Your taxpayer dollars at work promoting Cuba’s failed socialist system … PBS recently aired a report on Cuba’s outstanding health care system.

This was simply unbelievable.

Out state-run media is no longer just liberal – It’s communist:

They forgot to mention that Cuban President Raul Castro just warned his fellow Cubansthat they are running out of time and if they don´t change now, their will be an economic collapse.

(more…)

Recently in the New York Times, JFK speechwriter and adviser Ted Sorensen commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy/Nixon debates: “When Kennedy Met Nixon: The Real Story,” reads the op-ed’s title.

Turns out, however, that the “real story” as “revealed” by Sorensen is identical to the one filtered through the MSM for the past fifty years:  Kennedy, we’re given to understand, trounced Nixon—and not just in style—mainly in substance. Sorensen also laments what “now passes for political debate in our increasingly commercialized, sound-biteTwitter-fied culture, in which extremist rhetoric requires presidents to respond to outrageous claims.”

Nothing of the sort, we’re given to understand, marred those heady and substantive debates of yore. Take Kennedy’s claim that President Eisenhower had fallen asleep (or gone golfing) during his command and allowed a perilous “missile gap” to grow between the U.S. and the Soviets. In fact a huge gap had grown (roughly six thousand for us, three hundred for the Soviets.)

Might this qualify as an “outrageous claim” by Kennedy?  Not if your source is Ted Sorensen and the New York Times. In fact, prior to the debates, CIA director Allen Dulles had briefed Kennedy on the genuine missile numbers. But rather than respond to this genuinely outrageous claim, Nixon bit his tongue. Disclosing the real number (that JFK knew perfectly well) in public would alert the Soviets to how we got their number, and jeopardize U.S. national security.  Which is to say, to blindside his Republican opponent Kennedy relied on that opponent’s patriotism. Let’s face it, Republicans are at a woeful disadvantage here. (more…)

Hired help might be hard to find nowadays—but not for Fidel Castro. Jack Benny had his Rochester. Louise Jefferson had her Florence.  And Fidel Castro now has his Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s freshly-minted “Cuba Expert.”

Last month Fidel Castro granted Goldberg an extensive “interview.” This week a seemingly conscience-pricked Goldberg cops a plea for the arrant apple-polishing that resulted. Regarding his portrayal of a “benign” and grandfatherly Fidel Castro whom he also called a “great man,” Goldberg rationalizes thusly:

A close reading of the human rights literature suggests to me that the leadership of Cuba is not morally comparable to the leadership of Zimbabwe, Burma, Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, Eritrea, Venezuela.

Well, Mr. Goldberg, perhaps a closer reading might help. To wit:  In his book Against All Hope, Armando Valladares, who suffered 22 years in Castro’s dungeons, forced-labor camps, and torture chambers, then served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Human Rights Commission, reveals how at one point in 1961, Castro’s Gulag held 350,000 political prisoners. Freedom House estimates that half a million Cubans have passed through Castro’s Gulag. That’s out of a Cuban population at the time of 6.4 million. (more…)

Fidel Castro recently bestowed the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg with an exclusive interview. More than a mere exclusive, this is the first interview granted by the Stalinist dictator to an American reporter in four years.

The MSM is absolutely agog with the catalogue of insights, woes and regrets bequeathed by the Cuban mass-murderer to Goldberg. “I asked him if he believed the Cuban model was still something worth exporting” writes Goldberg.

“‘The Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore,” Castro replied.  And as mentioned the MSM and assorted “Cuba Analysts” are all aflutter over Castro’s “epiphany,”  “honesty,” “regret,” –take your pick—“that Communism “doesn’t work.”

Some actual study of recent Cuban history might enlighten these learned parties. To wit:

“This doesn’t work, I’m resigning!” (Fidel Castro, July 1959 during political crisis with his puppet “President” Manuel Urrutia)

“This doesn’t work! Terrible mistakes were made (especially in adopting Che Guevara’s moral incentives)–we need material capitalistic incentives. So I’m resigning!” (Fidel Castro, July 1970, after the much-ballyhooed “10 million ton” sugar harvest proved way short and utterly disastrous.)

“The capitalists organize production better than we do. There’s much we can learn from them.” (Fidel Castro, 1986 during “Rectification Process” i.e. another “re-evaluation” after another economic crisis.) (more…)

The oldest gay-rights organization in Latin America is taking Fidel Castro to the International Court of justice in The Hague for “crimes against humanity.”

“What?!”  snort the “enlightened.” You rubes got the news exactly bass-ackwards!  In fact, last week Fidel Castro apologized graciously for his regime’s past mistreatment of gays. His graciousness has been accepted graciously by all enlightened parties.  The AP, Reuters and CNN picked up the story and it went media-viral. Any Google search finds it in spades.

The “news” agencies to which Fidel Castro bestowed Havana “press” bureaus indeed ran with his “apology” regarding his historic jailing, torture and murder of gays.  But true to their Cuba-“reporting” the MSM has completely “overlooked” the World Court complaint by Brazil’s Grupo Gay da Bahía, which is to say, what prompted the apology in the first place.

Again, true to form, the MSM pack—yipping, yapping, tails wagging, tongues hanging — followed the snickering Castro’s every cue as he led them off the trail of this damaging accusation in the World Court. Again, dutiful to their mission as outlined by Castro upon granting their Havana bureaus, they rushed to bark up every wrong tree and report bald misinformation. (more…)

Time Magazine just ran an article on U.S.-Cuba relations which employs the word embargo (as in big, bad bully U.S. against innocent little free-health-care provider Castro) eight times. The term travel ban figures in the article’s very title.

Question 1. What embargo? Webster’s defines “embargo” as “a government order imposing a trade barrier.” As a verb it’s defined as “to prevent commerce.”

And yet:  according to figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce (that you’d hope Time could dig up) the U.S. transacted $710 million worth of business with Castro’s Cuba in 2008, and has transacted more than $2 billion worth of business with Castro’s Cuba in the last decade. Currently the U.S. serves as Castro’s Cuba’s biggest food supplier and fifth biggest import partner. Furthermore, the U.S. has been Castro’s Cuba’s biggest donor of humanitarian aid including medicine and medical supplies for decades. All this together with the almost $2 billion a year in remittances sent from the U.S. ranks our nation right between Red China and Hugo’s Venezuela as a Castro business partner.

Question 2. What Travel Ban? The term seems pretty self-explanatory, right? (more…)

The dictator who came the closest in history to igniting a nuclear war made several public appearances recently to predict imminent nuclear war. The cataclysm he craved in Oct. 1962 will erupt, he warned on Cuban TV, when the Israelis and their Yankee vassals provoke Iran in the straits of Hormuz.

That’s not a typo above. Castro, who co-sponsored the famous 1975 UN resolution equating Zionism with Racism, says the Israeli tail wags the Yankee dog. Those Yankees are certainly powerful, Castro explained, but also a bit naïve and docile.  The main instigators, the ones carefully setting the trap to ignite nuclear war are those crafty Israelis. “The control that Israel has over the United States is enormous,” he revealed last week.

Fidel Castro, that sentimental old fool, has excellent reason to bask in the fond memory of imminent nuclear war. “Of course I knew the missiles were nuclear- armed,” responded Fidel Castro to Robert McNamara during a meeting in 1992. “That’s precisely why I urged Khrushchev to launch them.  And of course Cuba would have been utterly destroyed in the exchange.”

If the missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.

– Che Guevara, November 1962.

“My dream is to drop three atomic bombs on New York City

– Raul –not Fidel—Castro, Nov. 1960.

But “Hay Caramba!” the Stalinist trio fumed and raged for years afterwards. “Nikita Khrushchev, that sniveling maricon, snatched that magic button-pushing moment from our eager fingers!”

“We should deliver a nuclear first strike,” read the telegram from Castro to Khrushchev on Oct. 28 1962. (more…)

Castro’s regime has agreed to release 52 political prisoners in the coming months and according to the New York Times, “this would reduce the number of prisoners of conscience on the island by about a third.”

“We think that’s a positive sign,” said Sec. of State Clinton. “It’s something that is overdue but nevertheless very welcome.”

“Gosh, Castro only jails about 150 political prisoners?” might remark a typical Times reader (maybe even Hillary). “So why all the fuss about Cuba’s human-rights problems? Heck, we keep almost double that many prisoners in Guantanamo!”

In fact, the Times (“Fidel Castro is not only NOT a Communist, he is decidedly anti-Communist. In Cuba there are no communists in positions of control.” New York Times, June 1959) probably picked up the political prisoner release story from the Associated Press, another outfit with “a past” on Castroism. (more…)

So the Cold War’s Over?

Tell it to Fidel Castro and his agents.  Among the ten spies just nabbed by the FBI and accused of working for the Russian Federation we find a Vicky Pelaez, weekly columnist for New York’s  largest circulation Spanish-language paper, La Prensa/El Diario.  You will never guess who they endorsed for President.

Besides this New York paper, please note who proudly publishes Vicky Pelaez’ articles and displays her byline.

Now please note who proudly publishes the articles confected by the Huffington Post’s Margarita Alarcon and proudly displays her byline. The Huffington Post’s “conflict of interest” was revealed on this site just the other day (if I may so say myself.)

Cubadebate, for anyone poised to spout off about “McCarthyism at Big Journalism!” is blatantly and unapologetically the Castro regime’s house organ.  Note that Fidel, Raul and Hugo’s pronouncements, decrees and fiats appear just to the right of The Huffington Post writer’s articles (and those of the recently arrested and accused Russian spy’s.)

Among Vicky Pelaez most recent articles was a paean to Hugo Chavez for his “lifting Venezuelans’ from abject poverty and restoring their pride” and to Oliver Stone for documenting and publicizing the glorious process. (more…)

The Huffington Post’s Cuba-based writer, Margarita Alarcon, informs us that treating Cuba, “this small island,” as “a threat to U.S. integrity so much that the Department of State puts it on its list of terrorist nations is considered tantamount to political dementia.”  In fact, Margarita Alarcon’s views closely parallel those of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency’s former Latin American head, Ana Belen Montes.

In a 1998 report entitled “National Intelligence Estimate on Cuba” and largely authored by Ms. Montes, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that:

Castro poses no significant threat to the U.S. or any of its hemispheric neighbors. No evidence exists that that Cuba is trying to foment any instability in the Western Hemisphere.

The Clinton administration based its Cuba policy on this eminently authoritative report. After all, its primary author had access to all U.S. intelligence on Cuba and led briefings on Capitol Hill, at the State Department and the Pentagon regarding Cuban policy. “On Cuba,” one government official said. “Montes was who you went to.”

Four years after issuing that report, its primary author was in U.S. federal prison having been convicted of espionage, (the same charges against the Rosenbergs) and having narrowly dodged their death sentence only with a plea bargain. Turned out that Montes, (a frequent visitor to Cuba on “academic exchanges”) had been working for Castro since the 80’s. (more…)

I spent much time during the past few weeks helping my son study for the state-wide World History test he took a few days ago. Working with him through his studies, I learned his class presented a brand new version of history, a version that never occurred. Some can argue different versions/interpretations of events that happened centuries ago, but his text book and curriculum distorted events I saw with my own eyes.

The text-book in question is called World History Patterns of Interaction, and is published by McDougal Littell.  Particularly upsetting was the section of the book covering the period from the end of WWII through the 1980s. It sets up the Cold War period with the mistaken politically correct explanation that both sides were aggressors. On page 983 it says:

Both sides believed that they needed to stop the other side from extending its power.”  What it should have said was that the Cold War was a battle between the Soviet side wanting to expand its communist philosophy across the world, and the west trying to prevent the takeover.

The book also whitewashes the tyranny of Castro’s communist Cuba. Page 985 says “Soviet aid to Cuba ended abruptly with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. This dealt a crippling blow to the Cuban economy.”  There was no mention of the brutality of the Cuban regime; the fact that all opposition newspapers had been closed down, all radio and television stations were in state control, or that moderates, teachers and professors were purged. Nor was there any mention of the torture and inhumane treatment in Cuban prisons that is still happening today. (more…)

Three times last week CNBC aired an hour-long special titled “Escape from Havana.“ “

Between 1960 and 1962, more than 14,000 Cuban children were secretly flown to the United States to escape Fidel Castro, “reads the catchy CNBC teaser.  “Today, many of the Pedro Pans have thrived in America… Each has walked a long road and fought to overcome profound obstacles on their way to the American dream.  In our documentary, you’ll meet a big-city mayor, an accomplished author, a singer, an activist, a professor, and a business leader. They were all part of a secret and improbable plan to escape a dictator’s rule and fly to freedom.”

CNBC seemed to promise   love, war, danger, intrigue, heartbreak, and a heart-warming Horatio Alger finale.  And indeed, accurately told, the story of thousands of Cuban parents desperate to save their children by spiriting them to the traditional land of the free as Soviet proxies Fidel Castro and Che Guevara tightened their grip around Cuba’s throat would provide all of the dramatic elements above –and in spades.

We still await such a depiction.  Instead NBC gave us cleverly-disguised Castroite propaganda. (more…)

This is the chubby face of tyranny. A Michigan state senator has introduced an Orwellian bill that would provide for the licensing of journalists. There is no doubt that this thing is aimed squarely at delegitimizing the New Media, silencing bloggers, and creating a protected class of state approved “journalists.”

State Senator Bruce Patterson is the brains behind this flouting of the U.S. Constitution and outrageously enough, this Patterson fellow claims to be a “constitutional lawyer.” Pair him with the “constitutional scholar” we have as president and we have a matched set of revisionists out to steal as much power for themselves as one can find in any tinpot dictatorship! Even more ridiculously, this mustachioed villain is a Michigan Republican, proving that this sort of megalomania infests both sides of the aisle.

So what is this licensing deal supposed to do for us, the stupid people not able to figure out which end is up with current events, anyway? According to Patterson we can’t get “good information” any more because of the proliferation of new sources of info. But not to worry, nanny Patterson is here to save the day and he’ll selflessly take it upon himself to determine what news source is a “legitimate media source.” What could possibly go wrong? (more…)

Imagine a Breitbart contributor thanking Timothy Mc Veigh in the acknowledgements to his books. Imagine a Tea Party speaker doing same. Imagine a Heritage Foundation Senior fellow proudly acknowledging how Timothy Mc Veigh “championed” his research and writings.

Might the MSM notice? Might they react?  Might their reaction consist of more than a few polite coughs behind the hand?

Well, here’s New York Times contributor and Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Julia Sweig in the acknowledgements to her book, Inside the Cuban Revolution:

In Cuba many people spent long hours with me, helped open doors I could not have pushed through myself, and offered friendship and warmth to myself during research trips to the island…Elsa Montero and  Jose Gomez Abad championed this project.

“Fine, Humberto,” you say.  “But just who are these folks who championed Sweig’s book? And how on earth can you equate them with Timothy Mc Veigh?” (more…)

In 1979 David Halberstam’s book, The Powers That Be, claimed that the major media had “stopped following the news and was now making the news. “An account of the rise of the modern media as an instrument of political power,” reads the jacket. Cuban regime defectors report that this became one of Fidel Castro’s favorite books. Not that he learned anything from its pages; simply that he received smug confirmation for something he’d plumbed decades before Halberstam.

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. (more…)

In his cautionary letter to Ann Coulter before her recently scheduled speech at the University of Ottawa, the institution’s provost, Francois Houle, explained that: “Our domestic laws, both provincial and federal, delineate freedom of expression (or ‘free speech’) in a manner that is somewhat different than the approach taken in the United States.”

Canada’s laws also seem to “delineate” medical quackery and fraud somewhat differently from those in the United States. To wit: this very University of Ottawa, so hyper-sensitive to human rights and so vigilant against ethnic sensibilities that it proscribes Bing Crosby’s lines from Road to Morocco is also a long-time partner with Fidel Castro’s Stalinist regime.

In 1999 this chummy partnership between Canadian academics and Castroite apparatchiks gave fruit to the first vaccination against Meningitis B, or so we’re told by “news” agencies that have earned Havana bureaus, and spokeshumans from the University of Ottowa, who co-owns the patent with Fidel Castro’s henchmen.

“Cuba has developed the world’s first Meningitis B vaccine which is available in Third World countries but not in Europe or in the United States due to U.S. sanctions,” dutifully reported Anthony Boadle from Reuters’ Havana bureau right after Sicko’s first screening (oddly good timing for such a “scoop” by a Castro-sanctioned “news” agency, I’d certainly say!) (more…)

Last summer the British government banned U.S. radio commentator Michael Savage from setting foot in the UK.  “Fostering extremism and hatred ” was his crime, as explained by Britain’s Home Secretary of the time, Jacqui Smith. “Coming to the U.K. is a privilege,” she elaborated, “and I refuse to extend that privilege to individuals who abuse our standards and values to undermine our way of life. Therefore, I will not hesitate to name and shame those who foster extremist views as I want them to know that they are not welcome here.”

The following month, for a hoopla titled “Cuba 50,” Britain rolled out the red carpet for Che Guevara’s daughter, Aleida. The celebration was billed as “the biggest European celebration in this 50th anniversary year (of Castro’s Stalinist regime).”

This British celebration for a regime that jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s, murdered political prisoners at a higher rate than pre-war Hitler’s, created refugees at a higher rate than the Waffen SS and Gestapo created while conquering and subjugating France, and came closest of anyone to plunging the world into nuclear war—the festival for this regime was held in London’s luxurious Barbican Centre.

( All figures for the above murder, oppression, and war-mongering by the T-shirt idol of  “human-rights” and “peace” demonstrators are provided with full documentation in Exposing the Real Che Guevara, and Fidel Hollywood’s Tyrant.) (more…)

In June 2007 Castro’s Stalinist regime held a “tourism fair” in Havana to kick-off an ambitious plan to boost the Cuban military’s tourist booty. By some peculiar coincidence NBC’s Today Show decided to broadcast from Havana that very week. Amidst smiling, clapping, dancing tourists, Matt Lauer and Andrea Mitchell advised viewers on how to legally vacation in Cuba.

Don’t look for this from NBC, but Castro’s Soviet-trained and armed military and secret police own most of Cuba’s tourist facilities. Along with providing these inquisitive Cuban officials with certain “insights” regarding visitors to Castro’s fiefdom, this set-up also insures that most of the money that tourists spend in Cuba lands in the pocket of the only people in Cuba with guns.

Yet Castro apologists and/or agents (both on the payroll and off) keep insisting that a flood of rich Western tourists will magically smother Cuban Stalinism whereupon the island nation will quickly mutate into a bigger (and more historic and picturesque) Cozumel. This logic (which Matt and Andrea naturally shared) seems to go something like this: rewarding and enriching the KGB-trained and heavily armed guardians of Cuba’s Stalinist status-quo will magically convert them into instant opponents of that Stalinist status quo.

Amazingly, this line of reasoning fails to convince those with first-hand experience under Cuba’s Stalinist regime. But never mind this insufferable rabble of “Cuban-American right-wing crackpots!” and their congressional allies. And never mind the evidence. (more…)

From a speech by Jimmy Carter at the University of Havana on May 14, 2002 which was broadcast throughout Castro’s islandwide fiefdom and trumpeted worldwide by all “news” agencies with Havana bureaus:

My nation is hardly perfect in human rights. A very large number of our citizens are incarcerated in prison, and there is little doubt that the death penalty is imposed most harshly on those who are poor, black, or mentally ill. For more than a quarter century, we have struggled unsuccessfully to guarantee the basic right of universal health care for our people. …but Cuba has superb systems of health care and universal education.

Thus did a former President of the United States prostrate himself before a regime that jailed and tortured political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s and murdered (in absolute numbers) more political prisoners in its first three years in power (out of a population of 6.4 million) than Hitler’s murdered in its first six years (out of a population of 70 million.) Not to mention that Pres. Carter’s host insulted his nation as “a vulture preying on humanity!” and came within a hair of nuking it.

There’s more: (more…)

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?” (more…)