Some heroes are made by the circumstances surrounding them, and others are born to be heroes. All of them, however, share one thing: the heart of a lion. Courage and the will to fight to the end is what separates the hero from the common man. It is their steadfast determination to stand up and fight against seemingly invincible forces that raises them above the vulgar crowds and earns them a place in history as brave and courageous warriors.
Guillermo "Coco" Fariñas is one of those men. Like his fearless predecessor Orlando Zapata Tamayo, and thousands of other Cuban heroes, Fariñas has a heart of a lion. Almost three weeks into his hunger strike, his body is frail and emaciated, but his valiant heart continues to fight against tyranny.
On Thursday, another hero, Lech Walesa, spoke to Fariñas by telephone shortly before he had to be hospitalized. Walesa pleaded with him to end his strike, reminding him that Cuba needs people like him alive to bring about freedom.
Fariñas response to him was that of a courageous lion. From hero to hero, he said to Walesa, "If I die, I ask you to lay a wreath on my grave when Cuba is free."
That, my friends, is what being a hero is all about.
"Zapata-Tamayo was not a political prisoner. He was a common criminal. A genuine political prisoner goes on a hunger strike to seek his freedom. But Zapata simply wanted a TV set, telephone and kitchen..he should have been treated by psychiatrists!"
"Judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail. We execute from Revolutionary conviction!"
Aleida's dear papi.
Well...as the saying goes the pumpkin does not grow far from the parent vine.
To (try and)stifle the gag reflex, take a slug of Pepto-Bismol first....then consider Zapata ( and now perhaps Farinas) in their final hours.....now--take a deep breath, say an act of contrition against any involuntary curses that might issue from your vocal chords-- and compare them to Aleida's dear Papi's final hours: "DON'T SHOOT!..I'm CHE!..I'm worth to you more alive than dead!"
"But it's simply about THE MUSIC! oink-oink...about brotherly LOVE!..oink-oink..So Shut up you FASCIST GUSANOS!!!...oink-oink
From Las Damas de Blanco:
"Anyone who tries to excuse what happens in Cuba by saying, "repression exists in all parts of the world" in our view, is an idiot using a vulgar justification for the Cuban regime. Such cosmetic use of language makes (your) expressions simply ridiculous. You claim to be impartial, but there's no doubt you side with Castro's regime. While mentioning "tortures" you only refer to the U.S. embargo and forget to condemn the physical tortures suffered by Cuba's political prisoners...you also claim that you cannot verify repression in Cuba? Well, in Sept. during your concert, you missed a prime chance to verify it first hand with a brief meeting with members of Cuba's civic sector....Mr Bose you're a great musician, but quit your navel-gazing!"
The rest here (in Spanish) as posted by our friend Zoe Valdez.
Apparently eager to highlight their hypocrisy, the month prior to their Cuba broadcast, the "Today Show" reported on location from Cape Town, South Africa. "The one indispensable visit on a trip to Cape Town is a pilgrimage to Robben Island [a former political prison]," frowned the Today Show hosts. "Most moving, of course, is the tour through the prison, led by former inmates, where you'll view the painfully cramped cell where Nelson Mandela spent eighteen of his twenty-seven years in prison."
Cuban political prisons and political prisoners did not merit any mention during the two-hour "Today Show" Havana broadcast, though hundreds of political prisoners were languishing in Cuba's dungeon's within miles of Andrea and Matt during the very taping. Among these were black human rights activist Dr. Elias Biscet, who attempted Gandhi's and Martin Luther King's tactics of non-violent civil disobedience against Cuba's very violent regime and suffers daily tortures for the effort, as confirmed by Amnesty International. The Paris-based Reporters without Borders documents that almost 20 percent of the world's jailed journalists (Matt and Andrea's colleagues, you might think) languish in Cuba's (a nation of 11 million!) prisons. Many of these jailed journalists suffered in dungeons within walking distance of where Matt and Andrea were yukking it up with their jailers and urging their viewers to "come on down!" -- and thus further reward, enrich, and entrench these jailers and torturers.
Ran into Enrique Encinosa last week at the Radio Mambi studios right before I went on the air with Lourdes De Kendall. He handed me a CD and said "I just re-wrote my Escambray Rebels book. Added a bunch of stuff. I want to get it into Cuba."
"I think I can help with that," I replied.
And here it is. Enrique Encinosa's excellent Heroes del Escambray - an absolute must read - available for download only at Babalu Blog. Download it, read it, and pass it along.
(This post will remain on top for the day. For news on Fariñas and other relevant topics, scroll down.)
Ive received quite a few emails from folks asking what they can do to help. We all feel a bit useless and frustrated right now given that we're outside Cuba and feel that we cant take some kind of action to help Fariñas.
But we can and there is something we can all do. Yesterday evening the term "Fariñas" reached the number 2 Trending Topic spot on Twitter in the USA. That may not sound like much but it's actually super important.
Twitter is used by almost 100 Million people throughout the world and the more exposure anything gets on twitter, the greater the likelihood that the story or event or person being tweeted about will make headlines in the MSM, and the more headlines in the MSM, the more pressure on the regime.
So get tweeting, folks, and while youre at it, facebook the hell out of this as well. You can use TweetDeck and post to both twitter and facebook simultaneously. These are the new weapons we have against totalitarianism and everyone needs to be armed to the teeth and proficient in their use.
Update:If you think that these new technologies dont have the commie creeps in Cuba shittin' pickles, check out the #Fariñas search on Twitter. The regime has sent its sycophantic vendepatrias in to do damage control. All of whom are desperately trying to discredit Fariñas, Tamayo, etal...At first I got angry and began responding rather passionately, but now, after reading their tweets, I just feel real sorry for them. They are blind to the world around them.
This coming Sunday, HBO will present The Pacific, the long-awaited companion piece to, what I believe is the finest portrayal of World War II in any medium, Band of Brothers. It is unfortunate that even before one minute is aired, controversy has erupted because of a statement Tom Hanks made to historian Douglas Brinkley in Time Magazine (no link):
“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods. They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s going on today?”
Putting aside the typical knee-jerk idiot liberal reaction, his statement is so stupid and wrong on so many levels that I'll let historian Victor Davis Hanson have at it:
Hanks may not have been quoted correctly; and his remarks may have been impromptu and poorly expressed; and we should give due consideration to the tremendous support Hanks has given in the past both to veterans and to commemoration of World War II; and his new HBO series could well be a fine bookend to Band of Brothers. All that said, Hanks’ comments were sadly infantile pop philosophizing offered by, well, an ignoramus.
Hanks thinks he is trying to explain the multifaceted Pacific theater in terms of a war brought on by and fought through racial animosity. That is ludicrous.
[...]
An innately racist society could not have gone through the nightmare of Okinawa (nearly 50,000 Americans killed, wounded, or missing), and yet a mere few months later have in Tokyo, capital of the vanquished, a rather enlightened proconsul MacArthur, whose deference to Japanese religion, sensibilities, and tradition ensured a peaceful transition to a rather radical new independent and autonomous democratic culture.
Read the entire piece here. and watch the Making Of video below.
Our friend Jamie Glazov of Frontpage Magazine (a refugee from Communism himself) wrote an excellent article about his family's travails and heroism under Bolshevism that should resonate with many Cubans:
"During this time, a friend of our family’s told my dad that, under vicious harassment by the KGB (they had discovered an affair she was having and threatened to tell her husband), she had agreed to be a witness for them in a trial against my father that would charge (and convict) him of selling foreign currency and drugs on the black market (which she would place in our apartment). Upon hearing this, my dad knew the KGB was going for the jugular...
"unless Cuban President Raul Castro's government agrees to release 26 ailing political prisoners."
"the Caribbean island has been ruled by brothers Fidel and Raul Castro since they ousted dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959"
Not that it started yesterday. In fact, from 57-59 the AP's "news" dispatches from New York were authored in full by Julio 26 agent in New York, Mario Llerena--who admits as much in his own book!--and who was main contact from Castro to-- none other than: HERBERT MATTHEWS!
The immensely shrewd and sagacious Llerena, by the way, fled Cuba just ahead of a Communist death-squad shortly before the liberator-saint-hero hailed in his AP press dispatches, took power.
The 2009 Human Rights Report is out, and Cuba unfortunately remains a totalitarian state that does not tolerate opposition to official policy, and denies its citizens basic human rights.
Cuba, with a population of approximately 11 million, is a totalitarian state that does not tolerate opposition to official policy. The country is led by Raul Castro, who holds the positions of chief of state, president of the council of state and council of ministers, and commander in chief of the Revolutionary Armed Forces. Although the constitution recognizes the unicameral National Assembly as the supreme authority, the Communist Party (CP) is recognized in the constitution as the only legal party and "the superior leading force of society and of the state." Fidel Castro remained the first secretary of the CP. The January 2008 elections for the National Assembly were neither free nor fair, and all of the candidates had to be preapproved by a CP candidacy commission, with the result that the CP candidates and their allies won 98.7 percent of the vote and 607 of 614 seats in the National Assembly. Civilian authorities, through the Ministry of the Interior, exercised control over the police, the internal security forces, and the prison system.
The government continued to deny its citizens their basic human rights, including the right to change their government, and committed numerous and serious abuses. The following human rights problems were reported: beatings and abuse of prisoners and detainees, harsh and life-threatening prison conditions, including denial of medical care; harassment, beatings, and threats against political opponents by government-recruited mobs, police, and state security officials acting with impunity; arbitrary arrest and detention of human rights advocates and members of independent professional organizations; and denial of fair trial, including for at least 194 political prisoners and as many as 5,000 persons who have been convicted of potential "dangerousness" without being charged with any specific crime.
Authorities interfered with privacy and engaged in pervasive monitoring of private communications. There were also severe limitations on freedom of speech and press; denial of peaceful assembly and association; restrictions on freedom of movement, including selective denial of exit permits to citizens and the forcible removal of persons from Havana to their hometowns; and restrictions on freedom of religion and refusal to recognize domestic human rights groups or permit them to function legally. Discrimination against persons of African descent, domestic violence, underage prostitution, trafficking in persons, and severe restrictions on worker rights, including the right to form independent unions, were also problems.
Representatives from all of the above agricultural industries are in DC as we speak for a hearing "To review U.S. agricultural sales to Cuba."
Naturally, the entities which these agents represent all sell to Cuba already, but, naturally, the entities want to change the rules of the game. Ostensibly, they want to eradicate the "cash up front" policy to a more regime friendly one of perhaps "cash upon delivery" or, ideally for these entities, "credit."
Because the castro regime has such an excellent credit rating and they always - ALWAYS - pay their bills. Naturally.
Ahem...
Of course, should they change the rules and allow raul and co credit, given that this is the heavily subsidized agricultural industry, when raul and co default, it will be those who put in the money to subsidize these agricultural concerns who ultimately pay the bill. And, in case youre wondering, that's you. The American Taxpayer.
Boy, Phil Peters must be suffering from an extreme case of priapism today.
The European Parliament adopted a resolution on Thursday strongly condemning the "avoidable and cruel" death of Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata and voicing its concern at the "alarming state" of another prisoner, Guillermo Fariñas. MEPs also repeat their call to the Cuban government for the "immediate and unconditional" release of all political prisoners and urge the EU to begin a "structured dialogue" with Cuban civil society.
Parliament, which approved the resolution by 509 votes to 30 with 14 abstentions, strongly condemns the "avoidable and cruel" death of political dissident Orlando Zapata, after a hunger strike of 85 days, and expresses its solidarity and sympathy with his family. MEPs also condemn the pre-emptive detention of activists and the government’s attempt to prevent the family of Orlando Zapata from holding his funeral and paying their last respects.
As a result, the Spanish government has abandoned its efforts to persuade the EU to change its position on Cuba. The Real Cuba reports:
March 11 - The Spanish government will abandon its efforts to persuade the European Union to change its Common Position on Cuba, which essentially conditions EU relations on Cuba's human rights record.
The announcement was made on Thursday by Ramón Jáuregui, vice president of Spain's socialist delegation to the European Parliament, minutes after that body voted to condemn the Castro regime by 509 to 30, for the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo.
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos has been trying to convince the EU to change its policy, which was adopted at the request of the conservative government of former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar, but the murder of Orlando Zapata derailed any possibility of convincing the other members of the EU to go along with Spain's recommendation.
Jáuregui spoke after the vote, to explain why the Socialist delegation voted in favor of the resolution to condemn the Castro regime, in what seemed to be a conflict with the Spanish government policy up to now.
"Spain wanted a consensus to renovate the frame of the EU relations with Cuba, but we do not want an absolute break of the common position," he said.
It seems that the Spanish government was surprised at the lopsided vote against the Cuban regime and decided to drop its attempt to relax the EU's current policy on dealing with Cuba's totalitarian regime.
So, basically, a man had to die in order for Spain to do what's right in the first place.
recent comments
yoanhermida: Awesome post Val. We have a hard copy of the book. My family’s fight against the dictatorship is...
Mambí: Spygirl, let me see what I can do, thanks. Ziva, you’re correct, it would make a great film.
Spygirl: Mambi: he can contact me at my e-mail:Simonspygirl@aol.com
Spygirl: Mambi, I have no idea on how to contact him, but if I did I would certainly help him in that endeavor.
Felixthe3rd: Heh, what’re you gonna do take him out? :^)
Ziva Sahl: Your welcome, and Mambís right about the books, I just wanted you to know about all of them. I hope the...
drillanwr: Damn. Just … damn. God, please fill this brave man with the nourishment of The Holy Spirit and keep...