Uncommon Sense

Cuban rice and beans

There are some interesting tidbits about Cuba on the blogosphere tonight.

El Cafe Cubano has news on how you can show your support for the Cuban "Ladies in White," which is made up of the wives, mothers, daughters and sisters of imprisoned Cuban dissidents.

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Communists in Spain's parliament, El Confeti reports, blocked consideration of a resolution censuring the "new deterioration" of the human rights situation in Cuba.

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In Rodas, Cuba, near Cienfuegos, there are more signs of trouble for Fidel Castro.

From CubaNet:

Anti-government signs appear in interior municipality

CIENFUEGOS, Cuba, March 29 (Alejandro Tur Valladares, Jagua Press /
www.cubanet.org) - Anti-government signs were put up on two downtown
streets in the municipality of Rodas last week.

One sign that said "Long Live Bush, Down with Fidel" drew curious
passersby on Independencia Street.

Another sign on Martí Street said, "Long Live Bush's Fifth Congress,"
an allusion to the fact that the Communist party of Cuba will shortly
hold a congress.

Lázaro Roger Avilés, who reported this information, said, "This is just
a reflection of the frustration that affects the Cuban people."

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Ernesto "Ché" Guevara knows the pain of their frustration. For Ché, all the pressure is enough to blow your brains out.

The death of Jesus is re-examined

Jesus may not have died like this

AFP has an intriguing story about how Jesus Christ may not have died on the cross exactly how his death has depicted over the years.

Of course, for believers, why he died, not how he died, is what really matters. Putting Jesus' death into historical or scientific context, as British researchers did, does not diminish that.

But then there are some who argue he didn't die on the cross at all.

Guillermo Fariñas: Hero and patriot

Protest by suicide is never noble, so I am relieved that Guillermo Fariñas has ended his hunger strike.

But La Ventanita is right. During his protest, Guillermo "El Coco" Fariñas Hernández proved himself to be both a hero and a patriot.

Some may dismiss Fariñas as merely someone who wanted the right to surf the Internet, a right not equal to his sacrifice and which he failed to attain. But his protest was really demanding something much more for himself, and for Cuba.

Freedom.

To be free, man must have the right to free expression, and in the modern age, that means the right to use the Internet to gather and distribute information.

Castro understands that, which is why unregulated use of the Internet by Cubans in Cuba is against the law.

With his sacrifice, Fariñas added to the evidence that, despite the dictator's bluster, Cuba and Cubans are not free.

The tyrant has no clothes.

Maybe that is why most of the MSM ignored the Fariñas. Everyone already knows that Cuba under Castro is a very bad place.

Yeah, and Al-Jazeera is hiring Lucia Newman because she is such an objective journalist.

The truth is, the MSM ignored Fariñas — one of their own — because they don't give a damn about Cuba, especially the Cubans who have suffered under almost 50 years of castroism. As a journalist in the MSM, I am angry and disappointed, but not surprised.

The MSM may have missed the story, but that does not diminish the magnitude of what Fariñas accomplished.

He stood up to Castro. Yes, he backed down before he got what he was demanding, but not before exposing for a new audience the cruelty of the Castro regime.

He also demonstrated a courage that if emulated, will eventually bring down the dictatorship and make Cuba, and Cubans, free.

Fariñas' courage and his love for Cuba are unquestioned.

He is a hero, and a patriot.

Guillermo Fariñas ends hunger strike

From EFE News:

Meanwhile, Guillermo Fariñas, a psychologist and director of the independent Cubanacan Press agency, is in serious but stable condition after on Wednesday ending a 56-day hunger strike he began to demand free access to the Internet.

The dissident "has had no complications, but he is very weak, with headaches and polyneuropathies in his legs and hands," his mother Alicia Hernandez told EFE on Wednesday.

Fariñas, 43, is receiving medical care - including intravenous nourishment and fluids - in a hospital in Santa Clara, some 280 kilometers (about 175 miles) east of Havana.

Hernandez said that her son continues to suffer from cramps, has little feeling in his hands and legs and remains committed to continuing his hunger strike, although relatives and friends "are doing everything possible to get him to end it." Fariñas - who began another hunger strike in 2003 that he pursued for 14 months, taking in only liquids - has staged 19 shorter protests of this kind since 1995.

Bravo for Italy

From the Associated Press:

ROME - Italy granted asylum Wednesday to an an Afghan who faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity, and Premier Silvio Berlusconi said the man was in the care of the Interior Ministry after arriving in Italy earlier in the day. Abdul Rahman "is already in Italy. I think he arrived overnight," Berlusconi said, declining to release more details. Rahman's jailing in Afghanistan inspired an appeal by Pope Benedict XVI to Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai and efforts by the United Nations to find a country to take him.

Remembering a hero and friend

My college classmate and friend Eric McErlain reflects at Off Wing Opinion on the memorial service in Washington, D.C., Tuesday for our classmate, Roddy Burke.

Roddy, a sergeant with the Metropolitan Police Department, died last week of a ruptured blood vessel while trailing a suspected stolen car while off duty. The police chief has officially determined that Roddy, a 16-year veteran of the force, died in the line of duty.

Police funerals are always poignant, but there was an especially memorable moment outside the church.

Eric writes:

There were rows of officers in dress uniform from all over the Washington metro area, so many it took about 10 minutes for all of them to file out of the church and onto the street outside. There was the playing of Taps and volleys of rifle fire. There was a helicopter fly-by. But most poigiant of all, there was a recording of the call Roddy made to 911 to report a stolen vehicle -- the start of the sequence that led to his death last Thursday night.

Trust me when I say it's one thing to read about the last moments of your friend's life. But it's another thing entirely to listen to it yourself.

You can leave your own tribute to Sgt. Gerard W. Burke Jr. here.

From within and without, faith under attack in Cuba

Cuba may have disavowed its official atheism in 1992, but there is still no room under communism for true freedom of religious expression. Houses of worship are strictly regulated, and men and women of faith like Oscar Biscet are locked away in Fidel Castro's gulag.

Castro may place nice with the Vatican, and American "religious leaders" like Minister Louis Farrakhan and Episcopal Bishop Frank Griswold may sing his praises, but Castro and his regime are no friends of religious freedom.

Freedom is against the law in Cuba, especially the freedom to pray to a God who promises true liberation from the Cuban nightmare.

As Religión en Revolución notes, the thugs on the Cuban street know it.

R en R has a post first found at CFaith.com. (CFaith.com requires a paid subscription.):

Dr. Octavio Rios Verdecia, minister with the Assemblies of God in Cuba and pastor of the Words of Life Church in Havana, Cuba suffered an attempt on his life on December 19. Verdecia was leaving his house when Eduardo Valdes Oliva approached him. Oliva had attacked a Baptist church several years before and had served time for various criminal activities.

Oliva began beating Verdecia with a police stick and attempted to stab him with a knife. He also smashed bottles of homemade wine against the doors of the church. After Verdecia gave a statement to police, they arrested Oliva only to release him seventy-two hours later. Oliva immediately continued his campaign against Christians by attacking another church with stones. Still on the streets, Oliva has vowed to “complete the work” he has begun.

Pastor Verdecia has said he is prepared to die for Christ, if necessary. Cuban believers are asking us to urgently pray for Pastor Octavio’s safety.

Pray that he will be allowed to continue bringing the Gospel to his city. Pray that Eduardo will see his own sinfulness and turn to Christ. Ask God to open the eyes of the authorities to see the danger that Oliva presents to local believers. Pray for pastors in Cuba who face increasing threats and physical opposition to the message of Christ. (Emphasis added)

Ministers like Griswold may delude themselves about Castro, but Val at Babalú says there is at least one religious organization that sees the truth.

Take Val's advice and read this article.

Cartoons matter

Muslims riot over Danish cartoons, and Scientologists get in a tizzy over "South Park."

Andrew Sullivan explains why it all matters.

The money graphs:

In the mansion of free speech cartoons have an honourable room. You can say things in cartoon form that you could never put into words or enact with real live human beings. You can turn politicians into unearthly creatures; you can portray the powerful as fools and liars; you can mock pretension of all sorts with an abandon and visual wit the written word cannot match. You can create fantasy worlds that make arguments that would be libellous or untrue in other contexts. ...

We need those truths and benefit from those fantasies. A free society survives partly because the powerful are mocked, and their pretensions undermined. Religions, which guard their own illusions carefully, are particularly ripe for satire. And they should be.

Whenever one human being is claiming to tell the truth about the meaning of life he is making a very powerful claim — and in a free society he also runs the risk of getting a raspberry. Laughter matters because piety begets power.

Orwell once remarked that one reason fascism never took off in Britain was because the sight of a goose-stepping soldier would prompt your average Englishman to giggle. Someone is now silencing the giggles. And our world is a lot creepier because of it.

Imprisoned Cuban journalist ends hunger strike

CubaNet reports that Cuban independent journalist Juan Carlos Herrera Acosta, 39, has ended a hunger strike to protest his treatment by prison officials. Herrera, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence, is one of the Group of 75 dissidents arrested and sentenced to lengthy prison terms as part of the "black spring" crackdown of March/April 2003.

Herrera told an associate, according to CubaNet, that he had been suffering from migraines and stomach pains, but vowed to resume his protest, once his health is restored, if prison authorities don't meet his requests.

Those requests are:

— Transfer to a prison in his home province of Guantanamo.

— Access to religious services, which are currently denied to him.

— Permission for him to receive letters from his relatives and friends.

Whether it is Juan Herrera or Guillermo Fariñas on hunger strike, protest by suicide is never acceptable.

The quickest way to end the use of those suicide threats to force changes in Cuba is for Fidel Castro to release Herrera and 22 other imprisoned journalists from his jails and prisons.

One way to send him that message is to sign this petition, sponsored by Reporters Without Borders.

(A technical note: Reporters Without Borders is based in Paris, so the confirmation e-mail you will receive after signing the petition will be in French. Just in case you don't read French, the confirmation e-mail asks you click on the link to complete the petition signature process. Castro won't receive your message until you click on the link.)

U.S. to release Abu Ghraib photos

The U.S. government Tuesday dropped its appeal of an adverse ruling in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

"The government never had a basis for withholding the photographs under the law in the first place," ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh told CNN. "So the withdrawal of the appeal only confirms that the public is entitled to these documents under the Freedom of Information Act."

The ACLU said in a statement that most of the 74 images are believed to have already been published on Salon.com.

So don't expect to see any new photos of American guards abusing Iraqi detainees.

Good. The ones we have seen to now are abhorant and offensive to everything this nation is suppose to be about.

The ACLU deserves praise for ensuring that the government does not cover up what happened at Abu Ghraib.