Diane Sawyer just after she hugged and kissed Fidel Castro in 1996.

If you wanna know
If she loves you so
Its in her kiss!
(That's where it is!)

This week the media was flush with stories on the 50th Anniversary of the U.S. “embargo” of Cuba. From the New York Times to USA Today, most are running AP and Reuters stories (from Havana) which begin and end with quotes from “academic experts” deploring the “embargo” as “failed,” “archaic,” “cruel,” “political pandering to Republican Cuban-Americans,” blah, blah.

First off, a totalitarian regime bestowed both Reuters and the AP with press bureaus. There was a day when Americans understood what this implied. For those who’ve forgotten here’s Vicente Botin, who reported for Madrid’s El Pais from Cuba for years. “The Castro regime assigns 20 security agents to follow and monitor every foreign journalist. You practice self–censorship or you’re gone.”

And lucky for those foreign journalists. Because local Cuban journalists don’t get off so easily. They don’t get a discreet little note saying, “Dear foreign journalist, We need to talk. It appears that you have forgotten the code of conduct we so clearly stipulated upon your arrival in Cuba and the agreed-upon subject matters for your reporting. So let us remind you of these two:

1.) The diabolical Yankee blockade of our innocent little nation which makes us the world’s poster child for victims of wanton bullying. 2.) Our munificent and magnificent Health Care and Education, which makes us the world’s beacon of social-consciousness and charity.”

Cuban journalists who side-step the above in order to expose human-rights violation (by a regime that surpassed Stalin’s rate of political torture and jailings) can’t then tuck their tail between their legs, scamper onto a plane and zoom off. They can’t courageously grimace and shake their fists behind them-- after they’re 2000 feet aloft and 500 miles distant from Castro’s KGB-trained police.

Instead, a Cuban journalist who forsakes self-censorship gets grabbed by this KGB-trained police and thrown in a torture-chamber. In fact, according to “Reporters Without Borders” (headquartered in Paris, not Miami) Cuba jails journalists at the highest rate of any nation on earth. Stunningly, the total number of journalists jailed in Cuba (a nation of 11 million) is only slightly behind that of China (a nation of 1.4 billion!)

With this datum in mind let’s revisit what some of America’s swankiest journalist and Media Moguls have to say regarding the world’s top jailer and torturer of journalists:

“Fidel Castro could have been Cuba’s Elvis!” That’s multiple-Peabody and Emmy award- winning Dan Rather. (And yes, CBS has a Havana News Bureau.)

But Diane Sawyer was so overcome in Castro’s presence that she lost control, rushing up, breaking into that toothy smile of hers, wrapping her arms around the Stalinist-mass murderer and smooching him warmly on his bearded cheek.

“You people are the cream of the crop!” beamed the mass-murderer to the beaming throng he’d come within a hair of nuking in 1962.

“Hear, hear!” chirped the beaming guests, while tinkling their wine glasses in honor of the smirking agent of their near vaporization and world leader in jailing and torturing their Cuban counterparts.....

Our friends at Townhall help disseminate many more items items unknown outside our ghetto

Unreal

Raul Castro and Che Guevara availing themselves of state-of-the-art U.S. communications equiptment provided them by CIA operatives in Santiago Cuba, Robert Weicha and Park Wollam (1957-58)

I refer to the tens of thousands of dollars delivered by the CIA's Robert Weicha to the Julio 26 Movement, along with the state of the art communications equipt. that became Radio Rebelde, from where Fidel, Raul and Che broadcast their utterly bogus “guerrilla" victories island-wide, along with their plans to uplift Cuba into a Caribbean Shangri-La inspired by the principles of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Thomas Jefferson.

Furthermore, these CIA operatives working undercover as "U.S. Consuls" in Santiago tried repeatedly to meet with Castro himself to better coordinate their clandestine financial aid. In July 1957 Frank Pais wrote Castro to say that U.S. diplomat (CIA officer Robert Weicha) craved to meet with him. "We do not raise the slightest objection to the U.S. diplomat's visit!" replied an eager Castro. "We can receive any U.S. diplomat here!"

“Me and my staff were all Fidelistas,” Robert Reynolds, CIA’s Caribbean Desk Chief 1957-60)

"Everyone in the CIA and everyone at State were pro-Castro, except ambassador Earl T. Smith. (Robert Weicha, CIA operative in Santiago de Cuba 1957-59)

Robert Hill, then responsible for the US State Department's relations with Congress, told the newly-appointed US Ambassador to Cuba, Earl Smith: "You are assigned to Cuba to preside over the downfall of Batista. The decision has been made that Batista has to go." (Hugh Thomas: p. 165)

So when Cuba "Experts" claim that U.S. officials have a history of plotting with Cuban dissidents to secretly slip money into their palms and plot "regime-change"--THEY'RE RIGHT!

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From Reuters:

"What's going to happen in Iran? What's going to happen in the Near East? What's going to happen in Syria?" he (Fidel Castro) asked at the (book release) event, which took place on Friday.

He said President Barack Obama no longer has power in the United States, that Cuba's longtime ideological foe is being run by a "high command" and not even they can "contain the situation" of a possible nuclear war.

Castro has been warning of impending nuclear war involving the United States, Israel and Iran for some time.

"The situation is difficult, more difficult than ever," he said.

But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve
of destruction.

(Naturally no mention by Reuters that Fidel Castro came closest of anyone in history to wantonly igniting a Nuclear war, that he asked, beseeched, and finally tried tricking Nikita Khrushchev into igniting a Nuclear war.)

From an AP piece on the 50 anniv. of the "embargo," where they quote folks "on the street" pro and con:

"The blockade" says Annia Rosales, 64, of Havana, "affects everything and everyone (here in Cuba), although it doesn't really affect me personally so much because I have my son in the United States and he sends me everything, even money."

Did it occur to any MSM editor to ask how "money",and "everything" (to say nothing of a son) pass (perfectly legally) through a "blockade"? Imagine the fun Jay Leno could have on his famous Jaywalking questioning the victims of Castroism's vaunted "universal education."

(Granted, on this issue, Leno could ask Cuba "Experts" and every Ivy League faculty member and elicit responses as hilarious.)

Unreal

A baptized and confirmed Catholic, but lifelong layman, I don’t claim expertise in ecclesiastical matters. But before granting absolution the Catholic Church, I’m fairly sure, still requires contrition—sincere contrition.

On his 1998 visit to Cuba, Pope John Paul II remarked that he was “reserving judgment on Che Guevara who had served the poor.” Upon greeting the Cuban ambassador to the Holy See in 2005, this same Pontiff hailed Cuba’s “gains in health care and education.” The above makes patently obvious that, on matters Cuban, the Vatican references the same media and academic sources gleefully bestowed Havana bureaus and visas by the Castro regime. Heaven knows the Vatican is not alone on this.

So if the in the Italian papers are right--and with all due respect to whomever has been tasked with hearing Fidel Castro’s confession and granting his absolution—I offer the following educational items regarding Castro’s historical record of sincerity:

"Cuban mothers let me assure you that I will solve all Cuba's problems without spilling a drop of blood..."

"Let me be VERY clear!--I repeat! We are NOT communists!"

Our friends at Townhall help dissemnate items utterly unknown outside our ghetto.

(left)Current Castroite official Carlos Alzugaray at ISU lectern.

(right)"Former" Castroite Intelligence official Artuo-Lopez-Calleja now a Univ. of Denver "Lecturer"

From the ISU newsroon:

Carlos Alzugaray, who spent 40 years representing the Cuban government around the world and sits on Cuba's (KGB founded and mentored) Foreign Service Institute - provided Indiana State Univ. students a rare opportunity to hear the Cuban perspective (emphasis by intransigent poster) of an international dispute that has persisted through 10 U.S. presidential administrations. He visited political science, history and Spanish classes and met with faculty, who are interested in exploring opportunities for educational exchanges, and delivered a public lecture at Cunningham Memorial Library.

"Rare opportunity???" Come on! They hear it daily from their professors!...The students who walked in late probably started taking notes assuming he was their new professor and they'd soon be tested on his points.

Try as I might I simply cannot remember in the 70's and 80's any South African or Chilean officials invited (in the name of Academic Freedom) to U.S. campuses to recite their government's official position on the issues of the day, including U.S. sanctions against them. "Academic Freedom", after all, is a very, very selective matter.

But why single out Indiana State? In fact Wisconsin's Beloit College honored Stalinist official, Alzugaray, with its "Weissberg Chair"--a program which: "prepares Beloit College students to engage critically with human rights and develop effective and responsible strategies that promote and defend human dignity." For this purpose they assign the roving ambassador of a regime that jailed and tortured political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin's and who served this regime at the very peak of these jailings, murders and tortures. For this purpose they assign an official of the first regime in the Western hemisphere to jail, torture and murder women political prisoners by the tens of thousands.

Alas, on balance this system seems more honest. These U.S. institutes of higher learning do not obfuscate Alzugaray's past and present. They rely--and quite sensibly--on their faculty and students' stupidity to render his background irrelevant, or even attractive. Let this be a lesson to The University of Denver. Go ahead and spill the beans on Lopez-Calleja, why dontcha? What academic will notice or care? Heck, such credentials would probably give Lopez-Calleja a career BOOST!

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"WELCOME! So glad you could come!...Your friendly and knowledegable "People-to-People" tour guides are here to answer your every question!"

The Washington Post's Andrea Sachs describes her "people-to-people" Cuba visit last week arranged by Friendly Planet :

“A full-time schedule of educational exchange activities that will result in meaningful interaction between the travelers and individuals in Cuba.” (explained the brochure). And the Friendly Planet itinerary...kept us busy from breakfast till dinner... I felt like a truant for skipping out any planned activities. Guilt squelched my independent streak (to hit the beach.) Resolved to behave, I pulled out the day’s events and started underlining.

Off to the "Museum of the Revolution" she went.

Only in the realm of Castroland (which includes much of the U.S. media and State Dept.) can the term "people-to-people" actually mean: "relentlessly escorted by Stalinist propaganda apparatchiks to insure you never actually meet any Cuban people."

The Stalinist regime turned the Cuban Adjustment Act and "family visits" into its financial lifeline...Now it turns "people-to-people" travel into an indoctrination scheme for every U.S. visitor. Best yet: These visitors gleefully pay for the privilege of being brainwashed--and further fill regime coffers!

Absolutely Un-'Freakin Real.

(H/T to our friends at NewsBusters)

"Let's face it, Tom, in all due respect ... the Don, rest in peace, was slipping. Ten years ago, could I have gotten to him?"

"We can never abandon Propaganda--Propaganda is the heart of our struggle." (Fidel Castro to Melba Hernandez 1955.)

Fidel, chico! You falling asleep at the wheel? Or what?! An "official" biography loses (even in Media eyes) much of its veracity--hence propaganda value. In your day you were unbeatable at this stuff: tasking the New York Times' Tad Szulc to write regime propaganda titled, Fidel a Critical Portrait, tasking Cuba "Experts" like Julia Sweig to write regime propaganda like "Inside the Cuban Revolution." Or partnering with "journalists" like Jon Lee Anderson to write Che's Biography, and in Sweig's own words "championing" the project and "opening every door" to them. Or having your ICAIC serve as co-producers for Robert Redford and Stephen Soderbergh. The media and academics just gobble all that stuff up, Fidel, and ask for seconds.

And granted: message-wise, your new Biography probably differs little from the work of New York Times "reporters," Cuba "Experts" and Hollywood--but back in your prime you woulda handled something like this more deftly--you woulda used a more credible (even in the eyes of the folks upon whom you bestow press bureaus) messenger.

Frank Sinatra with chums and business cronies, Carlo Gambino, Aladena Fratianno, Salvatore Spatola, and others

Mobster Frank Sinatra with another crony

"If a client comes into the Bunny Ranch and says 'I'm pimpin' for Paul,' they're gonna have a real good time!" boasts Dennis Hof, owner of the Bunny Ranch brothel.

Playground for rich tourists!--Gambling in mob-owned casino's! Legal prostitution; almost 30 legal brothels in the state! And the very brothel owners boast of backing politicians! In a nation whose very president was in cahoots with Mob!

Who will save Nevada?..Who will end the intolerable shame?! The humiliation?!...Nevada cries out for Castroism!

According to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor Commission the typical tourist spends five days in their city and spends an average of $580 ($75 in 1957 dollars) on gambling, the main motive for 90 per cent of visitors.

Throughout the 1950’s Cuba averaged 180,000 tourists a year (2.7 MILLION visited last year, BTW.) For the sake of this “study” let’s forget Cuba’s beaches, fishing, dining, palm-studded countryside, old world architecture, sightseeing etc. etc. etc. Let’s say all those tourists in the 1950's—men, women, adolescents, children—did nothing but gamble, and at the Las Vegas’ rate.

Well, my calculator shows this grossed Cuba’s gambling industry about $13 million a year. But in 1957 Cuba’s Gross Domestic product was $2.7 billion,

Our friends at Breitbart help set the record straight.

"Cuban military leaders and other connected families are getting rich under the status quo through black-market gasoline, monopolies and government contracts. Any opening with America could doom their scam." (From The New York Post)

We're well used to Mad-Hatter logic on Cuba by now. To wit: A murderous pscychopath who declares "Judicial evidence irrelevant!" who boasts that: "we execute (by the THOUSANDS!) from Revolutionary conviction!" whose "nostrils dilate while savoring the odor of blood!" becomes a hero of judicial activists against Capitol punishment.

A racist warmonger who craved "Millions of Atomic Victims!" for the "victory of Stalinism!" becomes a hero to minorities and peace groups:

The son of a rich, European latifundista, also a cowardly, scheming deadbeat who used a scoped rifle to murder (mostly) hapless Cuban guajiros and mulatos(Batista's army and rural guard) from long distance, while gold-digging from Cuba's white oligarchs and richest men (Julio Lobo, "Tofi" Babun, Barcardi's "Pepin" Bosch) --then scurries and hides behind the skirts of the two richest and most powerful nations in history for survival (Missile-Crisis "solution") becomes a: "hero of the poor", a "champion of blacks," "plucky underdog" and "MACHO-MACHO Man!" who "STOOD-UP TO the Yankee colossus!"

Now we learn from the New York Post that trading with Cuba will FOIL the Castroite military's business-monopoly in Castro's fiefdom.

Capitol Hill Cubans marvels at the classicaly Alice in Wonderland logic.

At the São Paulo fashion show on July 15, 2002 supermodel Gisele Bundchen (the world’s highest paid model and champion of “female empowerment”) catwalked wearing a glamorous bikini consisting entirely of faces of Che Guevara, who rarely bathed and constantly reeked of “boiled liver” and “rotting fish” according to his early comrades and surviving victims.

Granted, the future Mrs Tom Brady probably thought the cool, long-haired image clinging to her bosom and buttocks that day depicted Pink Floyd’s lead guitarist, or perhaps The Door’s lead singer, freshly-bathed and redolent of Guerlain--but still.

Many American ladies of Cuban heritage whose husbands, sons and grandkids will be cheering for your husband this Sunday, Mrs Tom Brady, carry horrifying memories of the image on your bikini. These ladies suffered under a totalitarian horror utterly unknown in the Western Hemisphere until introduced by the Stalinist regime co-founded by the subject of your cheeky fashion statement.

Thousands of Cuban women have also drowned, died of thirst or have been eaten alive by sharks attempting to “empower” themselves by fleeing the handiwork of your cheekiest fashion statement, Mrs Tom Brady. This from a nation that prior to Castroism towered over your native Brazil in every socio-economic indicator.

Our friends at Townhall help disseminate items utterly unknown outside our ghetto.

Unreal

(Oye pero la verdad que lo de este Fontova ya es un DESCARO!--un ESCANDALO!!...Sabeindo BIEN que muchos de los lectores de este blog son hombres Cubanos--y mira la foto que pone!..Pero que tipo mas 'descara'o!)

(H/T Asombra)

"Oye Raul, pero la verdad que no sabia hasta donde tu tenias a Obama, y su gente, y la prensa Norteamericana en tu bolsillo,chico!...Pero te la COMISTES!-- resulta que Bloomberg dice que yo te voy a reganar sobre los "Human Rights!"

"Pues, tu agente...esa mulata?..come se llama?....Si, claro--la"experta": Julia Sweig!!!"

"She's never let us down!--and she comes pretty cheap!"

While the Brazilian leader is unlikely to address Cuba’s human rights situation publicly, she’s able to talk productively to Castro about his government’s record behind the scenes, said Julia Sweig, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations.

Unreal

U.S. media representatives audition for Havana press bureaus

Last week the regime co-founded by Che Guevara (worldwide icon of youthful rebellion) murdered a young defenseless political prisoner named Wilman Villar for the crime of “disrespect to authorities.”

So, 53 years into Cuban Stalinism we’re at about 100,000 Cuban deaths at the hands of the regime, and counting. (All of this 90 miles from U.S. shores, while Havana swarms with MSM press bureaus and Hollywood producers, by the way.)

Last November 30-year-old Wilman Villar was peacefully protesting Cuban Stalinism near his home in Eastern Cuba in a sort of “Occupy Santiago de Cuba.” But this protest was more peaceful, less messy and completely devoid of Che Guevara iconography. You’ll notice that this last peculiarity is a historic trademark of people cursed by fate to have actually experienced the handiwork of Che Guevara.

Within minutes of the protest’s commencement the KGB and STASI-trained police that prop up the regime co-founded by Che Guevara swarmed in with billy-clubs and arrested all protesters. None of this newsworthy drama was captured by the MSM folks, by the way. And I repeat: Cuba bristles with MSM press bureaus that report every bruise or hangnail among the prisoners in Guantanamo.

In keeping with this fine tradition, after beating and arresting Wilman Villar, his Castroite jailers demanded he wear the uniform of a common criminal (a traditional Stalinist practice as elaborated by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his “Gulag Archipelago.”)

But Villar refused (a traditional response by many Cuban political prisoners as elaborated by Armando Valladares in his prison memoirs “Against all Hope.”) “I refused to commit spiritual suicide,” explained Valladares’ prison-mate Eusebio Penalver, a black Cuban who suffered longer in Castro’s prisons and torture chambers than Nelson Mandela suffered in apartheid South Africa’s Robben Island. Granted, you’d never know this from the MSM or Hollywood – much less the Congressional Black Caucus.

Our friends at WorldNetDaily help disseminate items utterly unknown outside our ghetto.

“Bruno, you shouldn’t have!” (H/T Asombra)

Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff greeted by Stalinist apparatchik, Bruno Rodriguez, foreign minister of a totalitarian regime in power four times longer than Hitler's, that jailed and tortured political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin's, and that prohibits visits by any International Human Rights agency.

In an interview with O Estado de Sao Paulo, Garcia said that Ms Roussef is giving more emphasis to human rights.

“Lula da Silva always underlined social questions, Dilma on the other hand will keep that sensitivity but wants to emphasizes human rights issues which are linked to her past as a political prisoner (under the dictatorship between 1970 and 1972)” said Marco Aurelio Garcia, special advisor to Brazil’s president in foreign affairs.

And by golly, Garcia wasn't kidding! Because the issue will probably come up on Roussef's current visit to Cuba. To wit:

“There doesn’t appear to be a (Human Rights) emergency in Cuba,” said Rousseff's Foreign Minister, Antonio Patriota. “There are other situations that are very worrisome, including Guantanamo.”

Absolutely-Un-'Freakin-Real

Dilma Rouseff with business crony

Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo published a report on Monday revealing a series of 266 telegrams from the Brazilian embassy in Santiago that unveiled strong economic and diplomatic ties between the nations’ military regimes in the early 1970s.

The telegrams were retrieved by the Brazilian Embassy in Santiago after Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff passed a government transparency law and opened a national truth commission earlier this month.

But no "truth commission" is needed to learn how Roussef embraces a regime whose human rights record compares to Pinochet's like evisceration compares to a stubbed toe. Indeed she boasts about it:

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff began a tour of Cuba on Monday in a visit emphasizing trade and economic cooperation.

Her office said the trip would seek to bolster trade between the two nations, which rose 31 percent from 2010 to hit a record $642 million last year.

Rousseff planned to meet with President Raul Castro on Tuesday in the capital and also tour the nearby port of Mariel, which is being expanded with the goal of turning the facility into a base for industry and oil operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

Brazil has financed almost 80 percent of the port project's $683 million price tag, according to a statement by the Brazilian presidency.

Unreal

“The embargo of Cuba is the stupidest law ever passed in the US,” (Jimmy Carter)

Senator Richard Durbin was chumming it up with Cuba's Stalinist aparatchiks last week in Havana, snubbing Cuban dissidents and urging and end to U.S. sanctions against Cuba.

But in 1986 he was co-sponsor of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 (also championed by ex-President Jimmy Carter who had slapped more economic sanctions against more nations than any president in U.S. history) which declared:

* that U.S. policy toward the victims of apartheid is to use economic, political, diplomatic, and other means to remove the apartheid system and to assist the victims of apartheid to overcome the handicaps imposed on them by apartheid.

* Expresses the sense of the Congress that high-level U.S. officials should meet with leaders of opposition organizations in South Africa.

Furthermore, economic sanctions against South Africa could only be removed if the segregationist regime:

* releases political prisoners and Nelson Mandela from prison, legalizes all political parties and permits political freedom for all races...

Needless to add, Senator Durbin's tune regarding Stalinist Cuba differs....

And remember how last year Senators Howard Berman and Gary Ackerman vociferously championed trade-with and travel-to Stalinist Cuba, totally ignoring the plight of Cuban political prisoners?

Well, Senators Berman and Ackerman also championed sanctions against South Africa, including closing all U.S. airports to their airlines.

Unreal

OMG!-OMG!--Fidel outlasted TEN U.S. Presidents!!!

From Today's Miami Herald:

"Castro has outlasted 10 American presidents.."

By now we're all accustomed to how Pinks gasp, quiver and moist-up when mentioning the above sound-bite..

Oh Goodness! OH-My GOD! that "Macho-MACHO MAN! (Fidel Castro) OUTLASTED ten U.S. Presidents bent on his destruction!

For all those who become tumescent or similarly aroused over the above datum, here's some saltpeter:

“We ended up getting exactly what we’d wanted all along,” snickered Nikita Khrushchev in his diaries regarding the Cuban-Missile "Crisis": "security for Fidel Castro’s regime and American missiles removed from Turkey. Until today the U.S. has complied with her promise not to interfere with Castro and not to allow anyone else to interfere with Castro. After Kennedy’s death, his successor Lyndon Johnson assured us that he would keep the promise.

Castro has survived by hiding behind the skirts of the two most powerful nations in human history-- shrewd diplomacy for sure. But something more worthy of Scarlett O'Hara, Madame Chiang and Cleopatra than Rambo, Rommel or Patton.

Unreal

I'm with Don Fanucci and Rush on this one.....

And never thought I'd quote Rodney King, but: "can't we all just get along?"

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"Fidel Castro is courtly–even paternal, a thoroughly fascinating figure!”

Our friends at Newsbusters report how Andrea Mitchell sneers at the "Anti-Castro vitriol" by the Candidates in Florida:

A disgusted Andrea Mitchell on Thursday decried the "anti-Castro vitriol" coming from Republican presidential candidates in Florida, sneering that they are "pander bears" to the Cuban community. [See video below. MP3 audio here.]

Teasing a discussion with Chuck Todd, Mitchell dismissed the GOP contenders: "And as Romney and Gingrich try to outdo each other with their anti-Castro vitriol, appealing to Florida voters, they think, Fidel weighed in today with his view of them." Todd lectured that Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney "ought to be careful, because it doesn't sound believable."

Needless to add Andrea Mitchell is a relentless critic of the so-called embargo against Stalinist Cuba. Needless to add she viewed sanctions against segregationist South Africa somewhat differently:

"How can the United States justify dealing with a nation that does not recognize something so basic as the concept of racial equality?!" she shrieked at Ronald Reagan during a presidential press conference in Dec. 7 1984. Back then, according to Ms Mitchell, a lack of U.S. sanctions "lent credibility to the apartheid regime," you see.

Unreal.