tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-344969102024-03-05T06:16:08.949-05:00José Martí BlogManuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.comBlogger136125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-19668327184424968682019-01-02T19:34:00.000-05:002019-01-06T12:14:56.657-05:00Antonio de la Cova (1950-2018)<br />
Antonio de la Cova (1950-2018), a brilliant iconoclastic historian who never compromised his views for the sake of expediency or personal advancement, has just passed away. He is responsible for the definitive investigation of the assault on the Moncada Barracks that highlights the cowardice, incompetence and opportunism which were the hallmarks of Fidel Castro's entire career. He founded one of the first and most useful internet archives to combat Castro's disinformation and expose the academics who propagate it.<br />
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If he had not done anything else, he would have done more than the majority in his position to promote the cause of freedom, but he did much more: he almost sacrificed his life and, in fact, sacrificed his best years in the quest to end slavery in our country by waging war on the slaveholders in the tradition of John Brown and other redeemers of men.<br />
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Branded a "terrorist" and imprisoned here for doing exactly that for which another generation of Cubans had been hailed as "liberators", Antonio de la Cova was a radical and extremist in his attachment to the truth and his refusal to compromise his principles regardless of personal consequences. And that vocation was born in him when he was barely ten years old and went into exile with his parents. It seems incredible but at 68 he was the youngest of his generation of freedom fighters, the last generation of Cubans to take up arms in defense of their country.<br />
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It is impossible to take the full measure of the man without acknowledging his militancy and <i>noble intransigencia</i> (Martí's phrase). Even those who have rightly praised him have declined to state why he is praiseworthy as if alluding to his past were somehow impolitic or impolite. Well, perhaps to them. The deceased never denied or obscured his past. On his website are reproduced pertinent documents relating to it.<br />
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As Maceo pointed out and de la Cova well understood, no nation has ever been freed by begging for its rights. De la Cova's chosen course, though disastrous to himself and ultimately unfruitful, was not the wrong course: the time may not have been right, the circumstances unfavorable and allies unreliable or even treacherous, but the impulse, the motive and the aspirations were pure and beyond reproach. De la Cova was a historian of lost causes, but no cause is ever really lost. There are no lost causes only lost men, He himself was never lost and he deserves to be honored for it.<br />
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<i>Acaba de fallecer el profesor Antonio de la Cova (1950-2018), brillante historiador iconoclasta que nunca comprometió sus puntos de vista en aras de la conveniencia o el avance personal. A él se le debe la investigación definitiva de los acontecimientos del asalto al Cuartel Moncada que destaca la cobardía, la incompetencia y el oportunismo que fueron las características de toda la vida de Fidel Castro. Fundó uno de los primeros y más útiles archivos de Internet para combatir la desinformación castrista y exponer a los académicos que lo propagan.</i><br />
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<i>Si no hubiera hecho nada más, habría hecho más que la mayoría en su posición para promover la causa de la libertad, pero hizo mucho más: casi sacrificó su vida y, de hecho, sacrificó sus mejores años para acabar con la esclavitud en nuestro país al hacer la guerra a los esclavistas en la tradición de John Brown y otros redentores de hombres.</i><br />
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<i>Tachado como "terrorista" y encarcelado aquí por hacer exactamente eso por lo que otra generación de cubanos había sido aclamada como "liberadora", Antonio de la Cova era un radical y extremista en su apego a la verdad y su negativa a comprometer sus principios independientemente de las consecuencias personales. Y ese apostolado nació en él cuando apenas tenía diez años y salió al exilio con sus padres. Parece increíble pero a los 68 años era el más joven de su generación de luchadores por la libertad, la última generación de cubanos en tomar armas en defensa de su país.</i><br />
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<i>Es imposible tomar la medida completa del hombre sin reconocer su militancia y noble intransigencia (frase de Martí). Incluso aquellos que lo han elogiado con justicia se han negado a decir por qué es digno de elogio como si aludir a su pasado fuera de alguna manera impolítico o descortés. Bueno, tal vez para ellos. El difunto nunca negó ni oscureció su pasado. En su página web se reproducen los documentos pertinentes relativos al mismo.</i><br />
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<i>Como lo señaló Maceo y de la Cova lo entendió bien, ninguna nación ha sido liberada al mendigar sus derechos. El rumbo elegido por De la Cova, aunque desastroso para sí mismo y, en última instancia, infructuoso, no fue el rumbo equivocado: el momento puede no haber sido el correcto, las circunstancias desfavorables y los aliados no fiables y hasta traicioneros, pero el impulso, el motivo y las aspiraciones fueron puras e irreprochables. De la Cova fue un historiador de las causas perdidas, pero ninguna causa está realmente perdida. No hay causas perdidas, sólo hombres perdidos. Él mismo nunca se perdió y merece ser honrado por ello.</i>
Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-59366585691343561452017-09-13T20:52:00.001-04:002017-09-14T10:31:39.802-04:00A Cuban Child Rescues Martí's Bust from the Mire<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This photograph was taken by Yander Zamora in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, and is undoubtedly the most important and symbolic of these last 58 years: portraying the reality that Cubans live and the hope of a better one in the future. I do not quote Martí's famous words about children because I know they are on everybody's mind. Before this photograph, the most emblematic one about Cuba's fate also featured a child: Elián González. It symbolized betrayal and hopelessness, which have also been part of our reality. <br />
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Everyone will read this picture according to his own history and draw from it what drew him to it.
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For me, it means the hope that someday it will be possible to restore Martí to his pedestal, not only the plaster bust that the child is carrying, but the man and his ideas, and that he will again occupy the central place in the national pantheon, without offensive comparisons to those who dedicated themselves to destroying his legacy and enslaving his people.
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And what about the child who represents the innate and indestructible dignity of that martyred people? Without losing the nobility and simplicity proper to his years, his face is marked with deep pain and steely determination, as if he has learned the lessons of the past and knows that he holds the promise of the future.
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Fidel Castro's followers suppressed every trace of rebelliousness in their children, terrible fathers who emasculated them so that they could never occupy their rightful place in the course of generations, allowing them, the "historical architects" of the revolution, to rule forever without ever yielding their place to them.
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But this child and all his generation are not within the reach of those diabolical great-grandparents. They will grow up without fear and confident of themselves and will be the ones who put an end to tyranny someday. Perhaps, they will even teach their fathers and grandfathers what it means to be men, that surely it is not to look passively while their children are enslaved with their same chains, to ignore their cries of hunger, and to accept a future for them that is not worthy of the human condition.
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<i>Click on photograph to view a larger version.</i>Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-86154842513433607212016-05-19T03:09:00.002-04:002016-05-19T04:14:35.347-04:00"M. de S.:" José Martí's False "Disguise"<b><br /></b>
<b>How 300+ Articles in<i> The</i> [New York] <i>Sun </i>by Another Author Were Wrongly Attributed to José Martí by Ivan A. Schulman. After 50 years, the Real Author Revealed.</b><br />
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In "José Martí y el 'Sun' de Nueva York: nuevos escritos desconocidos," published first in the <i>Anales de la Universidad de Chile</i> [Number 139, pp. 30-49], in 1966, and reprinted two years later in <i>La Gaceta de Cuba</i> [Number 65, June-July 1968, pp. 22-25], U.S. hispanicist Ivan A. Schulman announced that he had identified over 300 hitherto uncollected articles by Marti that had appeared in <i>The Sun</i> over twelve years (1882-1895). All the attributed articles from this period were signed with the initials "M. de S." The fact that Schulman does not cite the exact number of "M. de S." articles published in <i>The Sun</i>, nor deigns to provide even a partial list, much less entire articles, suggests that he never knew the real extension of his alleged discovery. Apparently, having convinced himself that "M. de S." was Martí's alter ego, everything which appeared above those initials was assigned to the Cuban without the need to keep a tally or perhaps even sight unseen. If Schulman had actually read all 300+ articles, it is possible that he might have disabused himself of this conceit. That he took ten years to publish his findings indicates that there was indeed some vacillation. In fact, the first to report Schulman's discovery was not Schulman but his teacher and mentor Manuel Pedro González, who made it a point in all his books to mention the "M. de S."attribution as an undisputed fact even before Schulman had staked his claim to, and made his case for, the articles. If accepted as authentic, these 300+ articles would constitute the largest single addition to the canon since Gonzalo de Quesada published the first edition of Martí's <i>Obras Completas</i>. The prospect of making such a contribution can pacify many doubts and feed many illusions.<br />
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Schulman recognized — as he could hardly hope to conceal it — that the "M. de S." articles were quite unlike anything that Martí had ever written before: impersonal and conventional; ironic and satirical; snobbish and fawning; frivolous and irrelevant for the most part. But rather than dismiss the articles on that account, Schulman posited that these incongruities were actually intentional, and rather than refute Martí's authorship, confirmed it. The incongruities, amounting to "self-disfigurement," as Schulman admits, formed part of an elaborate "disfraz" [disguise] which Martí had allegedly assumed when chronicling the gossip of European courts and allied topics, not because he would have been personally embarrassed to be known as a transatlantic gossip-monger, but because <i>The Sun's</i> editor, Charles A. Dana, noted for having pioneered personal journalism in the U.S., had prevailed on a penurious Martí to de-personify his prose style because <i>The Sun's </i>readers, supposedly, couldn't stomach its "tropological richness." Only by willfully "bastardizing his natural prose style," "drowning the artist" and "strangling his aesthetics," "disguising his ideology and personal inclinations," and "suppressing characteristic moral and social observations," could Martí's writing, in Schulman's estimation, pass muster at what Martí himself considered the world's best-written newspaper. Thus was born the un-Martí who, according to Schulman, wrote the "M. de S." articles in <i>The Sun</i>.<br />
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Schulman based his identification of "M. de S." with José Martí on external rather than internal factors, or what he calls "coincidences more than fortuitous:" the first "M. de S." article appeared in <i>The Sun </i> within a year of Martí's last acknowledged contribution (signed José Martí), and the "M. de S." byline disappeared completely from <i>The Sun</i> a month before Martí's death. The other piece of so-called evidence is of a similar character: the "M. de S." byline appeared for the first time in <i>The Sun</i> just a couple of months after Martí had severed his connection with <i>La Opinion Nacional</i>, of Caracas, where he wrote under the pseudonym "M. de Z." Of course, two men are not one and the same man because they enter and leave through the same door at the same time. Nor does the fact that Martí wrote under the pseudonym"M. de Z." to protect himself and his editor from persecution by Venezuelan dictator Guzman Blanco prove that Martí adopted "M. de S." in order to shield himself from the embarrassment of prostituting his genius and defacing his art. For Martí, even when writing a paid advertisement for gym equipment in <i>La América</i>, was always and unmistakably Martí. His writing could raise the level of any subject, but never did he write beneath his ability when treating any subject.<br />
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In "Seis crónicas inéditas de José Martí," published in <i>Cuban Studies 29</i> [1999], the late Carlos Ripoll and I challenged on various grounds Schulman's attribution of the "M. de S." articles to Martí. The reader is referred to that volume if he is interested in our reasons for rejecting Martí's authorship. The most compelling and simplest is that the final "M. de S." article published in <i>The Sun</i>, entitled "Paris Street Cleaning" (which the author refers to as "the <i>toilette"</i> of the city), is dated April 2, 1895, when Martí, who had already left New York for the last time, was ensconced at the old pirate-base of Great Inagua island, in the Bahamas. By the time it was published, on April 14, Martí and Máximo Gómez had succeeded in landing clandestinely in Cuba and were deep in the rebel <i>manigua</i>. Supposing that Martí was not preoccupied with other things during the last days of his life, how had he obtained the information to write that article (which is full of statistical data) and how was it smuggled out of the island — and why? Would Dana have asked Martí to write a 1750-word essay on garbage collection in Paris rather than a report from the trenches on the outbreak of war in Cuba? Is this, then, Martí's "Sanitary Testament," which complements his "Political Testament" and his "Literary Testament?" The absurdity of such a conjecture is so obvious and undeniable that the claim itself is its own refutation. Nevertheless, there are still those — including Ilian Stavans and Laura Lomas — who accept Schulman's attribution even after it was debunked in <i>Cuban Studies</i>. Stick the name "Martí" to something and it is very difficult to remove it.<br />
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As I wrote (to) Ripoll 20 years ago, "[i]t would be nice (but hardly necessary) to identify the real 'M. de S.' It is, rather, up to Schulman to show that Martí is 'M. de S.,' and that, of course, is impossible because he is not." I recognized later that it is more than "nice," indeed, it is imperative to discover the real identity of the author of the "M. de S." articles; for only then can Martí finally be free of the threat to his reputation posed by their capricious attribution to him. The answer, I suspected, was to be found in <i>The Sun</i>; itself and nowhere else. And that is exactly where I found it, among 280,000 other articles published in that period. Schulman had scoured the newspaper for all articles signed "M. de S.," which was almost a mechanical task. He did not, however, look for articles <i>about</i> "M. de S.," presuming no doubt that Martí would not want or consent to be unmasked in <i>The Sun </i> after so much trouble to conceal his identity and "strangle his aesthetics."<br />
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The real "M. de S." did not mind in the least being outed by her own paper since the attendant publicity served her ends. It was to promote her first novel that she consented to let her readers in on what was already an open secret. <i>The Sun's</i> book review, published on January 4, 1890, (p. 5, column 4), disposed of her anonymity: "The author is a newspaper correspondent widely known and esteemed. Readers of THE SUN have long been familiar with her work through the versatile and admirable European letters signed "M. de S." English social life has been minutely studied by Mme. Van de Velde and the results of her keen and appreciative observation are apparent in "Dr. Greystone.'" <i>The Writer</i>, a Boston-based monthly still published today, also identified Madam Van de Velde as the author of <i>The Sun's</i> "M. de S." column [Feb. 1890, Vol. IV, No. 2, p. 45]: "The New York Sun's European correspondent who writes under the signature "M. de S." is a lady, Mme. Van de Velde, who lives in London, and who has just published a novel, 'Dr. Greystone.'"<br />
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M[aria]. de S[auges]. Van de Velde (1833-1913), who wrote under her actual initials, was the wife of the Danish ambassador to the Court of St. James, and the editor, translator and benefactor of the American-expatriate author Bret Harte, who died in her home and was interred in a tomb designed and paid by her. with the inscription: "In faithful remembrance, M.S. Van de Velde." She was the author of <i>French Fiction To-day</i> [1891), and of <i>Random Recollections of Court and Society </i> [1888] and <i>Cosmopolitan Recollections</i> [1889], which treated at length the same subjects that she covered in her columns in <i>The Sun</i> and <i>The London World.</i> All of these books have recently been re-issued by print-on-demand publishers in India.<br />
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Ironically, in his article attributing Mme. Van de Velde's body of work in <i>The Sun</i> to José Martí, Ivan A. Schulman almost hit on the truth before dismissing it in favor of his version of magical realism: "On reading and analyzing the articles signed "M. de S." (as well as the one article signed "de Z.") the idea occurred to us on more than one occasion that, perhaps, this might be the work of a European, French, or Spanish columnist." Schulman quickly abandoned that idea after consulting several dictionaries of pseudonyms (which he lists in his article) and not finding an entry for "M. de S." in any of them. Why he would think that this confirmed his case for Martí is a question which he must now ask himself and which we cannot answer. Nor can we explain his assertion that "[d]espite Martí's artistic dissatisfaction [with the "M. de S." articles], and taking into account all of their imperfections, these writings do not diminish Martí's literary stature." Schulman could not be more wrong. The mere suggestion that Martí could have authored them is in itself damaging. If these articles had been admitted into the canon, as Schulman advised, the damage would have been catastrophic and perhaps irremediable.<br />
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Schulman's misattribution of the "M. de S." articles did have the unintended and indirect effect of rescuing Madame Van de Velde's writings from obscurity and elevating them light years beyond their merits. In this article, I have had to out "M. de S." a second time so that she might regain possession of what rightfully belongs to her. Thanks to Schulman's gaffe, Madame Van de Velde literary reputation (such as it is) has not only been burnished, but her name is now linked through history with not just Bret Harte's but José Martí's. She is really the only winner in this comedy of errors which had a 50-year run and closes today.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">This article was originally published in Spanish in <i>Cuba Encuentro</i> on May 13, 2016 as: </span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.cubaencuentro.com/cultura/articulos/m-de-s-el-disfraz-falso-de-jose-marti-325544">"M. de S.": el "disfraz" falso de José Martí</a></span>Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-57144505206253184482016-03-02T20:30:00.000-05:002016-03-03T06:07:52.905-05:00The Mountebank with AC and DC Currents in his Hair (and Head)<br />
For the first time in my life I believe that the United States is in an even more hopeless situation than Cuba. The clock will soon expire on the Castro gerontocracy, which can neither be revived nor cloned. If it is a victory to survive the worst, then a majority of Cubans can claim that victory, even in the midst of our country's ruin and the devastation wreaked on the lives of millions of our countrymen. The pall that settled for 57 years upon our country, while not exactly lifting, has grown grayer with time, and it is now possible to discern the outlines of the future: one which may not be to our liking and which almost certainly will not satisfy all Cubans (and, I suspect, will be a great disappointment to me personally); but, regardless, a different course (curse?) with different actors and an abbreviated shelf-life. <br />
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With greater clarity and no less certainty, America's fate is also being decided in these days. Will the great American experiment, born in revolution and tried in the crucible of civil war, fail at last because a man may be elected president whose ignorance and arrogance are the mirror image of Lincoln's wisdom and humility, who can divide a nation but can never hope to unite it?<br />
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The only minority group in this country that this aptly dubbed con-man has declined to insult is the KKK. Though prodded to repudiate the Klan for the biblical three times, he would not deny it. Why does the mother of all hate groups command such great deference from him? Does his tent, self-punctured with a thousand holes, still offer a warm spot to this oldest and historically most lethal domestic terrorist organization? He is either the most stupid man ever to run for president or the most dangerous (not that one excludes the other). On his defeat depends the survival of the Republican Party, and, indeed, the two-party system in this country. His victory would be calamitous. His defeat, because it would give us Hillary Clinton as president, would be just as calamitous. With him on the ticket there is no victory possible.<br />
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Cuban-Americans can take pride in the fact that they have provided the only two viable alternatives to the impending crisis in the Republican Party. In this case, however, one is better than two because two can only contribute to the victory of this one-man Fifth Column. It is time for Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz to quit the race and endorse the other Cuban-American. The one who retires will be the greater patriot and the greater man. But the other will save the American Republic from the fate that awaits it if that mountebank with AC and DC currents in his hair (and in his head) is elected president. Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-27035101938741753162016-02-27T22:11:00.000-05:002016-02-29T00:02:17.460-05:00Ramón Castro y Ruz (1924-2016)<br />
Ramón Castro y Ruz will be remembered, if he is remembered at all, as Fidel's older lackluster (some have even said "uneducated")) brother, but he was no such thing except as an imposture that assured his survival in a tribe dominated by a cheating Jacob. Ironically, Ramón was actually the one successful son in that family of wastrels. Of course, we do not consider Fidel or Raúl a success because their race was run without competitors. They shot, jailed and exiled anyone who threatened their monopoly on power, whether political or economic. Ramón was almost their first victim.<br />
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Before the Revolution, Ramón excelled as a politician and businessman. While Fidel never held a job in his life and depended on hand-outs from his family to support himself and his wife and son, Ramón prospered as a rancher and was thrice elected a councilman in his hometown of Mayarí — <i>the first and only Castro ever to win a free election in Cuba. </i>When his father Angel Castro died, Ramón purchased from his seven brothers and sisters their respective shares in his estate, which consisted of a 21,000 acre plantation and 28 outbuildings. We will not discuss how the paterfamilias acquired his property; his son Ramón, however, came into possession of it honestly.<br />
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He was not to enjoy it for long, however. One of the first things that Fidel Castro did upon coming to power was to confiscate his brother's land. Of course, his brother's along with everybody else's. With their backs literally against the (execution) wall, most landowners did not protest. Ramón did.<br />
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On his own behalf and as president of the National Association of Cuban Landowners (<i>Colonos</i>), he wrote a public letter to Fidel protesting the so-called Agrarian Reform, which resulted in the confiscation of all the country's arable land, not for the purpose of re-distributing it to the peasants (who were confined by Castro to cooperative farms), but to deprive the landed gentry of the source of their wealth and influence by replacing thousands of landowners with just one. Ramón's letter was published in <i>Prensa Libre</i> just before Castro nationalized and shut down every newspaper in the country.<br />
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Let us not overrate Ramón Castro's courage. He was the tyrant's brother and that was a title that could not be stripped from him. Still, he took a chance and it was a close call. Fratricide is certainly not beyond the brothers Castro, who had already executed 15,000 Cubans without due process or appeal in a country where the death penalty did not exist before 1959. Incredibly, more Cubans were shot by firing squad that year than died of natural causes. Fortunately for Ramón, Lina Ruz was still alive at the time.<br />
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Still, at Fidel's instigation (and some think in his own words), Ramón was attacked viciously in the government press as an <i>"hermano desnaturalizado"</i> (unnatural brother), accused of being a tool of United Fruit and a coward who had abstained from the struggle against Batista while his brothers directed the Revolution (always at a respectable distance and out of harm's way). Unlike his sister Juanita, the other discontented sibling in the Castro family, Ramón did not go into exile; but eventually decided that the intangible advantages of being the dictator's brother might well be worth 20,000 acres if he stopped demanding as his right what was now only in his brother's gracious gift. His gamble paid off. The brothers were reconciled and Ramón got back his plantation and became the only (and last) rancher in Cuba.<br />
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<b>POSTSCRIPT:</b><br />
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On re-reading this post it now seems to me that Ramón Castro comes off as too much of a hero for his initial opposition to the Agrarian Reform. Let it be noted, therefore, that Ramón Castro was also very much his father's son. He not only inherited Angel Castro's plantation but ran it exactly as his father had. He contracted for Haitian laborers, who were not allowed to live outside the grounds of the estate and were paid in script that could only be redeemed at the company store. Wholly dependent on their <i>amo</i> (master) for survival, the Haitians had even less protection than did 19th century Cuban slaves. They could be replaced easily and at no cost, whereas the death of a slave a century earlier meant the loss of an investment of thousands of dollars. For his harsh treatment of the Haitian "guest workers," Ramón Castro was known among the rebels in the Sierra Maestra as "el <i>negrero</i>" (the black slaver).<br />
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Like his younger brothers, Ramón was a sociopath accustomed to winning arguments with a gun. It is not known how many Haitians he killed, but he was accused though never prosecuted for the murder of four fugitives from the Moncada Barracks who had sought refuge at the Castro plantation in Birán, presumably because he feared he would be implicated personally in the attack. That's one more victim than Fidel killed in his youth, and he, too, escaped prosecution. Fidel was careful never actually to face his adversaries, but preferred to shoot them in the back (that way, if they survived, they could not identify him). The worst, though, was little brother Raúl, a serial killer just out of his teens. While ensconced in the hills, he entertained himself by hunting for "spies" among the rebel ranks and executed more of his own men as "traitors" than were felled by Batista's soldiers (46 executions vs. 35 casualties, in 1957). At one point, Fidel had to tell Raúl to stop because he was single-handedly winning the "war" for the enemy ("war" is in quotations marks because there were a total of 184 battlefield casualties on both sides in 3 years of alleged fighting).Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-87061099134789474102015-11-15T09:55:00.000-05:002015-11-15T10:17:18.648-05:00The Francis Effect: The Twerking Bishops of Indonesia<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="352" scrolling="no" src="//gloria.tv/embed/frame/media/NTpRcvdAfG7/width/640/height/352" width="640"></iframe><br />
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I still say that Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Archbishop of Havana, could beat them in any twerk off, though the fat bishop @ .58 would be a formidable opponent.<br />
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<a href="https://gloria.tv/media/NTpRcvdAfG7">https://gloria.tv/media/NTpRcvdAfG7/a</a><br />
H/T: <a href="http://popefrancisthedestroyer.blogspot.com/2015/11/oh-yeah-suretheres-cardinal-pitted.html">Francis the Destroyer Blog</a>Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-64903293850052168892015-11-14T10:26:00.001-05:002016-05-19T03:27:36.892-04:00Is a Biopic of "María Martí" in the Works at 20th Century Fox?<br />
On November 13, 2015 at 5:35pm the <b>José Martí Blog</b> hosted a visit from Twentieth Century Fox (I.P. Address 216.205.224). It landed here through a search on Bing for "josé martí maría mantilla," which directed them to <a href="http://josemartiblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/myth-of-jose-martis-natural-daughter.html">The Myth of José Martí's Natural Daughter</a>.<br />
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What could this possibly mean? One thing only comes to mind: someone there is researching a screenplay based on Martí's alleged paternity of María Mantilla.<br />
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There is no evidence to support such a conjecture and much evidence to refute it (including Martí's own written denial). But, of course, Hollywood is a distorter, not a purveyor, of historical facts. Perhaps the movie studio has purchased the rights to Francisco Goldman's novel <i>The Divine Husband</i>, or, less likely, the truculent Romero sisters — María Mantilla's grand-daughters — have found some nonagenarian hack who knew their uncle César and was willing to put forward their suggestion for a "María Martí" biopic. Perhaps they have even prepared their own treatment (which should doom the project from the start).<br />
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We hope that whoever visited this blog on Nov. 13 from Twentieth Century Fox got a good splash of cold water and put that project forever to rest. <br />
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See also:<br />
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<a href="http://josemartiblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/an-email-from-maria-mantillas.html">An E-Mail from María Mantilla's Grand-Daughters</a><br />
<a href="http://josemartiblog.blogspot.com/2013/07/more-observations-on-romero-e-mail.html">More Observations on the Romero E-mail</a>Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-8357395365900153752015-11-07T11:49:00.000-05:002015-11-08T09:21:59.425-05:00Book Review: "José Martí y la cuestión indígena" by Jorge Camacho<br />
The greatest reverence that can be shown to any historical figure is to desire to know everything about him. The most faithful biographer is the one who provides the most complete picture of his subject, not the myth-maker or repeater of the accepted pieties who wishes us to know only what he believes will elevate our opinion of his hero. These hagiographic histories can be sincere and well-intended, and those who are satisfied by them would no doubt reject less orthodox treatments as sacrilegious or at least mischievous. So it is that the true historian, who hides nothing and puts the truth before his own interests, is often ostracized by those that hold that the truth must always be subordinate to the greater good (as they perceive it) and that to smash an idol is worse than to worship one.<br />
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No figure in Cuban history, and, indeed, few figures in world history, have been more victimized by their self-appointed "champions" than has José Martí. Indeed, it can be argued that it was not until the advent of the late Carlos Ripoll that the many coats of varnish that had been slapped on Martí's portrait were finally stripped away and the original exposed to the light much to its advantage. That work of restoration is an ongoing one, in exile, at least, if not in Cuba, where the opposite process has been underway for 56 years, resulting in a mutilated and falsified depiction of Martí which serves the purposes of the island's ruling elite, whatever those purposes happen to be at any given time: whether Martí as the "Intellectual Author of the Revolution," the somewhat slow disciple of Marx, or the nationalist cum socialist (precursor of Hitler?).<br />
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Following in the tradition of Ripoll, but now far ahead of him in the extent to which he is willing to challenge, and, indeed, decimate popular misconceptions about Martí, Jorge Camacho has authored a landmark study about <i>José Martí y la cuestión indígena</i> (Chapel Hill: North Carolina University Press, 2013). This until now marginal but essential subject will change forever not only our interpretation of Martí's famous essay but even Martí's relation to "Nuestra América." Camacho has demonstrated that practically everything that is standard received knowledge on this subject was not only wrong, but wrong in the worst possible way, that is, the truth was the opposite of the popular belief supported by popular scholarship. Martí was not a latter-day Bartolomé de las Casas, the "Protector of the Indians" (in truth, even las Casas is not really the canonical las Casas admired by Martí, since he saved the Indians from extinction at the price of African slavery).<br />
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Martí romanticized the indigenous peoples of the Americas and strongly castigated the Spanish for their depredations on them, especially the systematic destruction of their culture and its literary monuments. He said that the Spaniards had torn a leaf from the Book of Nature. Their descendants, however, he saw as a retrograde people that would become extinct if they did not assimilate to the dominant culture and join the concert of civilization. Assimilation was no longer a choice, but an imperative since "America will not move until the Indian moves." Getting the Indian "to move" is no easy thing and a lot harder if you are trying to make him move where he doesn't want to go. At the time that Martí was writing his <i>crónicas</i> for <i>La Nación</i>, Argentina was engaged in the systematic extermination of its indigenous population. The Argentines did not even try assimilation. As Camacho shows, Martí did not reproach his Argentine friends (all of whom were connected to the government) for their conduct, but supported their course of action both publicly and privately, even going so far as supervising the committee that translated into English for international arbitration the documents supporting Argentina's claims to the Indians' lands, which were disputed by Brazil. Martí's enthusiastic support for Indian assimilation in the United States after all the tribes had been subjugated and confined to reservations by the federal government proved in the long run almost as catastrophic as genocide: the Indians were allowed to live but "educated" out of their languages and cultures at Indian schools (such as Carlisle, which Martí praised in the highest terms). Shorn of their identity, these assimilated Indians were still racially unacceptable to whites and rejected as renegades by other Indians.<br />
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Although Martí always advocated that Latin Americans embrace their indigenous roots and not copy European models blindly and to the detriment of what was "ours," it is undeniable that he was Eurocentric to the core of his being (and what else could he be given his origins and education?). Camacho also identifies and presents credible evidence for charging Martí with cultural racism, ethnocentrism, and even racial biases. These prejudices, of course, are not the sole province of those who denigrate the Indian. His champions, too, like Martí, tend to objectify and judge him according to their own idealized conception of the noble savage and are often disappointed that the less savage the Indian becomes, the less apparent his nobility appears. And when the Indian is finally civilized — that is, no longer an Indian except in external appearances — they will mourn the loss of everything which they once desired the Indian to lose.<br />
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I am not as bold or as forthright as Jorge Camacho — not by half, which is not to say that I would have withheld the facts which he discloses; but, rather, that I would have presented them in such a way as to mitigate Martí's blame whenever possible by contrasting his attitudes to the really genocidal ones of his contemporaries (like Sarmiento's and Mitre's). In the context of his time, if not ours, Martí is among the least culpable (which is not the same as saying blameless). My approach, I suppose, shows that I am still not an impartial commentator on these matters and perhaps I never will be; but I admire Jorge Camacho for telling the truth without qualifiers or palliatives because I recognize that this is what we need. Indeed, what Martí needs and would want.<br />
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Originally published in <i>Linden Lane Magazine</i>, October 2015Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-90795841244624574372015-11-07T11:38:00.001-05:002015-11-10T04:52:44.715-05:00The Devil's Advocate: Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Holy See's secretary of state under former Pope Benedict XVI, took a 23,000-euro helicopter ride to southern Italy paid for by funds for sick children from a Catholic Hospital, apparently to do 'marketing' for the hospital. The same hospital, </i>Bambin Gesu<i>, paid 200,000 euros for enlarging Cardinal Bertone's apartment at the Vatican, an allegation which the hospital confirmed, according to the author [Gianluigi Nuzzi] of the book [</i>Merchants in the Temple<i>], claiming they were also hoping to use the apartment for 'institutional' purposes." </i>— Delia Gallagher and Daniel Burke, CNN, <a href="http://cnnphilippines.com/world/2015/11/05/vatican-books-scandals.html">"New Books Allege Financial Scandals at the Vatican,"</a> November 5, 2015<br />
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The unsung "hero" of the normalization juggernaut was Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who did the legwork while Pope Francis took the credit. In a recent interview with the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/18/cardinal-tarcisio-bertone-pope_n_6699464.html">Huffington Post</a>, Bertone admitted that he "made five trips to Cuba and made my own contribution to Cuba-U.S. relations," explaining that "it was not something that just fell from heaven; there was a lot of work behind it." Indeed, nothing of the kind "fell from heaven," though it well may have bubbled up from hell, with Bertone as its conjurer.<br />
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Bertone has always been willing to work on behalf of the Castro dynasty and its interests. Communist Cuba has no need to pay for agents of influence in the Vatican when it has Cardinal Jaime Ortega as its official lobbyist there. Bertone's special relationship with the Cuban kleptocracy is born of their mutual venality and sustained, perhaps, as it certainly is in Ortega's case, by home movies stored in the vaults of State Security. <br />
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In 2005, Cardinal Bertone called the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba "unjust and ethically unacceptable" (it would take years for the Vatican to denounce as such the clerical molestation of children); and in 2008, Bertone declared, in Havana, that "the embargo constitutes an act of oppression against the Cuban people and a violation of Cuba's independence." He did not, however, condemn the oppression of the Cuban people by the Castro regime, nor explain why the refusal of the U.S. to trade with Communist Cuba oppresses its people or violates its independence while the denial of human and civil rights to its citizenry by its unelected rulers does not.<br />
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Moreover, how can a country be "independent" which blames all its domestic troubles on its inability to trade with another country (and "trade" as defined by Castro always means being subsidized by a third country in exchange for surrendering Cuba's independence to it)? The most notorious example in modern times of a servile state is surely Communist Cuba's 30-year vassalage to the Soviet Union which ended only when the Soviet empire itself ended. Yet never did the Vatican protest the fact that Cuba's main export to the Soviet Union was cannon fodder. One would suppose that such trade would be more objectionable to the Vatican than the absence of such trade. But such contradictions are the stock in trade of Vatican diplomacy, which supported sanctions on South Africa's apartheid regime but not on Cuba's apartheid regime.<br />
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Of course, Cardinal Bertone, as an exploiter and despoiler himself, sees nothing wrong with using humans as chattel or profiting from their misery. It is no surprise that a man who hails Fidel Castro as a "humanitarian" would believe that he, too, can commit any vile act and still be considered a "humanitarian," The fact that his carrion prey are children and sick children at that explains the great affinity between Castro and Bertone, for Castro has never had any mental reservations about stealing the kids milk money, much less their future.<br />
<br />Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-49395094592360818212015-10-21T12:05:00.000-04:002015-10-21T12:26:01.601-04:00Italian Newspaper Reports that Pope Francis Has a Brain Tumor<br />
The Italian newspaper <a href="http://www.quotidiano.net/il-papa-ha-un-tumore-al-cervello-ma-i-medici-dicono-che-%C3%A8-curabile-1.1409328"><i>Quotidiano Nazionale</i> reports</a> that Pope Francis has a brain tumor, which was diagnosed recently.<br />
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Well, that would explain a lot of things.<br />
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The Vatican promptly <a href="http://www.ibtimes.com/pope-francis-does-not-have-brain-tumor-vatican-says-dismissing-italian-news-report-2149899">dismissed the report</a>, characterizing it as "gravely irresponsible and unworthy of attention," which does not mean untrue. The only rebuttal it could offer was to point out that "the Pope is carrying out his very intense activity in a totally normal way."<br />
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The denial may be the confirmation.<br />
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In ancient times (and perhaps even today since everything that happens in a conclave must be kept secret under threat of excommunication), a pope had to submit to a digital examination of his testicles before his election was declared valid because eunuchs were excluded from the clergy. [Deut 23: "He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD."] This ceremony also insured that no female (or no female after "Pope Joan") would ever be elected pope (again).<br />
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Since it is obviously more important that a pope should have a fully working brain than the right reproductive organs in good order, perhaps all future candidates should be required to undergo a brain scan <i>before</i> assuming office.Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-52693598843648382652015-10-18T23:44:00.000-04:002015-10-18T23:45:12.035-04:00Francis: The Totalitarian Pope<br />
It hadn't occurred to me before, but now I believe that I have discerned the real reason for Pope Francis' trip to Cuba. He went there, like every left-wing Latin American politico, to consult with Fidel Castro about how best to consolidate his power and eliminate all vestiges of democratic discourse within the Church. Or, to put it simply, Francis wanted to learn how to be like Fidel, and how better than at the feet of the master?<br />
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Here's the proof:<br />
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<a href="http://blogs.new.spectator.co.uk/2015/10/pope-francis-is-now-effectively-at-war-with-the-vatican-if-he-wins-the-catholic-church-could-fall-apart/">Pope Francis is now effectively at war with the Vatican. If he wins, the Catholic Church could fall apart</a>Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-92109729889525214552015-10-14T12:55:00.000-04:002015-10-15T06:33:16.239-04:00Pope Francis Is Sorry, But Not for Forsaking Cubans<br />
Pope Francis has issued a public apology for everything and anything that he has done wrong during his disastrous two-year pontificate. He has not shown contrition, however, for his fawning embrace of the Castro brothers, his refusal to meet with Cuba's political prisoners and human rights activists, or his role in initiating a dialogue between Barack Obama and Raúl Castro which led to the "normalization" of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Communist Cuba as well as the pogrom unleashed in its wake against Cuba's dissidents, which the pope witnessed himself with absolute indifference and subsequent denial during his recent trip to the island. Francis' ultimate goal and greatest sin in the offing — the lifting of the trade embargo — will insure the survival of the Castro dynasty in perpetuity with the U.S. as its co-signer and accomplice. In reconciling good and evil, Francis has done more than Christ himself wanted or presumed to do. So much for his vaunted "humility," not to mention his doctrinal purity.<br />
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Barack Obama is infamous for apologizing in the name of the U.S. for "historical wrongs" which other presidents allegedly committed, which is just another way of cutting them down a few pegs and bringing them closer to his level. The last three popes, and John Paul II in particular, have also skewered their predecessors for not being 21st century men in the 16th century. Francis stands alone, however, in his eagerness to prove his "humility" by acknowledging just what a mess he has made of everything, except as a pimp for the world's oldest dictatorship.Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-19339966540137864392015-10-04T11:09:00.000-04:002015-10-06T21:14:11.606-04:00Pope Francis Greets Yayo and Iwan (But No Cubans Besides the Castros)<br />
Before meeting with Kim Davis, the four times married and three times divorced champion of traditional marriage, the pope granted a private audience — a "real audience" as the papal spokesman called it — to former student Obdulio "Yayo" Grassi and his Indonesian boyfriend Iwan Bagus, who have been together for 19 years, since Mr. Grassi, now 67, was 48; and Mr. Bagus, now 33, was ... you do the math. The media, of course, did not do the math. This was not just a same-sex couple but something which most people would find far more sinister and which the pope himself condemned at another venue in the harshest words he used during his trip to the U.S.<br />
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What could be more Borgian, and, at the same time, worthier of this pope, who blesses with the left hand what he condemns with the right, than to embrace in the span of 24 hours a gay couple and the scourge of gay couples? And what better defines American liberals than taking umbrage at the pope for following traditional Catholic teaching and praising him when he acts like a Unitarian Universalist? It's not a battle for the souls of the faithful anymore. The battle now is for the mind and heart of the pope. The pope appears to know this and consciously aspires to be all things to all men and nothing in particular.<br />
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In Cuba, Pope Francis gave no indication of divided loyalties. He stood with Fidel and Raúl Castro and with nobody else. <br />
<br />Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-15839231466656445082015-10-01T22:56:00.000-04:002015-10-02T11:38:36.894-04:00Pope Francis Gave Private Audiences to All and Sundry, Except Cuban Dissidents<i><br /></i>
<i>"I spent a little time Wednesday night examining my conscience, as we used to say around the ol' confessional, as regards the meeting between Papa Francesco and noted civic layabout Kim Davis. This contemplation was prompted by two things: first, an e-conversation I had with someone who had been part of the papal travelling party and second, the appearance of E. J. Dionne on Lawrence O'Donnell's show on MSNBC. According to the first person, there were a great number of people during the pope's tour who were simply hustled in and out for informal private audiences. According to Dionne, the meeting between Davis and the pope was brokered by Archbishop Carlo Vigano, the papal nuncio to the United States at whose residence the pope stayed during his time in Washington, which is when the meeting took place. Together, these facts set off my Spidey Sense about Vatican chicanery. </i><br />
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<i>"Before we continue, let us stipulate a few things. First of all, let us stipulate that there are more than a few members of the Church's permanent bureaucracy, both within the Clan Of The Red Beanie and without, who are not happy that this gentleman got elected Pope, and who are not happy with what he's done and said since he was. Second, let us stipulate that many members of this group are loyal to both former pope Josef Ratzinger and, through him, to the memory (and to what they perceive as the legacy) of John Paul II who, for good and ill, had a much different idea of how to wield a papacy than Papa Francesco does. Third, let us stipulate that this opposition to the current pope has been active and vocal, to say nothing of paranoid. Finally, let us stipulate that, for over 2000 years, the Vatican has been a hotbed of intrigue, betrayal, and sanctified ratfcking on a very high scale. (It also has been a hotbed of, well, hot beds, but that's neither here nor there at the moment.)"</i> —<b>Charles P. Pierce,</b> <a href="http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a38440/pope-francis-swindled-kim-davis-meeting/">"Was the Pope Actually Swindled into Meeting Kim Davis?"</a> on Esquire.com, October 1, 2015<br />
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Try to swallow the spoiled style, reeking with various bacteria, and consider what Mr. Pierce is actually saying. No, not that Pope Francis is an addle-brained imbecile at the mercy of Ratzinger's minions (not that we are disputing that premise). For our purposes it is far more interesting that there was allegedly a revolving door at the papal nuncio's Washington residence through which "a great number of people ... were simply hustled in and out for informal private audiences" with the pope: Kim Davis, the thrice-divorced champion of the sanctity of marriage, being just one in a long line of lay supplicants to meet with the pope and receive his blessing.<br />
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In Cuba, the only "lay supplicant" with whom the pope deigned to meet was Fidel Castro. The pope specifically excluded Cuban political prisoners and human rights activists from his sight and presence, and even admitted as much to reporters on the flight from Santiago de Cuba to Washington:<br />
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<b>"[F]irst, it was very clear that I was not going to give audiences because not only the dissidents asked for audiences, but also audiences [were requested] from other sectors, including from the chief of state. And, no, I am on a visit to a nation, and just that. I know that I hadn’t planned any audience with the dissidents or the others."</b><br />
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His trip, Francis said, was not political and neither was he himself political. In Cuba, at least. In his address to a joint session of Congress, the mask came off: the pope confessed himself to be a political animal since his boyhood days at his grandmother's knee. And he proved that he still was when he politicized his every action in this country, seeking to impress the left while not completely alienating the right — a challenge for the most deft of politicians let alone for the most daft of popes (My God, Pierce's style is contagious!). <br />
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<b>POSTSCRIPT:</b><br />
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The Vatican acknowledged today that “Pope Francis met with several dozen persons who had been invited by the Nunciature to greet him as he prepared to leave Washington for New York City. Such brief greetings occur on all papal visits and are due to the pope’s characteristic kindness and availability. The only real audience granted by the pope at the Nunciature was with one of his former students and his family.”
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What distinguishes a "real audience" from an unreal audience?<br />
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In any case, no Cuban was granted a "real audience" or even an "unreal audience" with the pope except Fidel Castro, and in his case the pope not only solicited the audience but actually went to Castro's home to meet him.<br />
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As for "the pope’s characteristic kindness and availability," it was conspicuous by its absence when it came to meeting with Cubans whose last name was not Castro. <br />
<br />Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-78629521429467192282015-10-01T06:40:00.001-04:002015-10-17T13:14:01.030-04:00In His Own Words: John Paul II Praises "Ché" Guevara and the Cuban Revolution's "Achievements" <div>
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“He ['Ché' Guevara] is now before God’s Tribunal. Let us leave Our Lord to judge his merits. I am certain that he wanted to serve the poor.” — <b>John Paul II,</b> warning others not to second guess God's judgment on "Ché" Guevara and then doing so himself, quoted in the <i>L'Osservatore Romano </i>(The Vatican's official newspaper), Spanish Edition, 30 January 1998, p. 6. Read that page <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070607015717/http://www.nacub.org/nacub/ossrom5/dati/005s06.pdf"> here</a><br />
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"I am not completely up-to-date on the problems facing Cuba [when asked by an Italian reporter to assess the last 40 years (1958-1998) of Cuban history]. I am still studying, but according to the news and what the [Cuban] bishops have told me, there has been progress. For example, in the extension of education and in the area of health care. I am sure that this is in fact so, because Marx's followers did the same everywhere, including the Soviet bloc. From that perspective there has been progress in the means of delivering those services; but as refers to the human being, his rights as an individual, there has probably been less progress. That is where progress remains to be made. We live caught between two opposed ideologies: the Communist or Marxist and the liberal or individualistic. We must search for and find a just solution [i.e. third way]" — <b>John Paul II</b>, accepting the pernicious myth of social progress under Communism while rejecting individualism as the only means to obtain both freedom <i>and</i> social justice, quoted in <i>Ibid</i>.<br />
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“I want to express the interest with which I observe the determination of the Cuban authorities to maintain and develop the achievements made in the fields of health care, education at its various levels, and culture in its different expressions. The Holy See believes that by guaranteeing these conditions of human existence [you] erect some of the pillars of the building of peace, which is not only the absence of war but also the ability to enjoy an integral human promotion of the health and harmonic growth of the body and spirit of all the members of a society.”<br />
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“For its part, Cuba distinguishes itself for its spirit of solidarity, made evident by the shipment of personnel and material resources to satisfy the basic necessities of several populations in cases of natural calamities, conflicts or poverty. The Church's Social Doctrine has developed much in recent years, precisely to illuminate the situations that require that dimension of solidarity in the pursuit of justice and truth.” — <b>John Paul II</b>, praising Cuban "internationalism" and the fraudulent "achievements" of the Castro dictatorship as "pillars of peace," at the presentation of the credentials of Raúl Roa Kouri as the regime's ambassador to the Vatican, January 8, 2005<br />
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<a href="http://reviewofcuban-americanblogs.blogspot.com/2008/02/john-paul-ii-and-che-guevara-honored-in.html">Pope John Paul II and "Ché" Guevara Honored in One Monument</a><br />
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<a href="http://reviewofcuban-americanblogs.blogspot.com/2008/01/notable-still-unforgettable-pope-john.html">Notable and Still Unforgettable: Pope John Paul II Praises "Ché" Guevara</a>Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-39867949709043185382015-09-30T16:41:00.000-04:002015-09-30T16:47:04.935-04:00Pope Francis Bets All His Moral Capital on a Long Shot: Gay Marriage<br />
Gay Marriage?<br />
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Really?<br />
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This is what Pope Francis was willing to squander all his hoarded moral capital on?<br />
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Gay marriage?<br />
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A moot question now, at least in this country (and in the pope's native Argentina as well).<br />
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The Vatican admitted today that the pope had granted a private audience to Kim Davis, the Rowan County (KY) clerk who is leading (and losing) Custer's last stand against gay marriage.<br />
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The pope may have acted from principle, and because a cause is lost does not necessarily make it a bad cause. But should gay marriage take precedence over every other cause?<br />
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Francis was willing to overlook the suffering of the Cuban people when he refused to meet with its authentic representatives — those who put their lives on the line every day to secure the freedom and human rights of all Cubans — preferring instead to visit and praise the man who enslaved them.<br />
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Should not the blood of Cubans be more of a priority to the pope than the issuance of same-sex marriage licenses?<br />
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Is it more important to the pope to make a symbolic gesture against gay marriage than a real attempt to save lives?<br />
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Yes, it would have been quixotic for Francis to agree to meet with Cuba's beleaguered dissidents.<br />
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But no more quixotic than his secret meeting with the last U.S. official (a county clerk) to offer active resistance to the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage.<br />
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The pope obviously thought that the cause of humanity demanded that he draw the line at gay marriage.<br />
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Too bad that the plight of the Cuban people did not meet that high threshold of humanity.Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-48821506160106457222015-09-30T09:41:00.000-04:002015-10-15T02:22:54.591-04:00John Paul II and Fidel Castro: Three Different Ways to Clasp Hands<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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There have been a few articles published recently contrasting John Paul II's visit to Cuba in 1998 with Pope Francis'. All have given the advantage to John Paul, and, indeed, used the first papal visit to lambaste the latest. Although we are glad to have Francis' pilgrimage to meet Fidel Castro disparaged, it does not seem quite fair to blame the Argentine pope for following in the footsteps of his Polish predecessor; nor can we see anything that distinguishes the conduct of one from the other.<br />
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The phrase everybody remembers from John Paul's trip to Cuba was his call for the island to open itself to the world, and the world to open itself to Cuba. So innocuous was it that even Pope Francis felt that he could repeat it without giving offence to his hosts.<br />
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For Cubans, the problem with Cuba then as now is not that it is closed to the world, but that it is closed to them. Whether or no they are actually in a prison, Cubans are, for all intents and purposes, under house arrest, since they cannot leave their homes and settle elsewhere, whether in Cuba itself or abroad. Cubans are forbidden to move from province to province; from city to city; and even from one house to another house on the same block without the prior authorization of the state. Cuban citizens require both an exit visa to leave their country and an entry visa to return; and rarely are those who leave allowed to return (not that any but Castro's spies would want to). The only blockade facing Cubans is an internal one: they are hostages of a police state which has enslaved and interned them in a massive island-prison whose walls are as high as the sky and as deep as the ocean.<br />
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It was to Fidel Castro personally that John Paul should have addressed his request to open that prison and free its captives, as Reagan did when he challenged Gorbachev by name to "tear down that wall." Nothing that the outside world could have done — certainly not paying ransom to the captors — would have demolished the Berlin Wall, as John Paul well knew. He should also have known (and was too smart not to have known) that unilateral concessions to Castro would not obtain freedom for the Cuban people. "Opening the world (i.e. the U.S.)" to the tyrant would only strengthen him and make his victims even more vulnerable. Yet that was John Paul's solution to the "Cuban Problem" and his "solution" has been carried out by Francis to the detriment of all Cubans except Castro and his henchmen.<br />
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While in Cuba, John Paul engaged in a virtual orgy of hand-clasping with Fidel; but, like Benedict XVI and Pope Francis, refused to meet with or even allude to Cuba's political prisoners or human rights activists. John Paul, on his flight to Cuba, even praised "Ché" Guevara as someone whom he "was sure had desired to do good for the poor." Francis said nothing about "Ché" Guevara, although, like all Argentinians (whether on the left or right), the pope feels proud of that connection (as we may infer from Cardinal Sean O'Malley's comment about his "great joy and pride" in celebrating mass "under the picture of his fellow Argentine Che Guevara").<br />
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Pope John Paul II did not publicly lecture Fidel Castro on human rights or condemn his regime's violations of those rights as he had done in front of Ferdinand Marcos during his trip to the Philippines ["It is a fundamental principle, upheld always by the Church, that a government exists only for the service of man and for the protection of his dignity and cannot claim to serve the common good when human rights are not safeguarded."] Being a persecutor of the Catholic Church guarantees left-wing dictators respect and deference from the Holy Father. If Marcos had confiscated all Church property in his country as Castro did in Cuba and then had it in his power to return that property, he would not have been excoriated by the pope either.<br />
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On that first papal visit, the Cuban people genuinely believed that the pope was on their side. It seemed inconceivable then that the man who had defeated Communism in his native Poland and the Soviet bloc would uphold it in their country. The crowd at his first public mass waited anxiously for any indication of support or even one word of commiseration. What they got was John Paul's personal assurance to Fidel Castro that "the values of the Gospel of Jesus Christ are not a threat to any social project," and that what he had come to Cuba to promote was "the Gospel of Christ, not a political ideology or economic system." The pope's chief concern, then, was to guarantee the regime that the Church in Cuba, unlike the Church in Poland, would never become with his sanction an arsenal of ideas or a bulwark of liberty.<br />
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As if to encourage John Paul to remember their suffering and its cause, the crowd that heard his words but could not believe that he had abandoned them, began to chant "¡Libertad, Libertad!" The pope at first ignored their cries, and then, when they would not stop, John Paul admonished them to seek freedom in Christ.<br />
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Their lives on earth, apparently, were intended to be a never-ending hell; and the only hope that the pope held out to them was in the afterlife. As for this life, this island and this people, the pope graciously ceded all to the Cuban despot. Such papal conduct finds many parallels in the Dark Ages, but this is the first instance of such a dynastic concession in our own. It need hardly be pointed out that Pope John Paul was not willing to surrender the Polish nation to Communist slavery in perpetuity. Cubans, however, were quite expendable and apparently worthless in the eyes of the vicar of Christ. His successors have followed his example.<br />
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<a href="https://www.aei.org/publication/in-havana-pope-francis-is-no-john-paul-ii/">In Havana, Pope Francis is no John Paul II</a> (In Havana, Pope John Paul II was no John Paul II, either).Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-60579175163301341722015-09-29T09:18:00.003-04:002015-09-29T11:28:48.357-04:00Guest Post: Francis Pays Homage to Fidel Castro<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Pope Francis met Fidel Castro on September 20, 2015, during his visit to Havana. As you can see in the photo above, the Pope showed a warm admiration for the decrepit tyrant of Cuba.<b> One could say Francis seems to be venerating the communist despot as he bows to Castro and strongly presses his bloody hands. </b><br />
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Expressions of papal admiration can also be seen in [other photographs] , in which Bergoglio seems deeply touched and even emotional to be with Fidel.<br />
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[These attest to] the climate of mutual cordiality between the representative of Catholics and the criminal responsible for more than 50 years of brutally murdering Catholics opposed to Communism.<br />
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According to the video distributed by the Cuban government, <b>"Pope Francis thanked Fidel and Cuba for their contribution [to] peace in a world filled with hatred and aggression." </b>If this statement is objective, it reveals the hypocrisy of Jorge Bergoglio, because it is public knowledge that Fidel and Cuba exported armed revolution and guerilla warfare throughout Latin America and Africa as much as they could during almost the whole time Fidel Castro was in charge.<br />
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Francis offered Castro his latest Encyclical <i>Laudato si</i>, and the criminal offered the Pope a book — Fidel and Religion — written by Frei Betto, a Brazilian ex-guerrilla monk, today a leader of Liberation Theology.<br />
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<b>A final detail, in 2012 Benedict XVI also met Fidel Castro on his visit to Cuba, but the tyrant went to meet him at the Papal Nunciature in Havana; on this occasion Francis went to the place Castro chose and at his convenience. Another symbol of the papal subservience to Communism.</b><br />
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A video of the encounter in Spanish distributed by the communist newspaper<i> Granma </i>can be viewed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R4Si2TcKqg8?rel=0">here</a>.<br />
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By Fr. Atila Sinke Guimarães<br />
From <a href="http://www.traditioninaction.org/RevolutionPhotos/A645-Fidel.htm">Tradition in Action</a> Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-14695086061605936312015-09-27T23:46:00.000-04:002015-11-12T21:40:59.170-05:00The Real Dorothy Day: A Castro Groupie<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i>"In these times when social concerns are so important, I cannot fail to mention the Servant of God Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker Movement. Her social activism, her passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints... Dorothy Day [championed] social justice and the rights of persons. A nation can be considered great when it [...] strives for justice and the cause of the oppressed, as Dorothy Day did by her tireless work."</i> <b>— Pope Francis</b>, addressing a joint session of Congress, on September 26, 2015
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Know whom the pope admires and you will know who and what he is.<br />
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<i>"I am most of all interested in the religious life of the [Cuban] people and so must not be on the side of a regime that favors the extirpation of religion. On the other hand, when that regime is bending all its efforts to make a good life for the people, a naturally good life (on which grace can build) one cannot help but be in favor of the measures taken. </i><br />
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<i>"We are on the side of the [Cuban] revolution. We believe there must be new concepts of property, which is proper to man, and that the new concept is not so new. There is a Christian communism and a Christian capitalism. We believe in farming communes and cooperatives and will be happy to see how they work out in Cuba. God bless Castro and all those who are seeing Christ in the poor. God bless all those who are seeking the brotherhood of man because in loving their brothers they love God even though they deny Him." </i>— <b>Dorothy Day</b>, writing in the <i>Catholic Worker</i>, July-August 1962.<br />
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This is what Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement,"tireless striver[er] for social justice and the cause of the oppressed," who was supposedly "inspired by the Gospel, her faith, and the example of the saints," wrote <i>after</i> John XXIII had excommunicated Fidel Castro for expelling most of Cuba's priests and nuns from the island; closing all parochial schools and the Catholic University (and invalidating their degrees); confiscating Catholic hospitals and orphanages; newspapers, radio stations and publishing house; looting and desecrating churches; and forcing the Cardinal-Archbishop of Havana to take refuge in a foreign embassy, in effect. decapitating the Cuban Church. Castro by then had also deprived Cuban workers (Catholic or not) of all protections under the law. His regime abolished in 1959 the right to organize unions; it outlawed strikes; it repealed minimum wage laws; it discarded collective bargaining and arbitration; it eliminated tenure and seniority; it scrapped Cuba's 35-hour work week (for which workers were entitled to 40 hours' pay); it rescinded the "13th month" bonus paid to all workers at Christmas; it authorized the payment of wages in script; and it instituted compulsory unpaid work for the State. Everything, in short, that you would expect Dorothy Day to denounce if these outrages had occurred in her own country to her beloved Catholic workers. But when Castro's Revolution did all these things to Cuba's Catholics and workers, she "could not help but be in favor of the measures taken."<br />
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Want to really get angry?<br />
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Savor this quotation from the same article, for sheer ignorance and condescension unequaled until Pope Francis' own recent statements in Cuba: <br />
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<i>"So here we have the problem. The education of the people. Fifty percent of Cuba’s millions were illiterate. No wonder Castro had to talk for so many hours at a time, giving background and painting a picture of what they were aiming at, for a multitude who could not read." </i><br />
<i><br /></i>In <a href="https://catholiceye.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/dorothy-day-a-communist/">"Dorothy Day, a Communist?"</a>, David H. Lukenbill writes:<br />
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"I’ve been studying this issue for some time and have reached the conclusion that Dorothy Day had so conflated Communism and Catholicism in her own mind that she saw them as one and the same; which is the only explanation I can find for her lifetime support of Communist governments and ideology, co-existing with devout practice of her Catholic faith.<br />
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"Another clear mark, in my opinion, of her lifetime adherence to Communism was that she never denounced it or its evils to protect others from becoming ensnared, which is what most people, yours truly included, do once they see a past way of life clearly for the wrong path it was."Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-30444201446045666552015-09-27T20:01:00.001-04:002015-09-28T07:17:17.266-04:00Pope Francis Embraces the Guilty and Shuns the Innocent<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Last <i>week</i> there were more abortions in the United States (16,799) than there have been executions over the last 400 years (15,269). There were 35 criminals put to death in the U.S. last year as compared to more than a million babies who had the death penalty imposed on them without the benefit of judge, jury or appeal. Yet Pope Francis, in his pandering address to a joint session of Congress, barely alluded to abortion <i>and did not condemn it</i>, but spoke at length and vehemently against the death penalty. This is what it means to have a pope who is a moral relativist, someone who, simply put, cannot distinguish between good and evil. Such myopism would be disastrous for any man and more disastrous for those who have anything to do with him. But for a pope, it is a calamity for all mankind. <br />
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Now the pope has just met and embraced prison inmates in Philadelphia, murderers, rapists and other criminals, most, no doubt, moral relativists like himself, offering to all support and encouragement as if each were St. Dismas (The Good Thief). Francis has said that "Jesus was a failure in life," and so when he looks at the faces of these prisoners, he must see the image of Christ. Aborted babies are not pretty to look at, but their humanity shines all the more because of the barbarity to which they have been subjected.<br />
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When Francis visited Cuba just a week ago, he met and embraced much more notorious and prolific murderers. Unlike the prisoners in Philadelphia, they have never been called to account for their crimes and it is likely that they never will be. History will not absolve Fidel or Raúl Castro, but Pope Francis has. When a priest visits the home of an unrepentant public sinner and does not ask him to repent, but showers him with praise and gifts — indeed, indulgences — the sin is not expunged but it is rewarded and public morals and religion are defiled. This itself is a mortal sin, for in condoning Castro's crimes Francis has acquired a share in them.<br />
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The pope did not visit the 3000 common criminals that Raúl Castro amnestied in his honor. He could well have preened himself on that "victory" but for the fact that his refusal to meet with Cuba's dissidents and political prisoners would have seemed even more inexplicable and inexcusable if the pope had embraced the guilty and shunned the innocent, and since he would not embrace the innocent he found it expedient to shun them both. For Francis, the opponents of a one-party state are simply rival politicians even if politics as such does not exist in their country. He does not recognize them as victims of the regime but as pariahs, and even worse than pariahs because they threaten the special relationship between Church and State which the pope is so anxious to maintain and expand at any cost.<br />
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Pope Francis cannot make Cuban dissidents disappear, But he can do the next best thing — ignore and marginalize them. And he has.Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-25448085713893266842015-09-27T00:59:00.002-04:002015-09-27T11:29:08.625-04:00Francis Stumbles Boarding Plane to Philadelphia<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="270" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rUW02oayICM" width="480"></iframe> <br />
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It is painful to watch this video of a corpulent near-octogenarian stumbling continually over his long frock as he struggles to mount the airplane stairs, more crawling than walking erect, a strong wind blinding him with his own <i>mozzetta</i> (short cape-like hood) and almost pushing him backwards while he holds on to the banister with one hand and his briefcase with the other: a picture of helplessness and vulnerability. Surely they can install a stair climber for him or lift him up in a crane. Perhaps he is too proud to show how really incapacitated he is. His assistants withheld their assistance in order not to embarrass him. Their concern for his feelings may well have cost him his life. I suppose that losing some weight, raising the hem of his frock a few inches and letting some young priest carry his briefcase might also help.<br />
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One last suggestion: as a sign of humility, Francis discarded the red shoes and socks traditionally worn by popes. He should reconsider that decision. The red shoes would allow him to see his own feet and prevent him from tripping over them.<br />
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Even if Francis does not have an ounce of compassion for the Cuban people, he does not deserve to be a "martyr" of any kind.Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-45971161662885413302015-09-26T10:56:00.000-04:002015-09-26T10:56:11.848-04:00Is Pope Francis the "Anti-Christ?"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I invite my readers to visit the <a href="http://popefrancisthedestroyer.blogspot.com/"><b>Pope Francis the Destroyer</b></a> Blog. Not even the Vatican's own websites chronicle the day to day activities of the pope as minutely as does this blog. In 2014, the 365 days of the year yielded 588 posts, and in what has transpired of 2015, 630. Granted, this blog is somewhat tendentious in its depiction of Francis as the Anti-Christ but not more so than the thousand blogs which just as tendentiously portray him as the Vicar of Christ. The truth does not lie in the middle. He can be one or the other; you can't split the difference. I will spend this week-end reading this blog and forming my own conclusion. After this past week I have a completely open mind about the pope (which means that I don't reject the worst said about him reflexively nor accept the best on faith). I am not endorsing the idea that Francis is the Anti-Christ or that there is even an Anti-Christ. I do believe that in many respects Francis speaks and acts as the Anti-Christ would if there were an Anti-Christ. But whom am I to judge? (to quote Francis' signature meme).Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-85776247440675924152015-09-25T12:05:00.001-04:002015-09-27T09:23:25.640-04:00"Francis Covers the Big Town"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-42021519530799202712015-09-25T04:48:00.001-04:002015-09-25T05:11:50.118-04:00Guest Post: Pope Francis to Become "Pope Hippocritus"<br />
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<header style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #777777; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 3px; padding-right: 46px;"><span class="post-byline" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span class="author publisher-anchor-color" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: 700;"><a data-action="profile" data-role="username" data-username="rubiconscross" href="https://disqus.com/by/rubiconscross/" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgb(0, 136, 187) !important; font-family: inherit; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.1s linear;">rubiconscross</a></span> </span><span class="post-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: inline-block;"><span aria-hidden="true" class="bullet time-ago-bullet" style="box-sizing: border-box; color: #cccccc; font-size: 9.75px; line-height: 1.4; padding: 0px 4px;">•</span> <a class="time-ago" data-role="relative-time" href="http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/09/24/dissident-group-250-cubans-arrested-during-pope-francis-visit/#comment-2273257607" style="border: 0px; box-sizing: border-box; color: rgba(0, 39, 59, 0.34902); font-family: inherit; font-size: 12px; line-height: 1; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.1s linear;" title="Friday, September 25, 2015 4:12 AM">29 minutes ago</a></span></header><br />
The Vatican (which is a sovereign state with immigration laws) that already built [its] Great Wall of Trump centuries ago, just announced that [it] will take in the millions of mostly Muslim refugees seeking sanctuary. And that [it] will sell the Vatican's vast treasures of art, gold, and jewels to feed them. Yea right?<br />
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That was followed by a Papal decree informing the world that the Pope's new name has obviously been changed to Pope Hippocritus!
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<span style="line-height: 15px;">Comment left at </span><a href="http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/09/24/dissident-group-250-cubans-arrested-during-pope-francis-visit/" style="line-height: 15px;">Breitbart.com</a></div>
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Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34496910.post-36844222617442078792015-09-24T19:19:00.000-04:002015-09-29T12:15:54.606-04:00Francis: A Pope with No Moral Compass<i><br /></i>
<i>"Is this not what we want for our own children? We must not be taken aback by their numbers, but rather view them as persons, seeing their faces and listening to their stories, trying to respond as best we can to their situation. To respond in a way which is always humane, just and fraternal."</i> — <b>Pope Francis </b>in an address to a joint session of Congress, September 24, 2015<br />
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What utter unmitigated gall! This is a pope who denies the right of Cuban citizens to live with dignity in their own country while upholding the prerogative of illegal immigrants to decamp in a foreign country, break its laws and disrupt its social order because Americans have a supposed moral obligation to treat the interlopers as they would want their own children to be treated. <br />
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But did Francis treat Cubans as his own children on his recent sojourn to the island: would a father allow his children to be beaten and dragged away in his sight and not attempt to shield or comfort them, or at least inquire about their fate and whereabouts? In refusing to be seen with dissidents on his trip to meet Fidel Castro, Francis showed that he does not "view [Cubans] as persons" worthy of his attention or consideration (unless their surname is "Castro") and feels no need to "see their faces or listen to their stories," much less "respond as best [he] could to their situation" in "a way that is always humane, just and fraternal."<br />
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No man is more worthy of contempt than one whose own words condemn him.<br />
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Manuel A.Tellecheahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08637085685599554349noreply@blogger.com0