The Savage Lands of Islam

The Savage Lands of Islam



AS USUAL MR. DANIEL GREENFIELD HITS IT ON THE SPOT...IT IS WORTH READING AND HEEDING YOUR ATTENTION TO IT....AMEN

EL EXILIO VIEJO...recuerdos del Parque de las Palomas

Ahora que está de moda criticar a los viejos cubanos, vale la pena abrir el álbum familiar. Ahí están bajando del avión, en los años 60, con sus ropas de domingo y una sonrisa nerviosa, todavía mojada por las lágrimas de la partida. A muchos, sobre todo a los 'recien llegados', les cuesta entender que en la década de 1950, incluso con la dictadura batistiana, Cuba era un mejor lugar para vivir que Estados Unidos. En lo social. En lo económico.  En lo humano. 

Acostumbrados a una cultura mediterránea en todo su esplendor y tolerancia, con una creciente permeabilidad entre clases, razas y credos, no es difícil imaginar el desgarramiento, el temor y la amargura de aquellos exiliados que al buscar apartamento tropezaban con un letrero de ‘No Cubans’.  “ No pets. “ La más pujante clase media de América Latina recogiendo tomates y aguacates en Kendall y Homestead.  Miami, que hoy es un campo de contradicciones, era un campo a secas.

Lo que cero debió constituir una descomunal prueba para un pueblo que ya casi tenía en sus manos un porvenir envidiable.  Basta mirar las ruinas para comprobar lo que estaba en pie. Pasamos la página del álbum y vemos a nuestros héroes con carro del año, casa propia y los hijos a punto de entrar a la universidad.  La bonanza de un lento sacrificio.  Y las arrugas prematuras.  Y la consternación de las ilusiones que se fueron en sobrevivir con dos trabajos.  En morderse la lengua en inglés y español.  En poner las dos mejillas muchas veces.  Ya perdida la esperanza de volver a un suelo natal libre.  Es natural, pues, que odien a Fidel y al comunismo con saña inmisericorde y fanática.  Y que ese odio con frecuencia paralice su razón.  Porque la razón que les piden que comprendan es salvajemente injusta y miope. 

Sobre esos hombros encorvados se levanta una callada y preservadora lección.  Del pastel de guayaba a la devoción constitucional, del taburete a la guayabera, esas canas coronan una larga batalla por nuestra identidad y por la prosperidad en un suelo que les acogio cuando la tirania les llamó 'gusanos' y 'escoria.' 

Académicos, campesinos, comerciantes, artistas, médicos, pícaros y mártires, soñadores y pragmáticos, ricos y pobres, restituyeron a la nación el patrimonio dilapidado por Fidel.  A ratos, el país de sus sueños es más concreto que el país real.  Ellos guardaron la receta y recordaron la canción.  

En la última página del álbum, con el cuello almidonado y el pelo fragante a agua de colonia, tienen el candor de las piedras lavadas por la tormenta.  Los viejos cubanos: clave y aliento.  Ellos horadaron en la roca, con uñas y dientes, abriendo las puertas que los que vinieron despues ya encontraron abiertas. Ellos protagonizaron a noventa millas toda una real epopeya de reafirmación nacional.  Déjalos quejarse. Si analizas verás que tienen razón. 

Déjalos refugiarse en sus pesares.  La taza de café se les enfría en las manos mientras leen las noticias de la isla . Y vuelven a oler los jazmines de sus patios en Cuba. Y en el frío cristal de la tarde vuelven a tocar el rostro de sus muertos.  Los viejos cubanos, curtidos a la intemperie. Sin ellos nada de lo que hay hubiera sido posible.  

Déjalos que sean como son.  ¡Porque son la sal de nuestra tierra!

MALALA AND KAILASH WIN A WELL-DESERVE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

                   9 months after being shot in the head by Taliban                   terrorists, Malala Yousafzai, speaks at the UN

In a reversal from the previous two years, individuals, and not international bodies, have won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

The young girl who was savagely shot aboard a school bus by Islamist fanatics for promoting education for girls, Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, was one recipient of the Peace Prize. The other recipient is an Indian man, Kailash Satyarthi, who also helped promote universal schooling and protecting children from abuse and exploitation.

The announcement was made this morning in Oslo, Sweden, by the Nobel committee chair, Thorbjorn Jagland.

The world was captured by the brutality of the attack on the girl referred to universally as “Malala.” The Taliban thugs boarded her school bus on Oct. 9, 2012, specifically to murder her. They shot her in the head and left her to die because she championed the cause of education for girls. But she didn’t die, instead she became an enduring symbol of her cause. Last year, a little over a year after her attempted murder, Malala spoke at the United Nations. She spoke on July 12, her 16th birthday.

“The extremists were, and they are, afraid of books and pens,” Yousafzai said to her audience at the U.N. “The power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women.” The day of her speech was declared Malala Day by the U.N  But Malala said it was “not my day,” but a day for every woman, boy and girl struggling for their rights.

“Thousands of people have been killed by the terrorists and millions have been injured,” she said. “I am just one of them. So here I stand, one girl among many.”

“I speak not for myself but for those without voice … those who have fought for their rights — their right to live in peace, their right to be treated with dignity, their right to equality of opportunity, their right to be educated.” And from just over the border in India comes

the other recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize. Kailash Satyarthi has been in the human rights world for longer than Malala has been alive. He has been crusading against child slavery and also for the right to education. Because of his many successful efforts to free enslaved children, Satyarthi has also been the victim of assassination attempts.  In 2011, Satyarthi was attacked while rescuing child slaves from clothing sweatshops in Delhi. In 2004 he and his colleagues were attacked while rescuing children from a local circus mafia in India. It is estimated that Satyarthi has freed over 75,000 bonded and child slaves in India, and developed a model for educating and rehabilitating the children following their emancipation. A CREDIT TO HIS NATION'S LEGACY OF MOHANDAS K. GHANDI!!!

MY PS.-  SHE REMINDS ME OF ANOTHER YOUNG AND COURAGEOUS GIRL...ALSO ABUSED BY TERRORISTS...HER NAME WAS (YOU GUESSED IT!) ANNE FRANK...AND AS THE SONG GOES:  "OH, WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN!!!"

MY PS.-  WHAT A DIFFERENCE A FEW YEARS MAKE...I STILL REMEMBER (WITH SHAME FOR ALBERT NOBEL) HOW OUR BELOVED GOLFER-IN-CHIEF "WON" HIS NOBEL PEACE PRIZE...

2014....or....ANOTHER MARIEL...

MIAMI — In an unexpected echo of the refugee crisis from two decades ago, a rising tide of Cubans in rickety, cobbled-together boats is fleeing the island and showing up in the waters off Florida.

Leonardo Heredia, a 24-year-old Cuban baker, for example, tried and failed to reach the shores of Florida eight times.

Last week, he and 21 friends from his Havana neighborhood gathered the combined know-how from their respective botched migrations and made a boat using a Toyota motor, scrap stainless steel and plastic foam. Guided by a pocket-size Garmin GPS, they finally made it to Florida on Mr. Heredia’s ninth attempt.

“Things that were bad in Cuba are now worse,” Mr. Heredia said. “If there was more money in Cuba to pay for the trips, everyone would go.”

Mr. Heredia is one of about 25,000 Cubans who arrived by land and sea in the United States without travel visas in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2014, according to government figures. He, like many others, is also an unexpected throwback to a time that experts thought had long passed: the era when Cubans boarded

homemade vessels built from old car parts and inner tubes, hoping for calm seas and favorable winds. As the number of Cubans attempting the voyage nearly doubled in the past two years, the number of vessels unfit for the dangerous 90-mile crossing also climbed.

Not since the rafter crisis of 1994 has the United States received so many Cuban migrants. The increase highlights the consequences of a United States immigration policy that gives preferential treatment to Cubans and recent reforms on the island that loosened travel restrictions, and it puts a harsh spotlight on the growing frustration of a post-Fidel Castro Cuba.

More Cubans took to the sea last year than in any year since 2008, when Raúl Castro officially took power and the nation hummed with anticipation. Some experts fear that the recent spike in migration could be a harbinger of a mass exodus, and they caution that the unseaworthy vessels have already left a trail of deaths.

“I believe there is a silent massive exodus,” said Ramón Saúl Sánchez, an exile leader in Miami who has helped families of those who died at sea. “We are back to those times, like in 1994, when people built little floating devices and took to the ocean, whether they had relatives here or not.”

Although the number migrating by sea hardly compares with the summer of 1994, Mr. Sánchez said the number of illegal and legal Cuban immigrants combined has now surpassed the number of thoseUnited States Coast Guard spotted 3,722 Cubans in the past year, almost double the number who were intercepted in 2012. Under the migration accord signed after the 1994 crisis, those captured at sea are sent back to Cuba. Those who reach land get to stay, which the Cuban government has long argued draws many people into making the dangerous voyage.

For the past 10 years, sophisticated smuggling networks were responsible for the vast majority of Cuban migration. A crackdown

by the American authorities and a lack of financing available to Cubans on the island have shifted the migration method back to what it was two decades ago, when images of desperate people aboard floating wooden planks gave Cuban migrants the “rafters” moniker.

“We have seen vessels made out of Styrofoam and some made out of inner tubes,” said Cmdr. Timothy Cronin, deputy chief of enforcement for the Coast Guard’s Miami district. “These vessels have no navigation equipment, no lifesaving equipment. They rarely have life jackets with them. They are really unsafe.”

About 20 percent of the vessels used in 2008 were homemade, but this past year, 87 percent of the migrants spotted at sea were riding rustic boats that the passengers had built themselves, Coast Guard statistics show.  Julio Sánchez, 38, a welder from Havana who traveled with Mr. Heredia, said most Cubans do not have the money to pay smugglers, and are instead forced to spend months gathering supplies for their journey.

“In our group, some people gave ideas, some gave money and some gave labor,” Mr. Sánchez said. The trip from a port east of Havana to an obscure Florida key cost them a total of $5,000, a fraction of the $200,000 or more that smugglers would have charged such a large group.  Experts said the recession cut the flow of financing for such journeys, because it was Miami relatives who made the payments. Many of the people arriving now — like those in Mr. Sánchez’s group — have no family in the United States to help pay.

“If I had to save $10,000 with my monthly salary of $17, I would not get here until I was 80 or 90 years old,” said Yannio La O,

31, an elementary school wrestling coach who arrived in Miami last week after a shipwreck landed him in Mexico.  He and 31 others departed from Manzanillo, in southern Cuba, in late August on a boat they built over the course of three months. They ran into engine trouble, and the food they brought was contaminated by a sealant they carried aboard to patch holes in the hull. They spent 24 days lost at sea.

“Every day at 6 a.m. or 6 p.m., somebody died,” Mr. La O said.

Nine people, including a pregnant woman, died and were thrown overboard, and six more got on inner tubes and disappeared before the Mexican Navy rescued the survivors, Mr. Sánchez said. Two more died at shore. Mr. La O said he survived by drinking urine and spearing fish.  Their deaths came as the United States Coast Guard found four bodies floating in the water 23 miles east of Hollywood, Fla. Their relatives in Miami identified their corpses by their tattoos and scars.

Mr. La O became one of the more than 22,500 Cubans who arrived in the United States by land last fiscal year — most of them in Texas. That is nearly double the number who did so in 2012.

Some of those migrants flew to Mexico and then requested entry at the Texas border. Relaxed travel rules in Cuba now allow people to exit the country more freely, a change that experts say plays a part in the surge in Southwest border arrivals. Other people, like Mr. La O, made the first leg of the journey by sea to Central America or Mexico.  Ted Henken, a Cuba scholar at Baruch College in New York, said Washington should be worried about the increase in migration, because it demonstrates that Cuba’s recent economic reforms have failed to help the majority of Cubans, making the nation vulnerable to a catastrophic event.

“If some triggering event or series of events were to happen, like with the Venezuela aid or major unrest, or a hurricane, we could have another ‘balsero’ crisis or Mariel,” Mr. Henken said, using the Spanish word for “rafter” and noting the 1980 boatlift.

A spokesman for the Cuban Interests Section in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.  Michael Flanagan, the deputy chief patrol agent for the United States Border Patrol’s Miami sector, said good weather, particularly the lack of hurricanes in

recent years, has played a part in facilitating travel. Although the 91 percent increase in Cuban landings was “significant and it has our attention,” he said, it was not “remarkable.”  “Even if half the people who leave from Cuba do not survive, that means half of them did,” Mr. La O said, speaking from his grandmother’s house in Miami, where he arrived last week. “I would tell anyone in Cuba to come. It’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.”

WHY IS IT THAT NOBODY BUILDS A "BALSA" AND SAIL TO CUBA???

GRACIAS DE TODO CORAZON AL COAST GUARD DE LOS EEUU...CUANTOS SE HAN SALVADO GRACIAS A SU ABNEGABLE LABOR DE AMOR!!!!!!!

QUE MORIR POR LA PATRIA ES VIVIR...

                                                Al combate corred Bayameses,

                                                Que la patria os contempla orgullosa.

                                                No temáis una muerte gloriosa

                                                Que morir por la patria, ¡es vivir!.

                                                En cadenas vivir, es vivir,

                                                En afrenta y oprobio sumidos.

                                                Del clarín escuchad el sonido,

                                                ¡A las armas valientes corred!

Nuestro Himno Nacional nació en agosto de 1867 y está indisolublemente relacionado con el proceso mismo de génesis de la primera contienda libertadora de Cuba.

El 13 de agosto de 1867, reunidos en el bufete del escritor, músico y revolucionario Perucho Figueredo, varios revolucionarios debatían importantes planes del inminente alzamiento contra el poder de España, es allí donde se le confiere a Perucho componer nuestro himno. En la madrugada del 14 de agosto de 1867 Perucho Figueredo compone las estrofas del Himno de Bayamo.

Nuestro Himno Nacional había nacido. Se le llamó La Bayamesa por dos razones: con el objetivo de evocar La Marsellesa, un himno nacido en Marsella, Francia y que se había convertido en símbolo de rebeldía para todos los oprimidos y además, por nacer en nuestra patria, en la ciudad de Bayamo.

Posteriormente se le encargó la orquestación del himno al músico Manuel Muñoz Cedeño, que dirigía una de las orquestas de la ciudad, el 8 de mayo de 1868. Días después un grupo de patriotas escucharon por primera vez la ejecución ya orquestada de las notas del himno nacional cubano. Tal fue la acogida que los revolucionarios dieron a la orquestación del himno, que Perucho decide aprovechar la próxima celebración de las festividades religiosas tradicionales en Bayamo, para dar a conocer en público la melodía del himno.Es así, como en la iglesia mayor de Bayamo, en un solemne Te Déum, y por las festividades del Corpus Christie, el jueves 11 de junio de 1868 y ante la concurrencia de personalidades y civiles, se estrena nuestro himno.

Iniciada la contienda bélica el 10 de octubre de 1868 y después del fracaso de Yara, se determina por el alto mando mambí proceder a la toma de Bayamo. Se consideró éste como lugar más estratégico de la provincia para el primer golpe certero que propinara la Revolución a las fuerzas españolas. El día 18 de octubre a las siete de la mañana se inició la toma de Bayamo, que duraría tres días, haciendo posible la primera victoria. La capitulación se firmó a las once de la noche del 20 de octubre de 1868 y marcaba para la historia de nuestra Patria, la primera victoria del ejército mambí.

Es allí donde Perucho Figueredo, acosado por el tumulto que le solicitaba a grandes gritos la letra de nuestro himno, sacó lápiz y papel de su bolsillo y cruzando una pierna sobre la montura de su corcel, vació en los moldes del verso la melodía ardorosa de sus estrofas y pronto, volando la copia de mano en mano, a coro con la música, brotó de cien labios a la vez el himno a la Patria.

Así, el 20 de octubre de 1868, en Bayamo la primera ciudad libre de Cuba, se completó el nacimiento de nuestro himno nacional.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGT9Zwk892k