Pontiff Calls on Benedictine Monks to Save Civilization… Again

His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI

Pope Benedict XVI received the participants in the World Congress of Benedictine Abbots at Castel Gandolfo on Saturday, September 20, 2008. Praising the ancient monastic order’s commitment to personal sanctification and witness to Christ, the pontiff called on the Benedictines to found new monasteries in Asia and Africa, and to renew the work they began centuries ago in Europe. 

Benedictine communities have been centers of learning, culture and hospitality throughout their existence, most notably during and after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire.

Zenit reports:

The witness of the Benedictine vocation is particularly important, added the Pontiff, “in a de-sacralized world and an age marked by the worrying culture of the void and the absurd.”

“This is the reason why your monasteries are places where men and women, also in our age, run to seek God and to learn to recognize the signs of the presence of Christ, of his charity and of his mercy,” he said.

The Pope appealed to Benedictines to “allow themselves to be led by the profound desire to serve all men with charity, without distinctions of race or religion,” and to found new monasteries “there, where Providence calls you to establish them.”

Moreover, the Holy Father also called their attention to the evangelizing, formative and cultural work that the Benedictines can carry out in Europe, “especially in favor of the new generations.”

“Dedicate yourselves to young people with renewed apostolic ardor, as they are the future of the Church and of humanity,” he encouraged. “To build a ‘new’ Europe, it is necessary to begin with the new generations, offering them the possibility to profoundly approach the spiritual riches of the liturgy, of meditation and of lectio divina.”

The full text of the Pope’s remarks can be found in Spanish here:

ZENIT: El Papa anima a los benedictinos a compartir con todos sus riquezas espirituales

And in Italian here:

The Holy See: DISCORSO DEL SANTO PADRE BENEDETTO XVI AI PARTECIPANTI AL CONGRESSO INTERNAZIONALE DEGLI ABATI BENEDETTINI

Deceit and Impunity vs Piety and Resistance

Map of Vietnam

The Vietnamese communist regime has betrayed a pledge made to return the historic Vatican Apostolic Nunciature in Hanoi to the Asian country’s Catholics, completely destroying the embassy building for the ostensible purpose of clearing the land for a park.

The Federation of Vietnamese Catholic Mass Media has extensive coverage, mostly in Vietnamese, but also reproduces and links to articles in European languages. The persecution the Catholics have faced throughout their campaign to recover the expropriated land and buildings reveals that the rights of all Vietnamese are subject to the whims of the rulers of the Socialist Republic. 

No Good Faith from the Faithless

Concord Live reported in February on the courage of the Vietnamese Catholics engaging in acts of nonviolent struggle, holding prayer vigils and peaceful demonstrations to demand the return of lands belonging to the Church that were seized by the incoming revolutionaries in the 1950s. In our previous story, we warned:

Embassy Handover Promised, but Uncertain. Concord Live will continue to watch this story as the actual handover has yet to occur and there is no reason to attribute good faith to a murderous tyranny like the Socialist Republic. In fact, a secret police operation to investigate the demonstrators is underway. Under Vietnamese law, all land is state property, and the resources of the State may be brought down swiftly upon dissenting voices.

Catholics Respond with Increasing Nonviolent Mobilization; Communists Increase Violent Repression

Catholic news services and blogs have been following this story very closely and reveal a resilient and determined Catholic movement to demand respect for rights long denied, perhaps even at the price of martyrdom. Catholic Culture / Catholic World News reports:

Church-state tensions continue to escalate: bishops are threatened with arrest; Redemptorist priests at a parish involved in another property dispute have even been threatened with death.

The media in Hanoi have charged that Archbishop Joseph Ngo Quang Kiet is inciting riots by expressing his support for demonstrated who opposed the demolition process. The media have consistently depicted the demonstrators as threats to public safety.

In a letter to the government leaders of Vietnam, Bishop Michael Hoang Duc Oanh of Kontum, warned that this campaign of vilification could have grave consequences. “Our people are gentle and kind, easy to forget the past and forgive those who trespass against them.” However “when they find themselves being tricked, pushed to the corner, and persecuted… they can accept even death”…

At the nunciature, construction workers worked throughout the night to demolish the building. Thousands of Catholics have protested around the clock.

Sunday morning saw the largest demonstration in the history of Vietnam since the Communist takeover, with hundreds of priests leading more than 10,000 Catholic protestors in a prayerful vigil outside the gate of the nunciature. Bishop Joseph Dang Duc Ngan of Lang Son lead the prayers, as police accompanied by attack dogs patrolled the fence lined with barbed wire that had been installed at the site.

The Federation of Vietnamese Catholic Mass Media issued a statement of “deep concerns about religious and human-rights violations against Catholics.” Citing the property disputes at the nunciature and at a Redemptorist monastery in Thai Ha parish, the group confessed: “We are at our wit’s end as the injustice being done to our brothers and sisters in Christ– to the unarmed, religious people whose only weapon to protect themselves and property has always been praying with an unshaken belief in God”…

…[A] large crowd appeared at the Thai Ha parish on Sunday, throwing stones, smashing statues, and shouting threats against the Redemptorist priests. One of the priests observed that “everything happened clearly in front of a large number of officials– police, security personnel, anti-riot police… but they did nothing to protect us.”

Associated Press Journalist Beaten; AP Reports Tensions

The Associated Press has a current report on this story that skips over the blatant about-face by the regime:

Communist authorities in Hanoi have threatened to take legal action against the city’s archbishop unless he immediately disbands illegal prayer vigils to demand the return of former church lands, state media reported Monday.

The government campaign against Archbishop Ngo Quang Kiet escalated over the weekend, with state television calling into question his patriotism in an apparent attempt to turn public opinion against him.

State-controlled newspapers on Monday quoted a letter to Kiet from Hanoi Mayor Nguyen The Thao, accusing the cleric of instigating unrest.

“Stop your illegal acts immediately or you will be dealt with according to the law,” Thao was quoted as writing. “You have a responsibility to persuade priests and parishioners to abide by the law.”

Prayer is only allowed at church under Vietnamese law. The reports did not specify what form the legal action might take.

Catholics have been holding sporadic prayer vigils this year to demand the return of two plots of land once owned by the church but seized decades ago by communist authorities. One is near Thai Ha Church, not far from the center of Hanoi, while the other is the site of the former Vatican Embassy, next to St. Joseph’s Cathedral, the city’s biggest church.

The vigils have put great pressure on Hanoi officials, who are eager to project an image of religious tolerance but determined to maintain political control.

On Friday, the city began bulldozing the grounds of the former Vatican Embassy to clear the land for a public park and library.

Over the weekend, the crowds near the site grew as hundred of Catholics attended weekend masses at St. Joseph’s. They were closely watched by riot police and other security officers.

City officials say the land belongs to Hanoi and will not be returned to the church. Church officials say they have old documents proving the land belongs to them…

The city announced last week that it would use the St. Joseph’s site for a library and park. Catholics have long said they believed the city planned to sell the valuable land to private developers. Monday’s report on state TV said city officials also plan to transform the 20,000 square-yard (17,000-square-meter) Thai Ha site into a public park…

AP Hanoi Chief of Bureau Ben Stocking was brutally beaten for covering one of the prayer vigils. Apparently showing Vietnamese secret police treating a peaceful gathering as a threat to their iron grip on power may be bad for foreign investment:

AP Hanoi Chief of Bureau Ben Stocking emerged from a police station Friday with matted blood on his head and trousers, and a gash in his head requiring four stitches. He reported that he had been choked, punched and bashed with his own camera — the last assault opening a cut in his scalp that bled profusely. After his 2 1/2 hours in detention, he immediately had to seek treatment at a private clinic for the head injury.

Nevertheless, a foreign ministry statement disputed that there had been a beating.

“There was no beating of Mr. Ben Stocking by the Vietnamese security force,” read the statement attributed to Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung and posted on the Foreign Ministry Web site.

“Stocking broke the Vietnamese law by deliberately taking pictures at a place where taking pictures was not allowed,” the statement said. “Officers who were on duty to keep the public order warned him, but Mr. Stocking did not follow.”

More Coverage of the Catholic Struggle in Vietnam

Here are some further reports:

Asia News: Thugs attack Thai Ha Catholics as police look on

Catholic News Agency: Vietnamese gang ransacks Catholic chapel as police stand by

ZENIT: Catholics Lose Land Battle With Hanoi

Catholic News Agency: Vietnamese Catholics continue struggle for land despite government threats

Catholic News Agency: Vietnam to return confiscated lands to prominent Catholic basilica

Catholic Culture / Catholic World News: Vietnamese nuns protest for return of property

Catholic Culture / Catholic World News: Viet Catholics continue vigils over disputed property

Catholic Culture / Catholic World News: Viet media call for crackdown on Catholic protests

Catholic Culture / Catholic World News: Viet authorities promise to return land around La Vang shrine

Catholic News Agency: Vietnam state-owned media ramps up attacks on Catholic demonstrators

ZENIT- Francais: Vietnam : Manifestations de prière pour la restitution d’un terrain

[Note the contrast in the following two articles between Communist-sanctioned and underground Buddhist leaders.]

Catholic News Agency: Buddhists enter Catholics’ property dispute with Vietnamese government

Catholic Culture / Catholic World News: Viet Buddhist leader backs Catholic claim to Hanoi property

Catholic Culture / Catholic World News: Viet government repeats promise on restoring property

Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn

Masterful Author, Russian Patriot, Orthodox Christian

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has died in Moscow at the age of 89. He was a towering literary figure, a resolute moral force, and one of the profoundest conservative thinkers of the last century. His life, work, and legacy are among the chief inspirations of Concord Live.

A Life Lived for Love of Truth

Michael T. Kaufman, writing for the International Herald Tribune, offers a long and detailed obituary:

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose stubborn, lonely and combative literary struggles gained the force of prophecy as he revealed the heavy afflictions of Soviet Communism in some of the most powerful literary works of the 20th century, died late on Sunday at the age of 89 in Moscow. His son Yermolai said the cause was a heart ailment.

Solzhenitsyn outlived by nearly 17 years the Soviet state and system he had battled through years of imprisonment, ostracism and exile.

Solzhenitsyn had been an obscure, middle-aged, unpublished high school science teacher in a provincial Russian town when he burst onto the literary stage in 1962 with “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.” The book, a mold-breaking novel about a prison camp inmate, was a sensation. Suddenly he was being compared to giants of Russian literature like Tolstoy, Dostoyevski and Chekov.

Over the next five decades, Solzhenitsyn’s fame spread throughout the world as he drew upon his experiences of totalitarian duress to write evocative novels like “The First Circle” and “The Cancer Ward” and historical works like “The Gulag Archipelago.”

“Gulag” was a monumental account of the Soviet labor camp system, a chain of prisons that by Solzhenitsyn’s calculation some 60 million people had entered during the 20th century. The book led to his expulsion from his native land. George Kennan, the American diplomat, described it as “the greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime ever to be leveled in modern times.”

Solzhenitsyn was heir to a morally focused and often prophetic Russian literary tradition, and he looked the part. With his stern visage, lofty brow and full, Old Testament beard, he recalled Tolstoy while suggesting a modern-day Jeremiah, denouncing the evils of the Kremlin and later the mores of the West. He returned to Russia and deplored what he considered its spiritual decline…

In almost half a century, more than 30 million of his books have been sold worldwide and translated into some 40 languages. In 1970 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Solzhenitsyn: “I Am Not Afraid of Death Anymore”

In a 2007 SPIEGEL interview, Solzhenitsyn offered some extremely candid reflections on his own life, work, and mortality.

SPIEGEL: In 1987 in your interview with SPIEGEL founder Rudolf Augstein you said it was really hard for you to speak about religion in public. What does faith mean for you?

Solzhenitsyn: For me faith is the foundation and support of one’s life.

SPIEGEL: Are you afraid of death?

Solzhenitsyn: No, I am not afraid of death any more. When I was young the early death of my father cast a shadow over me — he died at the age of 27 — and I was afraid to die before all my literary plans came true. But between 30 and 40 years of age my attitude to death became quite calm and balanced. I feel it is a natural, but no means the final, milestone of one’s existence.

SPIEGEL: Anyhow, we wish you many years of creative life.

Solzhenitsyn: No, no. Don’t. It’s enough.

Requiescat in pace.

Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn

Harper Perennial will be publishing an uncut edition of Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1964 novel The First Circle in English translation in 2009, according to recent reports.

The full text of the novel has been available in Russian for years, but the only published English edition, available from Northwestern University Press, is of an alternate version cut and modified by the author in an effort to get it past censors for publication in the Soviet Union. It was never intended to be published abroad in such a truncated form.

The Associated Press reports:

According to Harper Perennial editor Peter Hubbard, Solzhenitsyn approved a new English text a few years ago and commissioned his favorite translator, Harry T. Willetts, who had worked on Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago.” But Willetts died in 2005, not long after completing the translation and the publisher “went through some edits with Solzhenitsyn. It took a little time for the book to make its way to us,” Hubbard told The Associated Press.

The CBC offers the following synopsis of The First Circle:

The title, The First Circle, refers to Dante’s first circle of hell. Solzhenitsyn portrays political figures, including Stalin, amid a variety of plots involving the prisoners, some of whom rebel against working to further an oppressive regime.

Check back on Concord Live for more coverage of works by brilliant conservative Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Conservative Senator Dies on American Independence Day

Jesse Helms, who represented the state of North Carolina in the United States Senate for 30 years, died early on July 4, 2008. He was 86.

Hero to Rightists, Foe to the Left

Tom Leonard writes on Helms’s impact for the Telegraph:

Mr Helms, a senator for North Carolina for five terms spanning 30 years, was nicknamed “Senator No” for opposing just about everything that conflicted with his view of conservatism. The long list included abortion, gay rights, affirmative action for ethnic minorities, feminism, the United Nations and what he called “dirty art”.  His name became synonymous with social conservatism and he played an important role in moving the Republican party to the Right… As chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr Helms placed a key role in promoting what he saw as a moral foreign policy backed by heavy spending on defence.  Famously blunt and intransigent, he was lionised by conservatives and vilified by liberals and once said that his job was to derail the freight train of liberalism.

Agence France Presse highlights Helms’s role in shaping United States Foreign Policy as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

He was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where he pressed for reform of the United Nations. He also coauthored the Helms-Burton Act tightening and codifying as law US sanctions against communist Cuba. The law, highly controversial internationally, sought to apply sanctions against non-US firms doing business in Cuba, and penalized those suspected of profiting from assets seized from US nationals after the 1959 revolution. Helms was the first legislator from any country to address the UN Security Council.

A Conservative Legacy amid Tributes and Criticism

Adam Hochberg called Helms “a conservative purist” on NPR:

In his three decades in the Senate, Helms battled tirelessly for the conservative cause. He waged high-profile fights against the Panama Canal treaty, AIDS funding, abortion and affirmative action. He was willing to take on his fellow Republicans — criticizing Presidents Reagan and Bush for accepting tax increases in the 1980s and ’90s. But Helms was best known for his steadfast opinions on social issues. He lambasted Hollywood for sex and violence in movies, criticized artists whose work he considered obscene and berated groups he felt were destroying traditional families…

Tom Ferraro writes the Reuters obituary, calling Helms “a die-hard anti-communist firebrand who championed a wide range of conservative causes in his 30 years in the Senate.”

It might be hard to think of a better epitaph than that, but Helms framed his own desired legacy differently. Hochberg adds the following at the conclusion of the aforementioned NPR remembrance:

When asked in the 1983 NPR interview about the political legacy he hoped to leave, Helms, in contrast to his fiery campaign rhetoric, was introspective and modest: “I would like to be remembered as a fella who did the best he could and didn’t back down when he thought he was right. And if I’ve done anything … made any contribution, and I don’t say that I have … it is that I have introduced into the dialog some things that may not have been introduced otherwise.”

Concord Live’s Posts and Resources on America’s Second President

In honor of Independence Day, Concord Live is rounding up its previous posts on John Adams, a Founding Father of the American Republic whose Burkean sensibilities helped steer the country clear of revolutionary excess, fighting to preserve the colonies’ traditional liberties and embarking on the creation of a new government by studying and developing their long-established institutions. Adams died on July 4, 1826.

Liberty Fund Publishes Collected Works of John Adams

Sit Down, John!- John Adams Opens “1776″ Musical

HBO Dramatizes Life of John Adams from McCullough Biography

Western Democracies Urge Freedom for Cuban Political Prisoners, Colombian Hostages

At a summit on June 10, 2008 in Brdo, Slovenia, the United States and the European Union issued a joint statement calling for the unconditional release of Cuba’s more than 300 political prisoners, as well as the unknown number of hostages held by armed groups in South America. The statement specifically welcomed Cuba’s signing of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and called for that country to fulfill the obligations entailed in ratifying the agreement. However, Colombia and the FARC were not mentioned by name.

This important story was picked up in Spanish-language media, but largely ignored by English-language outlets. For example, it gets just a mention in the Miami Herald followed by a reference to coverage in the Spanish-language el Nuevo Herald:

Leaders of the European Union and the United States have urged Cuba to free its political prisoners “unconditionally.” They also urged guerrilla groups in Latin America to free “all their hostages.”
Click here for full story in Spanish

 The relevant section of the 2008 EU-US Summit Declaration reads:

We will continue to work together and in collaboration with partners in Latin America and the Caribbean, to spread the benefits of democracy in the Western Hemisphere; to promote economic opportunity and social development; to uphold democratic institutions and human rights; and to enhance security. We encourage democratic processes in the countries of the region consistent with the Inter-American Democratic Charter. We welcome Cuba’s signing of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and urge the government to ratify the Covenant and demonstrate its commitment by unconditionally releasing all political prisoners. We will work together to support human rights, democratic values and an active civil society and the continued exercise of freedom of expression throughout the region. We condemn the taking of hostages in any circumstances whatsoever and call on illegal armed groups to release all hostages.

Read the full text of the 2008 European Union – United States Summit Declaration here.

Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the [Iron] Curtain

Just as Concord Live’s last post on the FARC’s mounting defeats and the radical Latin American left’s material and political support for them was published, news broke of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s calls to the FARC to free their hostages and end their guerrilla strategy. Helen Murphy, writing for Bloomberg, has a summary of the situation as it stands:

The guerrillas, who hold as many as 750 hostages for ransom and political bargaining chips, are cornered in the country’s most remote regions with their ranks reduced to as few as 8,000 fighters from as many as 17,000 before President Alvaro Uribe took office in 2002. At that time, guerrilla attacks and bombings were common inside Bogota and other major cities.

International pressure on the FARC to free its hostages took an unexpected turn yesterday when Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez urged the rebels to give up their armed struggle and unilaterally release all their captives, some of whom have been held for more than 10 years.

“Guerrilla war has passed into history,” Chavez said in his regular Sunday television program, “Alo, Presidente.” “You in the FARC should know, you have become an excuse, an excuse for the empire to threaten all of us.”

Chavez, on Jan. 11, called the FARC, designated a terrorist group by the U.S., Canada and the European Union, a real army with legitimate political goals, worthy of the world’s respect. Colombia accuses the Venezuelan president of assisting the rebels with arms and as much as $300 million in financing.

The governments of Colombia and the United States welcomed his words, but his actions remain to be seen.

Shifting Tactics Continue to Foment Violence and Revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean

Given the following:

First, that Interpol certified the computer files and documents obtained on the Colombian Army’s raid resulting in the killing of Raul Reyes, and that this evidence showed Hugo Chavez a willing direct sponsor of FARC terrorism;

Second, that this year’s bid to gain the FARC legitimate belligerent status fell absolutely flat, resulting rather in today’s announced European Union-United States call for the release of all hostages held by armed groups in South America as well as freedom for all of Cuba’s over 300 political prisoners;

Third, that the strategy of creating radical regimes through the ballot box rather than through military-driven revolution (woe to ye who think that the ballot box embodies any kind of procedural democratic guarantee when dealing with determined people with Marxist ideology and aims) has worked well enough to bring Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, and Daniel Ortega to power in the Twenty-First Century Socialism coalition nurtured by totalitarian Cuba’s Fidel and Raul Castro, and to bring the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (the political home of El Salvador’s vicious 1980s terrorist guerrillas) within striking distance of winning El Salvador’s next elections;

And fourth, that Chavez was offering $300 million to finance the FARC’s operations (land mines, child soldiers, and targeting of civilians included) even as he shuttled from Venezuela to Colombia on a purported mission of mercy to gain the release of hostages, which served as a pretext for his belligerent status drive;

it is reasonable to conclude that this public position taken by the Venezuelan dictator:

First, is a reaction to the political cost of the intelligence revelations from Raul Reyes’s files, chiefly in the form of the international pressure alluded to in the second point;

Next, that there is no reason why the FARC might decline to aim to continue destabilizing Colombia for another 50 years if its members ostensibly demilitarize and compete politically to achieve the same kind of bloody rule under which they have kept the Colombian interior for decades;

Next, that the Twenty-First Century Socialist coalition will continue cooperating to support radical leftist agendas whether under the guise of guerrilla forces, political parties, student and youth movements to the detriment of the people of Latin America who will continue to be denied freedom, peace, and the opportunity for prosperity;

And finally, that as long as Cuba remains under the rule of a regime that terrorizes its people and remains determined to export revolution, Latin America and the Caribbean will be especially prone to tyranny and material poverty.

Hope for Peace in Colombia?

The past few months have seen a number of important victories for the Colombian government over the damnably long-lived Marxist, narcotrafficking FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia or Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). The killing of 2nd-in-command Raul Reyes and the seizing of invaluable intelligence from his laptop computer, surrenders by various other leaders, and the news of the death of FARC founder Pedro Antonio Marín, also known as Manuel Marulanda, or Tirofijo (Sureshot), have come hot on the heels of massive protests by Colombian citizens in their home country and abroad against the murderous guerilla army.

President Uribe’s Success against the FARC

In a May 29th article, the Economist writes sensibly  that the FARC’s total defeat may be only a matter of time due to the determined long-term campaign of the Colombian government, led by President Alvaro Uribe since 2002:

Recent changes of government strategy are now bearing fruit. These involve encouraging guerrilla desertions and targeting the leadership. The FARC are now losing more deserters than they are gaining new recruits, according to General Freddy Padilla de León, the armed-forces’ commander. “They are reduced militarily, isolated politically, have a reduced social base and we are cutting their finance [by acting against their drug business]. It’s impossible for them to return to the cities,” he says.

Sophisters, Calculators, and the Economist

In the same article, however, the Economist writes mindlessly about how “the FARC survived the end of the cold war, but at the cost of its ideological purity, by turning to drug-trafficking and kidnapping.” These crimes are apparently less innocent than the usual actions taken by Marxists who gain any measure of power, whether in the Soviet Union, Cambodia, or Cuba: the creation of labor and concentration camp systems, the torture and imprisonment in inhuman conditions of political enemies and complete innocents, and mass executions. The article also leaves out particularly atrocious practices like the targeting of civilians or the use of children as soldiers, described in a Human Rights Watch report here.

FARC’s International Ties: Cuba, Ecuador, and Mexico

It would be a mistake to leave out the century’s worth of international cooperation among communists to place allies and useful idiots in political power through revolution or other means.  The FARC and other groups have benefited from these international networks for decades. Some of the better known examples of this kind of subversion are the Communist Internationals, the World Festivals of Youth and Students, and the Tricontinental or OSPAAAL.

One recent instance of a Cuban intelligence official funneling Mexican students sympathetic to the radical Latin American left to a FARC camp in Ecuador, currently led by Castro and Chavez ally Rafael Correa, is reported here by United Press International.

It is also worth noting the rise of powerful narcotraffickers on the Mexican scene, whose targeted bombings combine with recent attacks by a group called the People’s Revolutionary Army against Mexico’s state-run Pemex oil monopoly to create a climate eerily reminiscent of the bad old days in Colombia. Ioan Grillo of Time Magazine reports and suggests the connection here.

FARC and Venezeula’s Hugo Chavez

Jens Glüsing, writing for Der Spiegel International, has a report hinting at the kind of support of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez for the Colombian terrorists:

Chavez admired FARC founder Marulanda and was “downright obsessed” with his strategic skills, says a Colombian intelligence agent. The Venezuelan leader allegedly offered his idol a financial injection of $300 million (€194 million) — the amount Marulanda had estimated it would cost his group to seize control of the government in Bogota.

The Economist writes more extensively on the insight into the FARC’s inner workings gleaned from the e-mails and information seized on the raid that killed Raul Reyes here:

The e-mails show the extent to which the army has the FARC on the run: the secretariat members often complain of their difficulties in communicating with each other. Days after Mr Reyes was killed another member of the secretariat, Iván Ríos, was murdered by his own bodyguard. This week Mr Ríos’s deputy, Nelly Ávila Moreno (aka “Karina”), surrendered. But the FARC is far from defeated. In an e-mail last August Mr Briceño notes that guerrilla landmines are undermining army morale. Their impact is “very good and we are going to increase them,” he writes.

Nicargua’s Ortega an Unabashed Admirer of Tirofijo

In other news, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, who spouts class warfare rhetoric and praises the half-century of totalitarianism in Cuba and terrorism in Colombia along with Cuba’s Fidel and Raul Castro, Venezuela’s hugo Chavez, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, could not resist publicly eulogizing the FARC’s founder and longtime leader. The Associated Press via the International Herald Tribune reports on the once-and-future Sandinista leader, who paid tribute to Tirofijo at the 2008 Foro de Sao Paolo in Montevideo, Uruguay. For a quick reminder of Sandinista atrocities committed under Ortega, check this article from Front Page magazine and its references.

Mary, Mother of God and Metahistorian

The Catholic News Agency reports on an address at the conclusion of the Marian month of May on Saturday, May 31, 2008 during which Pope Benedict XVI stated that

Following the Annunciation of the Archangel, “Mary found herself with a great mystery closed in her womb; she knew that something unique had happened; she was aware that the last chapter in the history of the salvation of the world had begun,” the Pope said…

“Her faith enabled her to see that the thrones of the powerful of this world are all transitory, while the throne of God is the only rock that does not change and does not fall. After centuries and millennia, her Magnificat remains the truest and most profound interpretation of history, while the theories of so many wise men of this world have been disproved by the facts over the course of the centuries.”

H2O News reports further on the Pope’s address, and includes footage here. Of course, the kinds of schools of historical thought utterly refuted by the actual course of history are those that attempt to prescribe the course history surely must  take. Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, and all the smokers of Enlightenment pipe dreams vanish before Mary and her recognition that Christ is the center and meaning of History.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!