Meurice’s Roar
Image taken from "La Voz católica"
In memoriam for Pedro Meurice Estiú
Archbishop Emeritus of Santiago de Cuba
They called Archbishop Pedro Meurice Estiu “the lion of the East” for his more-than-proven bravery in the face of the arbitrary and authoritarian. That January 24, 1998, in Antonia Maceo Plaza in Santiago de Cuba, his face is serious, deep in thought. Pope John Paul II has just finished his homily and the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba was to address his flock and the Shepherd who had come to visit it. Before taking the podium, Meurice spoke with the priest Jose Conrado Rodriguez Alegre and told him, “This lion is old with a shaggy mane, but it will roar.” He took the microphone and kept his word.
Facing the surprised Santiagans gathered there, and those who were watching the live on television, Meurice’s address seems to interpret our thoughts, to spring from our own mouths. “Holy Father… I present to you a growing number of Cubans who have confused the country with a party, the nation with a historical process we have lived through in recent decades, culture with an ideology.” And on this side of the screen, many of us did not stop applauding, crying, jumping, looking at the shocked and annoyed face of Raul Castro at the foot of the dais. No one had told the Minister of the Armed Forces–in public and before so many witnesses–truths of this nature. Some escaped in fear from that immense square, but others? The boldest? They were chanting the word, “Freedom.”
“This is a people that has the richness of joy, and a material poverty that saddens and overwhelms it, barely letting it see beyond immediate subsistence,” the lion continued to roar. And in our lethargic civic consciousness something began to stir. Meurice had returned to his years of greatest vitality and the swords that emerged from the ground of that Plaza flew in the face of a rebelliousness lost in some corner of history. For a few brief moments we were free. The homily ended, the severe gesture of our current president presaged scoldings for the old lion, but the crook of John Paul II would protect him.
Today, Pedro Meurice has left us, with his nobility of the feline guardian of the litter, leaving us with the responsibility to present ourselves to the world. How are we going to describe ourselves now? Who will be believe that 13 years later we haven’t been able to “demystify the false messiahs”? How will we explain the fear that has led to paralysis, to continuing to wait for others who will roar for us?
Agosto 1st, 2011 at 09:39
Friendly translator/Moderator:
#87 seems to qualify under the rules, perhaps if translated from spanish to english you will see what I mean.
Thank you for all your consistent work & dedication!
Julio 30th, 2011 at 22:22
YOUTUBE: Misa en honor a Pedro Meurice Estiú (Funeral services in honor of Archbishop Pedro Meurice Estiú)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5C7cddbjZ0s
Este 30 de julio comenzo la misa en honor a Pedro Meurice. Opositores de toda Cuba despiden a un hombre extraordinariamente valiente y humano.Entre los asisetntes estuvieron la Dra. Maybell Padilla, Eunice Madaula Ejecutiva del CEEDPA, directivos de la agencia aplopress y miembros de los MDO. Dios guarde a este arzobispo, el mayor critico de los hermanos Castro
On July 30 a mass was held in honor of Archbishop Pedro Meurice Estiu. Opponents across Cuba said goodby to an extraordinarily brave human being. Among the attendees were, Dr. Maybell Padilla, Eunice Madaula the executive director of CEEDPA, member of the the dissident organization MDO. God bless archbishop Estiu, one of the most critical voices against the Castro brothers
The “Lion of the East,” as he was called for his tough talk in response to the dictatorship’s machinations, was more like a gentle giant on a mission to set his people free from their fears. He had made headlines during Pope John Paul II’s visit to Cuba in 1998 when, during a huge outdoor mass at Antonio Maceo Plaza with Raúl Castro sitting front and center, the archbishop of Santiago, then 65, roared:
“I offer [this Mass] to the growing number of Cubans who have confused fatherland with a [political] party, the nation with the historical process we have lived in recent decades, culture with an ideology. There are Cubans who, rejecting it all wholesale, feel uprooted, reject what is from here and overvalue all that is foreign. Some think this is one of the most profound causes of internal and external exile.”
And then this: “There is another reality I must bring to your attention: The nation lives here and lives in the diaspora. The [average] Cuban suffers, lives and waits here, and also suffers, lives and waits out there. We are one people … looking for the unity that will never be the product of uniformity, but from a common soul that is shared and derives from our diversity.”
From the crowd, Castro must have heard the cries, “We are not afraid, we are not afraid!”
Pedro Claro Meurice Estiu (February 23, 1932 in San Luis, Santiago de Cuba – July 21, 2011 in Miami, Florida USA) was the Roman Catholic archbishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Santiago de Cuba, Cuba.
Ordained to the priesthood on June 26, 1955, and studied canonic law at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. When he returned to Cuba in October 1958, he was named vice chancellor and secretary to the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, Enrique Perez-Serantes. Meurice Estiu was appointed auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Santiago de Cuba and Titular Bishop of Teglata in Numidia in 1967 by Pope Paul VI. On July 4, 1970, he was appointed archbishop and retired in 2007.[1]
In 2011, he traveled to Miami for his diabetic condition, where he died on July 21 at Mercy Hospital.
Julio 30th, 2011 at 13:46
@#86
I will (tx 4 ur wish) even thru the eyes of my grand children …
Julio 29th, 2011 at 23:45
Thank you Albert, and for all your posts too.
I hope you get to see a Cuba free from Caudillo Castro.
Julio 29th, 2011 at 22:31
@#84
Go right ahead but, please give me ur site so I can publish ur many contributions to the Yoany blogg; I am sure u will not mind sharing all the insults, verbal abuse & racism u use to prop up ur statements & since u r such a defender of truth & enemy of deception I am sure u will allow others to see u for what u are; keep in mind: ur many postings will be the source & I will (like u) “screen print” all my postings just to make u accountable to ur own statements … pal
“…I took the screendump of the post, and will publish it soon on my own site, which will be dedicated to publishing all the lies and deception this site is throwing left and right. To remove the smoke screen of wrong-whinners’ propaganda and brainwash a little.
For the sake of the “democracy” and “freedom”, the two favourite subjects of the team “yoani”.
So, who was it, and what was done about it?…”
Julio 29th, 2011 at 22:19
Let us talk hypocrisy and hypocrites. To start with let us remind ourselves of the “policy” of the “friendly” translator/admin and his team “yoani” gang: the team “yoani” will NOT allow people posing and posting under the names of others. People caught doing so will be “blocked” and “banned” from the site.
Several people have apparently been blocked and banned.
Now, let us go to the post 67.
It carries my name.
I invite the “friendly” translator to inform us who was that person and has s/he been blocked and banned for using my name to post insulting and denigrating comments, as per the team “yoani’s” own rules.
I took the screendump of the post, and will publish it soon on my own site, which will be dedicated to publishing all the lies and deception this site is throwing left and right. To remove the smoke screen of wrong-whinners’ propaganda and brainwash a little.
For the sake of the “democracy” and “freedom”, the two favourite subjects of the team “yoani”.
So, who was it, and what was done about it?
Julio 29th, 2011 at 17:56
@#78
LC … I love ur comment about “being like che”
The thing is: the “defenders of the rebolution cyber brigade” must be getting desperate since they resort to impersonating other commentators.
Its speaks volumes about their tactics, since they use the same as the regime they so fervently defend. Most of this provocateurs follow similar scripts without realizing that rheir “tale’ gives them away; aside from everthing they show their arrogance & lack of respect for other people’s opinion. Their facility for insulting & denigrating as well as using abuse, twisting statements & quoting out of context is their pattern of “arguing” tought by the indoctrination that takes place in the “schools” among others w/the slogan of “being like che”. It is no wonder that being “tired” is the perfect choice of term to call how Cubans feel in Cuba.
As for me, I (by now) know when the real Love Cuba talks, is a matter of fact & speaking for myself & being sure others here will agree w/me: KEEP ON KEEPING ON LOVE CUBA!
Between you, Humberto, Sandokan, Julio & many others the information presented is provocative enough to inspire research & to bring the spot light onto what is happening in Cuba. The proof of the effectivness of Yoani’s blogg is in the presence of these provocateurs & the regular members of the “defenders of the rebolution cyber brigade, let us not forget that the rebolution’s “old man” did say the rebolution will/is fight the dissident bloggers in the web w/every tool at their disposal so” Take your best shot brigands … in the end freedom always prevails!
Viva Cuba !!!
Julio 27th, 2011 at 23:10
Damir! So glad you like this blog SO MUCH! AND “TEAM YOANI” TOO! HURAY!! BIG GUSANO HUG RIGHT BACK AT YA!
Julio 27th, 2011 at 18:22
Post 76 is directed at posters who claim that hitler was an atheist.
Funny thing they are all from the team “yoani” support brigade…
All 1 and a half of them.
Julio 27th, 2011 at 13:23
FROM THE MODERATOR. THIS EXPLAINS THE REASON KOMRADE KOMAR WAS BANISHED AND WHY ANONIMO KEEPS APPEARING IN SHORT SPURTS! FOR A BLOG THE HE CLAIMS IS USELESS AND OVERRATED, HE SURE HAS A FIXATION FOR IT AND THOSE WHO COMMENT HERE.
Querido Humberto,
The person who calls himself Komrade Komar was banned from commenting on Generation Y because he purposefully posted comments under the name of another regular commentator on the blog, seeking to discredit him and create controversy with his false comments. The person whose name he assumed complained in the comments section that comments were appearing under his name that he did not post. I investigated and discovered that, indeed, that is exactly what had happened and was able to see who had done it. I did not post a comment identifying or discrediting him, I simply re-posted the comment rules — which had been posted many times before — and banned him from the blog.
The person he impersonated, however, accused him of being the one who did it, and he freely admitted that he had. Since then he has continually changed his ISP seeking to continue to post comments on the blog, and has claimed he “didn’t do anything” and that he is being censored. As you know, other people commonly post comments on the blog that are much more negative than his and they are not censored.
Yoani’s rules are clear: Anyone who impersonates another commentator will be banned. Thus, he is banned.
Julio 27th, 2011 at 11:24
Since my last post didn’t show up yet, I suspect that our friend Komar or anonimo or whatever has been impersonating other readers beside myself. On his maximo’s secret service.
Julio 27th, 2011 at 11:20
pamela, I suspect Comrade Komar / Anonimo / and his other aliases and/or team mates, has been impersonating other posters beside myself. I’m sure he will continue to do so. So if you come across posts that are out of character for anybody, it’s probably an impersonator.
I guess the best we can say about him is that he is “being like Che”
Julio 27th, 2011 at 11:13
Every detached historian who has studied Nazi Germany considers Hitler to have been an atheist with deep anti-Christian sentiments. The paragraph below sums up the consensus. Although like I said, I don’t care if someone is an atheist or christian or socialist or capitalist, what matters is that people can peacefully respect other’s political and religious beliefs. Only with tolerance does democracy have a chance in this world.
In the political relations dealing with religion Hitler readily adopted a strategy “that suited his immediate political purposes”. Nonetheless, Hitler had a general plan, even before the rise of the Nazis to power, to destroy Christianity within the Reich. The leader of the Hitler Youth stated “the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement” from the start, but “considerations of expedience made it impossible” publicly to express this extreme position. His intention was to wait until the war was over to destroy the influence of Christianity. The plan was conceived by Hitler and an inner circle, including the propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, before the Nazis even came to power.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.....ious_views
Julio 27th, 2011 at 09:46
@#67
in ur reference to Hitler’s atheism …
He stated in a speech in Stuttgart February 15, 1933:
“Today they say that christianity is in danger, that the catholic faith is threatened. My reply to them is: for the time being, Christians and not international atheists are now standing at Germany’s fore. I am not merely talking about christianity; I confess that I will NEVER ally myself with the parties which aim to destroy Christianity.
So, what’s what … what u know of history comes not from research but Wikipedia eh …pal?
Julio 27th, 2011 at 00:36
“Anomino”/Komar/Whatever your nick du jour is:
People, especially you, have a certain writing style. You can change your aliases as many times as you like, but your posts are all the same. Your posts here, your review on Alexa, etc. You’re not fooling anyone. You’re beating a dead horse to death, posts are removed if they violate the rules of this blog. What don’t you understand about that? Really, nobody cares if you’ve saved 100 screen shots of your “removed” posts. Don’t you have anything better to do?
Julio 26th, 2011 at 19:55
Anonimo! YOU SAY PASTEMASTER, I SAY POSTMASTER! YOU SAY TOMAATO, I SAY TOOMATO,POTAATO, POOTATO! LETS CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF AND CALL THE CUBAN GOVERMENT FOR WHAT IT IS! A FASCIST STATE!
Julio 26th, 2011 at 19:50
OF COURSE, A CUBAN VERSION OF A SWAP MEET WILL SAVE THEIR AILING ECONOMY!! SURE IT WILL!
N.Y. TIMES : Castro Offers a Wave at Cuban Fete, but, Again, No Speech -By DAMIEN CAVE
CIEGO DE ÁVILA, Cuba — For the second year in a row, Raúl Castro left the rhetoric to his vice president.
Mr. Castro waved to the crowd gathered here on Tuesday in the countryside for the annual rite of a revolutionary holiday. But as was the case last year, the actual message — calling on Cubans to work harder and accelerate economic reforms — came from a party stalwart who fought at his side during the rebellion.
“We have to definitively break the mentality of inertia,” said Vice President José Ramón Machado Ventura, standing before a sign praising “the victory of ideas.” Instead of emphasizing what they lack, he added, Cubans must “evaluate how much more can be done with what is available.”
The event celebrating the attack on the Moncada barracks in 1953 — the public debut of a rebel movement that toppled President Fulgencio Batista six year later — offered yet another example of the revised socialism that has come to characterize Mr. Castro’s government. While his older brother Fidel used speeches to rally the country with an absolutist moral vision, casting Cuba as hero and the United States as a villain, Raúl Castro has spoken less often and emphasized current needs.
Expert say this is partly a matter of urgency. The world economic crisis plunged Cuba into an abyss not seen here since the years after the Soviet Union collapsed. And even before that, this island of 11 million people had been suffering from decades of economic deterioration. Many Cubans, especially in Havana, say the reforms Raúl Castro has been rolling out since officially taking over in 2008 are at least 20 years overdue.
Nonetheless, the changes in content and approach are significant. The most visible shift so far has been an effort to re-engineer employment. Cuba has opened up nearly 200 professions to limited private enterprise, and in the past year, the government says, the ranks of the self-employed have doubled to 325,000.
The flood of interest is especially visible in Havana. Handwritten signs on creaking colonial doors now advertise items for sale, like baby shoes and pork chops. New private restaurants also seem to be opening almost every day — which, in a country still dominated by centralized control and limited resources, has led to other problems.
Cubans now complain, for instance, that competition is increasing prices for basic items like food and construction materials, which are typically bought on the black market (after being stolen from state distributors).
In his 25-minute speech, Mr. Machado acknowledged some of these obstacles. An octogenarian hunched slightly with age and wearing a white guayabera, he criticized pilfering and the misuse of resources. Addressing a crowd of a few thousand, he called on Cubans to live according to the values that now appear on new billboards featuring Raúl Castro: “Order, discipline and rigor.”
But experts say the government is struggling with a more fundamental question: How much can be changed, and how quickly, to create economic growth without chaos?
“The reform plan has lots of moving, interdependent parts and in many ways the key task is sequencing,” said Philip Peters, a Cuba expert at the Lexington Institute.
Mr. Peters and other analysts said Mr. Castro’s government seemed to recognize that timing was as important as substance. In a surprise move to many Cuba watchers, Raúl, as he is called here, seems to have expanded the role of feedback and adjustments.
“I wouldn’t say he is more of a democrat, but he has a management style that is much more pragmatic,” said Ted Henken, a professor of Latin American studies at Baruch College in New York. “He wants things to work.”
In some cases, that has meant backtracking. “For example, last fall the government announced that by this past spring, the state sector would shed a half-million workers,” Mr. Peters said. Then came public resistance. Now, Mr. Peters said, “the layoffs are proceeding, but slower than that, much slower. This seems to reflect a decision that job creation comes first.”
Mr. Castro’s government has also announced that there will soon be other changes. Political liberties are not included, beyond a promise to let Cubans travel abroad more easily. But Mr. Castro is expected to speak when Parliament opens in August, where he may more fully outline plans for a major change to private property laws, which would allow the purchase and sale of real estate and cars.
Many Cubans seem uncertain about whether to trust that the government will be able to manage all the new laws and impacts. “It’s complicated” has become the common phrase ending discussions on what amounts to a new social contract in a country where very little is new. Others, however, insist that there is still too much talk and not enough action.
“We’re still in crisis,” said Enrique Suarez, 50, as he prepared for the July 26 festivities.
His friend, Belkis Fernandez, put it just as plainly: “It’s still bad.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07.....7cuba.html
Julio 26th, 2011 at 19:15
Anonimo! NO! I am your Copy and Paste, GUSANO Postmaster General!
Julio 26th, 2011 at 18:38
Pamela! Damir is no 007! He is in the negative numbers!
Julio 26th, 2011 at 16:11
Gee, I wonder who posted this “review” about Yoani’s blog on Alexa.
Comments: Nice blog, only the comments in Engish version are way of topic of the blog and are reprints of old news from another portals. Inconvinient comments are quickly removed by moderators and their authors banned from the blog. So much for freedom of speech here. No matter if author of this blog writes about, fruit, shoes, shotage of food or water in Cuba, comments are mostly about CASTROFASCISTS and some guys in prison, doing time for not agreeing with CASTROFASCISTS. It is a waste of time to dissagree with anyone on this blog, for disagreeable posts are quickly removed by moderator.
So would you pleeeeeeeeease quit wasting your time? Pretty please?
Julio 26th, 2011 at 13:23
Cubans Still Suffer, But Media Looks Away-By Mike Gonzalez
Last week, just outside Cuba’s holiest Catholic shrine, government thugs attacked in plain daylight a group of opposition women — beating them, stoning them and stripping them naked to the waist. The women, mostly black and middle-aged, suffered this public humiliation because they were trying to find a dignified way to bring attention to the plight of their husbands, who are in prison for freely speaking their minds.
The archbishop of Santiago de Cuba has condemned the attack. You can find an eyewitness account in Spanish here:
It should make for poignant watching today, the anniversary of the start of the Cuban Revolution.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing unusual in this grotesque attack on the Damas de Blanco (or Ladies in White, the harassed association of wives of political prisoners) on the street outside the shrine of Our Lady of La Caridad del Cobre. It’s routine for Cubans to be publicly degraded, brutalized and imprisoned when they dare speak their minds. Their daily existence has been one of fear and wretched suffering for 50 years now.
Yet the chances are that you probably haven’t heard about this story. A quick Google search of the attacks on the Damas de Blanco turned up only about five hits, none from a major publication. Why?
Not because it’s a dog-bites-man story (literally, in this case), as some journalists might have you believe. No, it’s simply because the media don’t report the daily attacks on the Cuban dissidents.
All the major international news wires, and at least two TV networks, have bureaus in Cuba. But they’re either so afraid of being expelled, or have so bought into the regime’s propaganda, that all they report is how Raul Castro is bringing economic reforms to Cuba.
So little is the story of Cuba’s oppression known outside that island prison that, were the constant repression reported occasionally, it might actually cause a stir.
Clearly, Raul—Fidel’s brother, who was handed the day-to-day reins of the island when his elder brother fell ill a couple of years back—has no intention of doing anything that will threaten communism’s firm grip on Cuba. Otherwise, his goons would feel no need to terrorize and drag a bunch of older women naked through the streets.
What this dearth of news on the Gulag Next Door has produced is a strange double standard, where similar repression in far-away Burma, Zimbabwe or Libya — also by leftist regimes — gets far better coverage. Such is the ignorance of events in Cuba that MSNBC host Chris Matthews two years ago asked this question in an interview:
“Congressman Burton, why do you think Cubans on the island still support the Castro brothers? What is it that allows that lock on those people to continue?”
Well, Chris, here’s your answer to what happens to Cubans when they try to pick that lock. Leaving Cuba is illegal, so you either stay silent, brave shark-infested waters on inner tubes (it is illegal to own boats in Cuba, for reasons that should be apparent), or risk suffering the fate of the Damas de Blanco.
Culturally as well, Castro gets a pass not just from committed Marxists like Michael Moore, from whom it is expected and therefore ignored, but from otherwise well meaning personalities like TV chef Anthony Bourdain.
On the day the Anthony Bourdain Goes to Cuba episode aired to much fanfare on the Travel Channel, July 11, news also emerged from the center of the island that dissident Guillermo Fariñas had been beaten up and arrested by police.
This poor timing was hardly Bourdain’s fault; again, Cubans get physically attacked and incarcerated for speaking their minds quite frequently. What is Bourdain’s fault, and the Travel Channel’s, is that they decided to give Fariñas’ tormentors such unfiltered propaganda.
Our leaders are no better. Lawmakers such as Barbara Lee, Javier Serrano, Emanuel Cleaver, Bobby Rush, Rosa DeLauro, Kathy Castor, James McGovern, Charlie Rangel, Laura Richardson and Jim Moran are constantly carrying water for the Castros.
It is well past time for people of conscience to continue supporting this abomination, here or elsewhere.
The shrine of del Cobre commemorates the occasion in 1604 when the Virgin appeared to three fishermen, the mestizo Juan Moreno and two Indian brothers surnamed Joyo, and carried their boat to safety from a storm. Those of the Christian faith would take comfort from the fact that this attack on helpless women happened to close to a church dedicated to this Virgin and would pray that Cubans too will one day soon be delivered from their suffering.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion.....s-plights/
Julio 26th, 2011 at 12:17
THERE IS NO “SOCIALISM” IN CUBA! IS A LENINIST/MARXIST DICTATORSHIP! THAT IS WHAT THEY ARE TRYING TO SALVAGE! ITS TOTALITARIAN DICTATORSHIP IN SHEEPSKIN “SOCIALISM” CLOTHING!
L.A. TIMES : Cuba draws on the past as it struggles with economic reform-Cubans hear a defense of their painful and uncertain march toward limited capitalism at a rally marking the 58th anniversary of the Moncada barracks assault that launched the communist revolution in Cuba. President Raul Castro attends but leaves the speechmaking to others- By Tracy WilkinsonReporting from Ciego de Avila, Cuba— Cuban authorities Tuesday used one of the most important dates in Cuba’s revolutionary calendar to rally their nation to its newest battle: painful but essential economic reform.
President Raul Castro appeared at an early morning ceremony here in lush central Cuba but did not speak. Dressed in a white guayabera shirt and straw hat, he enjoyed chants to his name and greeted guests but otherwise left the speechmaking to others.
The holiday marks the 58th anniversary of the unsuccessful military assault on the Moncada army barracks that launched the revolution that ultimately brought his older brother, Fidel Castro, to power on Jan. 1, 1959.
This year’s celebration comes as Cuba marches along a steady but uncertain path of economic reform. Under Raul Castro’s direction, the communist government is experimenting with a limited form of capitalism that has seen more than 300,000 Cubans acquire licenses to open or work in new businesses, from the selling of trinkets on a corner to running restaurants and hair salons.
Soon, they will also be allowed, for the first time under the regime, to legally sell and buy property.
But change comes in fits and starts. Thousands of Cubans have lost their jobs as the state attempts to cut deadwood, become more efficient and push workers into a fledgling private sector. And many budding businessmen and women complain of high taxes and shortages of the supplies they need to work.
“The battle we wage today is a daily struggle without quarter against our errors and deficiencies,” Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura said in the keynote address. “We must definitively break the mentality of inertia.”
Machado delivered a vigorous defense of the reforms as “permanent solutions to old problems” and said they must proceed and deepen to rescue Cuba’s struggling economy and promote agricultural production. However, he offered few specifics or new insights into the government strategy.
Thousands of Cubans and a smattering of foreign guests filed into a rain-soaked field just after dawn to attend the ceremony, which was also broadcast live on television and radio. Ciego de Avila, a region of sugar cane and pineapple, is about 250 miles east of Havana. Sitting in the first row, Castro, 80, was flanked by survivors of the 1953 battle or their relatives and also the families of five Cuban men imprisoned in the U.S. on terrorism-related charges, the fight for whose liberation is a cause célèbre in Cuba.
The rally took place under a huge billboard repeating Castro’s motto in promoting the reforms: Order, discipline and demands.
Ailyn Rodriguez, 19, was in the crowd with her “revolutionary youth” group. She acknowledged that economic change was a challenge but expressed confidence that she will be able to work in her chosen field of child psychology when she finishes her studies.
“We want the world to know that we, the youth, will take the steps necessary to confront the economy,” Rodriguez, dressed in a red Che Guevara T-shirt and huge red hoop earrings.
Some in attendance were disappointed that Castro did not speak, having hoped he might better outline government plans. He is likely to deliver important remarks at next week’s opening of the National Assembly.
In another sign of changing times, Fidel Castro was barely mentioned and did not even appear on billboards. The ailing former president, who turns 85 next month, ceded power to his younger brother in 2006 and has gradually taken a back seat in most affairs of state. This anniversary five years ago marked his last public political speech.
Organizers of the event also read out a message from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has come to Cuba twice in the last two months for cancer treatment. Chavez expressed his “gratitude and admiration” for Cuba
“We will live and we will triumph,” Chavez’s message said.
As in the attack at Moncada, he added, “we have learned to turn setbacks into victories.”
The Venezuelan socialist said this week that he intends to run for reelection next year but questions swirl about the true state of his health. A malignant tumor was removed last month, and last week Chavez underwent a first round of chemotherapy. He has not revealed exactly what kind of cancer he has, although speculation focuses on colon cancer.
His survival is an important question for Cuba, too, because Chavez gives the island hundreds of thousands of barrels of heavily subsidized oil as well as other benefits. Many see that continued backing as key to sustaining economic reform, measures of which were approved by the ruling Communist Party in an extraordinary congress in April, during which the steps were pronounced as necessary to “salvage socialism.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/na.....6307.story
Julio 25th, 2011 at 20:44
National Geographic’s 2011 new map of Cuba-
http://newswatch.nationalgeogr.....p-sized-2/
Julio 25th, 2011 at 20:15
GET OUT YOUR HANDKERCHIEFS! THIS IS A TEAR JERKER! SO IS JUST ABOUT EVERY CUBAN IMMIGRANT STORY!
WASHINGTON POST : National Geographic’s map of Cuba is labor of love for Cuban American mapmaker-By David Montgomery
Squint at this map just right, with a pair of wistful eyes — Juan Jose Valdes’s eyes — and it reveals more than shapes and symbols on a grid of latitude and longitude.
There is the warmth of the setting sun splashing gold over the sugar cane fields. The smell of coffee and the sea. The sound of the wind in the palms. Somewhere, also, is a little boy who loved maps in Havana, plotting the location of revolutionary battles on his Esso gas station road guide — until one day, the boy was put on a plane, alone, bound for colder places he only knew from maps.
“To a Cuban, there’s nothing more iconic than a map of the island,” Valdes says now, holding up his latest creation for inspection.
It’s a brand new map of Cuba, the National Geographic Society’s first comprehensive rendering of the Caribbean nation since 1906. It’s a classic wall map, 3 feet by 2 feet, 24 miles to the inch. The island stretches like a bony finger across the azure sea.
The map breaks cartographic news, which is not easy for a map to do anymore. Last year, Cuba created two new provinces on the western end of the island. Hello, Artemisa and Mayabeque.
Valdes’s coordinates this minute locate him at a drawing table in the maps division on the seventh floor of National Geographic’s headquarters on17th Street NW. He is 57. It is almost exactly 50 years since his parents put him on a plane in August 1961, several months after the Bay of Pigs invasion.
He grew up to be a cartographer and geographer — the Geographer, in fact, at National Geographic, charged with helping direct map policies and projects. Last year, during a brainstorming session, he said to his colleagues, How about a map of Cuba?
It was his dream project, bringing his life full circle. He poured everything he had into it, as if the standard data on a conventional map could resonate with something more.
“When I was mapping the beach areas, I would remember the wind hitting the palm trees,” he says. “Every day, I would feel, ‘I’ve been there. That looks like that. That smells like this. This tastes like that.’ ”
His eyes moisten as he tells the story of the map.
During the six months of production, on his way from the elevator to his office, he would pass a wall plaque with words he often quotes, attributed to Gilbert H. Grosvenor, the first editor of National Geographic Magazine:
“A map is the greatest of all epic poems. Its lines and colors show the realization of great dreams.”
Goodbye to Cuba
The boy thought they were going to the airport to look at the planes, as he sometimes did for fun with his father or uncle. He would be quizzed on the origins of different national airlines. His first geography lessons.
Instead, that day he had to say goodbye to his parents for nearly seven months. Goodbye to Cuba for much longer, maybe forever.
Jose and Juliana Valdes worked for Cuban Electric Power and Light. The family was middle class, living comfortably in a suburb of Havana, with a car and a housekeeper.
They were not politically active but were skeptical of the revolution, their only child recalls. “They just wanted to carry on with their lives.”
Juan had tracked Fidel Castro’s march on his Esso map. The day after a freighter from Belgium with munitions for Castro’s army exploded in the harbor in 1960, a teacher in his Catholic school made a geography lesson out of the ship’s route to Cuba.
After the Bay of Pigs invasion, Juan’s school was closed. His parents wanted no part of the new order, while other relatives supported the revolution.
The parents could only get one plane ticket, according to their son. Friends in Miami met Juan, then 7, at the airport.
“The plane was full of kids,” Valdes says. “It was just sad, very sad.”
In early 1962, his parents made it to Miami. His father got a job unloading bananas from Central America. One day, he got lost coming home from the wharf, and he called his son. Juan ran to a nearby fire station, found a map and talked his father home.
“That a map could do that,” says the Geographer, tearing up at the memory.
CLICK THE LINK FOR ENTIRE STORY!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....story.html
Julio 25th, 2011 at 19:40
SO THE CASTROFASCISTS WANT TO “GET RID OF CORRUPTION”? REALLY? AND WHAT IS THIS THEN? JUST ANOTHER DESPERATE ATTEMPT TO GET MONEY INTO THE COFFERS OF THE CUBAN GOVERNMENT! THIS IS JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG FOLKS!
ABC NEWS : Health Care, Medicare Fraud: Cuba Becomes Haven for White-Collar Criminals-By LINH TRAN
There are some places even the FBI can’t go in the search for health care fraudsters accused of bilking the system and raking in millions of dollars.
Cuba has become the destination of choice for some of the fugitives from South Florida, authorities say. The U.S. Department of Justice believes that dozens have fled to the island nation, according to an agency letter.
Once fugitives are in Cuba, there’s no way for authorities to get them back because of the lack of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Health care fraud is a multimillion-dollar business in South Florida, with more than 150 fugitives who’ve allegedly fleeced Medicare out of more than $360 million this year, according to the FBI. The FBI says that the most common form of health care fraud in South Florida involves outpatient services where people allegedly bill Medicare for equipment or treatments that patients never received or did not need if they received them.
Magda Luz Lavin is one example. She owned and operated clinics in Miami from 2000 to 2002 that purportedly treated HIV patients. She submitted fraudulent claims to Medicare and eventually made off with $5 million for those false claims. She fled near the end of her 2006 trial and was convicted in absentia on health care fraud charges, among others. She is listed as one of the FBI’s most wanted white-collar criminals.
Both the FBI and the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services list the most wanted fugitives in connection with health care fraud. Three of the seven on the FBI list are of Cuban descent and were allegedly involved in similar multimillion-dollar scams before fleeing the country.
The FBI says it works closely with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the DOJ and others to tackle the issue of health care fraud but that they are only part of the solution.
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/h.....d=14134950
Julio 25th, 2011 at 12:47
MIAMI HERALD : Cuban court hears appeal of jailed U.S. subcontractor Gross-By Juan O. Tamayo
Cuba’s highest court Friday heard the final leg of the appeal by Alan P. Gross, a U.S. government subcontractor whose 15-year prison sentence has stalled Obama administration efforts to improve ties with Havana.
A Cuban government announcement said the Supreme Peoples’ Court, meeting in a Courtroom for Crimes against the Security of the State, would issue its ruling “in the next few days.”
The 62-year-old Gross, from Potomac, Md., was convicted of providing Cuba’s tiny Jewish community with an illegal satellite telephone so it could bypass the communist government’s controls on access to the Internet.
He was working for a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) program that Washington says is assisting civil society on the island, and Cuban officials say is trying to subvert their government.
The court can uphold Gross’s conviction and sentence; overturn it and set him free; or uphold it and reduce the sentence. Raúl Castro, president of the Council of State, can pardon Gross after the court rules.
U.S. officials have been optimistic that Gross would be freed this year since January, when Havana authorities told a visiting U.S. State Department official that an early release was possible for humanitarian reasons.
His daughter is battling breast cancer and his mother has been reported in ill health. His wife Judy did not attend Friday’s court session and was reported to be recovering from unspecified surgery.
Obama administration officials have repeatedly demanded that Gross be freed and argued hat no significant improvement in US-Cuba relations is possible until he returns home.
Attending Friday’s court session were Gross, his Cuban and U.S. lawyers — Nuris Piñero and Peter Kahn — and three U.S. representatives from the U.S. diplomatic mission in Havana. The hearing was closed to journalists and the public.
http://www.miamiherald.com/201.....ailed.html
Julio 25th, 2011 at 11:48
I agree Humberto. Few people in Cuba want to give the government a peso in any type of tax. They are already used to keeping all their money hidden under a mattress or in foreign bank accounts, so it will take a lot of time and economic change before the situation “normalizes”. Until then officials will keep making good money with bribes as transactions are under-reported or completely off the books.
I would be curious to know how much undeclared money is delivered to Cuba each year and how much money changes hands in real estate transactions, but I doubt that any honest study of the matter has ever been done.
Julio 24th, 2011 at 16:52
SURE!! THIS WILL STOP THE CURRUPTION OF THE CASTROFASCITS OFFICIALS IN THE ILLEGAL HOUSING MARKET! SURE IT WILL!
ASSOCIATED PRESS : A Cuban housing market? Govt is lifting a taboo-By PETER ORSI
HAVANA — Each morning before the sun rises too high, Cubans gather at a shaded corner in central Havana, mingling as though at a cocktail party. The icebreaker is always the same: “What are you offering?”
This is Cuba’s informal real-estate bazaar, where a chronic housing shortage brings everyone from newlyweds to retirees together to strike deals that often involve thousands of dollars in under-the-table payments. They’re breaking not just the law but communist doctrine by trading and profiting in property, and now their government is about to get in on the action.
President Raul Castro has pledged to legalize the purchase and sale of homes by the end of the year, bringing this informal market out of the shadows as part of an economic reform package under which Cuba is already letting islanders go into business for themselves in 178 designated activities, as restaurateurs, wedding planners, plumbers, carpenters.
An aboveboard housing market promises multiple benefits for the cash-strapped island: It would help ease a housing crunch, stimulate construction employment and generate badly needed tax revenue. It would attack corruption by officials who accept bribes to sign off on illicit deals, and give people options to seek peaceful resolutions to black-market disputes that occasionally erupt into violence.
It’s also likely to suck up more hard currency from Cubans abroad who can be counted on to send their families cash to buy, expand and remodel homes, especially since President Barack Obama relaxed the 50-year-old economic embargo to allow unlimited remittances by Cuban-Americans.
“All these things are tied in,” said Sergio Diaz-Briquets, a U.S.-based demography expert. “They want expatriate Cubans to contribute money to the Cuban state, and this is one big incentive for people who want to help their families.”
But few changes are likely to be as complex and hard to implement as real estate reform.”It is such a big problem, the housing situation,” said Diaz-Briquets, who estimated in a recent paper that the country of 11 million people was short 1.6 million units of “adequate housing” in 2010. “They have been trying for years to solve it, and it’s finally dawned on them that the state is never going to do it.”
The Cuban government puts the shortfall at closer to 500,000 homes. Still, the result is legions of bickering divorcees trapped under the same roof; newlyweds forced to bunk up with siblings, cousins, uncles, and aunts; and elderly people unable to repair their crumbling homes.
Juana Ines Delgado’s plight is typical. She shares her tiny studio in Old Havana with her grown son, married daughter and 4-year-old granddaughter, while her son-in-law spends nights at his aunt’s place down the street.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE ARTICLE
http://www.google.com/hostedne.....3c59f1e730
Julio 24th, 2011 at 14:09
Damir wrote:
Offices or supermarkets did not exist in Pol Pot ’s and Mao’s time, nor they exist still today in Palestine or most of Lebanon, due to the continuous war guelled by the usa.
Here’s a link to a supermarket chain in Lebanon.
Hypermarket Bou Khalil
First chain of supermarket in Lebanon, founded in 1935, quoted in stock exchange.
http://www.boukhalil.com
One can find many office buildings in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories as well, but, most of us already knew that.
Julio 24th, 2011 at 12:23
Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso in Spanish) is a Maoist insurgent guerrilla organization in Peru. The group never refers to itself as “Shining Path”, and as several other Peruvian groups, prefers to be called the “Communist Party of Peru” or “PCP-SL” in short (see Communism in Peru). The Shining Path initiated the internal conflict in Peru in 1980, with the stated goal of replacing what it saw as bourgeois democracy with “New Democracy”. The Shining Path believed that by imposing a dictatorship of the proletariat, inducing cultural revolution, and eventually sparking world revolution, they could arrive at pure communism.
Widely condemned for its brutality,[3][4] including violence deployed against peasants, trade union organizers, popularly elected officials and the general civilian population,[5] the Shining Path is described by the Peruvian government as a terrorist organization. The group is on the U.S. Department of State’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations,[6] and the European Union[7] and Canada[8] likewise describe it as a terrorist organization and prohibit providing funding or other financial support.
Julio 24th, 2011 at 12:21
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (Spanish: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia – Ejército del Pueblo), also known by the acronym of FARC or FARC-EP, is a Marxist–Leninist revolutionary guerrilla organization based in Colombia, which is involved in the ongoing Colombian armed conflict.
FARC has been accused of committing violations of human rights by numerous groups, including the Colombian government, U.S. government, European Union, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and United Nations.
A February 2005 report from the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights mentioned that, during 2004, “FARC-EP continued to commit grave breaches [of human rights] such as murders of protected persons, torture and hostage-taking, which affected many civilians, including women, returnees, boys and girls, and ethnic groups.”
Julio 24th, 2011 at 09:47
We love you anyway, Damir. I hope you have a happy life.
Julio 24th, 2011 at 09:45
By the way Damir, you stated the following: “Offices or supermarkets did not exist in Pol Pot ’s and Mao’s time, nor they exist still today in Palestine or most of Lebanon, due to the continuous war guelled by the usa.”
I’m just wondering what century you think we’re in? Or rather, what planet?
Julio 24th, 2011 at 09:33
You haven’t answered the important question here, Damir: Which one are you?
Are you a peaceful Marxist? Or do you justify the killing of “conservatives” with slogans such as “self-defense”, etc?
You know that Fidel trained middle east and african terrorists, don’t you? People who went around slaughtering unarmed civilians, like children in schools.
So would you set lepers and their families on fire if they were “conservatives”:
http://www.canada.com/national.....5ba6bf09c3
Julio 24th, 2011 at 09:03
The list of LEFTISTS committing random act of violence is empty. The list of SUGGESTED “leftists” below is a fantasy list.
Stalin was reading Communist Manifest and still didn’t manage to become a communist. So did fail Mao.
Declaring CM a favourite book doesn’t make one a LEFTIST. The usanian in question also liked Mein Kampf. And if he were a leftist, why did he shoot a democrat memebr of Congress?
Your logic is usual failure of knowledge and its understanding.
Just like the example of hitler being an “atheist” and supported by “socialists”.
You know nothing about nothing and still patronisingly lecture those whose knowledge is many times larger.
You need to learn more and write less, until you acquire necessary knowledge to be able to speak and be respected for what you say.
No matter which political persuasion you choose. Your absolutely false and abhorrent claim that Marxists have been blowing up children in the Middle East cements your incapacity and lack of knowledge to ask questions or make your absurd statements.
By the way, I have asked:
“WHEN was the last time a radical leftist went on a rampage and killed ANYONE, let alone children in a school, on a bus or a street, in a supermarket or in the offices, in the last 20 years, or ever really, like this lunatic yesterday?”
Offices or supermarkets did not exist in Pol Pot ’s and Mao’s time, nor they exist still today in Palestine or most of Lebanon, due to the continuous war guelled by the usa.
So your “response” as absurd as it was, not only doesn’t disprove my question’s suggestion, it shows how little you understand what you read. I was refering to the western world, where the wrong whinners are on a rampage every year or so. Just like the shooting in Texas today, with 6 people killed by the hand of another religious fanatic, a conservative fundamentalist and a deeply mentally disturbed person, as 99% of conservatives are.
Get your facts straigth and understand the arguments of others BEFORE you write something again.
And I cannot believe I even bothered wasting my time explaining the obvious, to paraphrase you…
Julio 24th, 2011 at 00:05
Damir: “WHEN was the last time a radical leftist went on a rampage and killed ANYONE, let alone children in school, ona bus or a street, in a supermarket or in the offices, in the last 20 years, or ever really, like this lunatic yesterday?”
Where should I start?
In Lebanon, Palestine, or some other country in the middle east? Not just Islamic terrorists there, they have competition among the Marxist terrorists who have been blowing up civilians, including children in schools, for decades.
Or a more modern example perhaps are the Tamil Tigers, that group of Marxist suicide bombers, who also invaded villages and massacred women and children.
Practically every sect of Maoist practiced the slaughter of civilians. Like Pol Pot. His fighters would go into a village and chop babies in pieces in front of their mothers. Then rape and torture the women before killing them.
I’ll stop here, the list is too long, and I can’t believe I even bothered answering your question.
The main point, to repeat myself, is not about “socialist” or “capitalist” or “conservative”. It’s about hatred, and both “conservatives” and “Marxists” and anybody else can be a terrorist. If you’re a peaceful Marxist who can respect others as equals, then more power to you. But if you’re a hater who wants to kill “conservatives”, then you’re a curse on this world. So which are you?
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 23:51
Another Leftist who committed a random act of violence:
Ex-Black Panther convicted of murder
edition.cnn.com/2002/LAW/03/09/al.amin.verdict/index.html
And let’s not forget Lee Harvey Oswald and Che Guevara, both violent leftist murderers.
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 23:43
A leftist random act of violence:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.co.....-laughner/
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 23:42
AZ SHOOTER: Left-Winger JARED LOUGHNER – He Likes Watching US Flags Burn & Favorite Book is Communist Manifesto
Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, January 8, 2011, 2:58 PM
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 23:25
Where is Love Cuba?
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 23:22
Damir, Amor Cuba, Amir! I think you all/you need a cocktail of many anti-anxiety drugs! One is not enough Im afraid! and some Tilo too! as a suplement!
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 23:19
The copy and paste burgermeister is obviously well introduced to drugs for delusions and other mental troubles. I had to look up those suggested names to find out what are they and for what they are.
So I was right about that too.
As if I was expecting any other outcome… Of course not.
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 23:14
To the post 42:”Damir… Be careful where blind hatred leads you, because one day you may discover that you supported the killing of innocents.”
Let me just point out that your own has just flagged you yesterday. Despite the facade of a “moderate” person, you have already sided many a time with the conservatives, and attacked socialism and communism numerous times.
That put you in the same line with the murderer from Norway, following your own recipe above.
Do not even try to justify yourself because your statement goes both ways. If it is good to criticise me, whose political affiliation you have no idea of (and don’t fall into your own conservative trap hoping that I am some pro-castrista, when hundreds of my posts have shown how little I think of Castros), then it is good to chain you up too.
But, then I do expect the support brigade (all 1 and a half of people posing here under tens of different nicks because the “whole world” is just NOT coming to their rescue, despite the nazist goernments, press and “princes” giving them “prestigious awards”) to have double standards and pretend to have high “moral” stands when it comes to their delusions and dogmas, giving them in tehir minds some “divine” right to patronise others what should the others do and think.
Just remember, we, the others, couldn’t care less for your false pretenses and self-induced comatose delusions.
You are wrong and you yourselves keep digging your own graves with every word you post here.
WHEN was the last time a radical leftist went on a rampage and killed ANYONE, let alone children in school, ona bus or a street, in a supermarket or in the offices, in the last 20 years, or ever really, like this lunatic yesterday? Or the other in Finland some months ago, or that Timothy somtin, few years back in the usa? or those religious lunatics, who were all RADICALS from the wrong?
When EVER did we hear about a random act committed by a random LEFTIST person EVER?
The simple, painful and hard to swallow FACT:
NEVER.
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 23:04
Damir, Amir whatever you prefer!! Get some Xanax (Alprazolam) soon!
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 23:00
How do I suffer from any hatred is the question of the day. This is not MY blog. I simply respond to the nonsense some misguided, misinformed and brainwshed ignorants write, and these poor people immediately accuse me of hatred…
It was a radical conservative who went on a rampaga against the leftist oriented children. Children are the future, the conservatives, as their own name suggests, are the old people stuck in the past.
So no response is hard enoug response for such a disgusting act cmmitted by a conservative radical hating the left so much that he went on to kill children.
And the rsponse I receive?
I am full of hatred.
I wonder does the poster understand what is his/her comment telling us about him/her. Just like the preceding post of the intellectual giant who has finally, in his/her last years of life, learned how to copy and paste and is now in heaven…
Calling Cuba a ZOO that tourists come to visit. I mean, does ANYONE really need more proof that THAT about the intentions, sincerity and, most of all, intellectual levels of the support brigade, team “yoani” and all those who want to destroy Cuba and impose “some kind of pragmatic capitalism”, when the world is falling apart because that very same “some kind of pragmatic capitalism” is gone and already somewhere in hell, still begging COMMUNIST CHINA to save them and pull them up from the sewage?
The more they post, the more the peopleeverywhere in the world, and most importantly in Cuba, see more and more through these manipulators, hypocrites and liars, trying to create a web of deception in order to fool the Cuban people and fall for their version of history and “future” they offer.
Which is just more of the same old nonsense their idols Castros have already scrapped to bare bones.
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 22:19
YOUTUBE : New America Foundation-How to Ignite, or Quash, a Revolution in 140 Characters or Less - Future Tense Event - includes talk on Iran, North Korea and Cuba! So many similarities in all these cases. Includes interview and thoughts by Yoani Sanchez’ translator M.J. Porter. Worth watching!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....#t=158m55s
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 21:36
Damir, what happened in Norway is the result of hatred. Psychopathic hatred leading to mindless violence. I have never met you, but your posts seem to indicate that you suffer from such intense hatred also.
The real division in humanity is between those who are blinded by hatred and those who can think and love, not between “socialists” and “capitalists” and “christians/jews/muslems/budhists/hindus” and so on. Good people will use all those labels, but so will those who hate and commit senseless murder in order to justify their insanity. Stalin and Hitler and Mao and Che and the madman in Norway all used different labels for themselves, but all were fundamentally alike, all were blinded by mindless hatred.
Castro has a long record of supporting terrorists around the world, both with his words and his weapons and training in Cuba and abroad, and many innocent people have died as a result of his actions. Be careful where blind hatred leads you, because one day you may discover that you supported the killing of innocents.
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 21:13
DEDICATED TO EL GATO! BIG GUSANO HUG TO THE PUSSY-CAT!
MIAMI HERALD : Cuban archbishop a freedom-fighter with one weapon-By Myriam Marquez
I expected to see this giant of a man when I met Pedro Meurice Estiú at his office in Santiago, Cuba, nine years ago. But the “Lion of the East,” as he was called for his tough talk in response to the dictatorship’s machinations, was more like a gentle giant on a mission to set his people free from their fears. He had made headlines during Pope John Paul II’s visit to Cuba in 1998 when, during a huge outdoor mass at Antonio Maceo Plaza with Raúl Castro sitting front and center, the archbishop of Santiago, then 65, roared:
“I offer [this Mass] to the growing number of Cubans who have confused fatherland with a [political] party, the nation with the historical process we have lived in recent decades, culture with an ideology. There are Cubans who, rejecting it all wholesale, feel uprooted, reject what is from here and overvalue all that is foreign. Some think this is one of the most profound causes of internal and external exile.”
And then this: “There is another reality I must bring to your attention: The nation lives here and lives in the diaspora. The [average] Cuban suffers, lives and waits here, and also suffers, lives and waits out there. We are one people … looking for the unity that will never be the product of uniformity, but from a common soul that is shared and derives from our diversity.”
From the crowd, Castro must have heard the cries, “We are not afraid, we are not afraid!”
Priest Jose Conrado Rodriguez Alegre recalled that amazing January day during a recent visit to Miami.
The day before he returned to his humble but popular and growing church in Santiago this past May, Rodriguez made sure to go visit Meurice, who had retired in 2007 from his archbishop’s post and was now ill in a Miami hospital. “He has been my great protector,” Rodriguez, known for speaking truth to power, said of his mentor, Meurice, who often had to battle church officials and the Castro regime to keep both from shuttling Rodriguez out of Cuba permanently.
As it is, Rodriguez is being moved from St. Theresa to a smaller church in a little town on the outskirts of Santiago. Priests get moved all the time, but one has to wonder: Is this a punishment from Havana’s too often conciliatory-to-the-regime cardinal, whose mantra seems to be: Tell me what you want Fidel, the church will deliver!
For Rodriguez, like Meurice, has always seen the church’s role as an independent facilitator, a representative of God’s children, of the Cuban soul — not a mouthpiece for the regime. Yet that is what it seemed to become as church officials delivered messages to political prisoners in the past year, giving them one government-approved choice: to be free, you must leave. Only after many months and lots of push back were some prisoners, like Oscar Elias Biscet, freed to go back to Havana.
When I met Meurice in 2002, he seemed under no illusions about church hierarchy but focused for the long haul on Cuba’s people and their “personal human sovereignty.”
Monsignor Meurice was recovering from a host of ills even then and under tremendous pressure as the Varela project was underway and activists throughout the island were collecting signatures in an attempt to change Cuba’s constitution to offer free enterprise and freedom of speech and assembly.
The church was catching a lot of heat from conservative Miami exiles who viewed Catholic activist Oswaldo Paya’s Varela petition with suspicion, considering it nothing more than a paper tiger that worked within the island’s communist constitution.
Monsignor Meurice knew better. He confided during our hour-long chat that the lens of exile blurred the reality of living in a totalitarian state. “ Esto no es facil,” he kept repeating. “This is not easy.”
Everywhere I went from Havana to Santiago, Cubans seemed to sum up all their decades of frustration in those same words. No es facil.
In fact, less than a year after my reporting trip, with activists’ collection of thousands of signatures for the Varela Project completed, the regime cracked down during Cuba’s so-called Black Spring. Seventy-five dissidents, many of them Varela Project coordinators, were arrested, accused of treason and being agents of U.S. imperialism and sentenced to an average of 20 years.
Many of them are now “free” in Spain, but not in their homeland, uprooted not by their choice but by Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega’s “we will deliver” philosophy.
Meurice earned the respect of Miami’s exile community with his tough public words during the pope’s visit, but more important he earned the love of Cubans on the island looking for a trustworthy soul in a sea of mistrust, where neighbor snitches on neighbor, all in the name of the “revolution.”
With his death in Miami last week, the church has lost a passionate fighter for freedom with the one weapon the dictatorship fears most: the truth.
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 21:01
Damir said “No matter how bad a leftist government is, they still are better than a conservative nazist gulag.”
GULAG 1. A network of forced labor camps in the former Soviet Union.2. A forced labor camp or prison, especially for political dissidents.3. A place or situation of great suffering and hardship, likened to the atmosphere in a prison system or a forced labor camp.
CUBA IS THE GIANT GULAG! BUT NOT FOR THE CASTROFASCISTS AND THEIR MERCENARIES! AND OF COURSE THE TOURISTS WHO ADORE “THE REVOLUTION” LIKE A GIANT ZOO THEY CAN VISIT!
YOUTUBE : Armando Valladares - Oslo Freedom Forum 2009 (part 1 of 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related
Armando Valladares (May 30, 1937) is a former prisoner in Cuba turned United States ambassador to the United Nations. Valladares was a Cuban Postal Bank employee . He was arrested when he refused to display a sign on his desk that promoted communism. Valladares was jailed in 1960, at age 23, when the new government arrested him on charges of being a counter-revolutionary. Valladares spent 22 years in prison. He was adopted by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience, and an international campaign for his release was led by his wife Marta . Many artists joined it, for example Jacek Kaczmarski. The campaign culminated in French President François Mitterrand making a personal appeal to Fidel Castro. Valladares was freed after spending 22 years in prison. He then moved to the United States. Amnesty International’s Secretary General in Norway described Valladares as the “embodiment” of a “prisoner of conscience” and referred to him as “arrested and sentenced for thirty years in prison not for something he did but for something he refused to do and that was to become part of Fidel Castro’s propaganda machine.
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 20:50
No they are not. They are delusional because they cannot accept that after 100 years of fighting the progress off, they have destroyed themselves in the process and their ONLY hope of survival is for China to buy their economic failure out of the demise.
Which China will simply transform into their own turf, where communism a la China will be the order of the day.
Nice. Capitalist nazists beaten into the oblivion with their own weaponry.
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 20:12
What an echo to my recent posts!!!
A radical wrong-whinner murders 90 labourist party chldren members in Norway!!!!
THAT is what the conservatives are. Cold-blooded mentally disturbed murderers.
And that is why Castros, despite their abysmal economic management and total lack of understanding what socialism really is, are still rulling in Cuba.
No matter how bad a leftist government is, they still are better than a conservative nazist gulag.
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 16:33
You are now the voice of Cuba
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 10:52
Number 36!!!!!
What Catholic Church are you talking about with four year elections?????????
The Pope in Rome is death do we part.
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 09:13
Very sad news out of Norway. I hope one day people will stop supporting or apologizing for terrorism, if not, the senseless violence will never stop. All terrorists, including the ones who belong to large well-funded groups and wrap themselves in their ideological flags of the left or right or religion, are as mentally insane as the gunman in Norway. And those who support terrorist regimes may call themselves human rights activists and look like cuddly college professors, but they are as deluded and insane as those who supported Hitler.
When I heard of the attack I thought of my Cuban friends forced to serve in Angola or forced to support terrorism elsewhere. And of Castro’s support for terrorism from the Basque country to the middle east and Africa. How many lives have been lost as a result? And how many Cubans have been emotionally destroyed by the crimes they were forced to witness or commit?
Julio 23rd, 2011 at 02:59
What an eco to my posts yesterday:
Double attack in Oslo today, 87 killed, 85 Labourist Party youth having a working camp, meeting and discussing the future of their party and their country.
A person with well-known right-wing views has been arrested.
Typical.
Let no one be surprised with the fact that among the dictators, only Castros have lasted this long. People have removed the rest, all of them. Only Castros are still on.
As bad as they are, they are nowhere even close to the wron-wing radical maniacs with serious mental problems.
The ones who are all for “some kind of pragmatic capitalism”. The same “some kind of pragmatic capitalism” that the murdered youth were against.
The capitalist dogma has reached its’ point of no return in 2007. As I have already mentioned n the past three years, the only trajectory left to it is the downwards one. And that horrible nazist beast called “some kind of pragmatic capitalism”, will not go down without the fight.
Another 87 innocent people were today brutally killed by the hand of a radical paranoid schizofrenic retard from the wrong wing of the politics.
As bad as it may sound, the hard line Castros took with those retards is the way to deal with the conservatives.
Lock them all up because this is what happens if you don’t. Murder, violence, loss of innocent lives, including children.
Cretens. All to the last one. Nazist perverts.
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 21:46
HOW LONG DID PINOCHET, FRANCO, SOMOSA LAST? NOT 52 YEARS!!
THE GUARDIAN UK : Great dynasties of the world: The Castros-Ian Sansom on a family that’s a dictatorship, not merely a dynasty- Saturday 23 July 2011
Fidel Castro and his family have ruled an entire country for more than 50 years. One approaches such an achievement, of course, with a sense of one’s own limitations. One dare not be patronising. Nonetheless, as Castro himself is often fond of saying, Hay problemas, hay contradicciones (There are problems, there are contradictions). An Amnesty International report on Cuba, in March 2011, states that “The Cuban authorities are continuing to stifle freedom of expression on the island … Hundreds of pro-democracy activists have suffered harassment, intimidation and arbitrary arrest … as the Cuban government employs new tactics to stamp out dissent.” The Castros are no mere family dynasty. They are a family dictatorship.
Fidel Castro and his brothers and sisters grew up in a wealthy family in Birán, in south-eastern Cuba. Their father, Angel, owned a sugar plantation. There were nine Castro children in all. Fidel was the family favourite. He was privately educated and became politically radicalised at university. With his brother Raúl, he led an unsuccessful uprising against the unpopular regime of Fulgencio Batista in 1953. Fidel was imprisoned, released, went into exile in Mexico, and returned to eventually overthrow the Batista government in 1959.
Fidel became prime minister of Cuba and then, in 1976, president. Years after seizing power, he continued to style himself as a revolutionary leader, sporting his trademark cap and military fatigues. Cubans called him El Comandante, and Maximo Jefe (Maximum Leader). His sister Juanita thought he was a fool. She disagreed with her brothers and their revolutionary ardour and fled Cuba in June 1964, announcing at a press conference: “I cannot any longer remain indifferent to what is happening in my country. My brothers Fidel and Raúl have made it an enormous prison surrounded by water. The people are nailed to a cross of torment imposed by international communism.”
Fidel responded to her claims with characteristic vigour: “The imperialists have not hesitated with their detestable attempts to bribe, corrupt and even recruit close relatives … as they have done with my own family, to utilise them later as repugnant instruments for hire.”
According to Noam Chomsky, Castro is a “Latin American hero” and Cuba a “symbol of successful defiance”. This may be so. But it is also the case that under the Castro brothers’ regime, corruption continues to thrive, oppression continues and many Cubans have left the country. Information about the Castros, and their activities, is difficult to obtain, but according to the Cuba Transition Project at the University of Miami, the Castro brothers’ many children have various roles as government advisers.
Raúl took over as president in 2008, and succeeded his brother as secretary of the communist party earlier this year. Under Raúl, some restrictions on internet use have been lifted. And you can now run your own barber shop, and plough your fields. Fidel is 84. Raul is 80. Raúl’s son, Alejandro Espín, is rumoured to be the brothers’ likely successor.
One of Fidel’s children, Alina Fernández, is a famous critic of her father’s regime and Fidel’s former brother-in-law, Rafael Diaz-Balart, left Cuba to become a leading anti-communist campaigner. Two of Díaz-Balart’s sons, Lincoln and Mario, are American Republican politicians.
In a speech in 1953, Fidel famously declared: “History will absolve me.” As someone raised as a Catholic, he will know that absolution requires confession, contrition and penance.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life.....ian-sansom
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 17:42
@#32
No, Humberto he/she is not blind, perhaps it is just the usual prankster/hater using his/her multiple nicks … as he/she accuses others of doing; he/she should say thanks to the “friendly moderator” for not “outing” him/her … lol
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 17:26
AND GATO! WHY DONT YOU LOOK AT COMMENT #1 & #2! YOU BLIND?
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 17:22
El Gato! This is also a blog about Cuba and Cuban issues as well!CONTEXT AND NEWS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND YOANI’S WORLD! GET OVER IT!
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 16:16
@#13
And u expect a “CIVILIZED AND PROPERLY ARGUMENTED DEBATE” w/ur attitude?
By the way … who will define a properly argumented debate? u?
40Damir
Julio 15th, 2011 at 18:45
More of the same by the copy and paste elite, like “Putchism” was invented by “Marxists” (Putch is a German word and it means “strike” or a “hit” and came to use as a “coup d’etat” after the unsuccessful rebellion of rural conservative population against the liberal rule of the city of Zürich on the eve of the formation of the Swiss federal state.), but, as we all know wrong-whinners have the knee-jerk need to talk and talk bull shift as loud as possible, in order to outscream their opponents.
A CIVILISED and PROPERLY ARGUMENTED DEBATE is something the losers are intellectually incapacitated to even think.
Such is the hysteria and schizofrenia of those people.
It is a demonstration of stupidity to come out here and pretend to understand what Cuban people are going through, and “support” cretens who are hell-bent on more violence in the name of some elusive concept like “some kind of pragmatic capitalism”.
“…To all those losers and pretending “cubans” in the usa, the world has to say only one thing: Hasta siempre!
Now, let me flush the toilet…”
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 16:06
@#13
In case there is any doubt about intransigence, intolernace & abuse …
her is a recent statement from the owner of the truth …
Damir
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 08:09
“…Only ignorant conservatives, who do live under the stones of their dogmas and somehow just cannot fathom the world around them (hence the violence in their actions and politics) think that it is some kind of “revelation” the way Allende died.
To your information, this “news” was news back in late seventies. Even in the usa. Cretens from the conservative side of the politics did try their best to spread the propaganda and confusion by manufacturing numerous versions of the events, but Chilean socialists had confirmed that Allende had committed suicide DECADES ago.
Not that THAT has anything to do with the above post, which has nothing to do with anything anyway. Just as the supporter “brigade” have nothing to do with anything (you know, common sense, logic, valid and serious arguments for an open civilised debate…stuff like that, the things intelligent people do)…”
By ur words … pal
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 15:59
@#13
U r addressing issues of intolerance, lack of respect for human dignity or ideas of freedom of will, converting into dogma all political and/or religious beliefs. U, the one who justifies ur verbal abuse, insults, intolerance & denigration towards others to prove ur point; it is u the one who comes across as the sole owner of the truth & pronounces contradiction as stupidity. But if one looks in history it is littered w/people like u, intransigent, disrespectful & mean spirited destroyers uncapable of one constructive positive thought, self-centered & cruel. As I said, there are many examples of the likes of u … then it is my hope & belief that even in the lowest form of man there still exist a little bit of goodness.
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 15:39
@#14
No, u r the one saying it, based in ur superficial read of someone else’s thoughts.
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 13:30
15Love Cuba
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 09:02
Damir, again you’re confusing different things. Atheism and Marxism have nothing to do with Science. All 3 are completely different religions. There are many Atheists who are not Marxists, and nowadays many self-professed Marxists who are not Atheists.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dear Love (what a redundancy!!!!), you are completely right……. but you know, our patient damir profess a very dogmatic religion…… he is a hater, a hater that grabs Marxism when it matches his hate or grabs Serbian fascism when its matches his hate…… of course science has gone so far nowadays that it left the Marxists without its main philosophical support: The Matter as primary being.
I doubt damir is aware of this scientific fact…..
Yes, science moved the floor to Marxists when physicians discovered that Matter is made of energy down there in the quantum world….. Energy in form of particles that does not possess mass but only a charge…… charges that behaves amazingly by disappearing and appearing in other position in space and that seems to be in different places at same time…… So, those that once believed that the energy was first and then the Matter was right!!!!!………. for those Marxists that accepts Marx’s economical fiasco as good but does not accepts Materialism it has been a feast.
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 13:09
13Damir
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 08:43
………Of course, there are those little and irrelevant things like pandemic paedophilia among the priests, which spans across the continents, wiolation of women in hands of both male and female priesthood, let us also forget the 2000 years of murder, terror, horror, Borgias, nazists and fascists in many counries being justified by the church as the “defenders” of the “faith” against the “reds”, and similar “pro-democratic” measures used to protect and reinforce the dogmas that have made riches pour into the church………..
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Patient again confused………. Church is a human organization with interests and sins…….. We anticastrofascist fighters are the most affected by this organization in the last decades because this organization, following its interest has made alliance with castrofascism in order to keep some privileges inside Cuba and maybe trying to keep some secrets that affects its already weak international moral……. we antifascist fighters know that the Roman Catholic and Apostolic Church is a castrofascist allied today like it was an ally of Nazi Germany or Spanish Fascism before….. but we are talking here today about a priest, an individual like many others individuals into any organization that makes the difference…… I ask same question that I asked to “RCR” down there: Will we put in same bag Church’s pedophiles with Desmond Tutu, Archbishop Romero or Fray Beto??????
Or to bring it more close to this incurable patient: Will we put in same bag Church’s pedophiles with those Serbian priests that blessed Milosevic troops before departing to exterminate Bosnians children, women and old men??????
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 12:49
11Damir
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 07:45
Siding with the church is opposite to democracy. Democracy is fundamentally SECULAR.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is one of classical examples we “loqueros” use to bring up to show the veracity of the axiom: Mental insanity is directly proportional to Stupidity.
Ideological and economical organizations are not democratic and have not to be democratic to work properly into any human society. Economical organizations main task is to produce richness; ideological organizations main task is to produce ideas. The Church is an ideological and economical organization which main task is to produce richness and ideas. Democracy is a political system, a social phenomenon. When a human conglomerate produces a democratic system to rule its political life all other organizations, economical or ideological or military or whatever, can work and subsist in this political environment and be part of democracy as cooperative partners, each one making its best inside their area. This makes democracy stronger and is not in antagonism with the political system….. So, siding with the church is NOT opposite to democracy but a normal thing under democracy….. the only way economical or ideological organizations becomes antagonist with the political system is when this political system turns totalitarian…… totalitarians systems tries to destroy any independent economical and ideological organizations and have to subdue them to the political system in order to survive, creating in such way the paradox that drives totalitarians systems to destruction or economical dependence of foreign powers or factors…… because, you can’t destroy economical organizations without cause your own destruction as political system.
Of course, to try to make the patient to understand such thing is nonsense.
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 12:39
WASHINGTON POST: Jailed American makes final court appeal in Cuba; US officials hope for eventual release- Paul Haven - Friday, July 22
HAVANA — An American government contractor imprisoned in Cuba made a final appeal Friday to have his 15-year prison sentence reduced or dismissed, and a senior U.S. diplomat said Washington hopes he eventually will be released.
Alan Gross has been held since his arrest in December 2009, accused of bringing satellite and other communication equipment into the country illegally. He has acknowledged he was working on a USAID-funded democracy program, but says he meant no harm to the government and was only trying to help the island’s small Jewish community.
Cuba considers the $20 million-a-year programs a threat to its sovereignty and has used the case to expose what it sees as Washington’s long history of meddling in its internal affairs.
Julissa Reynoso, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, told The Associated Press the United States was following the case closely.
“We hope that Alan Gross is released,” she said.
Gross’ Cuban attorney, Nuris Pinero, arrived at the Supreme Court on Friday morning to present oral arguments. She and other participants emerged less than two hours later after the hearing apparently concluded.
Gross, who was wearing a dark suit, was seen from a distance exiting the courthouse guarded by state security agents, and getting into a brown car. Representatives of the U.S. Interests Section, which Washington maintains in Havana instead of an embassy, were also present. Journalists were not allowed inside.
Cuban authorities said in a message published in official media following the session that Gross had exercised his right to address the court and had thanked the judges for the opportunity to explain his case personally.
“The high court will issue a final sentence in the coming days,” the statement read.
While U.S. officials have said they do not anticipate Gross’ conviction being overturned outright, there is hope that the end of the legal process might clear the way for his release on humanitarian grounds. Gross has lost 100 pounds in jail, and several of his family members are suffering from serious illnesses.
Cuban officials have said privately they are sympathetic to humanitarian appeals, but would not consider them until Cuba’s Supreme Court weighs in.
Gross’ arrest sparked debate in Washington over the efficacy of the democracy programs, which are passionately supported by several Cuban-American politicians. In April, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry put a hold on funding, arguing that the programs don’t work and have in fact harmed U.S. interests.
“There is no evidence … that the democracy promotion programs, which have cost the U.S. taxpayer more than $150 million so far, are helping the Cuban people,” Kerry said at the time. “Nor have they achieved much more than provoking the Cuban government to arrest a U.S. government contractor.”
Kerry said last week he was close to ending the funding hold after getting assurances from USAID and the State Department that the money would be used more wisely in the future.
Reynoso told AP the democracy programs, which originally were explicit in trying to foment regime change in Cuba, had been significantly altered since President Brack Obama took office. Other State Department officials pointed to efforts to target new funding to support minorities such as the island’s gay and lesbian community, as well as people of Afro-Cuban descent.
“The programs have gone through an elaborate review over the last year and a half, two years, and we believe that these programs help the Cuban people, give them greater opportunities, provide for access to information and access to human rights tools,” Reynoso said.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....story.html
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 12:36
Damir said: “there are those little and irrelevant things like pandemic paedophilia among the priests, which spans across the continents, wiolation of women in hands of both male and female priesthood, let us also forget the 2000 years of murder, terror, horror, Borgias, nazists and fascists in many counries being justified by the church as the “defenders” of the “faith” against the “reds”, and similar “pro-democratic” measures used to protect and reinforce the dogmas that have made riches pour into the church.”
Damir! This blog post is about a MAN, not just a MAN OF GOD who was brave and willing to risk his job to speak for the PEOPLE OF CUBA ! CHANGING THE SUBJECT, DEFAMING ALL WORKING IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH JUST SHOWS YOUR PLAN TO DEFAME BY ASSOCIATION! PLEASE, GET MORE CREATIVE!
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 12:19
8291 RCR
Julio 21st, 2011 at 23:25
Freud …….By the way I am not “aim your hate”it is my way of expressing soul for those who have been abused…….
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
No you don’t, you are trying to discredit a honorable and valiant priest by comparing him with pedophiles in same organization….. be aware that we here are not talking only about a priest but a priest that fight injustice and crime……. that’s why my question: Will we put in same bag chuirch’s pedophiles with Tutu, Romero and beto?????
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 09:37
Damir, I realize you haven’t read much history, but Hitler and Mussolini were self-professed atheists. Hitler was especially fanatical and loud in his hatred of the church and thousands of priests were sent to the concentration camps during WWII.
But they all played nice when they needed the backing of the religious faithful. Stalin stopped killing priests and destroying churches during WWII, and then it was back to normal once the war was over.
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 09:25
Great post Albert. The difference between faith in God and faith in any human being or institution is the difference between Heaven and Earth.
Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao, Pol Pot, Fidel, all wanted to be worshipped as gods on earth. Which is why they hated traditional religion so much - all competition, even from God, had to be snuffed out.
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 09:10
Is true, the “church” has strayed many times trhu history but the “church” is not the building, is not the priests & other “authorities” its the people in their belief in God what makes the church. Everything “human” is corruptible yet that what it is God’s is not, while He is perfection, we are not & as such only hope & faith remains. Yes we must be faithful to God & vigilant against evil & false prophets using the tools of God’s teaching. Yes, the evolution/history of the “church” has been well documented thru the centuries: every atrocity, abuse evry possible human sin & yet it still has the power to unite if only in the name of God because of faith & hope. Nevertheless … the human condition affects all. what makes the difference is the freedom to choose.
I think what Kant’s statement goes as follows:
“…No one can compel me to be happy in accordance with his/her conception of the welfare of others, for EACH may seek his happiness in whatever way he sees fit, SO LONG AS: HE/SHE DOES NOT INFRINGE UPON THE FREEDOM OF OTHERS TO PURSUE A SIMILAR END WHICH CAN BE RECONCILED WITH THE FREEDOM OF EVERYONE ELSE WITHIN A WORKABLE GENERAL LAW – i.e. HE/SHE MUST ACCORD TO OTHERS THE SAME RIGHT AS HE/SHE ENJOYS HIMSELF.”
By Immanuel Kant
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 09:02
Damir, again you’re confusing different things. Atheism and Marxism have nothing to do with Science. All 3 are completely different religions. There are many Atheists who are not Marxists, and nowadays many self-professed Marxists who are not Atheists.
And of course, most Scientists are neither Atheists nor Marxists. Three totally different religions. And in the case of science, it only deals with beliefs about the material world, it doesn’t deal with Atheism, Christianity, or any other spiritual matter.
Only a religious fundamentalist could possibly say there is something scientific about Atheism or Marxism. It’s like saying belief in the Great Pumpkin is scientific.
And Atheism is one of the most fundamentalist religions around. They do NOT question their faith, unlike most modern Christians.
Damir, I hope you will think about and learn about the above religions.
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 08:45
Atheism and Marxism are NOT the faith. Go back to school before talking utter nonsense. Science is not a “faith”.
Atheism is not a set of predetermined beliefs set in stone and above questioning.
How stupid one has to be to say something like that, my Marx…???
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 08:43
Yeah, the church reeks democracy. Of course, there are those little and irrelevant things like pandemic paedophilia among the priests, which spans across the continents, wiolation of women in hands of both male and female priesthood, let us also forget the 2000 years of murder, terror, horror, Borgias, nazists and fascists in many counries being justified by the church as the “defenders” of the “faith” against the “reds”, and similar “pro-democratic” measures used to protect and reinforce the dogmas that have made riches pour into the church.
Nothing like a free enterprise and a little profit on a side.
Should someone complain, send him inquisitors and burn him ona stack to warn the other dissenters.
All completely freely and democratically, of course. We have to uphold the “divine” values now, don’t we.
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 08:17
The church is one of the most pro-democratic forces in the world today.
Damir: You’re mistaking fundamentalism/fanaticism with religion. Fundamentalist was what the church was during the inquisition, now it’s mainly the opposite. Like all faiths, Atheism, Marxism and Secularism are also religions, but Cuba after 1959 became a religiously fundamentalist state.
That is, the guys who took over Cuba - Fidel, Che, Raul - tried to impose their religions on Cuba and destroy all of Cuba’s other religions. With very little success. Fidel and Che were fundamentalists who tried to convert all others to their faith. The result was fear and oppression and a whole nation trained to lie in public. But millions of Cubans kept faith in secret, and one can see their religious resurgence today.
I hope you can understand the difference now Damir. It’s the difference between respect and hatred.
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 07:45
Siding with the church is opposite to democracy. Democracy is fundamentally SECULAR. Drawing any religion into the public life is advertising one’s personal belief. As Kant said, your freedom stops there where it starts limiting someone else’s freedom.
A priest died.
So what?
As we know from the last 2000 years of opression, extrajudiciary massacres and almost a billion of people murdered in the name of some “god”, priests are the persons prone to abuse of power, freedom depravation, violence against political and religious opposition, women and children.
It is probably a small step forward that another such person is now out of the way. If anything, more should follow and simply leave the stage.
Where a dogmatic ideology rules, there is no freedom and democracy.
Only an idiot can close his/her eyes before the oceans of horror, murders and torture “christians” have inflicted upon their own: humans.
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 01:41
BOY! These CASTROFASCIST DEVOTEES, APOLOGISTS, AGENTS whatever you want to call them are still up to the SAME OLD TRICKS! DEFAMATION, INNUENDO, CHISME, INSULTS, CHANGING SUBJECT MATTER ETC ETC!! Cant you get more CREATIVE? Maybe a little more COPY and PASTE?
Julio 22nd, 2011 at 01:37
While I belief that the Catholic church has made many mistakes, I don’t think it’s fair to bring this pedophile issues here on this article. I grew up inside the catholic church in Cuba and never had any kind of experience like that. The church guided by the Pope is against any abuse against minors and it has been expressed that way. Protestants do have their share of feces all over as well. What happened to Eddy Long the Georgia pastor? Like Eddy many others have settle. Why not talk about what mother Therese did for the poor? or the ongoing humanitarian missions in Africa and other countries? That’s is never mentioned by any of you who come only to attach the catholic church.
Julio 21st, 2011 at 23:59
291 RCR, do you think every police officer, police chief, senator, governor, and president is a criminal because there have been some corrupt police officers? Or every doctor and hospital is awful because there exist corrupt and incompetent doctors. Would you shut down every police station and hospital? We have to look at the entire membership of an organization and decide whether it does more harm or good first.
I agree that people in charge of organizations have a tendency to look the other way and protect the reputations of their organizations at the expense of transparency. But to automatically paint entire organizations the same color as their worst members is ridiculous.
As I said in a previous post, I have found Catholic priests and most other religious workers, in general to be less corrupt than most other people I’ve come across. We need to expose any corruption by priests, but to also see the hundreds of millions of people the church helps and acknowledge the work of many selfless priests.
In Cuba, the only thing that has kept many people alive is their religious faith. And the people I admire the most in that country for their complete selflessness, generosity towards others, and absence of corruption, are deeply religious. I don’t share their religious views, but I acknowledge the good that religion has done.
Julio 21st, 2011 at 23:25
Freud I cannot believe any person male or female would write like you. Think of the hundreds of thousands of individuals who’s lives have been destroy by church protected pedophiles. The cancer we write about goes all the way to the head!!!!!!!!!!!
By the way I am not “aim your hate”it is my way of expressing soul for those who have been abused
Julio 21st, 2011 at 21:36
YOUTUBE : Juan Pablo II - Los cinco días que estremecieron a Cuba- Documentary on Pope John Paul II visit to Cuba (Spanish Only)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyOEqqEpN9c
Julio 21st, 2011 at 21:14
3291 RCR
Julio 21st, 2011 at 17:06
Sham Sham for bring these cons into your Blog.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Can we say maybe the same about Frey Beto, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Bishop Arnoldo Romero and all priest of “Liberation Theology”???????
Come on “discreditor” think twice before aim your hate on your ideological enemies, your bullets can easely turn back on you!!!!
Julio 21st, 2011 at 21:03
291 RCR. I would just like to add that I’ve met a lot of priests who have sacrificed their lives to helping others and have never abused anyone, much less a child. As far as I can tell, the percentage of bad priests is probably less than the percentage of bad people you’d find driving a taxi, delivering the mail, or practicing medicine.
I agree though that we shouldn’t put complete faith in any organization, as too much faith leads to uncontested power, and with it, corruption. All organizations need transparency and should be open to criticism.
Julio 21st, 2011 at 20:41
291 RCR: “Sham Sham for bring these cons into your Blog.”
Was Mother Theresa a con and child abuser? The worst cons in the world are those who lie and promote hatred. In the recent past at least, the church has been a great force for human rights and peace, as opposed to some organizations, such as the Cuban government, which promote hatred and war.
The Catholic church is coming to terms with the abuses of some of its priests, and to its shame, attempts at keeping news about such abuses from the public. There is a dark side to power, which all organizations have to face if they become too powerful. To its credit, the Catholic church is facing its past, and is much better as a result.
Meanwhile in Cuba, where atheism is the state religion, police openly pimp women on the streets and offer tourists 12 year-olds for sex.
Julio 21st, 2011 at 17:06
Please Please do not put your trust and hope in an organize that fosters and protects child abusers. Read what is unfolding in Ireland as we write. Look under the stones in Cuba and I am sure you will find them there. Sham Sham for bring these cons into your Blog.
Julio 21st, 2011 at 16:35
El 24 de enero de enero de 1998, en presencia de Raúl Castro y en una homilía pronunciada ante el Papa y decenas de miles de cubanos en la Plaza Antonio Maceo de Santiago de Cuba, vista con asombro y alegria además por millones de cubanos frente a sus televisores, Pedro Meurice Estiu desde ese preciso instante se convierte en un héroe para todos los cubanos dentro y fuera de Cuba.
Santísimo Padre:
En nombre de la Arquidiócesis de Santiago de Cuba y de todos los hombres de buena voluntad de estas provincias orientales le doy la más cordial bienvenida.
Esta es una tierra indómita y hospitalaria, cuna de libertad y hogar corazón abierto.
Lo recibimos como a un Padre en esta tierra que custodia, con entrañas dignidad y raíces de cubanía, la campana de La Demajagua y la bendita imagen de la Virgen de la Caridad de El Cobre.
El calor de Oriente, el alma indomable de Santiago y el amor filial de los católicos de esta diócesis primada proclaman: ¡Bendito el que viene en nombre del Señor!
Quiero presentarle, Santo Padre, a este pueblo que me ha sido confiado.
Quiero que Su Santidad conozca nuestros logros en educación, salud, deportes…, nuestras grandes potencialidades y virtudes…, y los anhelos y las angustias de esta porción del pueblo cubano.
Santidad: este es un pueblo noble y es también un pueblo que sufre.
Este es un pueblo que tiene la riqueza de la alegría y la pobreza material que lo entristece y agobia casi hasta no dejarlo ver más allá de la inmediata subsistencia.
Este es un pueblo que tiene vocación de universalidad y es hacedor de puentes de vecindad y afecto, pero cada vez está más bloqueado por intereses foráneos y padece una cultura del egoísmo debido a la dura crisis económica y moral que sufrimos.
Nuestro pueblo es respetuoso de la autoridad y le gusta el orden, pero necesita aprender a desmitificar los falsos mesianismos.
Este es un pueblo que ha luchado largos siglos por la justicia social y ahora se encuentra, al final de una de esas etapas, buscando otra vez, cómo superar las desigualdades y la falta de participación.
Santo Padre:
Cuba es un pueblo que tiene una entrañable vocación a la solidaridad, pero a lo largo de su historia, ha visto desarticulados o encallados los espacios de asociación y participación de la sociedad civil, de modo que le presento el alma de una nación que anhela reconstruir la fraternidad a base de libertad y solidaridad.
Quiero que sepa, Beatísimo Padre, que toda Cuba ha aprendido a mirar en la pequeñez de la imagen de este Virgen bendita, que será coronada hoy por su Santidad, que la grandeza no está en las dimensiones de las cosas y las estructuras sino en la estatura moral del espíritu humano.
Deseo presentar en esta eucaristía a todos aquellos cubanos y santiagueros que no encuentran sentido a sus vidas, que no han podido optar y desarrollar un proyecto de vida por causa de un camino de despersonalización que es fruto del paternalismo.
Le presento, además, a un número creciente de cubanos que han confundido la Patria con un partido, la nación con el proceso histórico que hemos vivido en las últimas décadas, y la cultura con una ideología. Son cubanos que al rechazar todo de una vez, sin discernir, se sienten desarraigados, rechazan lo de aquí y sobrevaloran todo lo extranjero.
CLICK LINK FOR ENTIRE SPEECH
http://www.elveraz.com/articulo692.htm
Julio 21st, 2011 at 16:31
YOUTUBE : Papa Juan Pablo II en Cuba 03 (con discurso de Pedro Meurice Estiú )- Pope John Paul II visits Cuba and this video shows ArchBishop Pedro Meurice Estiu giving one of the most important speeches of that visit in Santiago de Cuba)- Spanish Only
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....EB318F20C3