From an actual July 2, 2007 Babalu post

Today, Fontova has found that truth is truly stranger than fiction - the man who made the new ape movie really was inspired by the similarities between the apes and his hero:

'Rise of the Apes' Director: Film's Hero Inspired By Che Guevara

Fontova educates this bozo as well.

Everyone knows what castro's idea of May Day is - tanks, turbas, thugs and long, long, long speeches about dictatorship of the proletariat and yanqui imperialismo. It's hard to mess up a holiday to the extent he has.

But over in Chile, a nation that in 1973 escaped castro's grasp, fought him off and kicked out his 40,000 goons --err, 'trainers' -- before he could create a second slave state (he tried), May Day has a different meaning: worker empowerment.

What happened there 30 years ago today is something that looks like a small thing that turns out wasn't such a small thing.

Chile swapped its castroite food ration books for La Libreta pension savings books - which are full of money. José Piñera shows what one looks like.

May 1 marks the 30th anniversary of the world's first pension privatization. It took Chile's bankrupt Social Security system and turned it into a system of personal retirement accounts. Investor's Business Daily in 'Chile's Private Social Security System Turns 30' describes why Chile's pension reform succeeded and why it can work here, too.

By privatizing pensions, Chileans liberated themselves not only from castro, whose calling card was murder - even of his obedient pawn, Salvador Allende - but from Otto von Bismarck, too.

Chile had a Social Security system exactly like ours that was borrowed from the Prussians in 1925. (Ours came in 1935). These Bismarckian set-ups, where a younger group of workers pays the retirement of an older group of workers, sound good in theory but they always goes bankrupt. That's because of demographics - more workers taking benefits than paying them in. On top of this, all kinds of special interests are grabbing at the money coming in - which is why our 'trust fund' is bankrupt. Well, Chile had the same thing in 1980.

But unlike us, Chile privatized and changed its fate forever. On Nov. 4, 1980, the same day the great Ronald Reagan was elected U.S. president, Chile passed a law saying pensions would go private. Had we done that too on that date, we'd all be taking home something like $55,000 Social Security pensions instead of $18,000 pensions (see IBD link above) we get now.

The system's architect, Labor and Social Security Secretary José Piñera specifically chose May 1 for the implementation to change the meaning of the holiday. Instead of a nasty castrofest, May 1 became a day of real dignity for workers.

Chile maybe didn't know so at the time, but it was enacting the biggest de-castro-ing agent ever invented. Nobel-prize-winning economist Gary Becker said as much. Money was yanked out of the greedy, grasping hand of big government and put into individual accounts where workers make all their own choices - what to save, how to invest, when to retire.

And by a law embedded in the 1980 constitution by Pinera himself - no government can ever lay a hand on these accounts. Result: workers started to care about the entire economic fate of the country because it affects their pensions, instead of what they could extract as special interests from the government. A culture of property and personal responsibility took root.

That's toxic to the likes of castro and all the new waves of pawns he's got out there claiming redistribution is the answer.

Meanwhile, Chile's accumulated savings soon came to equal 100% of GNP and as savings built all that extra cash went on to develop the country. That's why Chile is a nice place to live - it didn't happen out of nothing. It now looks and feels just like California during its better days except with highway signs in Spanish ... and the country has NO NET DEBT. Eat your heart out, bearded beast!

The U.S. and Cuba held a rare, unusual, unprecedented meeting over at the United Nations yesterday. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills was there, sitting down to talks with Bruno Rodriguez, the foreign minister of Cuba.

It would be normal to think the topic of this meeting would be Cuba's political prisoners, given that Cubans like Guillermo Farinas are in grave condition, one of many willing to die so that Cubans can be free. Or that Orlando Zapata Tamayo died last month. These acts have moved millions of people across the world, drawing hundreds of thousands to march in the streets in demonstrations that span the political spectrum - democratic leftists are among them - all to support these authentic heroes, and their families.

No such luck - and no surprise, given who's running Washington.

Instead, the U.S. is teaming up with castro to provide "free" medical care for the Haitians who have been devastated by the Jan. 12 earthquake. See here.

That would be the SAME Cuban doctors who are literally slaves in castro's medical racket (can Hillary be sued for slavery?), and who have brought lawsuits in U.S. courts over their conditions. Court documents show that these Cuban doctors do not serve of their own volition, are abysmally paid, are subject to slavecatchers, and live in fear. With this new "alliance," the U.S. is going to support that!

That would also be the SAME Cuban doctors within whose ranks lurk spies and agitators for the Cuban regime. Countries like Paraguay and Honduras have already kicked quite a few of them out for meddling, trying to overthrow their host governments in the past, so can there be any doubt that they'll try this in Haiti too, given the weakness of the Haitian government and the green light Hillary is giving them to go for it? Castro doesn't give these doctors away for free.

And this would be the SAME castroite racket whose doctors cannot even provide Band-aids to its own people, let alone Haiti. I have had more than one conversation with State Department people about the Haiti aid effort and they've already told me the Cuban doctors have been highly ineffective in Haiti because they are poorly trained and don't have any supplies. The U.S. at the time was providing supplies to them because they were helpless otherwise. The U.S. never sought to publicize that, but there you have it. The cooperation being talked about will be for Americans to provide supplies, castroites to sell them on the black market and castroites to obtain another steady stream of gringo cash, and Haitians to end up with nothing.

It's pretty obvious what castro gets out of this - free resources and the U.S. imprimatur for whatever shenanigans he's got cooked up for Haiti. He also gets to deflect world attention from his horrific treatment of political prisoners - some of whom have DIED because of castroite medical care - and tout his new cooperation effort with the U.S.

Worst of all, castro gets to claim credit for leading the Haiti aid effort, snatching the crown of credit right off our heads and putting it on his own - something he and Hugo Chavez have been trying to do from day one. Never mind that any aid he gives is something that would not be possible at all were the U.S. not backing him up. It was the U.S. that expended the heavy resources and did the dangerous jobs in delivering relief to Haiti. Castro's agents tried to smear the effort and spread lies about the U.S. Navy causing the quake.

Perceptions are all, and poor Haitians respond to the guy who's in front of them. So instead of seeing vast American generosity upon receipt of free medical care, a Haitian will see that castroite doctor in front of him providing a(n American-paid) Band-Aid and immediately will conclude that castro is the generous one and those gringos (who denied him his emigration visa) are the stingy ones. castro will be Lady Bountiful and America will be Scrooge.

How do you like that means of expending taxpayer dollars? This is one stupid, harmful alliance to make with a murderous machiavellian monster.

Music is a great uniter. It requires no wealth to make, and is loved by rich and poor alike. It cracks class barriers and makes all races beautiful. In the most oppressed slave societies, music is all they have.
It unites because even if you don't understand the language, can't pronounce the name of the singer, wouldn't know the instrument played, never heard the style ... you can still fall utterly in love with it as your own.
That's one reason why castro's separation of Cuba from the world is so sad. While Cubans can never leave the island and its indigenous musicians get persecuted and silenced, there's still enough in Cuba's music to somehow spreads the earth and unite people like none other.
I first heard the beautiful voice of Celia Cruz from an crumbling old 19th century colonial balcony in ... Hanoi, Vietnam. I was so enchanted with that voice, not knowing anything about it other than what I had heard that I had to find out who she was, and write it down and hope I never forgot it. I didn't. Celia united people all over the world with her heavenly talent, even in farflung communist regimes on the other side of the world.
With her beautiful voice spreading the oceans, it's significant that her voice was nevertheless banned in her own country, the one she passionately wanted to see free. castro shut Cuba from the world and he tried to shut Celia's beautiful voice from Cuba.
But in Cuba, her death a couple years ago didn't go unnoticed - she was mourned there too. Cubans knew who she was despite castro's best efforts because the spread of music is as uncontrolled as the sea.
Just as Cuba's music spread the world from Havana, something else happened too. The locals in other countries started singing like Cubans too. It didn't start with castro's troops invading Africa, as is the legend. It started way, way before. If you have ever heard Benin's Gnonnas Pedro, the rich evocative deep resonant and pure voice of the Afro-Cubana, you know what I mean. He first found his voice in the early 1960s, and formed popular Afro-Cubano bands. He changed his last name from Pierre to Pedro in honor of Cuba's Spanish language, which he sang songs in, because he loved Cuba.
He sang Benny More's Yiri Yiri Boum with a deep passion, you don't even know that the song is about wanting a girl, all you can tell is that it's about a longing as vast as the world. Recently I listened to his mesmerizing 'Yo Prefeid El Son and thought a bit about the lyrics - he sings of being in cities like Santiago and Havana, passionately loving being there.
I wondered if he'd ever been there. I looked it up as many places as I could find. He never was that rich or successful in his life and died of cancer in 2004. All I cound find was that he had a few trips to France, and proudly represented his region at a Canadian music festival in Quebec. There is no evidence he ever set foot in Cuba. He simply adopted Cuban music as his own and it's beautiful, no nation, no nationality, entirely universal. Only Cuban music seems to be able to do this. What a sad thing, though, that like Celia, he too died before he could see a free Cuba. His music was just his own soul imagining Cuba.

I got into a shouting match with a union thug today over Colombia. He ran a big famous labor union and screamed 'murder' to me as reason enough not to support the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, spouting one lie after another about Colombia's human rights record. I didn't want to be fed a load, so I called him out on every one of his lies and it got heated in public.
Turns out he and his pals have been doing a whole lot more than just screaming bloody murder. They've got pals in the so-called human rights organizations, who've in turn got pals in the United Nations and they've all decided that Israel shall not be the only object of UN revilement. Colombia will join them.
The UN is now demonizing Colombia alongside Israel as a nation whose human rights record must meet UN scrutiny and condemnation.
While Zimbabwe dies of cholera.
While Venezuela slides into a dictatorship.
While Darfur runs from genocide.
While Russia turn into a hell with no future.
While Burma goes ignored by the outside as monks are beaten and killed and aid is denied
While business as usual goes on in red China.
While Cuba continues to abuse truth tellers like Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet and harass Yoani Sanchez. While Cuba artificially impoverishes 9 million people to keep them servile and controlled. While Cuba continues to imprison 1000 people, many up on no charges at all except 'dangerousness.' While Cuba gets away with destroying libraries and mob-lynching dissidents. While Cuba refuses to allow anyone at all to leave the vortex legally.
Never mind that: Israel and Colombia are the real problem you see.
The reality is, Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and the only place where its Israeli citizen Arabs have zero desire to get involved with Islamofascist groups. It's a standing beacon to the Arab satrapies around its borders and beyond, that democracy brings human rights and freedom brings success.
In Colombia, it is the same story. No bigger hellhole existed on the South American continent than Colombia once did ten years ago. It was ruled by drug lords, who controlled the Congress. Its capital literally was encircled by FARC barbarians at the gate, no longer even acting as guerrillas, hiding and running - they were in full frontal confrontation with the military and about to take the capital. Their rein of murder and mayhem, blowing up whole villages and skyscrapers, was the antithesis of human rights. In 2002, President Uribe was elected, and he changed everything. Murder rates tumbled 40%, kidnap rates plunged 87%. The country at long last knew what peace and human rights were.
That's some moral authority the UN is cultivating with this farce, targeting Colombia and Israel on human rights. But there's a logic to it ... Cuba just happens to be a member of the Human Rights Council, making this decision to smear Colombia with the Big Lie as a human rights violator something it needs to do.
Here's what's really going on: Both Colombia and Israel are detested by the world's real human rights violators because they fight terrorists, ally with the U.S. and give real human rights to their people. Cuban can't countenance that. Where is the US' UN ambassador standing up to this bogus lynching on democracies? The U.S. should take this for the assault on its allies it is and respond in a way that fills these maggots with fear.

The dead-castro rumors are coming from somewhere. They seem to come every Friday night anymore, almost as if on some kind of pattern.
castroites of course are prime suspects as leakers, desperate to give the Bronx cheer to the Miami Cubans who are always so disappointed when the monster doesn't die. They even have a sense of humor about it, typically powering up the jogging suit and wheeling out the old dictator to where he can be seen, in some apparently normal convalescent activity.
But weekends aren't prime time for castroites to make dead-castro announcements if they ever would. They seem to have an incentive for weekdays, because they can round up Cubans in their workplaces and force them to get in line and mourn, as the KillCastro blog has noted.
That leaves us back with lonely clue about the peculiar Friday timing of the dead-castro rumors.
Another theory might be that market manipulation is taking place. Fridays can be critical for market moves, with players closing out their positions and some Fridays known as 'triple witching' hours when certain futures and options expire.
With that in mind, it might be significant that last Friday, I learned about the hogwild market activity in Cuban funds before I learned about the dead-castro rumors, which always makes these funds go up. The one I heard of shot up 9% on Friday, not stellar, but certainly noticeable. In itself, it proves nothing. But this news item, from what may be a marginal source, claims that the rumors did start on Wall Street. It may just mean that castro's men chose Wall Street as their vehicle with which to spread rumors. What a coincidence, castro's men have a United Nations office not that physically far from Wall Street and if someone is going to do something in secret with another party, it helps to not have to use phones.
Could these dead-castro rumors, every Friday on the dot, really just be someone manipulating market prices? It also might not be castro's men releasing these rumors, it might be a Wall Streeter. Anyway, something to keep in mind, now that the timing of the rumors is getting to be a constant. There may be some crooks looking to make tremendous fortunes.
If so, let's hope they get busted, this doesn't seem like this would be an easy thing to conceal from the SEC.

Anyone remember those strange attacks on Mexican natural gas pipelines that wrought havoc on central Mexico last month? A pathetic little leftist group called EPR said they did them in a bid to get their comrades out of jail in Oaxaca, a southern Mexican state where a leftist insurgency is festering. The EPR used to clown around in the early 1990s, back when something called Subcommandante Marcos was pretending to be guerrilla castro in the mountains, not of Escambray but of Chiapas. He and his EZLN were poseurs, and so was this EPR, which had at most, just 100-200 members.
All of a sudden they recrudesced, and now they blew up a gas pipeline.
I had a conversation with someone who knows different people in government and he told me that government sources think castro had a hand in those attacks too. It wouldn't be surprising, check out who's in the upper right corner of one of their Web sites. Yeah, them. They've been singing for their supper to the castroites for a long time. The Mexicans are aware of this, and though they won't say so openly, their government is very scared. They don't want to fight castro, who constantly threatened them in the 1960s - which is why they appeased the beast and allowed castro's men to use Mexico City as their continental base to spread trouble. It's not a good approach, but it's what they tend to do and explains why they are doing it now.
So, the Mexican government has gone out of its way to be nicey nice to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez even though we all know exactly what they really think of him. If they're scared, they should get help rather than take that oily dictator on all by themselves. Maybe they are. I just hope they don't go too far down appeasement road.
It's not surprising that castro is threatening to blow up Mexico's energy supplies. If Mexico loses its energy cash due to guerrillas, investment dries up and oil prices skyrocket. The only person who benefits from that scenario is Hugo Chavez.

castroites must take the world for idiots because they're trying to fob off on us castro's version of pre-revolutionary history in some old tome as proof that their dictator is alive and well. Today they ran an essay purported to be by the bearded beast in today's Juventud Rebelion (in a dictatorship that kills youth who rebel) about life in Cuba pre-1959. And we're supposed to think it's business as usual in castrodom.
Does anyone remember Yurii Andropov's eternal "cold"? (The enraged wife of a cashiered KGB agent is believed to have shot him.) Does anyone remember all the phoney pictures the Mao swimming released by the ChiComs and the Gang of Four as that dictator lay on his deathbed? Does anyone remember Kim Il Sung's lingering death? Or how many days it took for the Soviets to admit Stalin's death? All these communist dictatorships deny their supreme leaders' deaths right up till the end and beyond because all the minions in the dictator's inner circle are engaged in a power struggle over who will rule next. There's never any orderly handover of power in a dictatorship because there are no rules or laws or institutions. There's just the leader's word and that leader is ... unavailable.
There's no doubt the castroite toads are busily fighting it out tonight and for the next several nights to decide who will rule next. There always is. Oh to be a fly on the wall of the National Security Agency which hears all! Only when the castroite oligarchs decide who the next dictator will be will the death of castro be announced. Be prepared for a string of lies in coming days. Like this one about a spry old castro supposedly regaling his historical memories of 1959. Yeah, sure.

For a long time, I've been concerned about Colombia. Here is it, best friend the United States has right now in Latin America and congressional Democrats are treating it like an enemy, slamming the door on free trade to this valued friend and the most important country out there opposing castro and Venezuelan dictator Oogo Chavez. Abuse. That's the thanks it gets from Democrats. including Barack Obama, who is so keen to suck up to castro. Abuse to Colombia, kisses for castro, what's wrong with this picture?
A Cuban-American writer understands the whole critical triangle of Colombia, Cuba and Venezuela like Celia Cruz could sing. It's on the WSJ and since their links don't last forever, I reproduce it below for educational purposes, because he gets it:

Who Else Is Accepting Chavez's Petrodollars?
August 25, 2007; Page A5
Many thanks to your editorial staff, and to Mary Anastasia O'Grady in particular, for focusing attention on some ominous developments related to our Southern Hemisphere (Ms. O'Grady's Aug. 6 Americas column "The Real Uribe Record" and "The $800,000 Suitcase," Review & Outlook, Aug. 15).
As Ms. O'Grady's piece impeccably details, Colombia's President Uribe is under attack in our public forums, and by several of our leading legislators. Given the habitual indifference by our politicians to what goes on in Latin America, it's worth asking why Colombia should get this attention while America fights (and fights over) its war in Iraq, and while our presidential race is gearing up.
The answer, evidently, lies in the kind of dealing that was discovered in the cash-laden suitcase. Venezuela's President Chavez is using his country's oil-derived wealth to spread political influence around the hemisphere. And behind Mr. Chavez's extrovert presence lies the shadowy activity of the Castro regime. For years, Cuban security agents have been pulling the strings in Venezuela's governance; while Mr. Chavez has been funding Cuba's regime as well as its machinations across the continent.
For decades, Cuba has had Colombia in the forefront of its political designs, with Colombia a key target of its intelligence services. By the early 1980s, Fidel Castro had succeeded in forging an alliance between Colombia's narco-traffickers and leftist guerrillas. More recently, Mr. Chavez -- who has his own designs on neighboring Colombia -- has been underwriting Cuba's activities in that beleaguered country.
At the very least, the Cuban-Venezuelan campaign in Colombia merits urgent consideration by U.S. policy makers because it poses a major threat to our regional interest. And in view of that $800,000 suitcase, there's a decent likelihood that Mr. Chavez, in his efforts to destabilize President Uribe's regime, has also been spreading money around Washington. If Mr. Chavez is using his petrodollars to buy political influence in the U.S., it's worth finding out who is taking that money, and for what purpose.
Emilio Adolfo Rivero
President
New Cuba Coalition
Washington

raul castro cannot stand the big lunkheaded Thug Of Caracas. Sure he likes his money, but Hugo Chavez's persona is a different matter. raul, after all, is a disciplined military man of sorts. He's also a Marxist ideologue, far more so than his evil bearded brother. While fidel is grandiose and theatrical, cold and calculating, raul is vulgar, uncultured, ill-read and likes toilet humor. But knows raul place and prefers not to open his mouth in public. He lingers in the shadows. He keeps secrets.
That's why the loudmouthed, money-flinging, big-ambitioned, sycophantic Hugo Chavez gives raul the creeps. The only thing they have in common is vulgarity. Chavez has no personal discipline, no desire to stay in the shadows, no Marxist ideological reading of events, no decent military record, nada. He's got pseudointellectual pretensions but he's always full of bullshit. And he's not modest. Cripes, the guy always shows up wearing fire-engine red!
On the surface, the two are friends of course. But you notice they've never been seen in public, particularly not in those big public embraces Hugo is so famous for and that even Vladimir Putin recoils from? At least not many of them. When castro first took sick last year, Chavez flew into Havana unannounced on a detour from some overseas trips and raul told castro's best friend to beat it, he wasn't gonna see fidel no matter how slurpy the two of them had been in the past. Tail between his legs, Chavez reboarded his plane and continued on to Caracas.
raul had his reasons. He knew Hugo couldn't keep a secret. The situation was in flux, from his point of view, and telling Chavez would be about the same thing as announcing it on a megaphone at an international press conference.
That may be what's gone down now.
Hugo Chavez parroted the denial of the castroites in claiming his Havana Tio was alive and well. But as soon as he did, he started babbling on about castro's legacy, not his physical presence. He spoke in general and symbolic terms, rather than factual ones. Does this sound like a man who really knows that castro is alive and well?

'For those who want him to die, they will get frustrated, because Fidel Castro will never die,' Chavez told a socialist rally in the capital Caracas. 'He will always live among the people that fight for a better destiny. He will always live in the people of Cuba, Venezuela and the Americas.'

I think the dictator of Caracas might have let the cat out of the bag. I hope raul is screaming about it.

Fausta Wertz, who's originally from Puerto Rico, has been monitoring the castroite press and has a very insightful take on the meaning of the monster's imminent passing. Read it here.

So the Cuban Five, the passel of malevolent castroite agents convicted in Atlanta for espionage against U.S. citizens who happen to live in Miami, are now getting yet another court appeal on Monday, this time claiming the prosecution was brimming with errors. They had no such objections when the trial was going on. They only do now that their trump card strategy, which was to use slander against the Miami Cuban community as their get-out-of-jail-free-card, failed miserably. They are a real piece of work.
This time they're claiming that the prosecution used big photos of fidel castro with an organizational chart of Cuba's spy agency to unjustly sway the jury against these sweet little daisies. They actually intend to persuade a jury that castro had nothing to do with the spying they were doing and they just moseyed on in from Havana on their own, no connections to castro you see, and just happened to have the radio transmitters and wedding rings to transmit all the ill gotten information back to Havana. But it had nothing to do with castro.
Sure it's pathetic. Will an Atlanta jury be that dumb? This must be their tenth appeal on procedural grounds. Who's paying for these appeals if these five spies were just sauntering around South Florida on their own and had nothing to do with castro?
The whole thing is disgusting. Pack them off to jail forever. Be nice if they get entombed in the Supermax on the same day their bearded beast hero heads for hell.

castro is famous for his debt defaults and any banker who would do business with him damn well deserves to lose his money. An impressive banker for Citibank, named Bill Rhodes, reminisced about his banking experiences around the world for the Financial Times, and though these restructurings didn't involve Cuba, he was always the man who could arrange bailouts for any third world hellhole. He never bailed out Cuba, but he did have a run-in with castro, who had trouble keeping his word.
Right now, I like this guy Rhodes because he's working to help our anticommunist, anti-Castro, anti-Chavez ally, Colombia, get the free trade pact it's earned from our deadbeat Democrat congress. He seems to be wise to how the world works and what's needed.
Anyway, Rhodes bailed out pretty much every third world basketcase who asked by restructuring their debts. This included Marxist Nicaragua in 1979, when the Sandinistas first took power. castro somehow got involved with this restructuring, no surprise, and promised Rhodes a box of cigars if he got it done in a certain time. Well, that's pretty cheap considering what Rhodes was doing, but nevermind, Rhodes got it done the way he had always got it done, on time and under budget, but castro didn't bother with the cigars ... until many years later, saying he was 'busy.' In this FT story, that is how the castroites tried to spin it, and if you read to the very last graf of this story, you'll see how they tried to justify castro's slow-pay. I am sure the banker was not counting on the bearded beast and in any case, it didn't matter because Rhodes had led a significantly constructive life. castro has led exactly the opposite, not even being a man of his word unless he wanted something. I am sure he did this time with Rhodes too.

...check out what Hog On Ice has to say about castro's vaunted civil defense system that so draws the drooly praise of assorted United Nations inspectors here. The difference between ours and theirs is personal freedom. The UN is clueless about this little detail. But this piece knows the deal. Killer reading.

FWIW - Blogger Perez Hilton, who gets seven million hits a day for his coverage of celebrities, tells us he's hearing very loud dead-castro rumors from his Miami sources. He hasn't been able to confirm it for sure either, but he says it's never been like this before. National Post tracked him down and got an interview here.
Though he's not first with this news because Babalu is, what he's hearing may be worth something because he's an independent source with powerful contacts of his own. To his credit, he;s Cuban-American, his family fled the bearded beast and he hates castro as much as we do. See what he has here.
UPDATE: Canada's National Post has recognized Babalu's diligent dead-castro watch and updated its post with links. Hat tip: A Babalu reader who knows who he is.

Fresh from pandering to La Raza's rabid radicals in Miami this weekend, Barack Obama and John 'Hairspray' Edwards announced at the Democratic presidential debate tonight that they'd be happy to meet with fidel castro and Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who this weekend declared himself El Presidente For LIfe.
I kid you not. Miami Herald reports:

Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and John Edwards suggested Monday that they would meet with two leaders who top South Florida's most-hated list: Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez.
During a nationally televised debate, Obama responded to a hypothetical question: ``Would you be willing to meet separately, without precondition, during the first year of your administration, in Washington or anywhere else, with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, in order to bridge the gap that divides our countries?

Both implied that if they could just get the opportunity to be nice to these two brutal autocrats, they'd rapidly win their good will and everyone would turn kumbaya. In this, they implied that it's only Bush's clumsiness was responsible for the two dictators' venomous animosity toward the United States Of America.
If either of these idiots were elected president, Chavez and castro would roll their asses in the streets of Matamoros, to quote Tom Wolfe, and fry them up for dinner before they knew the fork was in them.
Both fools show no understanding of dictatorship, no understanding of the perpetual war against America that castro and Chavez must conduct in order to energize their own communist party bases. If there were no America for castro and his minime to scream about, the two of them would rapidly become lightning rods for all that is wrong in Cuba and Venezuela and would finally have to face the music of their own crimes. That is why the two of them desperately need an America to rail against, and why it's sustained them for decades. A simple understanding of the warlike nature of dictatorship ought to have informed these two, but this response just goes to show how stupid and venal and despicable these men really are.
And how missing in understanding they are of the Cuban experience in Florida, where memories of the bloodsoaked castroite communist scum shooting children against a wall isn't something that ought to ever been forgotten. Nevermind that, though, watch them come pandering for the Cuban-American votes anyway.
The naivete of these two fools running for president of the United States is a terrifying thing. They display a callous willingness to get in bed with dictators in the naive belief that niceness, or their own egotistic personalities will tame them, and worse yet also show a willingness to betray the people of Cuba and the exiles of Cuba who have suffered so much in the past 50 years under these bearded beasts who have literally tried to kill them.
These morons ought to crawl under a rock and disappear, their campaigns are sunk. Complete clowns. Nothing they do is going to redeem them from this stupidity. These two toads are toast.

Our friend Daniel in Venezuela has a photograph of a big government ad that's running in the local newspapers around Caracas, touting a big healthcare clinic, and most tellingly showing that the flag of Venezuela has now been superceded by the flag of Cuba, in a communist insult to both countries. Lotsa phony propaganda on castroite health care too, and note that they call Hugo 'Comrade Chavez' now.
As Chavistas sink every deeper into the vortex of castro, it's getting ever clearer which government is eventually going to be running the land of Simon Bolivar and it's not native Venezuelans. See the whole photo here.

Humberto Fontova has been doing historic and frankly, heroic, work getting the truth out about Cuba's mass murderers like che guevara who's otherwise resurging in the mass media and on Tshirts. He's one of the few voices out there getting the word out ... and winning, because I think he's almost singlehandedly changing how the monster is looked at. At a hearing in Congress on June 28, a leftist union thug testifying on why Colombia needs to be shut of free trade had a photo of himself with a che poster presented to him by rightwing congressman Dan Rohrabacher of Orange County, California, and had to squirm out an explanation about just why he associated himself this Marxist monster. (I'll post the link soon as I find it.)
Now IBD Editorials asked Fontova, author of Exposing The Real (c)he (g)uevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him to pop the che myths and tell Cuban-Americans' real story, for its first podcast on the Web. He's the one they wanted. The business newspaper also gave a whole page in the editorial section of today's Investor's Business Daily, to Fontova's thinking, which can be read online here.

Cuba's late Marxist revolutionary, ernesto "che" guevara, is experiencing something of a revival these days. His fiery-eyed visage and rock-star good looks, immortalized in an iconic snapshot by photographer Alberto Korda in 1961, seem to epitomize the youthful idealism of revolution, rebellion and free-spiritedness.
Since then, the famous communist's face has shown up on T-shirts, car decals, wristwatches, baby clothes, CD cases, hubcaps, jewelry, backpacks, and in Manhattan classroom posters, ironically advertising value of his image to capitalist markets.
Hillary Clinton has been spotted at campaign rallies with che T-shirt wearers. Carlos Santana has paraded his shirt at award shows. Angelina Jolie reportedly sports a che tattoo. And Hollywood has idealized the Argentine-born revolutionary in glossy movies like "The Motorcycle Diaries."
The only problem with this romance is there's not a wisp of truth to it. guevara was a deadly "killing machine" whose legacy was to enslave and impoverish Cuba.
Cuban-American author Humberto Fontova researched the man behind the image, exploring why pop culture seems so enamored of che guevara. Speaking to dozens of Cubans who knew and fought with Guevara (1928-1967), Fontova pieced together a very different picture of guevara for his book, "Exposing The Real che guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him."

In the podcast, Fontova blew che aficionados apart, telling the truth about the Argentine mercenary for IBD's 300,000 readers. On the broader topic of communist chic, I think it's also sweet that Humberto defended Cameron Diaz, someone whom I wasn't nice to here on Babalu, saying that at least she had the decency to apologize when she showed up in Peru carrying a Mao bag and offended the locals who know communist terror all too well. He said that hers was a simple case of someone who just didn't know any better. Most che lovers are just as ignorant as Diaz was about Mao, but unlike her, not one ever had the decency to apologize.
Anyway, it's a long, expansive 48-minute interview where Fontova explains the totalitarian reality of Cuba, how his family got out of Cuba, how Cuban Americans are demonized in the mainstream media, how the supposedly free press Western in Havana gets corrupted and what castro's aims in using che really are. He also speculates on the reason che hasn't lost his romantic appeal among the young while most every commie thug elsewhere has, he had answers I'd never heard before. Fontova paints che as the slimey little coward he was, an incompetent, a sadist and a snob. Everyone I know who's listened to the podcast says he's really interesting. Fontova always is. Word is getting out.
Yeah, Fontova!!!!!!!!!
Read the whole thing here, or listen to the podcast here.

Update Sunday night, June 24, by Pitbull: It seems that Cameron Diaz has apologized to Peruvians for the Mao bag. Dear, here's a hint: READ A FUCKING BOOK ABOUT THE COUNTRY YOU ARE VISITING. Then maybe you'll understand why Peruvians are pissed off when you have a bag that reminds them of 70,000 dead thanks to the ever-compassionate and tolerant left. Moron.
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Hollywood celebrities love to show how leftwing and 'dangerous' they are by wearing communist parapharnelia. Carlos Santana, who showed up in a che tshirt at the Emmy Awards, is a prime example. But these jackasses abound all over the entertainment industry, as Tren Blindado's famous Hollywood photo gallery shows. There's no real risk in it for them to do this, because they are all leftwing and like to feel righteous. If they really had a taste for risk, they'd wear a rightwing tshirt with Ronald Reagan's picture on it. But they don't. They always opt for the cheap leftism of communist 'revolutions as they prance around the world.
It's a funny thing being a Hollywood celebrity. They live cossetted lives with all the spas, liposuction, yoga, stylists, Guatemalan maids, wheatgrass juice, publicists, dance clubs, bodyguards, botox, toe polishing, life coaches, plastic surgeons, psychiatrists, gurus, Mexican gardeners, and Colombian cocaine they can snort. I live near it, so I know what they're like. They have luxury out the wazoo. Dog psychologists! Dog yoga! Dog walkers! Dog plastic surgery! Malibu! Santa Monica! Beverly Hills! It's all here!
So they like to get down and dirty with the masses when they can. They don't fly to package-tour places like Cancun with all the hoi polloi. Yet Gstaad and Aspen get boring. No, they need to show they're green, they're hip, they're daring, they're "serious," they're 'authentic,' and so they fly to wild places most of us can only dream of. In the 60s they used to head for Marrakesh and Bali, but they've since gotten Cancuned with Australians and Eurabians and therefore are out. So now some go to India. Some go to the Maldives. Some do the Africa thing, adopting some unfortunate kid who's about to become even more unfortunate as a celebrity arm decoration. Some go to Chile, a big favorite with the greensters, and still others go to Macchu Pichu, which, (because it has a little-known luxury resort attached), is big too.
Like Cameron Diaz.

"It alludes to a concept that did so much damage to Peru, that brought about so many victims. I don't think she should have used that bag where the followers of that ideology did so much damage."

The Peruvians set her straight, but think of what a rotten message she was sending to Peruvians from the states. She showed up there with a Mao bag, and some Peruvians must have thought 'all' Americans were as vapid as she was. This is where Ugly American legends come from. Like their cousins the Sandalistas, Ugly Americans - Al Gore, who insulted President Uribe of Colombia is another - are uniquely insensitive to the evils of communism and want to shove all the la-la land fantasy of its radical-chic 'statements' onto real places that have experienced the horror up close.
When will these Hollywood leftwing jerks ever learn?