"Adios Patria" released in 1997, explores the reasons why over a million Cubans have left their homeland since the 1959 revolution. It mixes poignant footage from the island with personal testimony from exiles and commentary by historians, politicians, and anti-Castro activists.

CORE, is a 64 year civil rights organization known for its 1960's demonstrations and the murder of three of its members as depicted in the movie “Mississippi Burning". Carl McGill is Assistant Western Regional Director of CORE and a candidate for the 35th California Congressional District, currently represented by Maxine Waters. To help raise funds for his candidacy, Mr. McGill is sponsoring weekly showings of "Adiós Patria" from Saturday, April 22 through Saturday, June 2, 2006. CORE seeks to raise awareness of the plight of balseros and the desperation that leads them to brave shark infested waters to seek freedom on America’s shores. They believe the false impression a large number of African Americans have of castro and Cuba would change if they knew the truth, that castro's Cuba is a racist apartheid society.

I viewed the documentary for the first time at yesterday's event. If you haven't seen the documentary it's worth hunting down a copy to view, it is a must see. It turns out Mr. McGill is from the same area in Connecticut as my husband, where we both lived for a number of years. When the event ended, Mr. McGill and I spent about an hour discussing a wide range of topics, including the old neighborhood, Cuba, and politics.

Carl McGill isn't your average politician seeking personal gain; he's a man on a mission to save his community from the devastating effects of decades of political misrepresentation, poverty and crime. He's a man who believes in personal sacrifice in order to do what's right. Currently running as a conservative democrat, this is not the first time he's taken on Ms. Waters. He ran against her on the Republican ticket back in 2000, and learned the hard way just how entrenched the Democratic Party is in the California's 35th Congressional District. Maxine Waters has never been challenged from within the Democratic Party. She has never faced an opponent in a primary, allowing her to easily defeat any Republican opponent in the general election. Carl McGill is a rock solid candidate, the real deal, a living example of the rewards of honesty, hard work and education.

Mr. McGill firmly believes that black leaders like Maxine Waters, Jesse Jackson, Al Shapton and Charles Rangel have betrayed their community. They promote a culture of violence, celebrating thugs who call their women "ho's", who have returned that abhorrent "N" word to popular jargon. Convicted criminals like "Tookie" are given hero status while hard working successful, educated, law abiding African Americans are denigrated. A defeat of Maxine Waters would carve a big chunk out of the Congressional Black Caucus members' current monopoly of African American politics. Imagine the impact of this change--the next time the LAPD arrests someone caught committing black on black crime, instead of Ms. Waters screaming racism and calling the police officers names and hinting of backlash/riots, Mr. McGill's media comment would support law enforcement and encourage adherence to law. Imagine the next time there's a vote on the Cuban Embargo and Mr. McGill passionately cites statistics on racism and apartheid in Cuba. What a difference one man could make given the chance.

Mr. McGill has roots in the Caribbean, and is a long time friend of the Cuban exile community. He traveled to Miami's Little Havana in 2000, to protest Maxine Waters' and the Congressional Black Caucus' support of fidel castro during the Elian affair.

Mr. McGill believes that fully informed educated voters will not support the Black Caucus or their friends, dictators fidel castro and hugo chavez.

Please support Carl McGill in his fight against Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus. Visit his website here.

There's a popular Cuban rap band called 'Las Orishas.'

They live in Paris, but they remain pro-castro. That alone doesn't sound too normal. But now some other things are happening. They seem to be allowing themselves to be used as an instrument to advance Chavez's big drug plans for the region.

Local Venezuelans report here (it's in Spanish) that these Orishas are the stars of a government-paid-for concert in Caracas, and at it they are showing big pictures of Chavez and castro together, with sneering claims that Chavez will win 10,000,000 votes in December's election.

That isn't the only thing, though. They also are advertising it with little logos of pot leafs. Meanwhile, at their concert the air was alive with the smell of marijuana.

I am not gonna moralize heavily on marijuana, but I will say it's generally an illegal drug. That's why it's particularly bad for Venezuela. Venezuela has gotten itself a new reputation as the New Colombia, and this concert, paid for with the ample funds of the Chavista government, has a pretty odd way of doing political advertising.

Do they want to create a 'context' for the legalization of drugs, so that they can ship them any place they like? Already they are becoming the New Colombia as far as drugs go, and increasingly, huge drug shipments are being intercepted with Venezuelan origins. There's talk that Chavez is opening the gates to Bolivia's coca.

And now, at a government paid for concert, pot-smoking is endorsed. Doesn't sound too good.

Back in January of this year, I was reading the latest edition of National Geographic when I came across a story on genocide around the world which offered some statistics on number of people killed in mass murders and genocide by country.

The data, provided to Geographic by the Strassler Family for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, showed China with 30 million, the USSR with 20 million, Germany and Japan with 11 million, Pakistan with 3 million, Iraq with 240,000, all the way down to Burma with 5,000.

As I worked my way down the list, I looked for Cuba.

Cuba was nowhere to be found.

Many of us have heard and read all about castro's executions in the Paredon, the beatings, the downing of boats leaving Cuba, and the numbers of dead reported to be in the thousands. How could a publication of the stature of National Geographic miss Cuba?

I don't have a clear answer to that question, although some of you might suspect that it was a purposeful omission, not an accident or oversight. However, that's not the point of this post.

I'm presenting this because of a story that came out in today's Miami Herald which Val alluded to it in his early AM post. It's by Frances Robles and it deals with Cuba Archives, an effort by two Cuban-Americans to archive all the deaths attributable to the Cuban Revolution. It's been a mostly thankless and tedious endeavor which has costed both money and time.

To date, Dr. Armando Lago and Maria Werlau have counted 31,173 victims.

I realize this topic has already been covered here, most recently last December. With the Herald article coming out today, however, I feel this important undertaking needs to be brought up again.

Why is this important? From the article:

Werlau said the idea of creating a more rigorous list of the dead came to her in 1997. Having been raised in Puerto Rico and studied in Chile, she was amazed that Gen. Augusto Pinochet's ill deeds were well-known -- his dictatorship has been blamed for 3,000 deaths -- while Cuba's weren't.

''This was important. There should be accountability,'' she said. ``People think of Guatemala, El Salvador, but never Cuba.''

That's it ladies and gentlemen. Accountability. The fact that the murders and mass killings at the hands of castro, che and their evil henchmen have largely gone by unnoticed is a crime in itself.

Through the efforts of Lago and Werlau, as well as those from the Cuban Memorial, we can only hope that people everywhere will begin to make the connection between castro and murder, just as with Pinochet, Stalin and Hitler.

The article states that Cuba Archives is sorely in need of donations to keep their project alive. Stop by their web site - www.cubaarchive.org - and make a donation. Let's show that we care.

Not just 20 names, not just 20 faces, but 20 human beings currently in prison for doing nothing more than trying to report uncensored information.

That's right these men are rotting in Cuban prisons, as we speak, because fidel castro can't bear to have the truth about his Cuba reported. I mean what's the point in having "journalists" on your payroll spreading propaganda around the world if a handful of people are daring enough to tell the truth. So there you have it. Look at these faces and think about them tonight when you go to sleep.

When certain political elements in our country try to tell you that "we are losing our freeedoms" remember these men who have never had any freedom and live under the yoke of the same system those "guardians of our freedoms" would have us live under.

More information about these men and what you can do to help at Reporters Without Borders and PayoLibre.com.

UPDATE:

Marc Masferrer provides some Uncommon Sense about Cuba's independent journalists here.

It's 7:00 AM on a Sunday. In about 30 minutes I'm going to load the appropriate tools and materials onto my truck and head off to fix a fence at my in-law's school. After that I'll swing by my parent's house and fix their TV system that somehow got all topsy turvy and they've been unable to watch their usual shows the past couple of days and I'll also help Dad with a reja he's making for a client. Ill pick up a box of pastelitos on the way for the folks and a few copies of today's Miami Herald.

Once the chores are done, at around noon, Im gonna kick back and have a few beers at ManCamp. Steve will be by. And Tommy the Official Drunken ManCamp photographer. We're gonna smoke some ribs, grill some cajun angels, drink a bunch of beers and maybe do a little fishing. Chill out the rest of the day as Monday and another week at the office are just around the corner.

That's what ManCamp is all about. A place to relax. Not worry about a darned thing. Hang out with a few buddies and not worry about spilling any beers or burping or manners or anything. Life in general can be stressfull, but add the work on this blog and all the news about Cuba and the frustration that comes long with that and you need a place to open the old pressure valve and let off some steam.

Today I'll be doing some gloating though because ManCamp has been featured on the front page of today's Miami Herald Home and Design section:

No girls allowed: Men are staking out their own spaces in their homes, with a bit of style

BY JAMES H. BURNETT III
jburnett@MiamiHerald.com

You just can't make up scenes like this one in the large backyard of Val Prieto's Kendall home on a recent Monday afternoon:

Prieto and pal Steve H. Graham grin ear to ear and grip cold Pilsner beers as they proudly survey the eight-by-ten-foot, wood chip-covered space where they stand. Both men glance up and nod with satisfaction at the sight of the sturdy white awning covering their heads. A few feet away, gentle waves from a canal lick the bank of Prieto's property.

This is ManCamp, Prieto's answer to the Average Joe's age-old nemesis: lack of private, personal space at home. And ManCamp is enough to make Al Bundy and his fellow members of the Married . . . With Children's No Ma'am group cry tears of joy.

As crude as ManCamp's design may seem on the surface, trend experts say Prieto is ahead of the curve in a growing movement of guys -- mostly married men -- who want their privacy but not at the expense of their ''manly'' credentials.

CARL JUSTE/MIAMI HERALD STAFF
THIS IS HIS SPACE:
Val Prieto is proud of his 'ManCamp,' set among wood chips in the backyard of his Kendall home.

Indeed ManCamp, which was built and ''furnished'' with donated materials, boasts storm-proof ''counter tops'' constructed of railroad ties secured to the ground with steel rods. And there are five barbecue grills of different sizes and styles. On this day, two of the grills are loaded with Polish sausages and bacon-wrapped prawns.

On one side of the camp there is a homemade entertainment center, complete with cable TV, mini-fridge, a dart board mounted inside one cabinet door and a Miami Heat cheerleaders poster pinned to the other door. There's also a singing fish wearing a Miami Dolphins helmet.

Patio chairs and a couple of bar stools complete the actual furniture. Just a few feet away, two fishing rods are propped up on tree stumps, their lures bobbing gently in the water.

And just when you think ManCamp can't get any cooler, there's a slight rustling. A pair of eyeballs peers over the privacy fence separating Prieto's yard from the neighbor's. Then a section of the fence pops open like the entrance to the Bat Cave. And another man, a neighbor, also smiling big, slips through before the hidden gate swings shut.

So now you all know why blogging is sparse on Sundays. It's my day to finish up whatever work needs to be done around the house, help the parents and in-laws out and then kick back and chill.

The gloating, obviously, will be ubiquitous today. But it'll be extra special for me. Remember that run-in I had with that certain someone who shall remain nameless that wrote a post criticizing the Herald for not covering her book readings in Miami? The one that posted my picture on the net and denigrated me? Said I should be called "Bubba" and then criticized the entire "right wing extremist" Cuban-American community in South Florida?

I just can't help from laughing out loud in a smoked rib eating, cajun angel munching, beer drinking, Abajo fidel! just call me Bubba sorta way.

(By the way, you can visit James Burnett's blog -- Burnettiquette -- here.)

Have a great Sunday, folks! And swing by tomorrow. We'll be having some excellent extra special blogging.

Be sure to check out this piece also in today's Herald by Frances Robles on The Cuba Archives which we've written about here before.

What a bunch of vermin inhabit our government and mainstream media!

Now it looks like the CIA has just fired a leaker named Mary McCarthy who was in good with a far-leftist reporter at the Washington Post named Dana Priest.

Her crazy husband spent his time as a castro apologist! William Goodfellow is the director at the Center for International Policy, a heavy duty castroite think tank, and specialized in justifying castro and his depredations.

That is, until he got some antiwar gigs from god knows where but I am sure castro gave good references. He was his own Joe Wilson, going around debunking the war while our troops were fighting and dying in Iraq.

And his wife was out printing classified CIA leak information about secret terrorist prisons in Europe, which, given that this looks like an FBI sting operation, turns out to have not existed at all.

So, from sticking up for castro to HELPING castro by penetrating and discrediting the CIA, this really sounds like a lovely crowd over at the Washington Post.

Boy is this starting to smell. Priest won the Pulitzer Prize about a week ago for her CIA prison story that has since been proven to have been false. I wonder what pro-castro stuff we can find under this traitor's byline? She should be in jail with all the rest of these irresponsible, biased, castroite mainstream media! Does the WashPost have any conflict of interest standards at all?

As a correspondent in Beijing writes:

When are these news agencies going to start hiring professional journalists?

Now the greater question is: How many more castro apologists are out there in our mainstream media, and close to our government? Does anyone in Washington realize how out of the mainstream a castro apologist is? How many more legions does castro really have and why do they get so close to the government and the media? Does castro control everything in Washington, too?

Sweetness & Light has the dirt here.

Hat tip: Lucianne.com

UPDATE: Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit has an excellent, comprehensive roundup on all the news surrounding this sorry issue. Read it here.

UPDATE: Clarice Feldman, at American Thinker reports that not only was Priest's husband affiliated with castro, she was also in deep with the Tides Foundation, run by Terayyyyyyyza Heinz Kerry. Cripes. There just wasn't any angle of the freak left they didn't have covered, was there? Read it here.