Things have changed. And though MSM agencies with Havana bureau’s still perform for Castro like trained seals, bloggers (and the new media in general) are increasingly vexing the Castro regime. Reuters, AP, and CBS might clutch the regime’s hand-out sheets and eagerly transcribe them. Upon hearing Castro’s whistle, ABC, NBC and the AP might come running, their tongues out and their tails wagging.

The Cuban-American bloggers at Babalu Blog, on the other hand, watch the clown-show with bitter mirth while rubbing their hands. Ed Mc Mahon never lobbed it over so temptingly for Johnny.  Babalu blog founder and guiding light Val Prieto along with managing editors Alberto de la Cruz and George Moneo were recently interviewed by Dr Helen Smith of Pajamas TV. And as much fun as they have with this venture, you’ll see that their mission amounts to more than eye-poking.  Much of the best reporting on (and from) Castro’s fiefdom is by Spanish language bureaus. Among Babalu bloggers’ tasks is to scour these stories, and translate the juiciest morsels into Red state English for U.S. consumption.

“For Cuba, being able to influence policy and elite opinion-makers is equally important– possibly even more important– than recruiting spies with access to intelligence information,” said Norman Bailey, who worked for the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Last year the Defense Intelligence Agency’s top Cuba specialist, retired Lt. Col. Chris Simmons, outed five Castro “agents of influence” involved in precisely what Norman Bailey describes above. Alas, the media blackout on Col. Simmon’s bombshell has been total, and quite understandable.

You see, for decades some of those he fingers as Castro’s “agents of influence” have been (and continue to be) the Mainstream Media’s favorite (and almost exclusive) go-to “Cuba experts” for interviews, insights, prognostications and soundbites on anything and everything related to Castro and Cuba. A cursory Nexis-Lexis search shows that roughly 70 per cent of what Americans read about Cuba in the MSM–was filtered through Castro’s agents.

The MSM scurried for cover but, quite characteristically for them, Babalu Blog hosted Lieut. Col. Simmons on their radio show for  a major expose on how Castro’s “vital weapon” (propaganda) filters through the U.S. media.

To right the decades of MSM wrongs about Castroism would require more bandwith than even George Soros could spring for.  But the Babalu bloggers are off to a rollicking start.

The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind! Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination!… If the nuclear missiles had remained (in Cuba) we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City!…. We will bring the war to the (U.S.) imperialists enemies’ very home,   to his places of work and recreation. The imperialist enemy (the U.S.) must feel like a hunted animal wherever he moves! Thus we’ll destroy (the U.S.!)  The solutions to the world’s problems lie behind the Iron Curtain. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims! We must keep our hatred against them (the U.S.) alive and fan it to paroxysms!

That was Ernesto “Che” Guevara , in his message to the Tri-Continental Conference, Havana 1966.

“I’m like Che Guevara with a bling on!”

That was Rapper Jay-Z,  whom President  Obama  recently invited to sit under the U.S. Presidential Seal in the same White House that Jay-Z’s hero  craved to incinerate with nuclear missiles.

OK, fine, Obamabots and MSM……? Perhaps you don’t object to having, as an honored guest of our White House, and sitting under your nation’s very Presidential Seal, a sympathizer with a Stalinist who craved to incinerate your nation? That’s one thing.

But how about having, by special invitation to the White House by your president, and sitting under your presidential seal — a “useful idiot?”

From his diaries, I give you Ernesto “Che” Guevara himself:

The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities and booze, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent… The negro has maintained his racial purity by his well known habit of avoiding baths.

In fact, this is not Obama people’s first public brush with Che Guevara.  In Feb. 2008 Houston’s Fox TV station interviewed some Obama campaign volunteers (a precinct captain and head of the “Houston Obama Leadership Team”) who had festooned their offices with Che Guevara banners and Cuban flags… The MSM kept mum, but the conservative blogosphere spread the story.  Intrepid blogger Henry Gomez (Babalu Blog), then uncovered 15 different pages of Che Guevara well-wishers on the official Obama campaign site.

More interestingly, those Che Guevara posters had not been hung by a young volunteer who dug the cool looking dude’s awesome guitar licks for the Smashing Pumpkins, nor by an older one who thought she remembered the groovy guy with the beret “hangin” with Wavy Gravy at Woodstock.  No, the campaign volunteer who hung the Che poster is named Maria Isabel and according to the Lone Star Times, she had hung similar banners from her balcony at home.

Most interestingly, she is a middle-aged woman who was born in Cuba and lived there as a child during the very period when Che Guevara was Cuba’s chief executioner and second in command. At the time Cuba had the highest political incarceration and execution rate on earth, far surpassing that of their Soviet mentors and suitors.

As a public service for Jay-Z and Obama staffers, I provide the following: Ernesto “Che” Guevara was second in command, chief executioner, and chief KGB liaison for a regime that outlawed elections and private property. This regime’s KGB-supervised police – employing the midnight knock and the dawn raid among other devices – rounded up and jailed more political prisoners as a percentage of population than Stalin’s and executed more people (out of a population of 6.4 million) in its first three years in power than Hitler’s executed (out of a population of 70 million) in its first six.

But don’t misinterpret Che Guevara’s bluster with actual bravery. His stock in trade was the mass-murder of defenseless men and boys — bound and gagged is how he demanded his victims. On Oct. 8, 1967, upon finally encountering armed and determined enemies, Che quickly dropped his fully-loaded weapons and whimpered: “Don’t shoot! I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!”

Che Guevara’s regime also shattered – through executions, jailings, mass larceny and exile – virtually every family on the island of Cuba. Many opponents of the Cuban regime qualify as the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern history, having suffered prison camps, forced labor and torture chambers for a period three times as long in Che Guevara’s Gulag as Alexander Solzhenytzin suffered in Stalin’s Gulag. But please, please, please don’t bother looking for any History Channel, NPR, or 20/20 interviews with these heroes. They were victims’ of the Left’s premier poster boys, you see.

The regime Che Guevara co-founded stole the savings and property of 6.4 million citizens, made refugees of 20 per cent of the population from a nation formerly deluged with immigrants and whose citizens had achieved a higher standard of living than those residing in half of Europe.

Under Che Guevara’s rule “change” indeed came to Cuba.