Che Guevara Lies

2008-06-10T08:43:00.000-07:00

A Cuban Movie Proposal

2008-05-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

As the world's leftists keep celebrating the 40th anniversary of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's death and keep selling him as the ultimate champion of a people's revolution, I keep thinking about my friend Carlos Barberia.

When you talk to Barberia, you see the other side of Guevara, who has become a romanticized icon.

At a time when Guevara's face has become a T-shirt fashion statement among young Americans, Barberia has a way of explaining why they should reconsider idolizing a man such as Guevara.

Barberia's story is dramatic, suspenseful — fit to become a Hollywood classic. Instead of fiction about Che, depicting the guerrilla/terrorist as a humanitarian motorcycle rider, this movie would be the story of one of Guevara's lucky-to-be-living victims.

Imagine a movie opening with Barberia, a black, robust man, leading the band at the swanky nightclub of the old Havana Hilton Hotel in Cuba before the revolution. Picture him living through those tumultuous days before the fall of Fulgencio Batista's dicatorship, when Havana's watering holes for American tourists were being bombed and terrorized by rebels.

Then fast-forward to the triumph of the Fidel Castro Revolution, the sudden departure of Batista, as Barberia performed on New Year's Eve, the evening before the first day of 1959. In the following months, destiny would bring Barberia close to Castro, Guevara and many of the other leaders of the revolution.

After all, when the guerrillas came down from the mountains, ironically, they stayed at the Hilton. For the first few months of 1959, Castro and his top men occupied three floors of the prestigious Havana hotel. And when the guerrillas and the musicians got hungry in the middle of the night, they all gathered at the hotel kitchen looking for leftovers.

That's where Barberia met Castro and Guevara. They hit it off right away. Barberia was an admirer of the rebels, and the rebels found him entertaining.

"We became very friendly, and we would talk about all kinds of things," Barberia said.

Suddenly, Barberia and the other musicians fell into the awkward yet privileged position of chatting informally with the men who had just taken over the government and were reshaping the country.

Think of it as a movie. Doesn't it have all the necessary hooks to make it a box-office hit?

It got to the point where Barberia felt he could say anything to Castro or Che. He even felt he could be critical.

During those first few months of 1959, Castro had put Guevara in charge of the firing squads that executed hundreds of Batista government officials and other Cubans considered potential enemies. Guevara served as prosecutor, judge and jury.
And at one point, Barberia felt it was getting out of hand.

"I simply suggested to Fidel that they should consider stopping the firing squads, and El Che was listening," Barberia said. "I told them they were killing too many people."

A few hours later, at the crack of dawn, a group of Guevara's men went knocking on Barberia's door in Havana. He was told that Guevara wanted to see him at La Cabana, the old Spanish fortress that had been turned from a tourist attraction to a prison, complete with firing squads.

Barberia said Guevara greeted him at the officers' club, a beautiful dining room that had a glass wall overlooking the castle's courtyard. He said he knew the room well because his Kubavana Orchestra had performed there many times back when La Cabana was still a place for tourists. But in the first few months of Castro's rule, that courtyard had become the stage for Guevara's bloody firing squads.

Barberia said Guevara invited him to breakfast, ordered two rare steaks and told him to sit facing the courtyard. Barberia had been invited to watch the executions.

"They brought four guys out, but when they shot the first one, I got up and I walked away," Barberia said.

Barberia felt that his rejection of Guevara's methods made him a marked man. In December 1959, upon learning that Guevara's men were investigating him, Barberia went into hiding in Havana and then out of Cuba. When Guevara's men went looking for him, Barberia said, "They took my father and had him shot."

Take that story into account when you consider that on the main commercial road in the town where Barberia lives (Bergenline Avenue in Union City, N.J.), there are boutiques selling T-shirts with Che Guevara's face.

Barberia, now 72, has made strides in the United States, both as a bandleader and as an advertising salesman for New York Spanish-language radio stations. But when he is confronted with images of Guevara, Barberia is visibly affected. His face turns red. His eyes shed tears. When he sees young Americans who don't know Guevara's true history blindly following a murderer who has been turned into a pop-culture icon, Barberia makes a visible effort to restrain himself.

Not long ago, when Barberia waited for a bus on Bergenline Avenue, he spotted a Guevara T-shirt on a rack at a sidewalk sale. And he couldn't take it. They had brought the T-shirt out too close to the comfort zone. He grabbed the T-shirt, took it inside the store and paid for it. And then he took it back outside and set it on fire.

When police arrived, Barberia said he was honest in explaining his outburst. "Che Guevara killed my father," he told the officers. "He had my father shot by a firing squad in Cuba."

As luck would have it, Barberia said one of the cops was a young Cuban-American. "He told me, 'I have not seen anything,'" Barberia said, "and he walked away."

Think of it as a movie — one with real memories and real pain.

To find out more about Miguel Perez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.

The True Story of Che Guevara

2008-04-11T13:46:00.000-07:00

Che Guevara Took A Lot of Pleasure in Killing

2008-03-23T21:51:00.000-07:00

Che Guevara is an icon, but those who idolize him idolize a lie. Che was not a “freedom fighter.” He was a killer who enjoyed killing. He was, after all, Fidel Castro’s executioner.How many people Che executed is debatable. As Humberto Fontova, author of Exposing the Real

Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him, writes:

A Cuban prosecutor of the time who quickly defected in horror and disgust named Jose Vilasuso estimates that Che signed 400 death warrants the first few months of his command in La Cabana. A Basque priest named Iaki de Aspiazu, who was often on hand to perform confessions and last rites, says Che personally ordered 700 executions by firing squad during the period. Cuban journalist Luis Ortega, who knew Che as early as 1954, writes in his book Yo Soy El Che! that Guevara sent 1,897 men to the firing squad.

In his book Che Guevara: A Biography, Daniel James writes that Che himself admitted to ordering “several thousand” executions during the first year of the Castro regime. Felix Rodriguez, the Cuban-American CIA operative who helped track him down in Bolivia and was the last person to question him, says that Che during his final talk, admitted to “a couple thousand” executions. But he shrugged them off as all being of “imperialist spies and CIA agents.
Why did Che kill so many?

Power. Simple power.

Guevara had witnessed the overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz, and felt that Arbenz would still be in power if he had only killed more people. He did not want the same result in Cuba, so executions were the rule.

Che would often execute people without so much as a trial. Fontova relates Che being confronted for his behavior, and Che’s response:

Che ordered 27 Batista soldiers executed as “war criminals.” Dr. Serafin Ruiz was a Castro operative in Santa Clara at the time, but apparently an essentially decent one. “But Comandante” he responded to Che’s order. “Our revolution promises not to execute without trials, without proof. How can we just….?”

“Look Serafin” Che snorted back. “If your bourgeois prejudices won’t allow you to carry out my orders, fine. Go ahead and try them tomorrow morning–but execute them NOW!”
The Batista soldiers would get a trial, after facing Che’s firing squad. Che often liked to finish the job with a .45 at five paces, shattering the skull of the condemned. And he liked killing.
Prior to the revolution in Cuba, and shortly after landing in Cuba with Fidel and Raul Castro, Che wrote his wife. In the letter, he said, “”I’m here in Cuba’s hills, alive and thirsting for blood.” Another account has the wording a little different, with Che writing, ““Here in the Cuban jungle, alive and bloodthirsty.”

The sentiment is the same. Che was looking forward to killing.

Fontova described the first time Che killed for Fidel:
Fidel Castro ordered the execution of a peasant guerrilla named Eutimio Guerra who he accused of being an informer for Batista’s forces. Castro assigned the killing to his own bodyguard, Universo Sanchez. To everyone’s surprise, Che Guevara — a lowly rebel soldier/medic at the time (not yet a comandante — volunteered to accompany Sanchez and another soldier to the execution site. The Cuban rebels were glum as they walked slowly down the trail in a torrential thunderstorm. Finally the little group stopped in a clearing.

Sanchez was hesitant, looking around, perhaps looking for an excuse to postpone or call off the execution. Dozens would follow, but this was the first execution of a Castro rebel by Castro’s rebels. Suddenly without warning Che stepped up and fired his pistol into Guerra’s temple. “He went into convulsions for a while and was finally still. Now his belongings were mine.” Che wrote in his Diaries.

Shortly afterwards, Che’s father in Buenos Aires received a letter from his prodigal son. “I’d like to confess, papa’, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing.”
His enjoyment of murder is illustrated by his remodeling of his office at La Cabana. If Che couldn’t be five paces away, he still wanted to watch. He had a wall removed that overlooked the area where executions were carried out.

He also loved to make the condemned families watch the executions. For example, a mother lobbied Che for mercy on her young son. Che responded by picking up the phone. He ordered the execution to be carried out immediately. He had this mother watch her son executed, so she could stop worrying about her son.

In 1997, Pierre San Martin, a Cuban who was jailed by Che, recalled an incident that happened in 1959. A 12-14 year old boy, beaten and bloody, had been thrown into the cell with him. The boy said he was there for simply defending his father. The boy was trying to keep his father from being executed. He failed.

Later, the guards came for the boy:
Near the wall where they conducted the executions, with his hands on his waist, paced from side to side the abominable Che Guevera.

He gave the order to bring the boy first and he ordered him to kneel in front of the wall. We all screamed for them not to commit this crime and we offered ourselves in his place. The boy disobeyed the order with a courage that words can’t express and responded to this infamous character: “If you’re going to kill me you’re going to have to do it the way you kill a man, standing, not like a coward, kneeling.

Walking behind the boy, the Che said “whereupon you are a brave lad…” He unholstered his pistol and shot him in the nape of the neck so that he almost decapitated him.
There are so many stories to tell about Che that illustrate his joy of killing. Yet the myth continues. The useful idiots who wear the Che t-shirts, like Carlos Santana or Johnny Depp, believe the myth, and continue the lie.

Che was not a freedom fighter or a revolutionary. He was a killer who enjoyed killing.
He was a monster on the scale of Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin.

(This article is cross posted at Newsvine, where you expect the usual useful idiots to be out in mass defending this killer.)

Che Gourmet

2008-03-19T11:12:00.001-07:00

Gourmet delicious fine foods from Che Gourmet made specially for rich western hard cash

2008-03-03T16:20:00.000-08:00

From the blog www.okieonthelam.com

Listened to Humberto Fontova talk about his latest book, Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him this AM on the Dennis Prager radio show, hosted by Mark Taylor today, and boy, what a force of nature Humberto seems to be.

Known for his previous political book on Cuba, Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant or more better known for his The Helldivers’ Rodeo: and The Hellpig Hunt: books, Humberto pulled no punches as he detailed what a murderous thug was Che Guevara. There is much available in print and on the web about Guevara, as you can easily see if you follow that link to his Wikipedia page. Fontova is out to separate the man from the myth — showing us a “Che” that is neither brave nor majestic, just crude, cowardly and homicidal to the core.

I can’t wait to get hold of a copy of this important book, as the mere taste of the teasers given during today’s interview are powerfully compelling. To give you an ideal of Fontova’s writing, one can read his online articles. In one of his FrontPage Mag articles from May 2006, Fontova highlights the Cuba that Castro and Che tore apart in their so-called “workers’ revolution”.
Here’s a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) report on Cuba circa 1957 that dispels the fantasies of pre-Castro Cuba still cherished by America’s most prestigious academics and its most learned film critics: “One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class,” it starts. “Cuban workers are more unionized (proportional to the population) than U.S. workers.

The average wage for an 8 hour day in Cuba in 1957 is higher than for workers in Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany. Cuban labor receives 66.6 per cent of gross national income. In the U.S. the figure is 70 per cent, in Switzerland 64 per cent. 44 per cent of Cubans are covered by Social legislation, a higher percentage then in the U.S.”

In 1958 Cuba had a higher per-capita income than Austria and Japan. Cuban industrial workers had the 8th highest wages in the world. In the 1950’s Cuban stevedores earned more per hour than their counterparts in New Orleans and San Francisco. Cuba had established an 8 hour work-day in 1933 — five years before FDR’s New Dealers got around to it. Add to this: one months paid vacation. The much-lauded (by liberals) Social-Democracies of Western Europe didn’t manage this until 30 years later.

Cuba, a country 71% white in 1957, was completely desegregated 30 years before Rosa Parks was dragged off that Birmingham bus and handcuffed. In 1958 Cuba had more female college graduates per capita than the U.S.

Doesn’t sound like it needed a “revolution” to help the poor working class, now does it. Does make one wonder why our intellectual class and University professors across the land worship the thought and image of “Che”. How many Che t-shirts have you seen out there? Far too many, that’s for damn sure. Here is a long excerpt from another Fontova FP article, this one posted on the anniversary of Che’s death last fall. It’s value here is self explanatory.

Employing interrogation techniques lovingly imparted by their East German STASI and Russian KGB, mentors, Cuba’s security forces finally pinpointed Tony’s hideout. As always, the Russian-trained Castroites came in overwhelming force and heavily armed with Soviet weapons. As always their foe was suicidally valiant, horribly outnumbered and utterly devoid of allies. Invariably, this characterized the armed exploits of a regime still revered as a “valiant underdog” by millions of imbeciles worldwide.

Castro and Che’s troops finally closed on Tony and captured him after a ferocious firefight where Tony took 17 bullets from their Czech machine guns, mostly in his legs.
As reverential and studious Stalinists, the Castroites desperately wanted Tony alive for a show trial, the better to terrorize and cow their subjects.

The Reds took Tony to a hospital and doctors patched him up–not completely now, just enough to keep him alive until his trial. Shortly he was dumped in La Cabana’s dungeons and fed just enough to keep him alive. A month later they went through the farce of a trial and the verdict–naturally–was death by firing squad.
On the way to the stake at the old Spanish fort turned to a prison and execution ground by Che Guevara, Tony was forced to hobble down some cobblestone stairs Again Tony pelted his captors with dreadful curses and stinging abuse, ”Russian lackeys!” Tony yelled again as they dragged him off. “Idiots!”

Tony’s insults hit home and stung. Finally a furious guard lost it. “CABRON!” (you B**tard!) He yanked Tony’s crutch away while another gallant Commie– WHUMP!– kicked the crippled freedom-fighter powerfully from behind. Tony tumbled down the long row of steps and finally lay on the cobblestones at the bottom, writhing and grimacing. One of Tony’s bullet- riddled legs had been amputated at the hospital, the other was gangrened and covered in pus. The Castroite guards cackled as they moved in to gag Tony with their tape.

Tony watched them approach while balling his good hand into a fist. Then as the first Red reached him –BASH!! right across his eyes. “AYEEH!” the Castroite staggered back while rubbing his face.

“You!…YOU!…..his gallant partner rushed towards Tony who was getting a good grip on his crutch with his other hand. BASH!!–Tony smashed the Red with his wooden crutch. “CABRON!” The enraged Castroites yelped for help against their helpless (as always) enemy.

“I’ll never understand how Tony survived that beating,” says eye-witness Hiram Gonzalez who watched from his window on death-row, screaming in helpless rage at the Communist guards. The crippled Tony was almost killed in the kicking, punching, gun-bashing melee but finally his captors stood off, panting and rubbing their scrapes and bruises. They’d managed to tape the battered boys mouth, but Tony pushed the guards away before they bound his hands. Their commander nodded, motioning for them to back off.

Now Tony started crawling towards the splintered and blood-spattered execution stake about fifty yards away, pushing and dragging himself with his hands as his stump of a leg left a trail of blood on the grass. As he neared the stake he’d stop and start pounding himself in the chest. His executioners seemed perplexed. The crippled boy was trying to say something. But his message was muzzled by the gag the gallant friend of George McGovern made obligatory for his thousands of execution victims.

Tony’s blazing eyes and grimace said enough. But no one could understand the boy’s mumblings. Tony kept pushing himself, shutting his eyes tightly from the agony of the effort. His executioners shuffled nervously, raised their rifles, lowered them. They looked towards their commander who shrugged. Finally Tony reached up to his face and ripped off the tape that George McGovern’s sparkling dinner companion required for his condemned.

The 20 year-old freedom-fighter’s voice boomed out. “Shoot me RIGHT HERE!” roared Tony at his gaping executioners. His voice thundered and his head bobbed with the effort. “Right in the CHEST!” Tony yelled. “Like a MAN!” Tony stopped and ripped open his shirt, pounding his chest and grimacing as his gallant executioners gaped and shuffled. “Right HERE!” he pounded.

On his last day alive, Tony had received a letter in jail from his mother. “My dear son,” she counseled. “How often I’d warned you not to get involved in these things. But I knew my pleas were vain. You always demanded your freedom, Tony, even as a little boy. So I knew you’d never stand for communism. Well, Castro and Che finally caught you. Son, I love you with all my heart. My life is now shattered and will never be the same, but the only thing left now, Tony….. is to die like a man.”

“FUEGO!!” Castro’s lackey yelled the command and the bullets shattered Tony’s crippled body, just as he’d reached the stake, lifted himself and stared resolutely at his murderers. But Castro’s firing squads usually murder a hero who is standing. The legless Tony presented an awkward target. So some of the volley went wild and missed the youngster. Time for the coup de grace.

Normally it’s one .45 slug that shatters the skull. Eye-witnesses say Tony required… POW!-POW!….POW!– three. Seems the executioner’s hands were shaking pretty badly. But they finally managed. The man Time Magazine’s hails among the “heroes and icons of the Century” had another notch in his gun. Another enemy dispatched–bound and gagged as usual.

Castro and Che were in their mid-thirties when they murdered Tony.

According to the authoritative Black Book of Communism their firing squads riddled another 14,000 bound and gagged freedom-fighters. Many (perhaps most) of their murder victims were boys in their early twenties and late-teens. Some were even younger. Carlos Machado and his twin brother Ramon were fifteen when they spat in the face of their communist executioners and died singing their national anthem as lustily as they cursed Che Guevara’s Internationale. Their dad collapsed from same volley alongside them.

Compare Carlos and Tony’s death to Guevara’s capture: “Don’t shoot!” whimpered the arch-assassin to his captors. “I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!”
Then ask yourselves: who’s face belongs on T-shirts worn by youth who fancy themselves, rebellious, freedom-loving and brave?

As Fantova said on the radio, it’s a complete oxymoron for the peaceniks to run around wearing “Che” t-shirts. Might as well wear a “Himmler” shirt to a Holocaust memorial! Sheesh! What a bunch of morons, Liberals, Progressives, Intellectuals; Useful Idiots!

www.okieonthelam.com

The Truth About Che Guevara- Murderer (Video)

2008-03-03T16:15:00.000-08:00

Jason Mattera and The Young America's Foundation put together a very powerful video on Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara including the mugshots of the people he murdered:

Maybe when (if) Barack Obama becomes president he can go coddle with Fidel's brutal younger brother Raul and break down the Cuban Marxist Regime.UPDATE: The Marxists not only murdered their opponents- they murdered the economy.

The victims of Che Guevara

2007-12-04T11:31:00.000-08:00

By Michelle Malkin

Update: Here’s a real hero.

***

I get sick every time I see some aging hippie, yuppie and baby, open-borders zealot, or college punk sporting a Che shirt–or some clueless corporate retailer making a buck off of Che chic.
The Young America’s Foundation is tired of it, too. They’ve put out a poster for Freedom Week this week illustrating the victims of Che Guevara, using the moonbat iconic image of the mass murderer.

Via the WashTimes:

One of the most famous faces of communism is getting a makeover this week, with a new poster designed to teach students the whole story about Cuban revolutionary icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara.“The Victims of Che Guevera” poster, produced by the Young America’s Foundation, centers on a collage that uses tiny photos of those killed by Cuba’s communist regime to compose the face of the Marxist guerrilla, who has become a popular T-shirt icon.“Che is one of the heroes that the left idolizes,” said Patrick X. Coyle, vice president of YAF. “But a lot of kids don’t know anything about him. We thought this would be a great way to highlight his atrocities.”

You can get a poster for the misguided moonbat in your life–free for a limited time–here:
During his vicious campaigns to impose communism on countries throughout Latin America, Che Guevara trained and motivated the Castro regime’s firing squads that executed thousands of men, women, and children.

All individuals used in this photo montage were murdered by Che and the Cuban regime, revealing the truth of Che’s cruel murderous hypocrisy and acknowledging his countless victims — known and unknown.
***
Background from Val Prieto at Babalu Blog:

I believe the YAF “che” poster was originally designed for Humberto Fontova’s lecture series in the University circuit as part of The 29th annual National Conservative Student Conference where he talked about his latest book “Exposing the Real che guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him”. (I believe you may have met him or heard him lecture sometime this past year.) The photographs used for the image are real, most gathered from Cuban exiles who lost family members at the hand of the Butcher of La Cabaña himself.

I cant even begin to tell you just how much pain che guevara caused to so many. It isn’t just those that he systematically killed, but the wives he widowed and children he orphaned, the parents who sons and daughters were executed. che’s been dead for forty years but in many cases, the families of his victims are still feeling the grief and anguish and certainly, Cuba is still suffering from the disease of a regime he helped instill.

Here’s a link to one of Humberto lectures, via the YAF website.

Humberto deserves a great deal of credit for exposing the real che guevara and standing fast against the murderer’s idolators. Here’s the link to his website, where this book and “fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant” are available.

Che, Cuba and Christmas

2007-11-26T09:53:00.000-08:00

BY MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY

Until last Thursday Christmas shoppers at Target department stores could purchase a 24-CD carrying case decorated with the image of Che Guevara. When I heard about it, I wondered why the retailer would want to promote the memory of a mass murderer. What's next, I asked, when I spoke with a representative of the company on Wednesday, Pol Pot pajamas?

Late Wednesday evening Target sent me this statement: "It is never our intent to offend any of our guests through the merchandise we carry. We have made the decision to remove this item from our shelves and we sincerely apologize for any discomfort this situation may have caused our guests."

That it took only a day for Target to make that admirable decision suggests that at least someone at the company knows who Guevara was and what Cuba is today thanks in part to him. The misstep, though, probably occurred because others at the company allowed Target to become a target itself of the Che myth.

Guevara is not just a dead white guy from a well-to-do family who terrorized a racially mixed nation and executed hundreds of innocents in the late 1950s and 1960s. He is also a symbol of the totalitarian regime that persists in Cuba, which still practices his ideology of intolerance, hatred and repression. It is not the torture and killing alone that make the tragedy. That only describes the methodology. Guevara's wider goal--to forcibly strip a population of its soul and spirit--is what is truly frightening and deplorable. Christians, who celebrate the birth of their Savior today, have particularly suffered under Guevara's dream of revolution, which has lasted since 1959.

The fear under which Cubans have lived for 48 years was fathered by the merciless Che Guevara. The unhappy Argentine Marxist met Fidel Castro in Mexico in 1955 and later became a rebel commander. "The Black Book of Communism," published in 1999 by Harvard University Press, notes that early in his career Guevara earned a "reputation for ruthlessness; a child in his guerrilla unit who had stolen a little food was immediately shot without trial." In his will, the book says, "this graduate of the school of terror praised the 'extremely useful hatred that turns men into effective, violent, merciless and cold killing machines.' "

Peruvian-born Alvaro Vargas Llosa penned his own book this year titled "The Che Guevara Myth." Mr. Vargas Llosa documents a twisted life, such as when Che shot a comrade and made the following entry in his diary: "I ended the problem with a .32 caliber pistol, in the right side of his brain. . . . His belongings were now mine." After that, Mr. Vargas Llosa says, Guevara shot "a peasant who expressed the desire to leave whenever the rebels moved on." Guevara also liked to simulate executions, as a form of torture. "At every stage of his adult life, his megalomania manifested itself in the predatory urge to take over other people's lives and property, and to abolish their free will."

Guevara was an architect of Cuba's forced labor camps, which by 1965 were transformed into concentration camps for dissidents, Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, Cubans of other religious sects, homosexuals and later people with AIDS,.

All independent thought that refused to worship the communist state was an affront to Guevara. Christians were an especially difficult lot. From the earliest days after Castro took power, Che sent hundreds of men to face firing squads at the Havana prison known as La Cabaña. His victims could be heard at dawn loudly crying "Long live Christ the King, down with communism," just before the rifle shots rang out.

Thousands of Cubans have perished in daring attempts to get off the island because they preferred the risks of flight to a life in which Christianity has been forbidden, children are the property of the state, thought is policed, and spying on your neighbor is one of the few ways to earn a living. During the Mariel boatlift in 1980, witnesses told of families arriving at the pier together only to be separated by Cuban guards who enjoyed watching their misery. Weeping mothers faced the point of a gun while their distraught sons and daughters were forced to board ships. This Christmas thousands of Cuban-Americans will remember their loved ones who didn't make it out or died trying.

Defenders of Guevara can't even claim that his cruelty brought about equality. Today state policy makes it a crime for the raggedly dressed, malnourished and mostly black Cuban people to visit the beaches, museums and amply stocked stores of their own country, while well-fed tourists in fashionable cruise-wear go where they like. This amounts to de facto apartheid.

Amazingly, hope is still alive in Cuba. One reason is because although Guevara was able to kill a lot of Christians, neither he nor his successors succeeded in wiping out Christianity. The struggling Christian community, which takes seriously the religious teaching to reject fear in the face of evil, is playing a key role in the island's dissident movement.

An icon of the Christian resistance is Oscar Elias Biscet, a black physician who is serving a 25-year sentence for his peaceful activism against the regime. He has been arrested more than 26 times since he began to express his dissent; he has been beaten, tortured and locked in tiny windowless cells for days on end. Hundreds of other prisoners of conscience are in jail, under atrocious conditions; many are also devout Christians.

The Christian faith has survived Che and Fidel and decades of brainwashing. It is battered but has not been defeated. Raul Castro fears it--which is why he takes Bibles away from his unbreakable prisoners. The moral of the story seems to be that even the all-powerful regime cannot stop Christmas from coming to Cuba.

Che Guevara Christmas Greeting

2007-11-26T09:31:00.000-08:00

Che Guevara Christmas Greeting

Ernesto Che Guevara sold 100,000,000 T-shirts this year alone! He's world's greatest T-shirt salesman. Come on, trust-fund college kid! Be a non-conformist because everybody else is! Being popular is so elfin' hard. Che shirt = instant recognition. Viva la merchandise! Who's your daddy? Have yourself an nice progressive Christmas!

Venezuelans topple Che statue put up by Chavez

2007-11-26T09:24:00.000-08:00

Hatip from http://www.nelsonguirado.com

CARACAS, Venezuela — A glass monument to revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara was shot up and destroyed less than two weeks after it was unveiled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government.

Images of the 8-foot-tall glass plate bearing Guevara's image, now toppled and shattered, were shown Friday on state television, which said the entire country "repudiated" the vandalism.
The monument on an Andean mountain highway near the city of Merida was unveiled Oct. 8 by Vice President Jorge Rodriguez and Cuba's ambassador to Venezuela to mark the 40th anniversary of Guevara's death.

Chavez venerates Guevara as a model socialist for all Venezuelans. He named a state-funded adult education program "Mission Che Guevara," and murals of the iconic revolutionary have become a common sight in Venezuela.

Police said they had yet to identify those responsible. The Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional published a copy of what it said was a flier found by the monument signed by the previously unknown "Paramo Patriotic Front."

"We don't want any monument to Che, he isn't an example for our children," the flier read. It called Guevara a "cold-blooded killer" and said the government should raise a monument in Chavez's hometown of Sabaneta, in the nearby lowland plains, if it wants to commemorate the Argentine-born revolutionary.

The local mayor, Jesus Maria Espinoza, suggested the vandals came from elsewhere.
"We can't tolerate people from outside ... damaging something that was unveiled with so much happiness, with so much enthusiasm that day," Espinoza told state television.
The 1.5-inch-thick stele was erected near the top of El Aguila Peak, a popular tourist spot and one of the highest points in Venezuela at 13,143 feet above sea level.

Guevara visited this spot in 1952 during his travels through South America, which he recorded in his diary, before joining the Cuban revolutionary struggle led by Fidel Castro.

We could use more freedom-loving, anti-Communist rock musicians like these:

2007-11-07T16:17:00.001-08:00

A Cuban Hero

2007-11-05T11:29:00.000-08:00

Cuban physician Oscar Elías Biscet and seven others will be awarded the presidential medal of freedom by George W. Bush in a White House ceremony today. But Dr. Biscet will not be there to accept his honor in person. Today, like most days for the better part of the past eight years, he is locked away in a dungeon on Fidel Castro's island paradise.

Che : False Idol

2007-10-25T12:07:00.000-07:00

Exposing Che Guevara & Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him

2007-10-25T12:05:00.000-07:00

Che is the “Patron Saint” of Warfare

2007-10-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

by William Ratliff

October 24, 2007

ASSISI, Italy — As I walked toward the grandiose Basilica of Saint Francis in this ancient city, I saw a familiar face at a souvenir stall on my left. It was Che Guevara, the macho, scruffily-bearded image everyone knows from Korda’s famous photo, with the halo.

This month marks the fortieth anniversary of his death in Bolivia. Finding a T-shirt with Che in this small Umbrian town next to statuettes of the patron saint of birds emphasized the almost Franciscan down-to-earth “tough goodness” of Che as depicted in the current cult. In Bolivia, President Evo Morales spoke in these terms when he told mourners that no one could ever be a successor to Che unless he “gave his life for humanity.”

The Mother Church of the reincarnation of Che as a saint is in Cuba, where the commercialization of the hero is as rampant as the selling of St. Francis is in Assisi. Cuba reported in early October that Cuban doctors had just restored the eyesight of the saint’s executioner. The moral, said the Communist Party paper Granma, is that four decades after that man had “attempted to destroy a dream and an idea, Che returned to win yet another battle.”

The juxtaposition here in Assisi highlights the lie of Che’s sainthood, unless there is a saint of war. St. Francis founded the Franciscans after a stint on the battlefield brought him to enlightenment and he pledged to preach salvation through poverty, repentance and non-confrontation. Che’s enlightenment occurred on a trip depicted in the popular film “Motorcycle Diaries” and after it he became an increasingly zealous advocate and practitioner of popular salvation through warfare.

Che was a head-strong, Messiah-like figure in a region plagued by what Venezuelan Moises Naim calls “legendary malignancies: inequality and poverty, dysfunctional politics and malfunctioning institutions.” For centuries Latin culture has inclined people to seek out and follow paternalistic miracle workers, sometimes called caudillos, like Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez today, who promise to bring a better life to loyal followers.

Like Chavez today, Che swore to bring justice to the downtrodden by crushing centuries-old tyrannies. He probably meant it, was certainly fearless, gave his life to the cause, and his reputation gained much from the fact that he was martyred by the Americans he so hated. In the wake of the Iraq war, his mix of real and false virtues has renewed his appeal to the frustrated, disgruntled and ideological in an increasingly anti-American world.

But only ignorant or interested parties can look on Guevara’s record and objectively judge him a selfless advocate of the poor or an impressive success in most of his endeavors. His path, totally contrary to that of St. Francis, was to promote conflict and warfare on all continents. Che totally bought into Fidel’s dictum that “the duty of every revolutionary is to make the revolution,” not to negotiate reforms with all parties involved.

Che’s writings on guerrilla warfare became world-famous, but the efforts to lead guerrillas that absorbed him in the final years of his life were pathetic failures, in Africa and Latin America, and thousands influenced by him died in wars against dictators and democrats. In country after country, the downtrodden lost much more than they gained from this True Believer’s ideas, activities and fanaticism.

Che was obsessed by U.S. involvement in Vietnam and beyond and drew apocalyptic conclusions there from. His last important writing, the 1967 Message to the Tricontinental, a grouping of Third World revolutionaries, eagerly looked forward to “two, three, many Vietnams” around the world that would so overextend the United States as to precipitate its collapse. The 1966-67 war in Bolivia, where he died, was intended precisely to create “a Vietnam in the Americas with its heart in Bolivia,” as his Cuban comrade Pombo wrote in his diary just before they died together in the Andes.

So if you ever buy a Che T-shirt, or signal thumbs-up approval to anyone else who is wearing one, remember what it is you are endorsing. As Paul Berman wrote when the film Motorcycle Diaries came out, the Che cult is “an episode in the moral callousness of our time.”

Even George W. Bush seems to have learned that negotiation can be more productive than conflict. The last thing the world needs today is anyone else glorifying war as the only solution to differences. Che’s final writings do just that, promoting the manipulation of the “unbending hatred” of which men are capable in order to turn each person into “an effective, violent, selective, and cold-blooded killing machine.” A truly humanitarian goal would be to work for fewer Vietnams and Iraqs, not more.

William Ratliff is Adjunct Fellow at the Independent Institute, Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, and a frequent writer on Chinese and Cuban foreign policies.

The BBC love them some Che Guevara!!!!

2007-10-08T21:31:00.000-07:00

Hatip to monkeytennis blog for this infromation!

I’d like to bring to your attention a disgraceful article about Che Guevara on the BBC News website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7028598.stmThe piece perpetuates every myth left-wing fantasy about Guevara, while completely ignoring his brutal crimes.

I have blogged about the story here: http://monkeytenniscentre.blogspot.com/2007/10/bbcs-vile-infatuation-with-che-guevara.html

Please forward this to other Cuban democracy campaigners, your friends and like-minded bloggers. Note that there is a comments form at the end of the BBC article. Please leave your comments, and images if you have any, and encourage your friends and colleagues to do the same. You can also contact the ‘Che’ artist, Jim Fitzpatrick, via his website.

Chairman Hugo's Little Red Constitution

2007-09-05T10:29:00.000-07:00

PJM correspondent in Caracas

On August 15, Hugo Chavez announced the constitutional changes he seeks, involving a stunning 10% of the articles of the still-fresh 1999 Constitution.

The vaunted “participatory democracy” of the 1999 document has yielded in a very few years to the increasingly absolute control of the country by one single man and his close camarilla. Even the New York Times quickly came out with a strong editorial showing they were not buying it. To quote the last sentence: “It’s participatory democracy in which only Mr. Chavez and his friends get to participate.”

Here in Venezuela, we have known about Chavez’s ambitions for quite a while. What is worrisome is that too many people do not object to a leader obtaining increasingly more and more power. The proposed changes will alter considerably the functioning of the republic and the relationships between its citizens. The future for Venezualans seems to be headed toward a violent denouement. Although high oil prices are helping Mr. Chavez to literally buy goodwill from many who should know better, historically, all regimes like the one Mr. Chavez is trying to impose end up in some form of violence; .

Which are these changes that seem so threatening? Here are some simple examples that illustrate well what the whole exercise is about.

Private property will be under constant threat. One of the most worrisome novelties of the regime is to make the private property concept a relative one. This is achieved in different ways, all to be applied when needed, as circumstances warrant. The government is creating different forms of property, putting at the end of that list private property, achieving the effect of making it less valuable by placing it after state or communal property. Constitutions have a way of ranking things to signify their value.

New language in Article 115 weakens property rights: Private property is that which belongs to private or legal entities and which is recognized as goods for use or consumption, and as means of production legitimately acquired.

It is important to note what was erased from the old Article 115: Everyone has the right to use, enjoy and dispose of their belongings. The implication is clear. First, citizens lose the right to dispose of our possessions as we wish: We can enjoy and use them but we cannot dispose of them as we wish.
In practice this is an opening for the government to decide on how you could sell your house, your businesses, your land, and even any stock you might own. And in the future — why not — even your personal possessions such as a valuable antique or a painting. What this will do to inherited estates is anyone’s guess. But if disposing of your property at will might not be an option anymore, the mere holding of property can be questioned at any time since it will have to be “legitimately acquired”. The question of who decides what is legitimate or not becomes crucial in a country where separation of powers has become a fiction, where the highest court of the country has demonstrated that it all but receives direct orders from the executive branch.

But this is not all. Legal expropriation for public interests, as eminent domain, is something that happens everywhere.

Unfortunately for property owners, under the proposed changes compensation for expropriated property in Venezuela will come AFTER the said expropriation. That is, it will be enough for the state to notify the need to expropriate and start the judicial process to seize the desired property. The previous owner will have to wait for the outcome of the trial, which could take years, to receive any indemnity. Needless to say, under such restrictions one would have to be a fool to invest a penny of one’s own money in Venezuela.
This is not all, as private activity promises to become overly regulated and limited. Article 113 states that a private business that could threaten by its efficiency (termed vaguely as “practices”) a state owned company or a collective (cooperative for example) can be banned. Not only is the private ownership of the means of production frowned upon, but it is forbidden for private enterprise to be more productive than state property. Milton Friedman must be spinning in his grave.

In Article 112 (note the progression, as the most offensive - Article 115 - comes after these two articles which are equally offensive and even more threatening to basic human rights) the new text goes further albeit in a more disguised form. Lines are eliminated from the old article referring to individual freedom of occupation - to pursue the business or office of their choosing. Instead, there is a required, vaguely defined general cooperation between all sectors to create a social state since the common interest is above the private interest. Obviously the state can eventually decide what economical activities are acceptable or not, what careers citizens are permitted to pursue. Putting together Articles 112 to 115, and you have no more venture business in Venezuela, no more risk-taking.

Regional autonomy will be limited and erased if necessary under Chavez’s changes.
If there was any remaining belief that local authorities would help Venezuelans defend their property against the central state, the proposal of Articles 11 and 16 (this latter from two paragraphs in 1999 to 13 today!) destroy any real local power that might have existed in Venezuela and effectively revert two decades of decentralization, returning to an even stronger central state than in 1958.

Under the new system governors and mayors will still exist as legal figures but in a diminished capacity, without even retaining their administrative territories. Now the executive power will be able to create almost at will separate regions that it will rule directly and whose local authorities will be appointed from Caracas. Residents of a region might elect a governor in a landslide but if that governor happens to incur the wrath of the central government, it could simply take over the control of a large part of its popular or economical base. Local will is going to be subjected to national will. In his speeches, Chavez has been very explicit in declaring that he leads a national project and that there is no room for local flavor (something subtley but clearly implied in Article 158).

In case there is any doubt as to who exactly will be in charge of your private business, Chavez’s personal power is increasing as well. He has decided, with no good reason, to extend the presidential term from an already long 6 years to 7 years. The head of the Venezuelan high court is already on record saying that if the referendum passes, Chavez’s current term will be automatically extended by an extra year.

That article - number 230 - is far worse in that it abolishes presidential term limits altogether.
It should be easy to understand that a president that has been in office for well over a decade, a president that controls all the resources of the state, a president that has diminished the financial muscle needed to organize a political challenge, will have no problem in getting reelected for ever since per definition any election will be highly biased and highly unfair (as was the 2006 election) and thus de facto extends Chavez’s rule indefinitely.

Without going into other equally offensive aspects of the reform (a militia under the direct orders of Chavez as a parallel army, public servants who are not public servants anymore but instead are servants of the state, and more) we can conclude by stating that the objective is quite simple: Chavez aims to preserve the democratic fig leaf where democracy still exists through some form of plebiscitary elections. But he will avoid any surprises by making sure that it will be very difficult for any opposition party or gifted leader to emerge. This he will attain by refusing to allow any regional power base where such an opposition leader could grow by showing his or her administrative skills. In the unlikely event that a political movement or some leader were able to gain some notoriety, the economic system that Chavez will impose will block effective financing of any opposition campaign which would rely mostly on small discrete contributions, while Chavez will shamelessly use the state resources for his campaigning, as he has always done.

How long such a system may last until it is overthrown or becomes an outright repressive regime is anyone’s guess.

References: Available on line for free there is only El Universal who carries a significant amount of information in English. Its Spanish language section carries of course more, and more complete articles, including a PDF document on the proposals. For additional interpretation there are two blogs in English written from Venezuela (1 and 2) that address regularly some of the issues linked to the constitutional changes.

Due to the current climate in Venezuela, PJM’s correspondent in Caracas prefers not to identify himself publicly so that he can share his impressions freely.
———Return to Pajamas Media homepage

Who Is Che Guevara?

2007-07-20T13:01:00.000-07:00

Che Guevara is the Great Salesman of Communism. He started his glamorous life by killing people who didn't buy his ideas of universal happiness and equality. Although this selling method worked well in South American and African countries, young Ernesto quickly realized that to conquer the world he had to learn other techniques.

He noticed that in the Land of Big Capital some idealistic college students, as well as pimple faced white middleclass teens had already begun to put his unwashed visage on their T-shirts and dorm room walls. Bingo! Like all communists faced with the prospect of making a few dollars, Che decided to try his hand at the mysterious entity known as "work" and "business investment".

A brilliant salesman, Che performed an ingenious maneuver by faking his own death and thus achieving the Jim Morrison type icon status. As the progressive world mourned and idolized his image, Che quietly started printing his own T-shirts in the humble basement of a Bogota Laundromat.

At first the process involved dunking his head in a bucket of ox blood and physically pressing his face on the T-shirt. After sales began to pick up he was able to apply for a small business loan and purchased a screen printing machine.

Che has marketed his brand name brilliantly over the years, selling to specific niche in the market: young people who have no clue what Che has done or what he stands for. The cash keeps flowing as most college dorms world-wide are being adorned with his face, and more and more middle class sons and daughters wear Che products in order to, among other things, wash away the guilt of their well-heeled upbringing.

"It's just cool to wear my stuff. Who cares what I'm about!" says a confident Guevara from his 36th floor office of his world headquarters on Madison Avenue in New York City. His unique product sells solely on popularity, coolness and young people looking to gain acceptance in social circles. "You can essentially turn out complete junk and people will still wear it because they want to be in," declares John Hayden of Consumer Reports magazine.

http://www.che-mart.com/

Hillary and Che Guevara

2007-06-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

Democratic Presidential candidate and U.S. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) shares a laugh with Commie, Che loving supporters during a town hall meeting

Emisión matutina El Observador 31 de mayo 3/5

2007-06-02T10:07:00.000-07:00

The news that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez tried to censor when he closed Radio Caracas Television are now available on YouTube.

Click here to see the May 31 newscast of El Observador

http://therealcuba.com/

El Observador más vivo que nunca y con el firme compromiso de informar al mundo: http://elobservador.rctv.net/ y http://www.venezuelapress.com/

Che is (still) dead, Fred

2007-05-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

The murderer Che Guevara is still dead. And the sun still rises in the east and sets in the west. And Fidel Castro’s government lies.

A simple DNA test could prove Castro and his government are liars (as if daily life in Cuba didn’t…):

A former CIA operative and Cuban exile is the latest to call the 1997 reburial of Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara a fraud, because he said the body of one of Fidel Castro’s closest friends is still in Bolivia.Gustavo Villoldo, 71, said he has strands of faded hair that he snipped before burying Guevara’s body under a Bolivian airstrip in 1967. He believes the remains are likely still there, not in the official grave site in a Cuban mausoleum. DNA tests could confirm his theory, he said.

But Villoldo would also need Guevara’s relatives to come forward to confirm a DNA match, an unlikely possibility as most of his children are supportive of the Cuban government.Villoldo was involved in Guevara’s capture in October 1967 in the jungles of Bolivia, according to unclassified U.S. records and other documents. He told The Miami Herald that he wrote down the burial coordinates and hopes one day to give them to Guevara’s family.

Since the Cuban government announced in 1995 that its anthropologists had uncovered Guevara’s remains from the Bolivian airstrip, some experts have raised doubts about the discovery. They question whether it was a public-relations stunt to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Guevara’s death.

What?!?! Castro lie and conduct a publicity stunt?!?! I’m shocked, shocked, I tell you

http://www.castrodeathwatch.com/2007/03/24/che-is-still-dead-fred/

Exposing The Real Che Guevara by Fontonova

2007-05-29T10:49:00.000-07:00

When one deals with Communist dolts one has the myth of Che. However, the myth of Che was created by Fidel who created the myth after he sent the bumbling idiot to die. In a similar vein Farrakhan now claims to venerate Macolm X who reviled and threatened in life, some have alluded to a role in the assasination.

The Fontonova book is funny and it does not aim to be. The antics of those who venerate Che are so absurd that they defy sanity. Idiot musicians who pay homage to a man that persecuted rock fans. Several prisoners whose sole crime was listening to Beatles music tell their story. Among the persecuted is Guevara's grandson who is an Anarchistt and fled to Mexico. I would have appreciated the author expounding on American hippie traitors being mistaken for Cuban hippies and being beaten.

Che was never a doctor and his medical degree has never been produced. The author compares Che to Ringo Star who was merely in the right place. Che like John Kerry makes a huge production of a scratch only to be told by a real doctor quit crying. Che shoots himself in the head with his own weapon in combat.

His combat prowess was a myth and the Batista troops he allegedy fought were bribed.
Much of the guerilla myth was a PR campaign in the media. He was more Gomer Che than the legendary rebel leader. His rag tag bunch in Boliva frequently was lost and he left documents for his enemies to find.

Che also planned several terrorist attacks in the United States including attacks planned for the Statue of Liberty, The Liberty Bell, The Washington Monument and the Herald Square Department Stores. However as Guevara was a bumbling fool these lans were thwarted.

Guevara was very brave only when facing people who were bound and unarmed. In a typical scene of dementia NYC notables venerate Che who is planning to blow up the city they reside in. Of course the NYPD arrest a woman who was raped and imprisoned in one of Che's gulags and send her for mental health evaluations.

Che also lived in a mansion with a waterfall for "health reasons". He also had a yacht, rolex watch and big screen TV's for the same illness. Guevara thought of himself as an Argentinian Aristocrat. In one encounter he asks a person who he sent off to jail if he read a certain work by Kafka. The book describes the well known brutal treatment of homosexuals in Cuba who were sent to a labor camp with an Aushwitz like slogan at the top. Nazis proclaimed work will set you free and the Commies placed Work will make men out of you at their labor camp for gays.

The book alludes to a T-Shirt that reads "Che is dead deal with it". I would like to
have my own version of Gomer Che or Che Gump.

I am amazed at the contortions of Commies who rail about Gitmo. The prisoners have air condition, unrestricted use of libraries and better food than Cubans. If Cubans ever learned how well the prisoners are treated at Gitmo they would storm the place looking to get in. The idiots deny genuine political prisoners exist who live in conditions far worse than Gitmo. The idiots deny Cuba is a police state with an army of finks that has meddled in the affairs of nations far removed as Eithiopia. Lastly,
the dolts cling to the myth of a workers paradise that does not allow people to leave.

Beamish in 08

http://thebeakspeaks.blogspot.com/2007/05/exposing-real-che-guevara-by-fontonova.html

Che on a tortilla

2007-05-29T10:46:00.000-07:00

By Michelle Malkin

Now on exhibit at at the Mexican Cultural Institute in Los Angeles (via Yahoo! News):

The painted tortillas are fetching $1,800 a piece.

How about sticking it in a mound of cow dung...

***Previous Che blogging.

Las Torturas de Castro

2007-05-22T14:55:00.000-07:00

Este Documental recoge vivencias y testimonios de las torturas y crimenes contra hombres y mujeres. 60 minutos de un testimonio aterrador de la realidad del gobierno castrista.

http://shop.therealcuba.com/shop/item.asp?itemid=82