Categoria: Idiomas

Little known facets of Fidel Castro

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

Each thing and each person has many facets. As I have said, each point of view is the view from a point. Everyone occupies a point on this planet and in the society of which we are a part. And from that point, each sees such reality as can be seen from that point. That is why we cannot treat any point of view as absolute, as if it were the only one. This is the origin of fundamentalism and discrimination.

That thought is worth keeping in mind with respect to the many points of view that are being expressed about the saga of Fidel Castro. No point can encompass all the views.

Something else must be considered. Each human possesses his share of light and his share of darkness. Spoken in the dialect of the new anthropology: each human being is sapiens and simultaneously demens. Thus, each human is a carrier of intelligence and of a sense of life. That is his sapiens moment. And he simultaneously displays deviations and contradictions. That is his demens moment.

Both always appear together. That is not a defect in our being. Is an objective fact of our human reality that must always be taken into account. It is also important when we evaluate Fidel Castro’s complex figure: his light and his darkness.

I want to make some points, beginning with those which enabled me to have a unique visit with Fidel Castro. The first is the negation of TINA (There is No Alternative ). The prevailing capitalist system maintains that “there is no alternative to capitalism,” that capitalism represents the pinnacle of human societies. Fidel Castro showed that socialism can offer a very distinct alternative to capitalism, which is now in a radical crisis of survival. The fury with which the United States attacked Cuba and Fidel, so as to destroy Cuban socialism, was intended to show that there can be no alternative to capitalism. Good or bad, with all its known defects, socialism is another possible means of organizing society.

A second point worth noting was Fidel Castro’s interest in the Theology of Liberation. He even confessed that if the Theology of Liberation had existed in his time, (it only began in 1970), he would have incorporated its lessons in the development of Cuban society. Under the pressure of the Cold War he was forced to side with the Soviet Union and from there to adopt Marxism. Fidel read and noted our principal works, those of Gustavo Gutierrez, Frei Betto, the works of my brother Fray Clodovis and my own. The books were all annotated with various colors. And in the margins were lists of questions and expressions about which he asked for clarification.

Another relevant point was his invitation, during the time of “polite silence” that was imposed on me in 1984 by the former Holy Office (the Inquisition). Fidel invited me to spend 15 days with him on the Island to explore questions of religion, Latin America and the world. He was a friend of the Apostolic Nuncio. As soon as I arrived he phoned the Nuncio, and in my presence, he told him: “Boff is here with me. I myself will ensure that he observes the polite silence. He will only talk with me”. In effect, we visited the whole island through our conversations, which lasted very late into the night. I recorded almost everything in three thick notebooks, because I wanted to turn them into material for a book. A few days after I returned from Cuba I left the three notebooks in the trunk of the car while I went to talk for a moment (some 15 minutes) with Don Aloisio, Cardinal, Lorscheider, who was the guest in the house of a friend in Copacabana. When I returned, I saw that the trunk of the car had been opened. Nothing was taken, except my three notebooks. I suspect that the security services of Brazil, or from the exterior, appropriated the material.

Another fact shows Fidel Castro’s tender dimension, to which many can attest.

I have a niece with a type of rheumatism that no physician could treat. I asked Fidel whether it was possible to treat her in Cuba. He asked me for all the medical information from Brazil, and he personally spoke with the Cuban doctors.

In effect, there was no cure. Each time Fidel saw me, the first thing he would ask was: “¿How is your niece Lola doing?” That affectionate and tender memory is not common in heads of state. Generally, where power predominates love does not prevail, nor does tenderness flourish. It was different with Fidel. He was extremely happy when I told him that a Brazilian physician had created a vaccine, of which a side effect was that it cured that type of rheumatism.

These are small gestures that show that power does not need to fatally undermine so profound a dimension as tenderness and concern for the destiny of the other.

The legacy of his charismatic persona will remain as a reference point for those who refuse to further the culture of capitalism, with all the injustices to the social and ecological order that accompany it.

Leonardo Boff Theologian-Philosopher and of the Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Life as a cosmic imperative

Leonardo BoffDeixe um comentário

For centuries scientists have tried to explain the universe with laws of physics, expressed through mathematical equations. The universe was viewed as an immense machine that always functioned in a stable form. Life and consciousness did not have a place in that paradigm. They were matters for the religions.

But everything has changed since the 1920s, when astronomer Edwin Hubble showed that the natural state of the universe is not stability, but change. The universe began expanding with the explosion of a point: extremely small but immensely hot, and full of potential: the big bang. Then the quarks and leptons were formed, the most elemental particles that, once combined, gave rise to protons and neutrons, the basis of atoms. And starting from there, everything.

Expansion, self-organization, complexity, and the emergence of order, ever more sophisticated, are characteristics of the Universe. And life?

We do not know how it emerged. We can only say that it took the Earth and all the Universe billions of years to create the conditions for the birth of this beautiful thing that is life. Life is fragile because it can easily get sick and die. But life is also strong, because until now nothing, not volcanoes, earthquakes, meteors, or the massive extinctions of past eras, has managed to totally extinguish life.

For life to emerge the Universe had to be endowed with three qualities: order, arising from chaos, complexity, derived from simple beings and information, created by the connections of everything with everything else. But one factor was still lacking: the creation of the bricks with which the house of life is built. Those bricks were forged within the heart of the great red stars that burned for several billion years. They are the chemical acids and other elements that enable all the combinations and transformations. Thus, there is no life without carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, iron, phosphorus, and the 92 elements of the Mendeleyev periodical table.

When these varied elements are united, they form what we call a molecule, the smallest piece of living matter. The joinder with other molecules created the organisms and organs that form living beings, from the bacteria to human beings.

Ilya Prigogine, 1977 Nobel laureate for chemistry, is credited with showing that life results from the intrinsic self organizing dynamics of the Universe itself. He also showed that a factory exists that continuously produces life. The central motor of this factory of life is the combining of 20 amino acids and 4 nitrogenous bases.

Amino acids are a group of acids that when combined permit life to emerge. They are comprised of four nitrogen bases that function like four types of cement, joining the bricks to build the most diverse kinds of houses. This is biodiversity.

Consequently, the same basic genetic code creates the sacred oneness of life, from micro-organisms to human beings. We all are, in fact, cousins, brothers and sisters, as Pope Francis affirms in his encyclical letter on integral ecology (n. 92) because we are made of the same 20 amino acids and 4 nitrogenous bases (adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine).

But the cradle that could welcome life was missing: the atmosphere and biosphere with all the essential elements to life: carbon, oxygen, methane, sulphuric acid, nitrogen and others.

With these pre-conditions, some 3.8 billion years ago something portentous happened. Possibly from the sea or a primitive marsh where all the elements bubbled like a kind of soup, suddenly, from the impact of a great bolt of lightning from above, life emerged.

Mysteriously, there has been life for 3.8 billion years on the minuscule planet Earth, in a fifth order solar system, in a corner of our galaxy, 29 thousand light years from the center of that galaxy. Here, the most unique event of the evolution occurred: the emergence of life.

Life is the original mother of all living beings, the true Eve. All other life forms descend from her, including we humans, a subchapter of the chapter of life: our conscious life.
Finally, I would dare join biologist Christian de Duve, also a Nobel laureate, and cosmologist Brian Swimme, in saying that the Universe would be incomplete without life. Whenever a certain level of complexity is reached, life will always emerge as a cosmic imperative, in any part of the Universe.

We must overcome the common idea that the Universe is merely a physical and dead thing, with some specks of life to adorn the picture. That is a poor and false understanding. The Universe seems to be full of life and it exists for that, as the cradle that welcomes life, especially our life.

Leonardo Boff Theologian-Philosopher, of the Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.

Worldwide disorder: the specter of total domination

Leonardo Boff1 comentário

Worldwide disorder: the specter of total domination. That is the title of the latest book by Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira (Civilização Brasileira, 2016), our most respected analyst of international politics. The author has had access to the most secure sources of information, to multiple archives, to which he brings a vast knowledge of history. There are 643 dense pages, written with fluidity and elegance that often sound like reading a historical novel.

Moniz Bandeira is, above all, a meticulous researcher and, at the same time, a militant against the imperialism of the United States, whose entrails he cuts as with a surgeon’s scalpel. Not without reason he was jailed in 1969 – 1970, and again in 1973, by the fearsome Center of Information of the Marine (Centro de Informaciones de la Marina, Cenimar), for critically opposing, in the context of the cold-war, the main supporter of Brazilian dictatorship: the United States of Northamerica.

The materials at his disposal permit him to denounce the present imperial logic through the subtitle of his book: “proxy wars, terror, chaos and humanitarian catastrophes”. Those who still nourish admiration for the Northamerican democracy and seek to align themselves with its imperial designs (as Brazilian neoliberals do), will find here vast materials for critical reflection and for a more nuance reading of the world.

Two themes guide the power centers of the Northamerican state, with its countless organs of internal and external security: “one world and only one empire” or “only one project” and “a vision of total domination (full-spectrum dominance/superiority)”. That is, Northamerican foreign policy is inspired by the (illusory) “exceptionality” of the old “manifest destiny”, a variation “of the chosen people of God, the superior race”, called to spread throughout the world democracy, liberty and rights (always according to the imperial interpretation of these terms) and to consider itself (pretentiously) “the indispensable and necessary nation”, the “anchor of global security” or the “only power” (sole power).

Already in the XVIII century, Edmund Burke, (1729-1797), and in the XIX century, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, (1805-1859), had the premonition that the Northamerican President had more power than an absolutist monarch, and that this would degenerate into a military democracy (p. 55). In effect, with George W. Bush as a result of the attack on the “Twin Towers”, a true military democracy was established, with the declaration of the war on terror and enactment of the Patriot Act, that suspended basic civil rights, undermined habeas corpus, and allowed torture. This is certainly a terrorist state.

Several Northamerican scientists, quoted by Moniz Bandeira (p. 470), affirmed: “there is no longer a democracy but an economic elite domination to which the president must submit. Decisions are made by the military-industrial complex (the war machine), by Wall Street (financiers), by powerful business organizations and a small number of very influential Northamericans. To guarantee the “vision of total dominations” they maintain 800 military bases throughout the world, the majority with nuclear installations, and 16 agencies of security with 107,035 civil and military agents. As Henry Kissinger said: “the mission of the United States is to propagate democracy, by force if necessary” (p.443). Under this logic, from 1776 to 2015, that is, in the 239 years the United States of Northamerica has been in existence, there have been 218 years of war, and only 21 years of peace (p. 472).

It was hoped that Barack Obama would bring a different direction to this violent history. That was an illusion. Obama only changed the names, but maintained the spirit of exceptionalism, and the tortures in Guantanamo and other places outside the United States, as in the times of Bush. To the perpetual war he gave the name Oversight Contingency Operation. By personal decision, (penal), he authorized hundreds of drone attacks and with planes without pilots, killing the principal Arab leaders (p. 476).

With certain deception, Bill Clinton said: “The United States has not won a single war since 1945” (p. 312). In the silence of darkness of the night they fled Iraq. (p. 508).

The book of Moniz Bandeira deals with minimal details about the Wars in Ukraine, the Crimea and the Islamic State of Syria, with the names of the principal actors and dates.

The conclusion is devastating: “Wherever the United States intervenes with the specific goal of bringing democracy, that specific objective is comprised of bombings, destruction, terror, massacres, chaos and humanitarian catastrophes… they come to defend their needs, their economic and geopolitical interests; and their imperial interests” (p.513).

The quantity of information presented sustain this claim, regardless of the limitations that may always be adduced.

Leonardo Boff Theologian-Philosopher -Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.
****************************************************************

Worldwide disorder: the specter of total domination

Leonardo Boff2 Comentários

Worldwide disorder: the specter of total domination. That is the title of the latest book by Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira (Civilização Brasileira, 2016), our most respected analyst of international politics. The author has had access to the most secure sources of information, to multiple archives, to which he brings a vast knowledge of history. There are 643 dense pages, written with fluidity and elegance that often sound like reading a historical novel.

Moniz Bandeira is, above all, a meticulous researcher and, at the same time, a militant against the imperialism of the United States, whose entrails he cuts as with a surgeon’s scalpel. Not without reason he was jailed in 1969 – 1970, and again in 1973, by the fearsome Center of Information of the Marine (Centro de Informaciones de la Marina, Cenimar), for critically opposing, in the context of the cold-war, the main supporter of Brazilian dictatorship: the United States of Northamerica.

The materials at his disposal permit him to denounce the present imperial logic through the subtitle of his book: “proxy wars, terror, chaos and humanitarian catastrophes”. Those who still nourish admiration for the Northamerican democracy and seek to align themselves with its imperial designs (as Brazilian neoliberals do), will find here vast materials for critical reflection and for a more nuance reading of the world.

Two themes guide the power centers of the Northamerican state, with its countless organs of internal and external security: “one world and only one empire” or “only one project” and “a vision of total domination (full-spectrum dominance/superiority)”. That is, Northamerican foreign policy is inspired by the (illusory) “exceptionality” of the old “manifest destiny”, a variation “of the chosen people of God, the superior race”, called to spread throughout the world democracy, liberty and rights (always according to the imperial interpretation of these terms) and to consider itself (pretentiously) “the indispensable and necessary nation”, the “anchor of global security” or the “only power” (sole power).

Already in the XVIII century, Edmund Burke, (1729-1797), and in the XIX century, the Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, (1805-1859), had the premonition that the Northamerican President had more power than an absolutist monarch, and that this would degenerate into a military democracy (p. 55). In effect, with George W. Bush as a result of the attack on the “Twin Towers”, a true military democracy was established, with the declaration of the war on terror and enactment of the Patriot Act, that suspended basic civil rights, undermined habeas corpus, and allowed torture. This is certainly a terrorist state.

Several Northamerican scientists, quoted by Moniz Bandeira (p. 470), affirmed: “there is no longer a democracy but an economic elite domination to which the president must submit. Decisions are made by the military-industrial complex (the war machine), by Wall Street (financiers), by powerful business organizations and a small number of very influential Northamericans. To guarantee the “vision of total dominations” they maintain 800 military bases throughout the world, the majority with nuclear installations, and 16 agencies of security with 107,035 civil and military agents. As Henry Kissinger said: “the mission of the United States is to propagate democracy, by force if necessary” (p.443). Under this logic, from 1776 to 2015, that is, in the 239 years the United States of Northamerica has been in existence, there have been 218 years of war, and only 21 years of peace (p. 472).

It was hoped that Barack Obama would bring a different direction to this violent history. That was an illusion. Obama only changed the names, but maintained the spirit of exceptionalism, and the tortures in Guantanamo and other places outside the United States, as in the times of Bush. To the perpetual war he gave the name Oversight Contingency Operation. By personal decision, (penal), he authorized hundreds of drone attacks and with planes without pilots, killing the principal Arab leaders (p. 476).

With certain deception, Bill Clinton said: “The United States has not won a single war since 1945” (p. 312). In the silence of darkness of the night they fled Iraq. (p. 508).

The book of Moniz Bandeira deals with minimal details about the Wars in Ukraine, the Crimea and the Islamic State of Syria, with the names of the principal actors and dates.

The conclusion is devastating: “Wherever the United States intervenes with the specific goal of bringing democracy, that specific objective is comprised of bombings, destruction, terror, massacres, chaos and humanitarian catastrophes… they come to defend their needs, their economic and geopolitical interests; and their imperial interests” (p.513).

The quantity of information presented sustain this claim, regardless of the limitations that may always be adduced.
Leonardo Boff Theologian-Philosopher -Earthcharter Commission

Free translation from the Spanish sent by
Melina Alfaro, alfaro_melina@yahoo.com.ar.
Done at REFUGIO DEL RIO GRANDE, Texas, EE.UU.