Shove That Up Your Condolence

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BREAKING: The Bastard is Dead

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You have to break some eggs to make a shabby socialist dictatorship

Fidel Castro died yesterday at the age of 90.

In the Americas, he was the greatest mass murderer of the last century.

That counts the prisoners killed by firing squad, the assassinated or "disappeared," the men and women who died in his prison camps, the men, women and children who perished at sea trying to flee his tyranny - often due to direct attacks from regime boats and aircraft - those who suffered premature deaths due to the poverty that he created, and of course the hundreds of thousands who died in the wars and guerrilla operations that he launched or participated in outside of Cuba.

The bastard is dead.

But those who supported him in one way or another, still have the blood of his victims on their hands.

How does that taste with the Thanksgiving leftovers?

Hangin' With the Butcher

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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)

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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?

Vatican Insider Mistakenly Uses Hitler Metaphor to Describe Evo's Sick Pope Gift

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"The Pope Wears the Decorative Honors Received From the President"

Were they communist symbols, swastikas or laughing Satan bas reliefs? Oh, at this point who really cares? 

We all know what the Pope was given by his close friend, Bolivian President  Evo Morales on Friday--a hammer and sickle "crucifix" with Jesus affixed to it. Early reports say the Pope criticized or rejected it. But that turned out to be a lie.

A few hours later he apparently re-gifted it to Mary.

Holy Mother of God, please accept this vile icon with my compliments.

Francis.

Here's the current Vatican Insider story on it. But also note the Freudian slip:

Pope leaves decorative honours with the hammer and anvil in Bolivia 

This morning Francis lay the two presidential honours he received Wednesday from President Evo Morales in La Paz, at the feet of Our Lady of Copacabana. One of these featured the hammer and anvil with a carving of a crucifix. 

Before leaving Bolivia, Francis placed two gifts he received on Wednesday from President Evo Morales at the foot of a statue of Mary. One of these, a chain with a chunky medallion, had the figure of the crucified Christ carved into a wooden hammer and anvil. This image had been drawn by Fr. Luis Espinal, the Jesuit priest who was assassinated in Bolivia in March 1980... 

Francis accompanied this gesture with the following words: “The President of the nation was kind enough to offer me two decorative honours on behalf of the Bolivian people. I thank the Bolivian people for their affection and the President for this courteous gesture. I would like to dedicate these two decorations to the patron saint of Bolivia, the Mother of this noble nation...”

Did you get it? It wasn't a hammer and anvil. It was a hammer and sickle. The hammer and anvil metaphor was made famous in a speech by Hitler, who in turn lifted it from Goethe.

One is either the hammer or the anvil. We confess that it is our purpose to prepare the German people again for the role of the hammer.

And so on and so forth. Cue World War Two and the Holocaust.

What an odd mistake.

Then again, Che Guevara, whose now too familiar mug graced the jacket of the Pope's most recent warmup act, was the moral equivalent of any concentration camp guard sadistic psychopath, as a number of his Cuban victims have testified. More on that in another post. But until then, as they say...

The crisis continues.