BREAKING: "Pro-Migrant" Obama Ends US Welcome for Fleeing Cubans

Tweet

Too bad you're not Muslim

With only a week to go in his presidency, Obama is about to end the current quasi-welcoming policy for Cuban refugees.

I have no idea if this will or can be easily reversed by the next administration.

The twenty-two-year old policy was not an unconditional welcome. Rather, President Clinton's "wet-foot, dry foot" policy granted residency to escapees from communist Cuba who made it to American soil. If they were instead intercepted on the water, they were subject to deportation.

That policy was morally problematic, obviously. And it led to a few grotesque situations where the Coast Guard tried to literally sink refugee boats with water hoses (picking up the survivors) before they made it to shore. 

But for people fleeing Castro's tyranny (often risking their lives to do it), it was better than nothing.

And the refugees themselves felt strongly enough about the crossing that an estimated 80,000 died attempting it.

But under the change in policy, even the "dry-feet" may now be deported. This apparently comes after "successful" negotiations with Cuban authorities.

This shows one thing (as if we didn't know it already): Obama and his allies on this are not "pro-immigrant" per se. They like "Syrians" because they're Muslim. They like Mexican and other Central American immigrants because they perceive them as being good "people of color" or whatever. They dislike Cuban refugees because they're anti-communist.

Cuban are merely "white Hispanics" after all. Those who choose to leave Cuba are reactionaries who will probably vote Republican. Send them back to the tropical gulag. The worms.

Not all liberals are this hypocritical or dishonest, obviously, but many are.

Immigration is just a political game to them, and immigrants (or now, "migrants") are merely tools to be used to advance a particular ideological agenda.

They don't give one damn about people.

From Jerry Iannelli at the Miami New Times:

Barack Obama Ends "Wet Foot, Dry Foot" Cuban Immigration Policy, AP Reports 

Barack Obama will be the U.S. president for eight more days. But he's decided something that will have lasting ramifications for Miami and South Florida: the end of the long-standing and controversial "wet foot, dry foot" Cuban immigration policy, which granted residency to Cuban immigrants who entered the United States without visas, according to the Associated Press. 

The policy was first implemented in 1995, after then-President Bill Clinton announced the U.S. Coast Guard would deport migrants caught floating in the waters between Cuba and the States but would accept any refugees who made it onto U.S. soil. If a Cuban migrant reached American land, he or she would then be able to apply for an expedited green card. 

The law sparked a significant amount of criticism over the years: When it was enacted, Cuba and the United States had no formal diplomatic relations. But over the years, the Cuban government has relaxed punishments for some crimes, and Cuban "refugees" in South Florida have increasingly traveled back and forth between the two nations without fear of imprisonment or worse. As relations between the two countries have improved, critics of the law have said it no longer makes sense to give Cubans immigrants an advantage over those from other nations. 

As relations have thawed, Cubans have increasingly fled to South Florida and other parts of the United States over concerns that "wet foot, dry foot" would likely come to an end. Over the years, hundreds of Cuban migrants have landed on Florida's beaches, sometimes to the cheers of locals.

WHAT NEW DEVILTRY? Pope Emeritus Benedict Praises Raul Castro, Claims He Resigned in Part Because He Couldn't Make it to World Youth Day, Expresses Gratitude to Providence for the Election of Francis

Tweet

World Youth Day got to him

The Italian daily, La Repubblica just published an interview with Pope Emeritus Benedict by Elio Guerriero, editor of the Italian edition of Ratzinger's works and author of a forthcoming biography. Andrea Torneilli provided a short summary in English for Vatican Insider.

These are only excerpts, of course:

On Pope Francis:

Obedience to my successor has always been unquestionable. Then there is a sense of deep communion and friendship. The moment he was elected I felt, as many others did, a spontaneous sense of gratitude towards Providence. After two Pontiffs from Central Europe, the Lord set his eyes as it were on the universal Church and invited us towards a broader, more Catholic communion. I personally felt deeply touched right from the start by Pope Francis’ extraordinary human warmth towards me. He tried to reach me by phone right after his election. He wasn’t able to get hold of me so he tried again straight after the meeting with the universal Church from St. peter’s balcony and he spoke to me in a very cordial manner. Since then, he has given me the gift of a marvellous paternal and fraternal relationship. I often receive small gifts, letters written in person. Before undertaking any major trips, the Pope always comes to visit me. The human kindness he has shown me is for me a special grace in this final phase of my life, which I can only be grateful for. What he says about being close to other people are not just words. He puts them into practice with me. May he in turn feel the Lord’s kindness every day. For this, I pray for him to the Lord.

On Cuba and Raul Castro:

I need scarcely remind you of how impressed I was in Cuba to see the way in which Raul Castro wishes to lead his country onto a new path, without breaking with the immediate past. Here too, I was deeply impressed by the way in which my brothers in the Episcopate are striving to navigate through this difficult process, with the faith as their starting point.

On World Youth Day and his decision to resign:

I was very certain of two things. After the experience of the trip to Mexico and Cuba, I no longer felt able to embark on another very demanding visit (to WYD in Rio in the Summer of 2013). Furthermore, according to the format of these gatherings, which had been established by John Paul II, the Pope’s physical presence there was paramount. A television link or any other such technological solution was out of the question. This was another reason why I saw it as my duty to resign.

Read the full summary here.

One would, I suppose, expect the Pope Emeritus to say nice things about Francis, though for faithful Catholics dreading each new day of the current pontificate, Benedict's overly effusive praise of Francis' election and his alleged quality of "being close to other people" are bound to grate.

Regarding being "impressed" by Raul Castro and the collaborationist episcopate in Cuba: Castro is a brutal communist tyrant who personally shot "counter-revolutionary" prisoners. The Cuban bishops are even now helping him suppress dissent, including dissent among Catholics. Would the younger anti-communist Benedict have ever made such outrageous statements?

Finally, that the universal head of the Catholic church felt it was his duty to resign (the first Pope in almost 600 years to do so) because he couldn't manage to attend an outdoor festival of Catholic teenagers in Brazil is of course insane.

I'm reminded of The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis. Everything you thought you could count on is going to pieces. Everyone you believed you could trust is betraying you.

A donkey is wearing a lion's coat.

Now that the Olympics are over, which largely occupied my mind for the last two weeks, I feel a profound sense of depression. There is no new good news about the Church. None. A donkey is wearing a lion's coat and the enemies of God are mocking and jeering.

What new deviltry will the next day bring?

Hangin' With the Butcher

Tweet

Along with Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his brother Fidel, Raul Castro directly participated in the executions of many hundred "enemies of the revolution" (Raul is the one tying the blindfold on) and was also responsible for ordering or signing off on the murders of thousands more. Some were killed without trial. Others were given trials that lasted minutes. Mercifully, some were allowed Last Rites.

Allen Ginsberg's Harsh Words for Islam and Muhammad (Strong Language)

Tweet

Starving

Hysterical

Naked

Yes, that Allen Ginsberg.

He was a flawed human being, like the rest of us. But I won't be speaking of his flaws here. One day, he defended another human being.

I don't think he was a great poet, but he also wasn't a hack. Parts of Howl are brilliant, whatever you may think of the message.

In 1971 Ginsberg wrote a poem called September on Jessore Road, which had a fair amount of impact in drawing attention to the state-sponsored genocide of Bengalis--Hindus, Muslims and others--by the Pakistan army and allied Islamist militias in Bangladesh. Estimates of those killed vary widely but a million or more deaths is reasonable. It is one of the largest recorded massacres of innocents by Muslim soldiers, militia and terrorist groups in history, and it was a liberal cause celebre for a few years. But it is now almost forgotten.

Ginsberg was a leftist. But though he often equated the "violence" of both communism and capitalism, he wasn't afraid to denounce the policies of communist states. And this got him into a bit of trouble. Wikipedia has a neat summary:

Ginsberg travelled to several communist countries to promote free speech. He claimed that communist countries, such as China, welcomed him because they thought he was an enemy of capitalism, but often turned against him when they saw him as a trouble maker. For example, in 1965 Ginsberg was deported from Cuba for publicly protesting at the persecution of homosexuals and referring to Che Guevara as "cute". The Cubans sent him to Czechoslovakia, where one week after being named the Král majálesu ("King of May" – a students' festivity, celebrating spring and student life), Ginsberg was labelled an "immoral menace" by the Czechoslovak government because of his free expression of radical ideas, and was then deported on May 7, 1965 by order of the state security agency. Václav Havel points to Ginsberg as an important inspiration in striving for freedom.

Deported from Cuba for calling Che Guevara "cute". I love it.

Cuba, by the way, would soon begin deporting homosexuals to concentration camps (following the Catholics), while most of the Western left still salivated over the revolution.

By all accounts, Ginsberg was friendly and charitable in his personal relations. As far as I can tell, most people that met him liked him and that included his cultural or political "opponents".

Here's a nifty clip from Firing Line where Ginsberg surprises William F. Buckley with a poem (that he proudly confesses was composed on LSD). Buckley blurts out "I kind of like that," and both men seem to be richly enjoying themselves.

The anecdote of the title comes from a 2010 piece in Reason Magazine by Mark Goldblatt. Read the whole article if you can, but here's the most relevant excerpt. I in turn was alerted to it by Kathy Shaidle:

I got to know the poet Allen Ginsberg towards the end of his life. Not very well, just a nodding acquaintance, but after he died I attended a memorial in his honor at the City University Graduate School. At that service, his personal assistant related a story about Ginsberg’s reaction to the death sentence pronounced on the novelist Salman Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. Rushdie’s “crime,” you’ll recall, was writing a provocative, perhaps even blasphemous novel inspired by the life of Muhammad called The Satanic Verses. 

Though I might be screwing up a few details, the gist of the story was as follows: Soon after news of the fatwa broke, Ginsberg and his assistant climbed into the back seat of a taxi in Manhattan. After a glance at the cab driver’s name, Ginsberg politely inquired if he was a Muslim. When the cabbie replied that he was, Ginsberg asked him what he thought about the death sentence on Rushdie. The cabbie answered that he thought that Rushdie’s book was disrespectful of Islam, and that the Ayatollah had every right to do what he had done. At this point, according to his assistant, Ginsberg, one of the gentlest men ever to walk the planet, flew into a rage, screaming at the cabbie as he continued to drive, “Then I shit on your religion! Do you hear me? I shit on Islam! I shit on Muhammad! Do you hear? I shit on Muhammad!” Ginsberg demanded that the cabbie pull over. The cabbie complied, and, without paying the fare, Ginsberg and his assistant climbed out. He was still screaming at the cabbie as the car drove off.

My own interpretation is that Ginsberg knew or cared little about Islam per se. But he knew what had happened to Rushdie (whether they were personally acquainted, I have no idea), and was sticking up for a comrade. How could anyone do this? How could any religion do this? How could anyone not aggressively oppose it?

Will you please please please please please please please stop talking?

Tweet

"I live in a van down by the river."

Havana, 20 September, 2015:

You are standing up and I am sitting. How unmannerly. But you know why I sit down? It’s because I took some notes of some things that our companion here said, and what I want to say is based on these. 

One word that struck a chord is "dream." A Latin American writer has said that people have two eyes: one of flesh and another of glass. With the eye of flesh, we see what is before us and with the eye of glass, we see what we dream of. It’s nice, no? In the objectivity of life, the capacity of dreaming has to enter in. A young person who is not capable of dreaming is cloistered in himself, he’s closed in on himself. Sure, a person sometimes dreams of things that are never going to happen. But dream them. Desire them. Seek the horizon. Open yourselves to great things. 

I’m not sure if in Cuba they use this word, but in Argentina, we say, Don’t be wimpy. Open yourselves and dream. Dream that the world with you can be different. Dream that if you give the best of yourself, you are going to help this world be different. Don’t forget. Dream. If you get carried away and dream too much and life cuts you off, don't worry. Dream and share your dreams. Speak about the great things that you want, because inasmuch as your capacity to dream is greater, when life leaves you only half way, you will have gone farther. So, first dream. 

You said a phrase that I underlined and took note of: "that we might know how to welcome and accept the one who thinks differently than us." Truly, sometimes we are closed in. We shut ourselves in our little world: "This is either the way that I want it or we’re not doing it." And you went even further, "that we don’t close ourselves into the 'little convents' of ideologies or in the 'little convents' of religions. That we might grow in the face of individualism." 

When a religion becomes a "little convent" it loses the best that it has, it loses its reality of adoring God, of believing in God. It’s a little convent of words, of prayers, of "I’m good and you’re bad,’ of moral regulations. I have my ideology, my way of thinking and you have yours; I close myself in this "little convent" of ideology. 

Open hearts. Open minds. If you are different than me, why don’t we talk? Why do we always throw rocks at that which separates us? At that in which we are differing? Why don’t we hold hands in that which we have in common? Motivate ourselves to speak about what we have in common, and then we can talk about the differences we have. But I said, talk, I didn’t say fight. I didn’t say close ourselves in. I don’t say "shut ourselves into our little convent," to use the word you used. But this is possible only when I have the capacity to speak of that which I have in common with the other, of that by which we are able to work together. 

In Buenos Aires, in a new parish, in a very, very poor region, a group of university students was building some rooms for the parish. And the parish priest told me, "Why don’t you come some Sunday and I’ll introduce them to you." They worked on Saturdays and Sundays on this construction. They were young men and women of the university. So I arrived, I saw them and they were introduced to me. "This is the architect. He’s Jewish. This one is Communist. This one is a practicing Catholic." All of them were different, but they were all working together for the common good. 

This is called social friendship: to seek the common good. Social enmity destroys. A family is destroyed by enmity. A country is destroyed by enmity. The world is destroyed by enmity. And the biggest enmity is war. And today we see that the world is destroying itself with war because people are incapable of sitting down and talking. OK, let’s negotiate. What can we do in common? In what things are we not going to give in? But let’s not kill more people. When there is division, there is death, death in the soul because we are killing the capacity to unite. We are killing social friendship. And that’s what I ask of you today: be capable of creating social friendship. 

There was another word that you said, the word hope. Youth are the hope of a people; we hear this everywhere. But what is hope? Is it to be optimistic? No. Optimism is a mood. Tomorrow, you wake up with an upset stomach and you’re not optimistic, you see everything in a negative light. Hope is something more. Hope is something that endures through suffering. Hope knows how to suffer to bring forward a project. It knows how to make sacrifices. Are you capable of making sacrifices for a future or do you only want to live today and leave what comes to those who come after? Hope is fruitful. Hope gives life. Are you capable of giving life? Or are you going to be a spiritually sterile young man or young woman, without the capacity to create life in others, without the capacity to create social friendship, without the capacity to create a homeland, without the capacity to create greatness? 

Hope is fruitful. Hope is given in work, and here I want to mention a very grave problem that is being experienced in Europe: the number of youth who don’t have work. There are countries in Europe where as many as 40% of youth 25 years old and younger live unemployed. I am thinking of one country. In another country, it’s 47% and in another 50%. 

Evidently, when a people is not concerned with giving work to youth — and when I say "people," I don’t mean government, I mean the entire people — it doesn’t have a future. 

The youth become part of the throwaway culture and all of us know that today, in this empire of the god money, things are thrown away and people are thrown away, children are thrown away, because they are unwanted, because they kill them before they are born, the elderly are thrown away — I’m speaking of the world in general — because they don’t produce anymore. In some countries, there is legal euthanasia, but in so many others there is a hidden, covered up euthanasia. Youth are thrown away because they are not given work. So then? What is left for a young person who doesn't have work? A country that doesn’t invent, a people that doesn’t invent employment opportunities for its youth, what’s left for this youth are addictions, or suicide, or to go around looking for armies of destruction to create wars. 

This throwaway culture is doing damage to all of us; it takes away hope, and this is what you asked for the youth: "We want hope." Hope endures suffering, it’s hardworking, it’s fruitful, it gives us work and it saves us from the throwaway culture. Hope that brings together, brings everyone together, because a people that knows how to bring itself together to look toward the future and build social friendship, as I said, despite thinking differently, this people has hope. 

And if I find a young person without hope, I've said this before, "a young retired person." There are young people who seem to have retired at 22 years old. They are young people with existential sadness, they are young people who have committed their lives to a basic defeatism. They are young people who lament. They are young people who flee from life. The journey of hope is not easy. And it can’t be made alone. There is an African proverb that says, "If you want to go quickly, walk alone, but if you want to go far, walk together." 

And I, Cuban young people, though you think differently from each other, though you have your own points of view, I want you to go along accompanying each other, together, seeking hope, seeking the future and the nobility of your homeland. We began with the word hope and I want to conclude with another word that you said and that I tend to use a lot: the culture of encounter. Please, let us not have "un-encounter" among us. Let us go accompanying each other, in encounter, even though we think differently, even though we feel differently, but there is something bigger than us, which is the greatness of our people, which is the greatness of our homeland, which is this beauty, this sweet hope for the homeland to which we have to arrive. 

I take leave wishing you the best, wishing you all of this that I have said, this I wish for you. I am going to pray for you. And I ask you to pray for me. And if one of you is a non-believer and cannot pray because he doesn’t believe, may he at least wish the best for me. May God bless you and bring you to walk along this path of hope, toward the culture of encounter, avoiding these "little convents" that our companion spoke about. May God bless all of you.