LISTEN UP!

I figure this would get your attention. Pardon me, I did not mean to be rude. But fellow bloggers have asked that Guillermo Farinas' plight be placed on the front burner again. Yes, once in a while all of us have to pause and be soberly reminded that life is not all fun, and games, pretty pictures, and nostalgia. Not while good men and women suffer under petty, cowardly, terrified and dying tyrants. Paradoxically, it seems that the more arbitrary power is exercised by abusers like the puke green bastard of Havana, the more this becomes a reflection of the fear growing ever more inside the soul-less creature. Because, as Guillermo Farinas is a man of no fear, his oppressor is tormented by it, regardless how vociferously he might deny it.

One clarification - the image used was previously featured in the March 23rd post titled "A brief digression to honor a VBM - Very Brave Man." The drawing is by the talented Pat Texidor. By now, obviously Mr. Farinas has been on a hunger strike much longer than 50 days. However, this image, at least to me, speaks so much of the essence of Mr. Farinas' struggle and the soul of the man, featuring it again was unavoidable.

So, Mr. Farinas is still unjustly imprisoned, ill, in pain, starving - whether by choice or not, is not the point. The point - his point - is freedom - not anarchic, irresponsible "freedom" as malpracticed by many who think freedom is indolence, indifference, a sense of entitlement, exercising rights without taking on responsibilities, and so on. The freedom Mr. Farinas is laying his life on the line for is the freedom to exercise the simple right of self-expression through this medium even now being used to let the world know of his plight. And, as opposed to the fear the tyrant feels, Mr. Farinas is calm, at peace, unafraid. This is the source of his power to endure and struggle for what too many of us take for granted.

We will not abandon you, Mr. Farinas. We will not abandon or forget others who suffer - Dr. Biscet, the Ladies in White, Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello; too many others to mention, from 1959 to the present.

I'm gonna take off the Christian gloves now. I'm going to set aside all the good lessons I learned from my parents, my Catholic teachers, priests, and peers. The lessons Jesus taught. Perhaps many who read this will not think well of me, but sometimes one has to face one's true feelings, and accept inescapable truths about one's imperfections. In the case of one particular individual, I regret being unable to NOT wish him ill. Not when it is obvious he is responsible for an unmeasurable amount of suffering and destruction, as illustrated by what has happened to Guillermo Farinas, and also indeed to Havana, to all Cuba.

I pray you do not make it to your 80th spawn-day, putrid, cowardly degenerate. I pray Mr. Farinas, Dr. Biscet, the Ladies in White, and Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello will have the satisfaction of seeing you choke to death on that coca cake your buddy Evo the Bolivian is supposed to bake for you. I pray that event will represent, for these good, brave people, for all of Cuba, if not - to paraphrase Churchill - the beginning of the end of your obscene regime, at least the end of the beginning of the process which will bring it to its well-deserved collapse...

Pray for Farinas - and take some action, for his sake, for the sake of those who suffer under the cowardly green geezer. Write letters to your elected representatives; call them, call international organizations. Publicize his condition and struggle; ask for sanctions and action against those who torture him and the Cuban people. No deals with tyrants! Death to tyrants. Sic Semper Tyrannis!