Of the Letter in which Fidel Castro Rubbished Obama

Karl Marx wrote in his book, the 18^th Brumaire that ‘history repeats itself,it occurs first as a tragedy and repeats as a farce.’ Truly, history has repeated itself between North America and the socialist revolutionary world.It first occurred in the person of John F Kennedy during the mid of the last century, and it has now farcically repeated itself in the eventuality of Barrack Obama visiting the revolutionary republic of Cuba.The visit of Obama to Cuba where he delivered a self-confident speech to the people of Cuba was diminutized by the doyen of revolutionary Castro the one Fidel Castro, he had to rubish every letter,dot and tittle of Obama’s speech through the letter he wrote to the editor in the Granma a Cuban revolutionary newspaper.

Obama’s experience in Cuba reminds the world of John F Kennedy  an American president during  the mid of the last century.Kennedy was a top most intellectual in the western world.Classified as America’s most eloquent and most well read president by that time.He was among his worthies in the western intellectual station.He shared a pedestal with Luther King Junior,Athur Schelleissenger and other champions of market focussed civilisation.

One time Kennedy exposed himself by trying to bestride  the  terrains of contemporaries in the socialist or revolutionary Geographies .These were Kwame Nkurumah , Frantz Omar Fanon,Jewarlal Nehru,Fidel Castro,Abdul Gamel Nasser,Julius Nyerere  and Leonid Brezhnev to mention just but a few.The outcome was tragic to the western world.

Nkurumah was by then on the crest of his political intellectualisation course as he had just published his criptic political logic known as the consciencisim,In fact Nkurumah refused to to offer a state meeting with  Kennedy, it had happened that Kennedy was on a visit to Ghana, an act which Nkurumah justified by saying that Kennedy was illiterate and a half-baked intellectual. Instead Nkurumah instructed the secretary to give Kennedy, the Rhodesia File, a book by Nkurumah.

Omar Frantz Fanon was an intellectual tower,his two books, The Wretched of the Earth and White Skins and the Black Masks were a compulsory read for literature and political science in both the western and socialist universities.Julius Nyerere was a gifted Machiavellian, he dissembled by shrewdly meeting Kennedy but they never discussed ideology, they confined themselves to Catholicism.Given that both Nyerere and Kennedy were Catholics.Nehru out-rightly refused to meet Kennedy on the grounds that Kennedy was an intellectual saddo.A fact that can be justified on reading Nehru’s Glimpses of History,Discovery of India and Autobiography.Brezhnev was a tower over a Lilliputian Kennedy over matters intellect , ideology and politics.When Kennedy was assassinated, Castro publicly giggled by mirthfully wondering how a man in position of John Kennedy, commanding all the riches in the world could be shot by a street mad man, unless out of personal folly.That was that.

Again the world have been feted to the same treat between waning American capitalism and waning Cuban communism.Castro did not meet Obama in Cuba, he watched Obama on You Tube and television screen.Obviously Obama is garrulous and his garrulity enjoyed a sidereal station this time round when giving an olive leaf of a speech to the Cuban citizens.His message was for Cuba to change into a market based economy for the better of the Cuban youths.An idea to which any informed mind can react in a regal by asking the self that Africa is purely market based in economic civilizations but its youths wallow in poverty as the current wretched of the earth with overt notions for illegal migration to Europe as a solution.What a paradox.

In a capstone response,Fidel Castro rubished Obama in an a letter to the people of Cuba,Published in the Granma under the title El Hernamo Obama or Brother Obama.He faulted Obama’s capitalist world fact by fact.Starting with failure to protect environment,failure to curb terrorism,racism in America,abuse of the rights of migrants,historical injustice of colonialism and apartheid,annihilation of native populations in the Americas, American terrorism on Cuba and Vietnam and Australia.The apex of Castro’s riposte was in two statements;the people of Cuba are able to work and use their intelligence to feed themselves without begging from the empire of North America, and also Cubans are at risk of heart attack just by listening to a syruppy speech like that one delivered by brother Obama.However, Castro ridiculously appreciated Obama for reflecting on history that happened ten years before Obama was born and also cautioned Obama not to experiment with empty theories on Cuban politics.

Alexander K. Opicho

(Lodwar,Kenya)

Yes, Pope John Paul II Loved a Woman for the Sake of Art, Literature and Philosophy

A fortnight ago the social, print and virtual media were replete with stories that the late Pope John Paul II had a romantic relationship with a married woman for three decades. The most notable among other media that circulated the stories was the BBC online, Yahoo news service, the Pambazuka News, Facebook, Twitter and others. This story provoked me to carry out some archival research to find out to which extend was Pope John Paul II or Karol Wojytila had a sexual experience of three decades with a married woman against the stern catholic vow of celibacy, that is usually  ritually celebrated along with the sacrament of ordainment. The sources of    data for the purpose have been literary writings and newspaper reports.

Literary writings used  in this archival research are David Yallop’s In God’s Name, Berber Thiering’s Christ the Man, the Catholic Observer (l’oservatore), The Holy Grail, and Marco Politi’s His Holiness, and the writings of Lech Walesa. The findings are that yes, it is true Pope John Paul II loved a married woman for three decades but not out of sexual motivation but out of passion for   art, literature and philosophy.

The facts are that Dr Anne-Teresa Tymiencka, a married woman was a close friend to Karol Wojytila for three decades. She was a doctor of Phenomenology in very many American universities including Havard. When she came across the writings of cardinal Wojytila, in the book, The Acting Man, she was attracted to the author out of three reasons, philosophical alertness in the writings, the author was a native of Poland as she was and also the author was a man. Of course all women are attracted to men with special traits, power and tempestuous lifestyle.

The night and day relationship was all about philosophy and art, Wojytila being a guru of art and philosophy given his back-ground in poetry and theatre , whereas Anne-Teresa was a guru of philosophy of phenomenology with a strong passion for intellectualism. Their correspondences in form of hand written letters are still safely kept in an intact position at Havard University library. Marco Politi in the book His Holiness points out that it was Dr, Anne-Teresa Tymeniecka that translated Wojytila book from the polish version, Osoba i czyn into an English version as The Acting Man .During the process of translation that took a period of four years Anne-Teresa and Wojytila were always together up to late in the night on every day in the absence of the husband of Anne-Teresa. The fact is that they were philosophical partners but not sexual partners. This realtion was also an informal school to Cardinal Wojytila; it gave him the frame of mind to write the encyclical Veritas Splendor or the splendor of truth in which he discussed theology of sexuology. The same relationship also gave Wojytila the opportunity to contribute very incisive philosophical papers to the scholarly journal Anelecta Husserliana.

In contrast to the alarmist tone in the article by Henry Makori, published in the Pambazuka News, that Pope John Paul had broken a vow of celibacy to have three decades of sexual relationship with someone’s wife, the archival facts reveal the otherwise; the frame of the mind between cardinal Wojytila and Anne-Teresa was basically philosophical but not erotic nor prurient. Moreover, sexual desire among animals and logically among human beings is a natural feeling expressing the state of normal biological conditions of an animal. The abnormal behaviour in this situation is the vow of celibacy not Pope’s sexual adventures or aggressiveness. There is nothing astounding for a human being to go against abnormality in the vow of celibacy for normality in man to woman sexual relationship.

The only unusual thing in this juncture is a phenomenon that all great leaders are at least victims of sexual imbroglio once in their life. Napoleon had Josphine, Caesar had Cleopatra, Clinton had Monica Lewisky, Odysseus had calypso, Aphrodite had Sapho, and Prince Charles had Diana in a tri-angle with Afawhyed, Mandela had Yvon Chaka Chaka, Jesus had Mary Magdalene, Mohammed had Hadija, Samson had Delilah, Hitler had Eva Braun and Kenyatta has Anne Waiguru, then going by logic there is nothing wrong in the Papacy if Wojytila had his sexual projections in Anne Teresa Tymniecka.

But again, what is the actual source of the rumours that Karol Wojytila had three decades of sexual relation with a married woman? The answer is this; it comes from the politics of ideology between Russia and America. Poland the birth place of Wojytila after having been a colony of Nazi Germany got annexed and became a physical and ideological colony of Russia. Wojytila as a young boy experienced these two sad episodes. Later on when he became the Pope   at the Vatican, he immediately turned his political and ideological salvo on to the communist dictatorship at his home in Poland; Lech Walesa was only his proxy and mouthpiece. Marco Politi writes in the His Holiness that, after the politburo realizing that it was going to be defeated in Poland, the Soviet leaders that included comrades; Gorbachev, Goryminko, Brezhnev and Suslov used all tactics to counter the ideological and social terror of Christian socialism on the Soviet communism in Poland; mudslinging was one of the tools. Then they chose to write in the Pravda, the Soviet Newspapers and other socialist papers around world that Pope John Paul had sexual relationship for thirty years with a married woman when he was a cardinal. They thought this would weaken the spirit and the intellect of the Pope, but it did not. Thus, it beats logic for the BBC, to repeat doing what soviets did five decades ago, maybe it is a vice of intellectual laziness among the British media.