers" has ever expressed an opinion contrary to one taken by the "Founding Editor" and paterfamilias of all their satellite blogs. And I mean just that and no more: it is inconceivable that any of them would actually write a post refuting Val. I do not know if the contributing writers (who are not even allowed the title of "editors") must obtain prior approval from Val before publishing their posts. I should think not since self-censorship tends to be more draconian in most cases than if imposed from above. Still, I may be wrong since in judging Val I tend to use logic where logic is seldom called for.

There is only one Babalú's contributor who has ever challenged Val when he delivered himself of a particularly onerous opinion about Cubans. On occasions that Val took to asserting that Cubans have "no balls" or were lazy and pampered and could only be awakened from their supposed ennui by heating up the pressure cooker, Marc Másferrer was sure to take exception in a tightly-worded comment. He was never joined in his criticism by any other of Babalú's 17 contributing writers, though one or two may have privately expressed reservations (or not). I have chronicled all these debates because any free exchange of opinions at Babalú is an event rare enough to be newsworthy (see here; here; here; and here).

Val's replies to Marc or anybody else are always more like rants. He dashes them off in a fevered moment and the absence of punctuation and atrocious typing gives some idea of how distasteful it is for him to be obliged to defend his opinions and what an imposition it is for him to do so. Usually, he ignores completely what the commenter has to say, preferring, instead, to take umbrage at the fact that he would raise an objection. With Marc, however, Val has shown more consideration until lately. Having Marc as a contributor adds considerably to Babalú's credibility. Marc is not only the only professional journalist on Babalú's staff but his blog Uncommon Sense is undoubtedly the most useful and necessary of Cuban-American blogs. You will not find much in the way of pyrotechnics there or personalismos. His style and manner is suited to his subject, which is a somber one -- the plight of Cuba's dissidents and political prisoners. Marc's reputation for fairness is such that almost everybody links to his blog, even those bloggers whose concern for Cuba's political prisoners is not exactly at the top of their agenda (Peters and his clones).

A week ago, when Babalú reprinted Yoani's column "Scorched Earth" from Generación Y, Val appended a coletilla to it objecting to her conclusion that "the most viable initiative [for helping victims of the hurricane] is for family members abroad to send cash to their relatives in Cuba." If anybody else had said anything of the kind Val would not have been as restrained in his reaction. Still, Val's anger at Yoani's endorsement of remittances, coupled with the ineluctability of reprinting her latest post, which he had committed to do by prior agreement, must have continued seething in him and exploded like his proverbial pressure cooker when Marc stepped up to defend Yoani's position (nobody else was going to at Babalú):

Comments:

I must disagree with Yoani. The most viable initiative is not sending cash, but getting the Cuba government to allow humanitarian and relief organizations and agencies into the island. Whow bring with them the infrastructure to distribute aid and repair Cuba's infrastructure on their own.
Posted by: Val Prieto at September 9, 2008 08:08 AM

It does not have to be an either/or situation. Yes, the humanitarian aid should be allowed in, but the United States also should at least suspend limits on remittances and travel so family members in the U.S. can provide quick assistance to their loved ones. Cubans need all the help they can get, so this is not the time to continue a policy that even when the weather is good, is an embarassment to the United States. Otherwise, our desire to help is held hostage by the dictatorship. Some may think that is OK, for how it enhances their political position. But as long as Cubans are suffering during the current crisis, that is a morally indefensible position.
Posted by: Marc R. Masferrer at September 9, 2008 09:34 AM

Marc,

Serioulsy man, Im starting to think you dont really see this issue clearly. Quite simply: First, if there isnt enough food and water for Cubans on the island right now, how can there be enough if more Cubans show up? The last thing any disaster area allows is more people in, period. Water and food and shelter are jsut going to magcally show up with dollars and tourists from abroad?

"Cubans need all the help they can get, so this is not the time to continue a policy that even when the weather is good, is an embarassment to the United States." I suppose you may see th epolicy as an embarrassment, I dont. What I see as an embarrassment is to FUND THE VERY SAME GOVERNMENT THAT IS FUCKING YOUR FAMILY. Otherwise, our desire to help is held hostage by the dictatorship. Some may think that is OK, for how it enhances their political position. But as long as Cubans are suffering during the current crisis, that is a morally indefensible position. I see you still havent fallen from the tree. EVERYTHING IS HELD HOSTAGE BY THE DICTATORSHIP. INCLUDING YOU AND ME. AND FEEDING THAT ANIMAL ONLY MAKES IT STRONGER. And please, dont you ever state to me that my position on this is politically motivated. I take that as an extreme insult and offense. If thats what you think of me and other folks with the wherewithall to see beyond th eregime's platitudes and propaganda, then perhaps you are in the wrong place. As for Cubans suffering in the "current" crisis, what the fuck do you think theyve been doing for years? What the fuck do you sthink theylll be doing twenty years from now when we, ourselves, are economically backing, supporting and propping up the very same poeple that are the cause of their suffering? My God, man. Stop staring at the fucking tree and look at the fucking forest al around you. Posted by: Val Prieto at September 9, 2008 10:40 AM

One cannot act against character, and for Val, who is more impulsive than most men, it was inevitable that he would reply to Marc with a barrage of obscenity eventually. Val's trump card is always to show dissenters the door. In the past, he has done so with scores of commenters (including me). Insofar as I know, however, the only contributing writers accorded this treatment in the past were George Moneo and Anatasio Blanco (both since reconciled to Val and reinstated at Babalú). The difference, of course, was that they disappeared without the "Prieto treatment." In fact, their respective expulsions were first revealed by RCAB. In Marc's case, however, the admiral was hanged pour encourager les autres. Or, rather, not hung, just shown the gallows.

I was surprised that no one came to Marc's defense. Or perhaps they did and their comments were consigned to Babalú's black hole. I have enough regard for some of Babalú's contributors to at least hope that they did object privately. Of course transparency will make little leeway at Babalú so long as essential questions are consigned to secret councils.

The question for Marc now is whether to continue to tolerate Val's monomania because of the forum which Babalú provides for Cuba's political prisoners, or to sever his connection to Babalú because the only Cubans that Val approves of are those in prison.

A Meeting of Minds

On Miami's Cuban Connection, Stuck on the Palmetto and Critical Miami, all long since gone, Alex (now of Miami & Beyond) and I often, and, for a time, almost on a daily basis, debated Cuba's past and present. These exchanges were always entertaining and sometimes instructive (for both parties, I hope). Not quite Adams and Jefferson unbosoming their souls to each other and posterity, but not without interest as an example of the importance and even possibility of civil discourse among Cubans. Interest was also lent to our discussions by the fact that we were both equally stubborn (or committed, as Cubans see it) and refused to concede the last word to the other (we could hope as much for the McCain-Obama debates; we are sure to get it in the Biden-Palin one). The fact that we do not know each other and never exchanged so much as a private e-mail between us though thousands and thousands of words publicly, did not dilute the intense character of our exchanges. Ultimately, however, our differences were about approaches, not goals. We saw eye to eye on what mattered most — the malevolent role of Castro in our history and the need to finally consign him to our past.

That we also agree that the Cuban people are Castro's victims (not accessories after the fact that must be rendered in a pressure cooker), or that we both regard the survival of the Cuban people rather than their martyrdom at Castro's hands as the only victory which we can still obtain over him, is not in the least surprising to me. Sin pueblo no hay patria.

Though not surprised I was greatly gratified to see that our common concern for the Cuban people and interest in their survival would lead us both to condemn, independently and in equally forceful terms, those who welcome natural catastrophes as God-ordained opportunities to wreak their vengeance not on Castro but on the Cuban people.

At Miami & Beyond ["Nothing to Buy in Cuba," Sept. 12, 2008], Alex honored RCAB by quoting at length from our condemnation of those who dream of a Cuba free of all Cubans rather than a free Cuba for all Cubans. For my part, let me also declare my agreement with Alex's eloquent defense of our people's humanity and excoriation of those who deny it or hold it cheap.

From Miami & Beyond:
Saturday, May 31, 2008

The subversive power of remittances [Excerpt]

Remittances fuel the black market and the grey economy where whole generations of Cubans are learning empirically to act as entrepreneurs and create an ipso facto social network of support. My family doesn't spend the money I sent in state-controlled stores simply because they are too expensive. If my sister needs meat, milk or shoes she goes to somebody in the black market with my dollars. That person in turn will use my dollars to buy a meal at a private restaurant, and so on. Before my dollars get to Raul's coffers, they have provided for several everyday Cubans.

Remittances are also subversive by nature, because they are the main source of wealth not provided by the omnipotent communist state.

A communist system has a foundation of total obedience. You will work for the state and you will work where you are assigned and you will receive the same salary as anybody else with the same job, regardless of productivity. To deviate from this system creates subversion. The increasing number of people who opt to stay out of the system are sending a big "F you" to the regime — something only a person that has shook the mental shackles can do.

A communist system has as its main principle the paternalistic responsibility of the state to support all citizens. Nobody can provide like the state do. The people who thanks to the remittances and the black market are able to live much better now realize that the state has failed. Most Cubans today know the state can't provide even their basic needs and it's up to them to procure their subsistence in the grey economy. Those Cubans are more free. So a doctor becomes a taxi driver and a dentist does work on the side. In a normal country this is a sorry state of affairs (and so it's in Cuba, let's be clear) but their motivation is self-betterment, they are taking an active, if desperate, stake in their own lives.

A communist system postulates equality. But remittances and black market income create a big gap between those who enjoy them and those who don't. Now, it's easy to say poor Cubans outside the hard currency circle will hate their luckier compatriots, but give them more credit. They realize it's working for the state what keeps them in poverty. If the state allows these policies of inequality, the state doesn't have their interests in mind and it's only interested in its own survival.

Black market and grey economy are illegal enterprises in market economies. In communist countries they are a form of survival and since they violate unjust laws, a form of resistance. When a Cuban is forced to quit his poorly paid state job and make a living hustling in the black market, they are resisting the totalitarian state who tells them "you can't do that, you have to work for the greater good", and in the process they are picking up the skills of self-reliance and entrepreneurship which will be invaluable in a future Cuba.

Disobedience, self reliance and subversion of the basic principles of the communist state. Even at the though price of giving hard currency to the regime, remittances make people more free.

Our Country Is Dying: "Apártame Este Cáliz"

With little food or drinkable water, and in the midst of the worst sanitary crisis in its history, Cuba is on the brink of a major pandemic that could decimate its population and turn it into an insular desert. Cholera, diphtheria, malaria, polio, dengue, TB or even the black plague, diseases which had been eradicated in Cuba before 1959 but which have since made sporadic comebacks, may all be in various stages of incubation at the same time. Like Medieval Europe, Cuba has only fire left to combat such a pandemic. If Cuba soon becomes a great bonfire from one end of the island to the other, it will mean that our country is dying. That will be Cuba's final S.O.S. to the world before the last survivors take to the sea like Pompeii's lost souls.

It may be God's plan that the architect of our destruction should survive it. Certainly it would be the perfect coda to 50 years of favoring the interests of one man over those of an entire people. When God made Israel his chosen people, He did the Jews no favor. Cuba must have become a candidate for divine preferment at some time as well. We got our Herod and our Hitler at the same time and in the same person. The last 50 years have been the best in Israel's history perhaps because God was too busy with us. All there is to say on Cuba's behalf is: "Apártame este cáliz." ("Take this cup from me.")

"How Is Your Aunt Marta, Lincoln?"

Does Lincoln Díaz-Balart know if his Aunt Marta is OK in Cuba where she went to live shortly after Fidel got sick in 2006? How about his cousin Fidelito? And does his ailing Uncle Fidel need anything? I guess the subject of getting aid to his family in Cuba is not a pressing concern for him. He's lucky that way. This does not mean, however, that he should try to close all avenues of aid to other Cubans in concert with his uncle in Havana.

Between Castro's refusal to allow humanitarian assistance into the island and Lincoln's support for U.S. restrictions on remittances and travel to the island, the Cuban people are pretty much screwed.

BTW, why hasn't Díaz-Balart gone after the billions of dollars stolen by his aunt's former husband and brother-in-law? You know, track the Castro clan's ill-gotten loot in European banks and do for Castro's victims what has been done for Hitler's? Even if they can't, for now, gain access to it, it would still be useful to document the extent of the family fortune for a more propitious occasion.

Do Remittances Benefit the Cuban People More Than They Do Castro?

Babalú reports that Cubans sent $240 million in remittances last year to their countrymen on the island. This, of course, does not take into account the monies sent there by mulas (carriers) or through third-countries in order to avoid paying Castro's 20% "tax" on remittances, not to mention what the exile themselves bring to the island on their visits there. If all sources of assistance were combined the total would exceed $1 billion annually. Since "only" the $240 million is taxed, however, Castro's total haul last year was $48 million (not counting the profits he makes at the usurious company store). Not an inconsiderable sum but less than he gets from long-distance calls to Cuba. Exiles must pay a $1 per minute to call the island when calls to China cost 2 cents per minute. (Fortunately, the Bush administration has not implemented restrictions on calls to the island -- yet).

Let's suppose that if present restrictions on remittances were suspended for the proposed 90-day period that exiles would send the same $240 million to their relatives not over a year but in the course of those three months. That would mean an additional $48 million off the top for Castro. Again this is not chump change, but for the vampire to continue to suck even when his victim is in extremis, will not exactly cast him in the best light (excuse the pun). The MSM might then expect of Castro some of the compassion for his own people that it demands of the United States. Or perhaps not. Castro has enjoyed 50 years of exemptions from decent human conduct from The New York Times and his other media camp followers.

What is certain, however, is that those additional $48 million will have an inconsequential impact on the regime's ability to inflict misery on its people. The Castros and their henchmen have had 50 years to enrich themselves at the expense and the sacrifice of the Cuban people. In addition to stealing everything of value in the country, they have saddled Cubans with $36 billion in foreign debt, much of which was diverted into their own bank accounts. They have managed to become the richest plutocrats in Latin America without the advantage of siphoning revenues from oil production (as in Mexico and Venezuela) or exploiting any other national resource besides the blood and sweat of the Cuban people. They have abandoned sugar production, Cuba's traditional source of wealth, which was only lucrative for them when the Soviet Union was paying them ten times the market price. Castro Inc.'s principal economic activity now is the selling of the Cuban people -- to tourists as "exotics" and to other other countries as indentured servants. In the struggle to give Cubans some measure of control over their own lives, remittances are essential. Without them the Cuban people are literally at Castro's mercy and hence completely without hope.

Although they are still as greedy as robber barons, and will certainly capitalize on any opportunity to exploit the suffering of their countrymen, the money sent as remittances to their victims will not benefit the Castros as much as it will benefit the Cuban people, who have nothing. The $48 million which the regime gleans from remittances is not going to be used to consolidate its position in Cuba because not one cent is spent there. It is part of the family's pecunia, which is kept as far from the island as possible. So, yes, the $48 million will make Castro's clan wealthier but they are already among the world's wealthiest. The other $192 million will allow the Cuban people to "resolver," that is, to survive. This is not an ideal situation, but ideal situations are not possible when you are forced to deal with hostage takers whose contempt for human life is infinite but whose patience is not. It may even be a pact with the devil (the kind of pact that saved the Jews of Rome). But the life of even one Cuban child is worth $48 million.

Val Prieto to The New York Times: Cuban Hurricane Survivors Don't Need Money

"What are they [Cubans] going to do with money when there is nothing to buy?" -- Val Prieto, quoted in The New York Times, Sept. 10, 2008

Whenever Val Prieto feels the urge to dump on the Cuban people, the establishment media is more than happy to let him. Last year, when The Wall Street Journal needed an exile blogger to cast doubts on Yoani's motives in an otherwise sympathetic profile, Val was invited to share his unfounded suspicions. And yesterday, when The New York Times required a Cuban-American to assert, in the midst of the greatest natural catastrophe in Cuban history, that the last thing that Cubans needed now was money, Val again was there to make us all look like the monsters which the MSM is fond of portraying us as. Can you imagine any transplanted New Orlenean telling The Times (New York or -Picayune) that the last thing that the victims of Hurricane Katrina needed was money! Did even David Duke oppose the $4000 debit cards that were distributed by the government to the homeless and displaced of New Orleans?

The answer to Val's question is obvious. "What are the Cuban people going to do with the money?" Everything that they can't do without it. They will be able to obtain water, food, medicine, shelter, clothing -- everything which they require to survive this crisis. Val knows very well that far from there being "nothing to buy in Cuba," everything is for sale there if you have the dollars to buy it. Of course you will have to buy it from the "Castro Depot," as Val likes to call it. The "Castro Depot" is the only store in the country. Cuba is, after all, a Communist state run like an antebellum plantation where provisions are available only from the master's larder and the master is by no means generous. If you hope to survive then you must find a way to supplement his scanty fare, whether that means stealing, begging or accepting charity. Whatever you do, of course, will rebound to the slaveholder's benefit. If he is only relieved of the burden of feeding you, then he is that much wealthier. But you, more importantly, are that much stronger because you are less dependent on him. Slavery consists of degrees of dependence and the less that you count on your master the more distance that will be placed between you.

Of course, self-reliance, as understood in a free society, is not an option open to you since your master claims your body and your labor. His authority is absolute because he has the guns and you have the shackles; he has the force of the lynch law on his side and you have only your feet. There is nothing that you alone can do to effect your own freedom that won't almost certainly lead to the grave. Your friends, under such circumstances, are those who would deliver you from your bondage, not those that would bound you over to it forever. Not those who ignore your cries for help, but those who heed them.

A man who sees your despair and is aware that you have no one else to turn to, yet is so denatured as not only to deny you his assistance but to counsel others against helping you, claiming that even money, which supplies his wants well enough and all mankind's besides, will be of no use to you in particular, is no friend to any man but himself and especially no friend to you.

Not even in the days of slavery was it considered a concession to evil to buy a slave's freedom. More slaves obtained their freedom that way than through any other means. Sometimes there is no other way than to bribe evil men to act against their interests and instincts. In the case of the Castro regime, there is in fact no other way to secure the survival of our people. We cannot even speak of freedom because this slave master may consent to let his slaves live but will never consent to their manumission. Freedom will come, nonetheless, but it must not be the freedom of the cemetery, which will be their fate unless we can save them.

The Enigmatic Death of Abel and Celia Hart

Before she took her own life on July 26, 1980, Haydée Santamaría, "Heroine of the Cuban Revolution," crashed her car against a tree in Miramar but survived to die more conspicuously a few weeks later from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Last Sunday, her two children, Abel (48) and Celia Hart Santamaría (46), were killed when their car crashed against a tree in Miramar in what has been officially reported as an accident. Was it in fact an accident or a suicide pact? That's a question that their father, Armando Hart Dávalos, another architect of Cuba's destruction, will have to ponder for the rest of his life.

Babalú to the Cuban People: "Let Them Eat Cake"

Babalú's position on family remittances is reprehensible. It was so before the hurricanes struck but now it amounts to genocidal intent. My endless taunts finally got Val to retire his "pressure cooker" for rendering humans (specifically Cubans), but though he does not use that metaphor anymore, the intent is the same because for him hurricanes are natural "pressure cookers." Val wants to increase, not lessen, the misery of the Cuban people in the hope that they will rise against their oppressors sans arms, sans food, sans everything. He has said in the past that all that is needed for Cuba to be free is for Cubans to "grow balls" and be willing to fill if not "rivers of blood" then at least "pools of blood." For Val this is not a time to help Cubans live but to let them die.

Since the regime will not allow as much as a nail to enter Cuba without its countenance, and the only means available of sending assistance to the island is through remittances, it is disingenuous to oppose the latter in favor of an alternative which doesn't exist. In fact, this is the modern-day equivalent of "Let them eat cake." If Marie-Antoinette really said that it was because she was naive not cynical. But the Babalunians are not in the least naive:

"Let's face it, folks, castro is not going to allow humanitarian organizations into Cuba to assist disaster relief. castro Depot is not going to allow "charity" from neighboring states it does not see eye to eye with. castro Depot is not going to allow its own people to coordinate their own relief efforts. castro Depot is not going to allow the Cuban people to receive, directly, humanitarian donations from abroad." -- Val Prieto, "Castro Depot," Babalú, Sept. 9, 2008

And again:

"Cuba does not allow these [humanitarian] organizations to come in and help the population, no matter how dire the circumstances, no matter how deadly the consequences. The Cuban government [sic] simply does not allow it. Period." -- Val Prieto, "And Speaking of Money...," Babalú, Sept. 8, 2008

And here is Gusano acknowledging the same thing:

"What needs to happen is international pressure for the Cuban regime to allow international aid to flow directly to the victims through internationally sanctioned agencies like the Red Cross. But the regime will never allow the Red Cross in Cuba. The only Red Cross in Cuba is the one that all Cubans are forced to carry on their backs." -- Gusano, "More Hurricane Food (for Thought)," Babalú, Sept. 9, 2008

Val and Gusano are both right. The Castro regime will never relieve the Cuban people of the cross that it has laid on their shoulders nor allow a Simon to help them bear it. Their 50-year via crucis will not be interrupted because of humanitarian concerns. The regime is deaf to all such appeals of conscience. But because it is deaf does not mean that we have to be. The Revolution's position is consistent with its history. Abandoning our countrymen to their fate, however, is not consistent with ours. For 50 years, Cuban exiles have been the only lifeline of our people. To withhold assistance at the hour of their greatest need in order to exert pressure on those who are unmoved by their plight accomplishes nothing except to make us accomplices to their desolation.

Not only does Babalú oppose a moratorium on present restrictions on remittances, it actually supports what amounts to a moratorium on aid from exiles to their Cuban brethren at least for "the first few weeks" of the crisis while they wait for emergency assistance from countries and international organizations which Val and Gusano have already admitted will never reach them:

"Let me make this crystal clear: sending some money to Cuba will undoubtedly help. There's no question about that. But for the first few weeks -- the first or two weeks even -- after a hurricane, there is no use for money [emphasis mine]. What the people affected by the storm need is food, water, medical supplies, clothes, shelter... you know, emergency supplies." -- Val Prieto, "Cuba Depot," Ibid

The first weeks are the most crucial in recovering from the effects of a hurricane. Yet it is precisely during that time that Val suggests Cubans will have "no use for money." What they will need then is "emergency supplies." But where are these "emergency supplies" to come from? Does he believe that the Castro regime will meet the needs of the Cuban people? Well, actually, yes:

"Ladies and gentlemen, if you were thinking about donating to some hurricane relief effort in Cuba or sending money to those in the affected areas, hold on to your cash. The following report proves that, as the saying goes, en Cuba no falta nada!" -- Val Prieto, "Milk for Babies!!!!!," Babalú, Sept. 9, 2008

So now we should trust the regime to do what is in the best interest of the Cuban people and rely on its assurances that it is supplying all their essential needs. Well, if the assurances of Castro's henchmen are enough to assuage Val's concern, such as it is, I would not be surprised. I suppose that this might also be a joke, which would make it marginally less offensive than if spoken in earnest; but hardly indicative of genuine solicitude in any case.

When Babalú reprinted Yoani Sánchez's latest post from Generación Y ("Scorched Earth," Sept. 9), where she writes that "the most viable initiative is for family members abroad to send cash to their relatives in Cuba," Val felt obliged to place his own coletilla attesting to the fact that her views on hurricane relief do not have his personal imprimatur lest anyone assume that reproducing her column implied an endorsement of her position on remittances:

"I must disagree with Yoani. The most viable initiative is not sending cash, but getting the Cuba government to allow humanitarian and relief organizations and agencies into the island [which] bring with them the infrastructure to distribute aid and repair Cuba's infrastructure on their own."

How exactly does Val propose to "get" the Castro regime to allow such assistance? He does not say. Certainly his optimism in this instance contradicts his previously stated position: "The Cuban government simply does not allow it. Period." It also contradicts his position after commenting on Yoani's post: "Let's face it, folks, castro is not going to allow humanitarian organizations into Cuba to assist disaster relief."

By now you have probably arrived at the same conclusion as I have: Val Prieto's only concern is to limit cash remittances to Cuba. He relies on President Bush for that; and on Castro himself to see to it that no humanitarian assistance makes it to Cuba from relief organizations. These are the necessary conditions for Val's pressure cooker and his excitement is great indeed at the prospect of its being turned on. If he could blog up another storm, he would. A week or two is all he hopes will be required under such optimal conditions. There's only one little problem with Val's pressure cooker. As Charlie Bravo once observed: "The theory of the pressure cooker worked wonders in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, and North Korea. Everybody got cooked inside it, and it never exploded."

Notable & Despicable: "Gorki Is No Havel"

"If Gorki is being set up as the Havel of Havana, then God help Cuba." -- Phil Peters, "Gorki!," The Cuban Triangle, September 7, 2008

Phil Peters is the tour guide at a supposedly independent think tank whose only Cuba-related activity is sponsoring junkets to the island for U.S. politicians sympathetic (or potentially sympathetic) to the regime. His investiture as a Cuba expert, however, has been approved by The New York Times and there is nothing more to be said on that matter.

If Phil Peters were a journalist writing about Gorki instead of an "expert," he would at least feel the obligation to get the name right. It is Gorki Aguila not "Avila," Mr. Peters. I wonder if this was actually a careless mistake or just another calculated attempt to belittle him, which seems the only purpose of Peter's belated post about him. I suppose that while the Gorki affaire played itself out -- and Peters was conveniently "away from the blog" -- he did not feel that it was the right time to dump on him. His comments as an "expert" would have been at variance with everybody else's from Amnesty International to The Times itself and would have made what should be obvious to all about Peters even more obvious. Now that Gorki has been released, however, Peters feels safe sitting on the fence again and in judgment of him.

He begins by disputing what he calls the "unanimous narrative" about Gorki, to wit,"that the Cuban government [sic] intended to silence him, but flinched and retreated in the face of an Internet-fueled blast of worldwide outrage." Peters is not so sure that the regime wanted to "silence" Gorki as in repressing his speech because he "blast[s] the government and its leaders in both political and personal terms, sometimes with obscenity." Now, Peters himself seems pretty shocked that Porno Para Ricardo would take such liberties and personally offended that it would resort to "obscenity" to combat the living embodiment of obscenity that is the Castro regime (or "government," as he would have it). Peters, who is apparently more zealous of the regime's "dignity" than is the regime, speculates that it was not the subversive content of Gorki's songs but the noise generated by his band's rehearsals that disturbed the public peace and led to Gorki's arrest. Of course, we all know how important quality of life issues are to the regime. No doubt it feared that Porno Para Ricardo's high-decibeled playing would crack the 3 or 4 intact panes of glass within a 20-block square radius of his studio or cause the walls to buckle that weren't already shored-up.

Ambrose Bierce defined "noise" in his Devil's Dictionary as "undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization." For Peters, however, music, at least in Cuba, should be domesticated and civilization itself reduced to silence. "Listen to the music,' asks Peters, "imagine living nearby as rehearsals are going on, and ask yourself if there’s a neighborhood on earth where a few neighbors wouldn’t call the cops." Of course, in Cuba those "few neighbors" would belong to the block's Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, the "eyes and ears" of state security. No one else would have denounced Gorki because his neighbors, unlike Peters, know the consequences of such a complaint to the police. The Cuban people prefer to keep their contacts with the police at a minimum. Their intervention in such matters is usually avoided because it is certain to complicate everybody's lives, including the complainant's.

Peters also debuts in this post as a music critic. He had never heard of Gorki before the punk rocker's recent arrest (I guess his handlers had never mentioned his name) and made it a point to listen to the songs on the Porno Para Ricardo website. He didn't like what he heard: the outrages committed by Castro's henchmen will always elicit a moderate response from him, but the forceful condemnation of those outrages by one who is not afraid to call Castro a "cocksucker," is more than Mr. Peters could stand. It's not just the "noise pollution" that Peters finds objectionable; he is also concerned that Cuba's children might be exposed to Gorki's explicit lyrics and feels that any parents who denounced him to the police on that account were justified. Never has Peters said one word about the deleterious effects which living in a police state would undoubtedly have on Cuba's children. Perhaps he should begin to research that question with Gorki's 12-year old daughter.

So great is Peters' aversion to Gorki's music and to what Gorki represents (a future without "Cuba experts") that he comes down from the fence he usually straddles to deliver himself of this remarkable statement:

"If Gorki is being set up as the Havel of Havana, then God help Cuba."

So now Gorki is not his own man but is being "set up" by others (?) who want him to be the next Havel, which Peters considers a ridiculous idea. These "others" are presumably using Gorki to hurt Cuba and Peters invokes God's intercession to save our country not from Castro but from Gorki!

For Peters' information (and I could start every sentence with that phrase), the Havel of Prague was himself accused of "obscenity." Perhaps obscenity is the only way to speak to tyrants, except for those, like Peters, who are trying to court them.

http://cubantriangle.blogspot.com/2008/09/gorki.html

On the Provision of Humanitarian Aid to Cuba

In view of the natural disasters that have lately befallen Cuba, compounded, as they are, by the regime's wilful abandonment of the island's infrastructure which has made the Cuban people infinitely more vulnerable to the effects of a Gustav or a Hannah than was ever the case before 1959, when there were no buildings in imminent danger of collapse before a hurricane struck nor a lack of basic supplies to combat and survive it, the question on most people's minds, or, at least, in the minds of Cuban exiles still sensible to the suffering of our countrymen, is how to relieve it.

That this is even a question shows what a unique set of facts confronts us when we attempt to penetrate the wall which Castro has erected between the Cuban people and the outside world. This wall exists to hide from the world the misery of the Cuban people and from the Cuban people the world's concern and disposition to help them. One would suppose that a time of national emergency the regime would lower or even dismantle that wall if only for the duration of the emergency; but in fact its efforts at such times are geared to shoring it up because its first priority is not to protect the people from natural or man-made disasters but to shield them from being "compromised" by the well-intentioned charity of others. When Cuba most needs the world's help, the regime is most wary of the world.

It's in the regime's interest to make the Cuban people feel that they are alone in the world, isolated and besieged even at the moment of their greatest need, and with no one to turn to but those who look upon their suffering as an opportunity to intensify their bondage. It's not just the labels on food packages that are considered subversive, though "Donated by the people of the United States," or by any other "non-fraternal" people whose largesse is unwelcome by the regime, is the tangible refutation of a half-century of Castroite propaganda. The labels could be easily torn off; in fact, they are are torn off when U.S. aid is funnelled through some United Nations agency and the contents then sold in state-owned stores or re-gifted to third countries as Cuba's contribution to their relief efforts.

What is most objectionable to the regime, however, is the very idea that, for the first time since Castro assumed control of food distribution 47 years ago, Cubans might actually have full stomachs for a day, a week or a month; that the hurricane, despite its ravages, might provide them with a reprieve from their daily routine of scavenging for food from daybreak to dusk, in the hope of filling the pot that was empty today and will be empty tomorrow without the replication of their exertions. At concentration camps, also, prisoners were kept on the edge of starvation so that all their efforts would be channelled to obtaining the turnip or potato that might allow them to cheat death another day. Castro has adapted that policy to an entire nation. If he had ever fulfilled their material needs, Cubans might have expected more of him. The human spirit rebels against injustice when life is not a struggle to keep body and soul together; but when it is, the needs of body come before the needs of the spirit. Without life there is no hope; but hope by itself cannot sustain life. Those who chastise Cubans for not rebelling against the regime should remember that the only victory within their grasp is to survive it. That, too, was the only victory available to the survivors of Weyler's camps.

How, then, can we alleviate the suffering of our countrymen on the island when we are barred from even mailing them a food package by those holding them hostage? We cannot depend on foreign countries because their assistance is neither wanted nor welcome; and, if accepted, will not be directed to those who need it. The obstacles which the regime has put in place to discourage donor nations will not stimulate munificence on their part when a token gesture elicits a more favorable response than the most generous offer.

Now, as always, it is Cuban exiles who have the greatest interest in the survival of our countrymen on the island. The most effective means at our disposal is still remittances. Yes, the regime will not declare a moratorium on usury because of the hurricane and shall, as usual, take its 10 or 20 percent off the top from all monies sent to Cuba. The rest, too, will eventually find its way into its coffers because in Cuba there is no trickle down, only trickle up. But the regime will get its hands on that money only after it has alleviated the suffering of millions of our people, and made them less, not more, dependent on it. The choice is not between starving the regime and starving the Cuban people, as I myself once mistakenly believed. The regime will not be starved out of power; its resources are already sufficient to insure its own survival, which is all that matters to it. The Cuban people, whether they die in the thousands or in the millions, signify only collateral damage since all is expendable in Cuba and will be sacrificed to maintain the Castro dynasty in power.

There is nothing more subversive we can do than feed and clothe the Cuban people and our success will be measured by how far we can extend our efforts on their behalf. These are necessarily hampered by the restrictions on remittances put in place by the Bush administration, which limited the amount that could be sent to relatives in Cuba and defined which relatives were eligible to receive assistance. The Cuban concept of family has resisted Castro's worst attempts to deconstruct it. By limiting "family" to parents and siblings, Bush in effect accomplished what Castro never could -- the dissolution of the extended Cuban family. In Cuba, family transcends even blood; it is a maze of inter-relations based on kinship but not restricted to it which has enabled even those without children to survive. To splinter the Cuban family is to weaken the Cuban people's strongest line of defense against the regime. Everything that strengthens it has the reciprocal effect of weakening the regime.

Bush's restrictions on remittances have allowed Barack Obama to become the spokesman for their elimination. Of course, he couldn't care less about remittances or the welfare of the Cuban people. It is the elimination of the trade embargo and resumption of relations with Communist Cuba which concern him and his foreign policy managers. Obama has called on President Bush to suspend temporarily the provisions of the U.S. trade embargo in response to the devastation wreaked by Gustav in Cuba. He did not request that Raúl Castro remove the barriers that have been put in place to hinder the provision of humanitarian aid to the island. When Obama asked for the suspension of the embargo what he really wanted was the extension of lines of credit to the regime, which is the only aspect of bilateral trade which the embargo currently proscribes. Or, to put it another way, Obama wants the U.S. to offer "remittances" to Castro himself while cutting out the middle men (i.e. the Cuban people), though eventually saddling them with the debt for underwriting their oppression.

Cuban exiles, as always, find ourselves in an untenable position, and within its narrow confines, we must decide what is best for our people.

75th Anniversary of "4th of September 1933"

There were revolutions in Cuba before 1959. Castro's revolution was in fact an anti-revolution, which institutionalized tyranny in our country and closed the recourse to arms as a means of national liberation. The revolution to end all revolutions ended Cuban freedom as well, laid waste to our country and destroyed millions of lives. It is hard to believe today that there was a time when the word "revolution" did not have the ominous connotations that it does today but signified hope, sacrifice and redemption. So great is our repugnance for the word now that it has all but been written out of our history. No one speaks of Martí's Revolution anymore as if to associate him with that concept were somehow to defame him or acquiesce to Castro's characterization of him as the precursor of his anti-Cuban revolution. By ceding to Castro all rights to the use of "revolution" we have deprived ourselves of the most honorable motif in our history and confined it into the hands of one who has used it to pervert our past and deprive us of our future.

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the "4th of September Revolution." It transpired at a crucial crossroads in Cuban history: the forces of fascism, communism and democracy were contending for the soul of the nation after Machado's ouster and a sergeant named Batista decided the contest in favor of democracy. It was a revolution without firing squads; without political prisoners; and without the abridgment of civil or human rights. It returned stability to the nation and inaugurated the most progressive era in Republican history. Nationalistic without being militaristic, it demanded and obtained the abrogation of the Platt Amendment ending Cuba's vassalage to the U.S. and securing its absolute sovereignty. Its social legislation established Cuba in the forefront of the world's most advanced nations and gave Cubans a living standard that surpassed that of most Western industrialized countries. This was not the work of one man but a process that involved different players with conflicting points of view on the commonweal. All coalesced, however, to draft the Constitution of 1940, the synthesis of the achievements of the 1933 Revolution as well as its culmination and conclusion. A revolution that supplants the government has failed as a revolution and will fail as a government. The success of a revolution is judged by its demission not its perpetuation in power.

The 1940 Constitution was and continues to be a source of pride for all Cubans and shall one day be the cornerstone on which a restored Cuban Republic will be erected. In that sense the Revolution of 1933 is more alive today than Castro's Revolution because its roots are in the future whereas the 1959 Revolution is like a mushroom that has no roots and will leave nothing but a stain.

Sarah Palin's Speech

An excellent acceptance speech by Governor Palin. I would only have added this passage to her introduction of her family:

"And did you hear? I'm going to be a grandmother! That, too, is a baby that God made and I welcome him to my family."

The Galveston Hurricane (1900): How Cuba Nearly Saved the U.S. from the Worst Natural Disaster in Its History

According to our new favorite not-so-useful idiot, "the Gulf Coast of the United States can thank Cuba for lessening the force of Hurricane Gustav" and sparing it its worst effects. Is that right? Did Cubans willingly consent to take the blunt of the storm's fury so that the U.S. could be spared the worst of it (and to whom exactly did they address their consent)? Did Castro's santeros raise prayers and make sacrifices at his behest for such an outcome so that the Republican Convention might not be preempted or President Bush blamed again for an act of Nature? Or did Castro himself, like a superannuated Moses, order the winds and waters to bypass the U.S. Gulf Coast and they obeyed him?

That, at least, is a more plausible scenario than Castro asking that the hurricane spare Cuba. Castro welcomes every hurricane and natural disaster as a vote of confidence from the dark forces that favor him. Anything that adds to the misery of the Cuban people increases his power over them and perpetuates his tyranny. Communist Cuba does not accept humanitarian assistance from other countries because that would loosen Castro's stranglehold on the Cuban people and indicate to them that they are not alone in the world despite his efforts over 50 years to isolate them. Only if we consider Cubans as Castro's hostages, beholden to him for even a gulp of water or crust of bread, can we understand their plight and his ruthlessness. Worst infinitely than the ravages of Nature, which it also compounds and exploits, are the man-made disasters the regime inflicts on the Cuban people both as a function of its incompetence and as a means of control.

The claims which are made on behalf of the regime by its apologists become more outrageous in proportion to their disposition to serve the regime and the perceived needs of the regime itself. Ironically, however, what is claimed in this case is only far-fetched because the character of the regime itself precludes it. Cubans did endeavor, more than a century ago, to allay the greatest natural disaster that ever befell this country, not through superhuman agency, but by sharing our own experience and expertise on hurricanes with the United States.

The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 killed more Americans than the Johnstown Flood, the San Francisco earthquake and the Great Chicago Fire combined. You could add the casualties of 9/11 as well to that total, and the Galveston Hurricane, which killed between 8000-12000 people in one day, would still be the worst peacetime disaster (natural or man-made) in U.S. history. It could have been averted if U.S. officials had listened to repeated warnings from Father Lorenzo Gangoite, director of Cuba's Belén Observatory, who correctly predicted the trajectory of the hurricane and warned that it was headed straight in the direction of Galveston island. The U.S. Weather Bureau did worse than ignore him: it suppressed the telegraphs which Father Gangoite had sent by military wire and banned him from sending any more. If they had heeded his advice and evacuated the area, not one life would have been lost. Instead, convinced that the hurricane would curve northward towards the Eastern seaboard and away from the Gulf Coast, the Weather Bureau's official forecast for Galveston called for "rain followed by clearing" on the day the hurricane hit with 135 mile per hour winds and tidal waves which swept away half the houses and sank most of the island underwater.

It was not unknown to the Americans that Cuban meteorologists, led by Father Benito Viñes, had pioneered the science of charting hurricanes two decades before the U.S. Weather Service was organized in 1900. They failed to act on Father Gangoite's timely warnings because they "hated the Cubans" who "were extremely good at predicting cyclones -- way better than the U.S. could hope to be." Rather than, as in the case of yellow fever, follow the advice of the leading Cuban expert if only to steal the credit from him, they chose to ignore Father Gangiote with consequences as calamitous as if they had ignored Dr. Carlos J. Finlay.

The city of Galveston, incidentally, was named in honor of General Bernardo Gálvez, hero of the battles of Mobile and Pensacola during the American Revolution. The troops which Gálvez commanded in those engagements were derived principally from the Havana garrison. Our history is linked in a thousand ways to that of our more northerly neighbor (Cuba, too, is part of North America). And it is always Cubans who have contributed to the greatness of this country selflessly and anonymously (for all practical effects). In turn we have seen our country destroyed and enslaved because of the sometimes well-meaning (and sometimes not) interference of the U.S. in our affairs. If Cubans had only to contend with Nature we would have been alright. It was unnatural forces that produced the denatured monster that has raged and rages still in our country. There has never been a hurricane "Fidel." That name was taken a long ago.

http://www.historyhouse.com/in_history/galveston/

Cleaning-Up the Back(b)log

Here are two posts from last week which I wrote but did not publish at the time because I wanted to keep Gorki's arrest uppermost and the posts relating to him together:

Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908-2008)

Beacon Street Irregular is Out

Meet Fidel Odinga

Yes, his complete name is Fidel Castro Odinga. He is the eldest son of Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga and a first cousin to Barack Hussein Obama. The late Obama Sr. was the prime minister's maternal uncle. Although Obama Sr. was educated at Harvard and Odinga in East Germany, uncle and nephew were friends and political allies.

Today it is Barack Obama and Raila Odinga who have formed a transcontinental political alliance. In fact, Senator Obama, in an unprecedented breech of protocal, went to Kenya in 2006 to campaign on his cousin's behalf in that country's presidential election.

Raila lost the election when a secret pact was revealed with Kenya's Muslim Brotherhood to institute sharia law in all the country's courts in exchange for their support of his candidacy. This is all the more remarkable because it is Christianity (66%), not Islam (10%), which is the largest religion in Kenya, and English common law, not the Koran, which is the basis for its legal system. Or, perhaps, it is not so remarkable, after all, since both the Odingas and Obamas belong to the 10 percent.

Although not an observant Muslim, Odinga does represent Moammar Qaffafy's oil interests in southern Africa, which may better explain his willingness to tranform his non-Muslim country into a Muslim state as Idi Amin did in Uganda when he was the recipient of the colonel's largesse 30 years ago.

Odinga's connection to Barack Obama, however, has proved more useful in his political career than Qadaffy's billions. It was in the expectation of Obama's election as president, and to ingratiate himself to him, that Odinga's political rival offered him the premiership as a consolation prize.

When Prime Minister Odinga named his son "Fidel Castro," he broke with Kenyan tradition as he should have named him for the boy's grandfather Oginga Odinga (the Kenyan "Fidel Castro"), a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary who led an unsuccessful coup to topple the government of Kenya on behalf of the Soviets.

It is not known whether Oginga Odinga's brother-in-law, Obama Sr., was involved in the coup, though given the tribal character of politics in Kenya it would be difficult to imagine that he wasn't at least aware of it or wouldn't have profited by it even if he didn't contribute to it. Indeed, that may have been the reason for Obama Sr.'s failed political career in Kenya.

It is certainly ironic that Obama Sr.'s star eclipsed because of his relationship to Oginga Odinga, whereas his son Raila's rose because of his connection to Obama Jr.

We wonder how things might have turned out if Obama Sr., the Harvard-trained economist, had followed his cousin's example and named his American-born son "John Maynard Keynes Obama."