from the Onion
WASHINGTON, DC—In a sudden and unexpected blow to the Americans working to protect the holiday, liberal U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt ruled the private celebration of Christmas unconstitutional Monday.
Per the court order, city workers take down the Christmas tree from New York's Rockefeller Plaza.
"In accordance with my activist agenda to secularize the nation, this court finds Christmas to be unlawful," Judge Reinhardt said. "The celebration of the birth of the philosopher Jesus—be it in the form of gift-giving, the singing of carols, fanciful decorations, or general good cheer and warm feelings amongst families—is in violation of the First Amendment principles upon which this great nation was founded."
In addition to forbidding the celebration of Christmas in any form, Judge Reinhardt has made it illegal to say "Merry Christmas." Instead, he has ruled that Americans must say "Happy Holidays" or "Vacaciones Felices" if they wish to extend good tidings.
Within an hour of the judge's verdict, National Guard troops were mobilized to enforce the controversial ruling.
"Sorry, kids, no Christmas this year," Beloit, WI mall Santa Gene Ernot said as he was led away from his Santa's Village in leg irons. "Write to your congressman to put a stop to these liberal activist judges. It's up to you to save Christmas! Ho ho ho!"
Said Pvt. Stanley Cope, who tasered Ernot for his outburst: "We're fighting an unpopular war on Christmas, but what can we do? The military has no choice but to take orders from a lone activist judge."
Across America, the decision of the all-powerful liberal courts was met with shock and disappointment, as American families quietly took down their holiday decorations and canceled their plans to gather and make merry.
"They've been chipping away at Christmas rights for decades," Fox News personality John Gibson said. "Even before this ruling, you couldn't hear a Christmas song on the radio or in a department store. I hate to say it, America, but I told you so."
Enlarge Image
Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. 9th Circuit of Appeals issues his ruling.
Gibson then went into hiding, vowing to be a vital part of the Christmas resistance that would eventually triumph and bring Christmas back to the United States and its retail stores.
The ban is not limited to the retail sector. In support of Reinhardt's ruling, Sen. Ted Kennedy, a Jew, introduced legislation that would mandate the registration of every Christian in the United States and subject their houses to random searches to ensure they are not celebrating Christmas.
"Getting rid of every wreath or nativity scene is not enough," Kennedy said. "In order to ensure that Americans of every belief feel comfortable in any home or business, we must eliminate all traces of this offensive holiday. My yellow belly quakes with fear at the thought of offending any foreigners, atheists, or child molesters."
America's children are bearing the brunt of Reinhardt's marginal, activist rulings.
"Why did the bad man take away Christmas?" 5-year-old Danny Dover said. "I made a card for my mommy out of paper and glue, and now I can't give it to her."
Shortly after Dover issued his statement, police kicked down his door, removed his holiday tree, confiscated his presents, and crushed his homemade card underfoot.
A broad, bipartisan coalition of lawmakers has been working closely with the White House, banding together in the hope of somehow overruling the decision. So far, however, their efforts have been fruitless.
"Our hearts go out to the Americans this ruling affects," Sen. Chip Pickering (R-MS) said. "If it's any condolence, I wish you all a Happy Holidays, which, I'm afraid, is all I'm legally allowed to say at this time."
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Thursday, December 15, 2005
The Real Che Guevara
by Humberto Fontova (December 1, 2005)
Article website address: http://www.CapMag.com/article.asp?ID=4455
Summary: Che excelled in one thing: mass murder of defenseless men. In anything like a fair fight Che was consistently routed, stomped and humiliated.
[CapMag.com]
Mike Tyson used to end fights with his arms upraised in triumph. Then he got a Che Guevara tattoo. Now he ends fights on the ground, a bloodied mess, battered and bowed, pounded almost beyond recognition. Lennox Lewis didn’t just defeat him, he stomped him. It was a hideous thing to watch, even if you loathe Mike Tyson.
Tyson was jinxed by that Che tattoo. There’s no other explanation. Somebody should have enlightened mighty Mike about the real Che Guevara.
Che was hell on smiting his enemies, all right – thousands of them – but only when they were bound, gagged and blindfolded. I’m afraid the Boxing Federation doesn’t allow that. In anything like a fair fight Che was consistently routed, stomped and humiliated.
Ineptitude in combat defined Che Guevara. In every conflict he was pounded like a gong. When he whimpered to his American-trained captors in Bolivia, “Don’t shoot – I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!” he had a point.
We blew it by not kidnapping him from the Bolivians in time and using him the way Luddendorff used Lenin in WWI. Recall that the Germans shipped Lenin through their lines into Russia “like a sealed bacillus” (in Churchill’s phrase) to infect the Russian army, to demoralize and incapacitate it, thereby shutting down the Eastern front.
It worked like a charm. The mighty Che, airdropped into Vietnam’s Central Highlands with bundles of his “Lessons in Guerrilla War” in October 1968, would have crippled the V.C. worse than 10 Operation Rolling Thunders.
We’d have had the boys home by Christmas. No Tet. No Cambodian invasion. Upon graduating from Che’s Academy of Guerrilla War, the V.C. would have become black-Pajama’d Beavis and Butt-heads. In a month they’d all be bedraggled and lost, starving and bickering, enraging the peasants, blundering into ambush after ambush.
We’d have cleaned house in two months, maybe even without employing the firepower and cojones of Al “To Hell and Back” Gore.
Actually, I dream here. Halfway through the first page of Che’s legendary book, the V.C. would have impaled Che on pungi sticks as a CIA agent – a very stupid one, trying a transparent ruse to get them all killed.
Cuban-American fighters who faced Che at the Bay of Pigs and later in the Congo still laugh. The Bay of Pigs invasion plan included a ruse where a little boat packing a huge fireworks show and tape recording of battle sounds landed in extreme western Cuba as a diversion.
Sure enough, the wily Che immediately recognized this as an Anzio-type “second front.” He snapped on his holster, cocked his beret at just the right angle, scowled for the camera and rushed over with a few thousand troops. He spent the whole battle there. It was the only thing in the invasion that went according to plan.
Later, many of these Cuban-American BOP vets itched to get back into the fight (but with ammo and air cover this time). The CIA obliged and sent them with ex-marine Rip Robertson to the Congo in ‘65. There they linked up with the legendary mercenary “Mad Mike” Hoare and his “Wild Geese.”
Here’s Mike Hoare’s opinion, after watching them in battle, of the men routinely smeared by the Beltway media as cheap Mafiosi, bumblers and cowards, of the outfit the Church Commission and Clinton regime disparaged and emasculated: “These Cuban-CIA men were as tough, dedicated and impetuous a group of soldiers as I’ve ever had the honor of commanding. Their leader [Rip Robertson] was the most extraordinary and dedicated soldier I’ve ever met.”
Saved From Cannibals
Together Mad Mike, Rip and the Cubans made short work of the alternately Chinese-and Soviet-backed “Simbas” of Laurent Kabila, who were murdering, raping and munching (many were cannibals) their way through the defenseless Europeans still left in the recently abandoned Belgian colony.
Forget Frank Church and the Clintonites. Ask the hundreds of Europeans rescued from butchery (literally!) by these men. You’ll hear a different song, believe me. You can read about their exploits in Hoare’s book, “Congo Mercenary,” and in Enrique Ros’ “Cubanos Combatientes” (sadly, available only in Spanish).
Kabila made Idi Amin look like Gandhi. Castro, itching to be rid of this nuisance, sent Che (code-named “Tatu”) and a force of his rebel army “veterans” to help these cannibals. The Congolese reds, unfamiliar with Che’s true record, accepted Tatu gratefully.
The masterful “Tatu’s” first order of business was plotting an attack on a garrison guarding a hydroelectric plant in a place called Front Bendela on the Kimbi River in Eastern Congo. His masterstroke was to be an elaborate ambush of the garrison.
The wily Tatu was stealthily leading his force into position when they heard shots. Whoops! ... Hey?! WHAT THE?! Ambushers became ambushed – and by the same garrison he thought was guarding the plant. Che lost half his men and barely escaped with his life.
Some Ally
His African allies started frowning a little more closely at Tatu’s c.v. and asking a few questions. (But in Swahili, which he didn’t understand.)
Thing was, any teen gang member in East L.A. or south Bronx has 10 times the battle experience and savvy of any of these strutting Fidelista “Comandantes.” Imagine the Germans atop Monte Cassino outnumbering and outgunning the Allies 10 to 1 in early ‘44. Hell, they’d STILL be there. It was a defender’s dream.
Well, the brilliant Tatu and his comandantes had that very set-up in a place called Fizi-Baraka in Eastern Congo for their second clash with the mad dogs of imperialism. Mad Mike and his CIA allies sized the place up and attacked. Within one day the mighty Che’s entire force was scrambling away in panic, throwing away their arms, running and screaming like old ladies with rats running up their legs.
Teen ‘Rebels’
One of the most hilarious and enduring hoaxes of the 20th century was the “war” fought by dauntless Che and the Castro rebels against Batista. But I hear it was a kick – a fun way for adolescents to harass adults, loot, rustle a few cows, and play army on weekends with real guns, maybe even getting off a few shots, usually into the air.
What 17- or 18-year-old male could resist? Petty delinquency became not just altruism here, but downright heroism. How many punks get such a window of glory? Normally these stunts land you in reform school. In Cuba in 1958 it might get your picture in the New York Times:
“Comandante Humberto ‘El Guapo’ Fontova shown here relaxing with a bottle of rum and a grateful senorita after smiting the Fascist hordes of the Tyrant Batista in the ferocious Battle of Santa Clara, described by senior correspondent Herbert Matthews as ‘bloodier than Stalingrad!’ “
Here’s an insider account of one such “battle,” from “Comandante” William Morgan as recounted to Paul Bethel after the glorious victory. Bethel was press attaché in Cuba’s U.S. Embassy in 1959. It’s in Bethel’s superb and meticulously researched book “The Losers”:
“We had a helluva time, Paul! We used a short-wave radio to broadcast the battle. Eloy and I yelled fake battle commands into the mike while a few of the muchachos shot BARs and pistols into the air for the sound effects. We really whooped it up!”
Here’s another insider account from Bethel’s book about a “famous battle.” This one features Che the Lionhearted himself and his invincible “Column” on their Long March through Las Villas province:
“Guevara’s column shuffled right into the U.S. agricultural experimental station in Camaguey. Guevara asked manager Joe McGuire to have a man take a package to Batista’s military commander in the city. The package contained $100,000 with a note. Guevara’s men moved through the province almost within sight of uninterested Batista troops.”
This was part of the famous “Battle of Santa Clara” where Che “Blood ‘n’ Guts” Guevara earned his eternal fame. Skip Dave Barry one Sunday and instead read the New York Times version of this historic military engagement. You’ll laugh louder. Here’s the headline in that “Newspaper of Record” for Jan 4, 1959 (and, like Barry, I swear I’m not making this up):
“One Thousand Killed in 5 days of Fierce Street Fighting! .... Commander Che Guevara appealed to Batista troops for a truce to clear the streets of casualties! ... Guevara turned the tide in this bloody battle and whipped a Batista force of 3,000 men!”
Funnier Than Geraldo
We laugh at Geraldo Rivera’s buffooneries in Afghanistan. Hell, next to NYT reporters, Geraldo looks like Ernie Pyle.
To give them credit, most of Castro’s comandantes knew their Batista war had been a gaudy clown show. After the glorious victory, they were content to run down and execute the few Batista men motivated enough to shoot back (most of these were of humble background), settle into the mansions stolen from Batistianos, and enjoy the rest of their booty.
Che’s pathological power of self-delusion wouldn’t allow him to do this. And he paid the price.
Statistically speaking, a nocturnal stroll through Central Park offers more peril than Castro’s rebels faced from the dreaded army of the beastly Fulgencio Batista. According to Bethel, the U.S. Embassy was a little skeptical about all the battlefield bloodshed and heroics and investigated. They ran down every reliable lead and eyewitness account of what the New York Times called a “bloody civil war with thousands dead in single battles!”
They found that in the countryside, in those two years of “ferocious” battles, the total casualties on BOTH sides actually ran to 182. New Orleans has an annual murder rate DOUBLE that.
Alas, the Viet Cong took its lessons from guerrilla leaders who – get this, Che groupies – actually fought in a guerrilla war. Yes, where people shoot back and everything. Che eventually tried his hand at this novelty and ... well, we saw what happened. He was run out of Africa with his tail between his legs in months. Then in Bolivia he and his merry band of bumblers was betrayed, encircled and decimated in short order.
Dissed by Mao
Real guerrillas had Che’s number. Mao refused to see him when he visited China. He had him cool his heels in a reception room for two hours, then stood him up. He knew. Che the Lionhearted’s image is still ubiquitous on college campuses. But in the wrong places. He belongs in the marketing, PR, advertising – and especially – psychology departments. His lessons and history are fascinating and valuable, but only in light of Sigmund Freud or P.T. Barnum. One born every minute, Mr. Barnum? If only you’d lived to see the Che phenomenon. Actually, 10 are born every second.
Here’s a “guerrilla hero” who in real life never fought in a guerrilla war. When he finally brushed up against one, he was routed.
Here’s a cold-blooded murderer who executed thousands without trial, who claimed that judicial evidence was an “unnecessary bourgeois detail,” who stressed that “revolutionaries must become cold-killing machines motivated by pure hate,” who stayed up till dawn for months at a time signing death warrants for innocent and honorable men, whose office in La Cabana had a window where he could watch the executions – and today his T-shirts adorn people who oppose capital punishment!
‘Greens’ Love This Polluter
Here’s communist Cuba’s first “Minister of Industries,” whose main slogan in 1960 was “Accelerated Industrialization!” Whose dream was converting Cuba (the hemisphere, actually) into a huge bureaucratic-industrial ant farm – and he’s the poster boy for greens and anarchists who scream and rant against industrialization!
Here’s a sniveling little suck-up, teacher’s pet and momma’s boy who was the constant pride of joy of his teacher (Alberto Bayo) and parents (the most obnoxious sort of Limousine Bolsheviks) – and he’s idolized by millionaire delinquents such as
Rage Against the Machine!
Here’s a humorless teetotaler, a plodding paper-pusher, a notorious killjoy and all-around fuddy-duddy – and you see his T-shirt on MTV’s Spring Break revelers!
Perhaps competent psychologists (if any exist) will explain this some day.
Che excelled in one thing: mass murder of defenseless men. He was a Stalinist to the core, a plodding bureaucrat and a calm, cold-blooded – but again, never in actual battle – killer. And there was an actual method to this murderous madness.
Recall that in 1940 Stalin’s commissars rounded up the Polish officer corps, herded them into the Katyn Forest and slaughtered them to a man. Stalin didn’t want any Polish contras messing up his plans. These officers would have led them. So his men dug a huge mass grave and lined up the Polish officers. The Russian pistol barrels went up against the backs of the necks:
POW! ... Thump. Fifteen thousand shots later the deed was done and the dirt replaced. Any contra problem was nipped in the bud.
Che followed suit in Cuba. As a communist flunky in Guatemala he’d seen the Guatemalan officer corps rise up against the communist Arbenz government in ‘54. (And you pinko professors, please stifle the noise about Arbenz as a harmless “social democrat” and “nationalist” victimized by the fiendish United Fruit Co., OK? When ousted, Arbenz sought refuge in Czechoslovakia, not Sweden.)
Beloved Mass Murderer
Anyway, Che didn’t want a repeat in Cuba. Upon entering Havana in January ‘59 he started rounding up all army officers. Then – FUEGO!! – his firing squads got busy. Real busy. By his own count, Che sent 2,500 men to “the wall.”
The “Cuban Katyn,” I call this slaughter. The reds called these executed men “war criminals” and the Beltway press naturally parroted the charge. Nothing new there.
The New York Times’ (Pulitzer Prize-winning, no less) reporter Walter Duranty had parroted Stalin and Beria’s charges against the victims of the 1930s show trials, too. Later, they, along with Chris Dodd, Ted Kennedy and Tip O’Neill, labeled Nicaragua’s contras “war criminals.” But today Nicaragua is free because of them.
Che’s true legacy is simply one of terror and murder. That dreaded midnight knock. Wives and daughters screaming in rage and panic as Che’s goons drag off their dads and husbands – that’s the real Che legacy.
Desperate crowds of weeping daughters and shrieking mothers clubbed with rifle butts outside La Cabana as Che’s firing squads murder their dads and sons inside – that’s the real Che legacy.
Thousands of heroes yelling “Viva Cuba Libre!” and “Viva Christo Rey!” before firing squads of murderous drunks whom they’d have stomped in open battle – that’s the real Che legacy.
Secret graves and crude boxes with bullet-riddled corpses delivered to ashen-faced loved ones – that’s the real Che legacy.
And let’s not forget the craven “Don’t shoot – I’m Che! I’m worth more to you live than dead!” (Then why didn’t he save his last bullet for himself?) Perhaps the defiant yells of the men he murdered actually affected Che the Lionhearted?
By 1960 he started ordering that his victims’ mouths be taped shut. Perhaps there was a trace of human emotion in this icy dolt after all? Genuine bravery and defiance unnerved him.
When the wheels of justice finally turned, Che was revealed as unworthy to carry his victims’ slop buckets. He learned nothing from their bravery. He could only beg for his life. So yes, the craven request when cornered in Bolivia is also the real Che legacy.
So anyway, friends, I hope you’ll excuse all the champagne corks that popped in Cuban-American households back in October 1967 when we got the wonderful news. Yes, our own compatriots serving proudly in the U.S. Special Forces had helped track down the murderous, cowardly and epically stupid little weasel named Che Guevara in Bolivia. Then he got a major dose of his own medicine.
Justice has never been better served.
About the Author: Humberto Fontova holds an M.A. in History from Tulane University. He's the author of the Fidel; Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant.
Copyright 2005-1997 Capitalism Magazine. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
Article website address: http://www.CapMag.com/article.asp?ID=4455
Summary: Che excelled in one thing: mass murder of defenseless men. In anything like a fair fight Che was consistently routed, stomped and humiliated.
[CapMag.com]
Mike Tyson used to end fights with his arms upraised in triumph. Then he got a Che Guevara tattoo. Now he ends fights on the ground, a bloodied mess, battered and bowed, pounded almost beyond recognition. Lennox Lewis didn’t just defeat him, he stomped him. It was a hideous thing to watch, even if you loathe Mike Tyson.
Tyson was jinxed by that Che tattoo. There’s no other explanation. Somebody should have enlightened mighty Mike about the real Che Guevara.
Che was hell on smiting his enemies, all right – thousands of them – but only when they were bound, gagged and blindfolded. I’m afraid the Boxing Federation doesn’t allow that. In anything like a fair fight Che was consistently routed, stomped and humiliated.
Ineptitude in combat defined Che Guevara. In every conflict he was pounded like a gong. When he whimpered to his American-trained captors in Bolivia, “Don’t shoot – I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!” he had a point.
We blew it by not kidnapping him from the Bolivians in time and using him the way Luddendorff used Lenin in WWI. Recall that the Germans shipped Lenin through their lines into Russia “like a sealed bacillus” (in Churchill’s phrase) to infect the Russian army, to demoralize and incapacitate it, thereby shutting down the Eastern front.
It worked like a charm. The mighty Che, airdropped into Vietnam’s Central Highlands with bundles of his “Lessons in Guerrilla War” in October 1968, would have crippled the V.C. worse than 10 Operation Rolling Thunders.
We’d have had the boys home by Christmas. No Tet. No Cambodian invasion. Upon graduating from Che’s Academy of Guerrilla War, the V.C. would have become black-Pajama’d Beavis and Butt-heads. In a month they’d all be bedraggled and lost, starving and bickering, enraging the peasants, blundering into ambush after ambush.
We’d have cleaned house in two months, maybe even without employing the firepower and cojones of Al “To Hell and Back” Gore.
Actually, I dream here. Halfway through the first page of Che’s legendary book, the V.C. would have impaled Che on pungi sticks as a CIA agent – a very stupid one, trying a transparent ruse to get them all killed.
Cuban-American fighters who faced Che at the Bay of Pigs and later in the Congo still laugh. The Bay of Pigs invasion plan included a ruse where a little boat packing a huge fireworks show and tape recording of battle sounds landed in extreme western Cuba as a diversion.
Sure enough, the wily Che immediately recognized this as an Anzio-type “second front.” He snapped on his holster, cocked his beret at just the right angle, scowled for the camera and rushed over with a few thousand troops. He spent the whole battle there. It was the only thing in the invasion that went according to plan.
Later, many of these Cuban-American BOP vets itched to get back into the fight (but with ammo and air cover this time). The CIA obliged and sent them with ex-marine Rip Robertson to the Congo in ‘65. There they linked up with the legendary mercenary “Mad Mike” Hoare and his “Wild Geese.”
Here’s Mike Hoare’s opinion, after watching them in battle, of the men routinely smeared by the Beltway media as cheap Mafiosi, bumblers and cowards, of the outfit the Church Commission and Clinton regime disparaged and emasculated: “These Cuban-CIA men were as tough, dedicated and impetuous a group of soldiers as I’ve ever had the honor of commanding. Their leader [Rip Robertson] was the most extraordinary and dedicated soldier I’ve ever met.”
Saved From Cannibals
Together Mad Mike, Rip and the Cubans made short work of the alternately Chinese-and Soviet-backed “Simbas” of Laurent Kabila, who were murdering, raping and munching (many were cannibals) their way through the defenseless Europeans still left in the recently abandoned Belgian colony.
Forget Frank Church and the Clintonites. Ask the hundreds of Europeans rescued from butchery (literally!) by these men. You’ll hear a different song, believe me. You can read about their exploits in Hoare’s book, “Congo Mercenary,” and in Enrique Ros’ “Cubanos Combatientes” (sadly, available only in Spanish).
Kabila made Idi Amin look like Gandhi. Castro, itching to be rid of this nuisance, sent Che (code-named “Tatu”) and a force of his rebel army “veterans” to help these cannibals. The Congolese reds, unfamiliar with Che’s true record, accepted Tatu gratefully.
The masterful “Tatu’s” first order of business was plotting an attack on a garrison guarding a hydroelectric plant in a place called Front Bendela on the Kimbi River in Eastern Congo. His masterstroke was to be an elaborate ambush of the garrison.
The wily Tatu was stealthily leading his force into position when they heard shots. Whoops! ... Hey?! WHAT THE?! Ambushers became ambushed – and by the same garrison he thought was guarding the plant. Che lost half his men and barely escaped with his life.
Some Ally
His African allies started frowning a little more closely at Tatu’s c.v. and asking a few questions. (But in Swahili, which he didn’t understand.)
Thing was, any teen gang member in East L.A. or south Bronx has 10 times the battle experience and savvy of any of these strutting Fidelista “Comandantes.” Imagine the Germans atop Monte Cassino outnumbering and outgunning the Allies 10 to 1 in early ‘44. Hell, they’d STILL be there. It was a defender’s dream.
Well, the brilliant Tatu and his comandantes had that very set-up in a place called Fizi-Baraka in Eastern Congo for their second clash with the mad dogs of imperialism. Mad Mike and his CIA allies sized the place up and attacked. Within one day the mighty Che’s entire force was scrambling away in panic, throwing away their arms, running and screaming like old ladies with rats running up their legs.
Teen ‘Rebels’
One of the most hilarious and enduring hoaxes of the 20th century was the “war” fought by dauntless Che and the Castro rebels against Batista. But I hear it was a kick – a fun way for adolescents to harass adults, loot, rustle a few cows, and play army on weekends with real guns, maybe even getting off a few shots, usually into the air.
What 17- or 18-year-old male could resist? Petty delinquency became not just altruism here, but downright heroism. How many punks get such a window of glory? Normally these stunts land you in reform school. In Cuba in 1958 it might get your picture in the New York Times:
“Comandante Humberto ‘El Guapo’ Fontova shown here relaxing with a bottle of rum and a grateful senorita after smiting the Fascist hordes of the Tyrant Batista in the ferocious Battle of Santa Clara, described by senior correspondent Herbert Matthews as ‘bloodier than Stalingrad!’ “
Here’s an insider account of one such “battle,” from “Comandante” William Morgan as recounted to Paul Bethel after the glorious victory. Bethel was press attaché in Cuba’s U.S. Embassy in 1959. It’s in Bethel’s superb and meticulously researched book “The Losers”:
“We had a helluva time, Paul! We used a short-wave radio to broadcast the battle. Eloy and I yelled fake battle commands into the mike while a few of the muchachos shot BARs and pistols into the air for the sound effects. We really whooped it up!”
Here’s another insider account from Bethel’s book about a “famous battle.” This one features Che the Lionhearted himself and his invincible “Column” on their Long March through Las Villas province:
“Guevara’s column shuffled right into the U.S. agricultural experimental station in Camaguey. Guevara asked manager Joe McGuire to have a man take a package to Batista’s military commander in the city. The package contained $100,000 with a note. Guevara’s men moved through the province almost within sight of uninterested Batista troops.”
This was part of the famous “Battle of Santa Clara” where Che “Blood ‘n’ Guts” Guevara earned his eternal fame. Skip Dave Barry one Sunday and instead read the New York Times version of this historic military engagement. You’ll laugh louder. Here’s the headline in that “Newspaper of Record” for Jan 4, 1959 (and, like Barry, I swear I’m not making this up):
“One Thousand Killed in 5 days of Fierce Street Fighting! .... Commander Che Guevara appealed to Batista troops for a truce to clear the streets of casualties! ... Guevara turned the tide in this bloody battle and whipped a Batista force of 3,000 men!”
Funnier Than Geraldo
We laugh at Geraldo Rivera’s buffooneries in Afghanistan. Hell, next to NYT reporters, Geraldo looks like Ernie Pyle.
To give them credit, most of Castro’s comandantes knew their Batista war had been a gaudy clown show. After the glorious victory, they were content to run down and execute the few Batista men motivated enough to shoot back (most of these were of humble background), settle into the mansions stolen from Batistianos, and enjoy the rest of their booty.
Che’s pathological power of self-delusion wouldn’t allow him to do this. And he paid the price.
Statistically speaking, a nocturnal stroll through Central Park offers more peril than Castro’s rebels faced from the dreaded army of the beastly Fulgencio Batista. According to Bethel, the U.S. Embassy was a little skeptical about all the battlefield bloodshed and heroics and investigated. They ran down every reliable lead and eyewitness account of what the New York Times called a “bloody civil war with thousands dead in single battles!”
They found that in the countryside, in those two years of “ferocious” battles, the total casualties on BOTH sides actually ran to 182. New Orleans has an annual murder rate DOUBLE that.
Alas, the Viet Cong took its lessons from guerrilla leaders who – get this, Che groupies – actually fought in a guerrilla war. Yes, where people shoot back and everything. Che eventually tried his hand at this novelty and ... well, we saw what happened. He was run out of Africa with his tail between his legs in months. Then in Bolivia he and his merry band of bumblers was betrayed, encircled and decimated in short order.
Dissed by Mao
Real guerrillas had Che’s number. Mao refused to see him when he visited China. He had him cool his heels in a reception room for two hours, then stood him up. He knew. Che the Lionhearted’s image is still ubiquitous on college campuses. But in the wrong places. He belongs in the marketing, PR, advertising – and especially – psychology departments. His lessons and history are fascinating and valuable, but only in light of Sigmund Freud or P.T. Barnum. One born every minute, Mr. Barnum? If only you’d lived to see the Che phenomenon. Actually, 10 are born every second.
Here’s a “guerrilla hero” who in real life never fought in a guerrilla war. When he finally brushed up against one, he was routed.
Here’s a cold-blooded murderer who executed thousands without trial, who claimed that judicial evidence was an “unnecessary bourgeois detail,” who stressed that “revolutionaries must become cold-killing machines motivated by pure hate,” who stayed up till dawn for months at a time signing death warrants for innocent and honorable men, whose office in La Cabana had a window where he could watch the executions – and today his T-shirts adorn people who oppose capital punishment!
‘Greens’ Love This Polluter
Here’s communist Cuba’s first “Minister of Industries,” whose main slogan in 1960 was “Accelerated Industrialization!” Whose dream was converting Cuba (the hemisphere, actually) into a huge bureaucratic-industrial ant farm – and he’s the poster boy for greens and anarchists who scream and rant against industrialization!
Here’s a sniveling little suck-up, teacher’s pet and momma’s boy who was the constant pride of joy of his teacher (Alberto Bayo) and parents (the most obnoxious sort of Limousine Bolsheviks) – and he’s idolized by millionaire delinquents such as
Rage Against the Machine!
Here’s a humorless teetotaler, a plodding paper-pusher, a notorious killjoy and all-around fuddy-duddy – and you see his T-shirt on MTV’s Spring Break revelers!
Perhaps competent psychologists (if any exist) will explain this some day.
Che excelled in one thing: mass murder of defenseless men. He was a Stalinist to the core, a plodding bureaucrat and a calm, cold-blooded – but again, never in actual battle – killer. And there was an actual method to this murderous madness.
Recall that in 1940 Stalin’s commissars rounded up the Polish officer corps, herded them into the Katyn Forest and slaughtered them to a man. Stalin didn’t want any Polish contras messing up his plans. These officers would have led them. So his men dug a huge mass grave and lined up the Polish officers. The Russian pistol barrels went up against the backs of the necks:
POW! ... Thump. Fifteen thousand shots later the deed was done and the dirt replaced. Any contra problem was nipped in the bud.
Che followed suit in Cuba. As a communist flunky in Guatemala he’d seen the Guatemalan officer corps rise up against the communist Arbenz government in ‘54. (And you pinko professors, please stifle the noise about Arbenz as a harmless “social democrat” and “nationalist” victimized by the fiendish United Fruit Co., OK? When ousted, Arbenz sought refuge in Czechoslovakia, not Sweden.)
Beloved Mass Murderer
Anyway, Che didn’t want a repeat in Cuba. Upon entering Havana in January ‘59 he started rounding up all army officers. Then – FUEGO!! – his firing squads got busy. Real busy. By his own count, Che sent 2,500 men to “the wall.”
The “Cuban Katyn,” I call this slaughter. The reds called these executed men “war criminals” and the Beltway press naturally parroted the charge. Nothing new there.
The New York Times’ (Pulitzer Prize-winning, no less) reporter Walter Duranty had parroted Stalin and Beria’s charges against the victims of the 1930s show trials, too. Later, they, along with Chris Dodd, Ted Kennedy and Tip O’Neill, labeled Nicaragua’s contras “war criminals.” But today Nicaragua is free because of them.
Che’s true legacy is simply one of terror and murder. That dreaded midnight knock. Wives and daughters screaming in rage and panic as Che’s goons drag off their dads and husbands – that’s the real Che legacy.
Desperate crowds of weeping daughters and shrieking mothers clubbed with rifle butts outside La Cabana as Che’s firing squads murder their dads and sons inside – that’s the real Che legacy.
Thousands of heroes yelling “Viva Cuba Libre!” and “Viva Christo Rey!” before firing squads of murderous drunks whom they’d have stomped in open battle – that’s the real Che legacy.
Secret graves and crude boxes with bullet-riddled corpses delivered to ashen-faced loved ones – that’s the real Che legacy.
And let’s not forget the craven “Don’t shoot – I’m Che! I’m worth more to you live than dead!” (Then why didn’t he save his last bullet for himself?) Perhaps the defiant yells of the men he murdered actually affected Che the Lionhearted?
By 1960 he started ordering that his victims’ mouths be taped shut. Perhaps there was a trace of human emotion in this icy dolt after all? Genuine bravery and defiance unnerved him.
When the wheels of justice finally turned, Che was revealed as unworthy to carry his victims’ slop buckets. He learned nothing from their bravery. He could only beg for his life. So yes, the craven request when cornered in Bolivia is also the real Che legacy.
So anyway, friends, I hope you’ll excuse all the champagne corks that popped in Cuban-American households back in October 1967 when we got the wonderful news. Yes, our own compatriots serving proudly in the U.S. Special Forces had helped track down the murderous, cowardly and epically stupid little weasel named Che Guevara in Bolivia. Then he got a major dose of his own medicine.
Justice has never been better served.
About the Author: Humberto Fontova holds an M.A. in History from Tulane University. He's the author of the Fidel; Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant.
Copyright 2005-1997 Capitalism Magazine. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.
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Mapplethorpe arrives in more-tolerant Cuba
VANESSA ARRINGTON
Associated Press
HAVANA - Communist Cuba hasn't exactly been tolerant of homosexuality. In the late 1960s, Cubans were sent to labor camps for being gay, with homosexuality derided as an illness of the capitalist past. Even today, Cuban transvestites are sometimes detained and threatened with prison. But a new tolerance over the past decade has led to what many believed they would never see on the island: an exhibit by Robert Mapplethorpe, the controversial American photographer known for his homoerotic images.
The "Sacred and Profane" exhibit, which opened Wednesday at a recently restored gallery in the heart of Old Havana, features 48 photographs spanning Mapplethorpe's career. The exhibit runs through Feb. 15.
"I never thought I would have this experience in Cuba, to see Mapplethorpe's work firsthand," said Ricardo Rodriguez, a 35-year-old photographer. "When people told me this exhibit was coming, I didn't believe them."
Rodriguez said his surprise stemmed from the fact that Mapplethorpe is gay, American and highly controversial even in his own country.
In 1990, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati and its director were charged with obscenity for exhibiting Mapplethorpe's photographs. Both were acquitted, but the case sparked a national debate over using government funds for the arts. Conservative lawmakers and religious fundamentalists attacked the National Endowment for the Arts for subsidizing Mapplethorpe shows.
"It's incredible to see him here," Rodriguez said.
As for the images themselves, most agreed they were more serene than shocking.
"Pure sensuality," Farah Gomez, a 26-year-old art historian, said of the black-and-white images portraying flowers, various female body parts and nude black men.
Parliament Speaker Ricardo Alarcon, one of Cuba's highest ranking officials, agreed. He said Mapplethorpe "achieves the transmission of a purely artistic message and sense."
"Frankly, this really doesn't strike me as a sexual exposition," he told The Associated Press in an interview. "Nudity is found in cultures dating much further back than the United States or Cuba. Classicism is full of the nude human body."
Mild hints of sadomasochism pepper the exposition, which also features images of two men kissing, actress Susan Sarandon holding a child and a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in his bodybuilding days.
Another photograph shows the profiles of an albino man and a black man with a shaved head. The eyes of the albino are open, his gaze drifting off the photograph; the black man's eyes are closed.
Mapplethorpe's own self-portraits express some sadness, showing the deterioration in his health before he died of AIDS at age 42 in 1989.
The exhibit, which doesn't include Mapplethorpe's roughest images, embraces the photographer's internal contradictions, said Philip Larratt-Smith, a New York-based Canadian who curated the show with the help of Cuba-based Pamela Ruiz.
"His work toys with the polarities of masculine and feminine, insider and outsider, personal and political, subjective and objective, black and white ... and of course, sacred and profane," Larratt-Smith said.
The turning point in the island's newfound tolerance toward homosexuality, which came with the limited economic and social liberalization of the mid-1990s, is often linked to the release of the 1994 hit film "Strawberry and Chocolate." The movie explores the friendship between a naive young Communist and a highly educated Cuban homosexual who is in love with his country but at odds with his government.
Several Cuban artists have started tackling some of Mapplethorpe's themes in the last decade, including Rene Pena and Eduardo Hernandez Santos. Pena is among a dozen photographers with an exhibit called "Descartes" opening Friday in a Cuban gallery.
ON THE NET
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc., http://www.mapplethorpe.org
Ed. Note: So it's ok to show a picture of a guy sticking his shlong in another guy's face, but it is not ok to carry a sign saying "Fidel & Raul Son Maricones." Who is this Vanessa chick? A Hanoi Jane Disciple? Hell even Allen Ginsberg was thrown out of Cuba because he called Raul a homo. Cuba more tolerant? Perhaps this Vanessa bitch should watch Néstor Almendros "Mauvaise Conduite" ... Sorry but I want to puke now.
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
Associated Press
HAVANA - Communist Cuba hasn't exactly been tolerant of homosexuality. In the late 1960s, Cubans were sent to labor camps for being gay, with homosexuality derided as an illness of the capitalist past. Even today, Cuban transvestites are sometimes detained and threatened with prison. But a new tolerance over the past decade has led to what many believed they would never see on the island: an exhibit by Robert Mapplethorpe, the controversial American photographer known for his homoerotic images.
The "Sacred and Profane" exhibit, which opened Wednesday at a recently restored gallery in the heart of Old Havana, features 48 photographs spanning Mapplethorpe's career. The exhibit runs through Feb. 15.
"I never thought I would have this experience in Cuba, to see Mapplethorpe's work firsthand," said Ricardo Rodriguez, a 35-year-old photographer. "When people told me this exhibit was coming, I didn't believe them."
Rodriguez said his surprise stemmed from the fact that Mapplethorpe is gay, American and highly controversial even in his own country.
In 1990, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati and its director were charged with obscenity for exhibiting Mapplethorpe's photographs. Both were acquitted, but the case sparked a national debate over using government funds for the arts. Conservative lawmakers and religious fundamentalists attacked the National Endowment for the Arts for subsidizing Mapplethorpe shows.
"It's incredible to see him here," Rodriguez said.
As for the images themselves, most agreed they were more serene than shocking.
"Pure sensuality," Farah Gomez, a 26-year-old art historian, said of the black-and-white images portraying flowers, various female body parts and nude black men.
Parliament Speaker Ricardo Alarcon, one of Cuba's highest ranking officials, agreed. He said Mapplethorpe "achieves the transmission of a purely artistic message and sense."
"Frankly, this really doesn't strike me as a sexual exposition," he told The Associated Press in an interview. "Nudity is found in cultures dating much further back than the United States or Cuba. Classicism is full of the nude human body."
Mild hints of sadomasochism pepper the exposition, which also features images of two men kissing, actress Susan Sarandon holding a child and a young Arnold Schwarzenegger in his bodybuilding days.
Another photograph shows the profiles of an albino man and a black man with a shaved head. The eyes of the albino are open, his gaze drifting off the photograph; the black man's eyes are closed.
Mapplethorpe's own self-portraits express some sadness, showing the deterioration in his health before he died of AIDS at age 42 in 1989.
The exhibit, which doesn't include Mapplethorpe's roughest images, embraces the photographer's internal contradictions, said Philip Larratt-Smith, a New York-based Canadian who curated the show with the help of Cuba-based Pamela Ruiz.
"His work toys with the polarities of masculine and feminine, insider and outsider, personal and political, subjective and objective, black and white ... and of course, sacred and profane," Larratt-Smith said.
The turning point in the island's newfound tolerance toward homosexuality, which came with the limited economic and social liberalization of the mid-1990s, is often linked to the release of the 1994 hit film "Strawberry and Chocolate." The movie explores the friendship between a naive young Communist and a highly educated Cuban homosexual who is in love with his country but at odds with his government.
Several Cuban artists have started tackling some of Mapplethorpe's themes in the last decade, including Rene Pena and Eduardo Hernandez Santos. Pena is among a dozen photographers with an exhibit called "Descartes" opening Friday in a Cuban gallery.
ON THE NET
The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc., http://www.mapplethorpe.org
Ed. Note: So it's ok to show a picture of a guy sticking his shlong in another guy's face, but it is not ok to carry a sign saying "Fidel & Raul Son Maricones." Who is this Vanessa chick? A Hanoi Jane Disciple? Hell even Allen Ginsberg was thrown out of Cuba because he called Raul a homo. Cuba more tolerant? Perhaps this Vanessa bitch should watch Néstor Almendros "Mauvaise Conduite" ... Sorry but I want to puke now.
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Butbutbut the FREE HEALTHCARE!!!!
From babalu blog.com
What a rascal that fidel castro, eh?
Great-great-grandparents' home seized from dissident
HAVANA, December 13 (Juan Carlos Linares Balmaseda / www.cubanet.org) - A rustic one-room house with outdoor plumbing that belonged to the great-great-grandparents of dissident Alejandro Miguel Novoa Saldívar has been seized from him because of his political views.
Although Novoa, 35, had legal title to the house, he did not live there. Instead, he loaned it to Grisell de la Caridad Ruiz and her husband, both dissidents. They have a small child.
Novoa lived in the Alamar district in his mother-in-law's three-room apartment which he shared with her, his wife, son, brother-in-law and his wife, as well as an ailing sister-in-law.
On November 15, the housing director in Regla, Susana Pérez Ferrol issued an order seizing Nova's house. "It has been proved that in the residence occupied by Grisell de la Caridad Ruiz and other members of the nuclear family a negative political behavior is maintained, therefore, socially reproachable," said the order. It said that Novoa was a member of an "anti-revolutionary group" and that he had carried on "traitorous activities" in the house.
Novoa, a member of the opposition Democratic Solidarity party, was detained November 28 and held on suspicion of robbery. While he was being held, police broke down the door of the one-room house, removed all personal effects and turned the building over to another couple.
Novoa has since been fired from his job as a night watchman.
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What a rascal that fidel castro, eh?
Great-great-grandparents' home seized from dissident
HAVANA, December 13 (Juan Carlos Linares Balmaseda / www.cubanet.org) - A rustic one-room house with outdoor plumbing that belonged to the great-great-grandparents of dissident Alejandro Miguel Novoa Saldívar has been seized from him because of his political views.
Although Novoa, 35, had legal title to the house, he did not live there. Instead, he loaned it to Grisell de la Caridad Ruiz and her husband, both dissidents. They have a small child.
Novoa lived in the Alamar district in his mother-in-law's three-room apartment which he shared with her, his wife, son, brother-in-law and his wife, as well as an ailing sister-in-law.
On November 15, the housing director in Regla, Susana Pérez Ferrol issued an order seizing Nova's house. "It has been proved that in the residence occupied by Grisell de la Caridad Ruiz and other members of the nuclear family a negative political behavior is maintained, therefore, socially reproachable," said the order. It said that Novoa was a member of an "anti-revolutionary group" and that he had carried on "traitorous activities" in the house.
Novoa, a member of the opposition Democratic Solidarity party, was detained November 28 and held on suspicion of robbery. While he was being held, police broke down the door of the one-room house, removed all personal effects and turned the building over to another couple.
Novoa has since been fired from his job as a night watchman.
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Perfect example of leftist media bias....
From Babalublog.com
Tit for tat, biatch.
Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association are "very disappointed with the government's decision to deny the participation of a team from Cuba in the World Baseball Classic". The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets (OFAC) denied Cuba a permit to enter the US and play in the World Baseball Classic as it would allow the communist government to make money on US soil and that is a major nono.
Others, like fidel castro's buddy Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y, are also decrying the government's decision:
"Let's leave the politics out of this," said Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., seeking to have Cuba allowed into the tournament. "The World Baseball Classic should not be tainted by our grudge against Cuba's government. Cuba produces some of the finest baseball talent in the world and they deserve to participate."
This has been all over the news:
ABC News
The Miami Herald
The San Francisco Chronicle
The New York Times
Reuters
Just to name a few. A Google News search yields 344 related artciles from the MSM.
This story is quite the media feeding frenzy.
Yet in a different Google News search, this one looking for articles on the Ladies in White and the Sakharov prize, where the castro regime denied their travel to Europe to receive same, we get a grand total of 15 related articles.
And there you have it folks. The world is aflame because the US didnt allow Cuban baseball players to play in a tournament in the US, yet there is no such outrage when it comes to allowing Cuban dissidents to travel abroad to receive a humanitarian prize.
Some people will argue left and right about this issue, stating that the US should allow the baseball players in because we're the US and we're better than that and yadayadayada. For me, it's quite simple:
You want the Cuban baseball players to play in the US? Fine. Then call for the Ladies in White to be allowed to travel abroad also.
It aint about a few baseball games. It's all about propaganda for fidel anyway you look at it. The castro regime wants the positive propaganda of having the national baseball team palying in the tournament, yet refuses to allow the Ladies to receive their award because it knows fully well it would be a public relations nightmare for the regime.
No ticket, no laundry, fidelito.
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
Tit for tat, biatch.
Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association are "very disappointed with the government's decision to deny the participation of a team from Cuba in the World Baseball Classic". The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets (OFAC) denied Cuba a permit to enter the US and play in the World Baseball Classic as it would allow the communist government to make money on US soil and that is a major nono.
Others, like fidel castro's buddy Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y, are also decrying the government's decision:
"Let's leave the politics out of this," said Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., seeking to have Cuba allowed into the tournament. "The World Baseball Classic should not be tainted by our grudge against Cuba's government. Cuba produces some of the finest baseball talent in the world and they deserve to participate."
This has been all over the news:
ABC News
The Miami Herald
The San Francisco Chronicle
The New York Times
Reuters
Just to name a few. A Google News search yields 344 related artciles from the MSM.
This story is quite the media feeding frenzy.
Yet in a different Google News search, this one looking for articles on the Ladies in White and the Sakharov prize, where the castro regime denied their travel to Europe to receive same, we get a grand total of 15 related articles.
And there you have it folks. The world is aflame because the US didnt allow Cuban baseball players to play in a tournament in the US, yet there is no such outrage when it comes to allowing Cuban dissidents to travel abroad to receive a humanitarian prize.
Some people will argue left and right about this issue, stating that the US should allow the baseball players in because we're the US and we're better than that and yadayadayada. For me, it's quite simple:
You want the Cuban baseball players to play in the US? Fine. Then call for the Ladies in White to be allowed to travel abroad also.
It aint about a few baseball games. It's all about propaganda for fidel anyway you look at it. The castro regime wants the positive propaganda of having the national baseball team palying in the tournament, yet refuses to allow the Ladies to receive their award because it knows fully well it would be a public relations nightmare for the regime.
No ticket, no laundry, fidelito.
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
PINKOS ARE ALIVE AND WELL IN AMERICA AND A THREAT
The Lunatic Fringe Goes Mainstream
By John PerazzoFrontPageMagazine.com December 14, 2005
The World Can’t Wait (WCW), an organization that opposes President Bush’s decision to send U.S. troops to Iraq, ran a paid advertisement in The New York Times Monday denouncing the “fascists and religious fanatics” responsible for the ongoing unrest and carnage in the land formerly ruled by the iron fist of Saddam Hussein.
WCW was not talking about bin Laden, Zarqawi, Zawahiri, and al-Sadr, et. al. – the Islamists who have vowed to wage perpetual jihad against the West until the latter is eviscerated and ultimately replaced with an Islamic caliphate. Its condemnation was aimed exclusively at the United States.
Members of the Bush administration in Washington are the “fascists and religious fanatics” who are “setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come.” (Did we mention they were fascist?) Bellowing that the U.S. government “is moving each day closer to a theocracy, where a narrow and hateful brand of Christian fundamentalism will rule,” WCW vows “to send Bush, Cheney and the rest of those fascists packing.” According to WCW, when people examine Bush’s policies, they “think of Hitler – and they are right to do so.” The WCW ad in the Times continued:
YOUR GOVERNMENT, on the basis of outrageous lies, is waging a murderous and utterly illegitimate war in Iraq, with other countries in their sights. YOUR GOVERNMENT is openly torturing people, and justifying it. YOUR GOVERNMENT puts people in jail on the merest suspicion, refusing them lawyers, and either holding them indefinitely or deporting them in the dead of night…YOUR GOVERNMENT suppresses the science that doesn't fit its religious, political and economic agenda, forcing present and future generations to pay a terrible price. YOUR GOVERNMENT is moving to deny women here, and all over the world, the right to birth control and abortion. YOUR GOVERNMENT enforces a culture of greed, bigotry, intolerance and ignorance.
These are just a few of the threats posed by these “homegrown Christian fascists.” (There’s the f-word again.)The WCW ad was the handiwork of C. Clark Kissinger, created by the Maoist radical in June 2005. Kissinger is a longtime leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Maoist vanguard dedicated to promoting civil unrest in the U.S., as evidenced by the organization’s key role in initiating the deadly Los Angeles Riots of 1992. RCP is so violent, it is considered extremist even by other Maoists. In 1987, Kissinger also created the rabidly anti-American group Refuse and Resist, which excoriates the U.S. for its alleged quest to achieve “global dominance and superiority over other people” – a goal with “raising the specter of a police state” and possessing “a distinctly fascist aura.” Moreover, in 2001 Kissinger initiated the Not In Our Name (NION) antiwar project, which condemns “the injustices done by our government” in its pursuit of “endless war”; its greed-driven “transfusions of blood for oil”; its determination to “erode [our] freedoms”; and its eagerness to “invade countries, bomb civilians, kill more children, [and annihilate] families on foreign soil.”
“The problem in this country,” says Kissinger, “[is] the oppressive system of capitalism that exploits people all over the world, that destroys our planet, that oppresses minority people, that sends people to the death chambers in droves.”
RCP protestors called David Horowitz a “Christian fascist” at Bowling Green State University and rushed the stage when he spoke at the Liberty Film Festival in late October.Given his radical, violent history, it is worth noting the names of those who chose to endorse and sign the WCW ad that was his brainchild. Below is a partial list of the more prominent signatories. Many of them are officially identified as WCW supporters on the organization’s website. They know well who Kissinger is, and they are familiar with his loathing of America. By signing the Times ad, these individuals (and organizations) make it clear that they share the founder’s fiery sentiments (as if the text of the ad wasn’t badly enough). Signatories include:
Jane Fonda, infamous for her Vietnam War-era trip to Hanoi, where she lauded the Vietcong and accused American soldiers of acting as “war criminals.” “If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist,” Fonda told Americans in the 1970s. She also co-founded (with her then-husband Tom Hayden) the Indochina Peace Campaign, which worked to cut American aid to the governments of Saigon and Phnom Penh. Her success in this effort helped the North Vietnamese Communists and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge take power and ultimately slaughter 2.5 million Indochinese peasants.
Martin Sheen, current president on “The West Wing” and leftist actor with a long history of condemning American anti-Communist foreign policy – and a long arrest record. During the Cold War, he supported the Soviet-backed Marxist Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
Ward Churchill, the Colorado professor who said the employees of the World Trade Center on 9/11 were “little Eichmanns.” His prescription for healing the world’s ills is to wipe the U.S. “off the planet.” He has fibbed about American genocide “unparalleled in the history of humanity” and may be guilty of plagiarism.
Eve Ensler, the feminist playwright behind “The Vagina Monologues,” is a member of Refuse & Resist. While objecting to the use of the term “evil” in defining America’s Islamist foes, she had no problem using it about Americans.
Cornel West, the Marxist professor who deems the U.S. a “racist patriarchal” nation where “white supremacy” reigns unabated.
Cindy Sheehan, the vapid antiwar activist who has milked her son’s heroic death for all it’s worth. She famously quipped, “This country is not worth dying for.” Sheehan loathes what she calls America’s “morally repugnant system.” She has wondered aloud, “[W]e were not attacked by Iraq. We might not even have been attacked by Osama bin Laden…9/11 was their [the U.S. government’s] Pearl Harbor to get their neo-con agenda through.” Sheehan, who refers to the followers of al-Zarqawi, bin Laden, and Zawahiri as “freedom fighters,” has defended Lynne Stewart, whom she likens to Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. “He did what he knew was right, but wasn’t popular, and that’s what Lynne is doing.”
Rabbi Michael Lerner, the Tikkun magazine founder who ascribes the 9/11 attacks to the worldwide anger aroused by the U.S. for “turn[ing] its back on global agreements to preserve the environment, unilaterally cancel[ing] its treaties to not build a missile defense, accelerat[ing] the processes by which a global economy has made some people in the third world richer but many poorer, show[ing] that it cares nothing for the fate of refugees who have been homeless for decades, and otherwise turn[ing] its back on ethical norms.” Apparently, the jihadists were leftists outraged by an issue of the Utne Reader.
Michael Ratner, the current president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and former president of the National Lawyers Guild, who constantly accuses American soldiers of highly imaginative barbarities. Viewing the Iraq War as immoral and illegal, Ratner believes that the U.S. should “treat the attacks on September 11 as a crime against humanity, establish a UN tribunal, extradite the suspects, or if that fails, capture them with a UN force, and try them.” He also named his hero since boyhood: Cuban Communist murderer Che Guevara.
Harold Pinter, the Nobel Prize laureate who views America as “a truly monstrous force in the world,” and as the moral equivalent of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
Gore Vidal, the author, playwright, and Castro supporter, who says that 9/11 was brought about by America’s “actions all over the world” and that the U.S. military response is nothing more than “an imperial grab for energy resources.”
Ed Asner, the well-known actor, enthusiastic supporter of Fidel Castro, and proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Lauding socialism as a necessary measure to“ curb the excesses of capitalism,” Asner has supported the 9/11 Visibility Project, which promotes the idea that the U.S. government had foreknowledge of the September 11th attacks yet did nothing to prevent them.
Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) maintains close ties to the Democratic Socialists of America, Tom Hayden (its co-founder), Jodie Evans, and radical Congresswoman Barbara Lee, D-CA, whose anti-American hatred is legendary.
Mumia Abu-Jamal, the convicted cop-killer and alleged “political prisoner” who has become an idol of the Left. He is passionately supported by many of the co-signers listed in this article.
Lynne Stewart, the attorney convicted of aiding and abetting the “blind sheikh,” Omar Abdel ahman, who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Stewart violated prison rules to pass on messages from Rahman to his terrorist followers in the Islamic Group.
Howard Zinn, the Marxist professor and author of the tendentious A People’s History of the United States, who believes that socialism and Communism are systems that advance the cause of humanity, and that America is a reactionary, terrorist state.
Jodie Evans, a hardcore Marxist who founded the antiwar group Code Pink for Peace.
National Lawyers Guild, a pro-Communist organization that spearheads the open borders movement and whitewashed the North Korean regime of Kim Jong-il.
Professor Michael Eric Dyson, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, who said that the 9/11 attacks were “predictable to a degree, due to America’s past imperialistic practices and how it is viewed by other countries.”
Aris Anagnos, the billionaire creator of the Humanitarian Law Project, admirer of Fidel Castro, and funder of Marxist causes worldwide.
Professor Bill Ayers, a former leader of the Weather Underground, a left-wing domestic terrorist group responsible for dozens of bombings aimed at destroying the defense and security infrastructures of the U.S., including the Pentagon. “I don’t regret setting bombs,” an unrepentant Ayers has said. “I feel we didn’t do enough.”
Bob Bossie, the Catholic priest and antiwar activist who founded Voices In The Wilderness and condemns the United States for its purportedly endemic “racism, sexism, [and] classism.”
Carl Dix, a co-founder of, and spokesman for, the Revolutionary Communist Party. Dix views the United States as an oppressive, racist nation that is “aiming for nothing less than unchallenged control of the world.” “As long as U.S. imperialism stays in power,” says Dix, “the horrors that come from their system will continue.”
Leonard Weinglass, the former co-chairman of the international committee of the National Lawyers Guild; he has legally represented numerous communists, terrorists, and cop-killers, and has traveled to Cuba as a guest of Fidel Castro.
Professor Armando Navarro, a Castro supporter who spent the 1970s and 1980s teaching and working with the group La Raza Unida, which, like Navarro, contends that the mythical land of “Aztlan” was stolen from Mexico by the United States. A proponent of open borders and increased rights for illegal immigrants, Navarro is a member of Mexico’s Socialist Party.
Alice Walker, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and longtime admirer of Fidel Castro and Mumia Abu Jamal; she believes that America should try to neutralize Osama bin Laden by responding to 9/11 with contrition and “love.”
C. Clark Kissinger’s overheated hate rhetoric cannot be masked by such left-wing euphemisms as “peace,” “civil liberties,” and “women’s rights.” These useful idiots’ condemnation of America has been invariable and unwavering for decades; and the objectives they support require, if they are to be fulfilled, the destruction of American society from the ground up. They have, after all, willingly lent their names to publications crafted by the Revolutionary Communist Party. That anyone would condemn Americans in such vociferous, over-the-top ways in the middle of a war demonstrates the mindset of the Left: Zawahiri is a hero, or at least a “people’s leader”; the real evil is President Bush, David Horowitz, capitalists, churchgoers, and normal Americans who love a country the undersigned thoroughly despise.
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Even Chávez supporters knew the election wasn't fair
It's not lies - even Chávez supporters knew the election wasn't fair
Despite attempts to coerce Venezuelans into voting, the people stayed away, says Jocelyn Henriquez
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian
Last week the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, addressed a gathering of South American heads of state. The delegations from the EU and the Organisation of American States which had observed our December 4 national assembly election were liars, he said - part of a global rightwing conspiracy, allied with the US and intent on destabilising democracy.
While listening to Chávez, I looked again at Richard Gott's article (Democracy under threat, December 6). "A tiny ragbag of opposition groups...," Gott wrote "by their irresponsible electoral abstention... hoped to undermine the credibility of the parliamentary system." Gott suggested that it was almost a "superfluity of democracy" and a certainty of Chávez's victory which explained why only 30% of Venezuelans (the official figure is actually 25%) had bothered to vote.
The EU/OAS thought differently. Their delegations expressed "surprise" at the decision of the opposition parties to withdraw four days before the poll; and they also recognised the actual election results as valid. But the EU preliminary report also concluded that "wide sectors of Venezuelan society do not have trust in the electoral process". This is not surprising.
A key reason the opposition withdrew from the contest was a controversy around an audit of the polling system, witnessed by EU/OAS delegates. During the audit, a file was uncovered in that system's software by opposition-sponsored technicians. The opposition charged that the file compromised the secrecy of the vote - and thus compounded a row that had started weeks before with the revelation, acknowledged by the EU/OAS, that the government held a computerised list of more than 12 million citizens containing personal data and political preferences. This, said the EU delegation, had "generated widespread fears that this information could be used for intimidation". Thousands of Venezuelans have lost their jobs as a consequence of their political stance.
The EU/OAS acknowledged that blacklists, the abuse of government economic and media power, open threats against public employees by pro-Chávez candidates, and military interference in the electoral process, had further polluted the atmosphere. Hours before the polls opened, the state media went into overdrive to encourage - and coerce - Venezuelans into voting. Yet Chávez's government failed miserably. And it wasn't just the middle class who abstained. In the working-class heartlands of Caracas, supposedly loyal to Chávez, just 18% bothered to turn out.
It is particularly galling to find my country caricatured and relocated into Gott's dreamscape, with a heroic Chávez, an opposition of "ragbags" propped up by the US government, and a walk-on part for the citizenry. The demand by Venezuelans for fair elections is rooted in democratic principles. So why is the probity that Europeans expect of their electoral system somehow unnecessary for developing countries? Unfortunately for Gott, the people do have minds of their own. And they have just shown it.
· Jocelyn Henriquez, director of the Centre for Diplomatic and Strategic Analysis in Caracas, is a former Venezuelan ambassador to India and China
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
Despite attempts to coerce Venezuelans into voting, the people stayed away, says Jocelyn Henriquez
Wednesday December 14, 2005
The Guardian
Last week the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, addressed a gathering of South American heads of state. The delegations from the EU and the Organisation of American States which had observed our December 4 national assembly election were liars, he said - part of a global rightwing conspiracy, allied with the US and intent on destabilising democracy.
While listening to Chávez, I looked again at Richard Gott's article (Democracy under threat, December 6). "A tiny ragbag of opposition groups...," Gott wrote "by their irresponsible electoral abstention... hoped to undermine the credibility of the parliamentary system." Gott suggested that it was almost a "superfluity of democracy" and a certainty of Chávez's victory which explained why only 30% of Venezuelans (the official figure is actually 25%) had bothered to vote.
The EU/OAS thought differently. Their delegations expressed "surprise" at the decision of the opposition parties to withdraw four days before the poll; and they also recognised the actual election results as valid. But the EU preliminary report also concluded that "wide sectors of Venezuelan society do not have trust in the electoral process". This is not surprising.
A key reason the opposition withdrew from the contest was a controversy around an audit of the polling system, witnessed by EU/OAS delegates. During the audit, a file was uncovered in that system's software by opposition-sponsored technicians. The opposition charged that the file compromised the secrecy of the vote - and thus compounded a row that had started weeks before with the revelation, acknowledged by the EU/OAS, that the government held a computerised list of more than 12 million citizens containing personal data and political preferences. This, said the EU delegation, had "generated widespread fears that this information could be used for intimidation". Thousands of Venezuelans have lost their jobs as a consequence of their political stance.
The EU/OAS acknowledged that blacklists, the abuse of government economic and media power, open threats against public employees by pro-Chávez candidates, and military interference in the electoral process, had further polluted the atmosphere. Hours before the polls opened, the state media went into overdrive to encourage - and coerce - Venezuelans into voting. Yet Chávez's government failed miserably. And it wasn't just the middle class who abstained. In the working-class heartlands of Caracas, supposedly loyal to Chávez, just 18% bothered to turn out.
It is particularly galling to find my country caricatured and relocated into Gott's dreamscape, with a heroic Chávez, an opposition of "ragbags" propped up by the US government, and a walk-on part for the citizenry. The demand by Venezuelans for fair elections is rooted in democratic principles. So why is the probity that Europeans expect of their electoral system somehow unnecessary for developing countries? Unfortunately for Gott, the people do have minds of their own. And they have just shown it.
· Jocelyn Henriquez, director of the Centre for Diplomatic and Strategic Analysis in Caracas, is a former Venezuelan ambassador to India and China
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
Roast Pork Gives Holiday Latin Flavor
By JEFF HOUCK jhouck@tampatrib.com
Published: Dec 14, 2005
Buena preparations. Christmas Eve, when Noche Buena is observed, is a huge night of food and festivities for Cubans, and he wants everything to be perfect.
But Hurricane Wilma put a damper on his plans. Instead of getting ready to slice through mojito-flavored roast pork at his home in the Miami suburb of Kendall, he has spent a large portion of his time in the past month cutting through Australian pines toppled by the storm's winds. Living without electricity for two weeks didn't help, either.
Most years, he usually takes a head count of invited guests, then multiplies that number by 2 pounds of pork per person. Running behind at the end of November, he did away with invitations and made what he called a "lechonero executive decision" to cook a 150-pound monster of a pig.
"Noche Buena means 'beautiful night,' " he says. "To Cubans, the Christmas Eve celebration is, by far, the biggest and best party of the year."
Prieto has been so excited, he has chronicled the preparations on his blog, Babalú ( www.babalublog.com).
"Oh, yes," he wrote. "I can smell the mojo already."
Ah, yes, the mojo. Prieto's marinade includes lots of naranja agria (sour oranges) as its base. Then come a few limes, healthy amounts of garlic and vino seco (cooking wine), diced yellow onions, cumin, a bit of oregano, crushed cilantro and, of course, sal y pimienta (salt and pepper).
He will make about six gallons of it for a pig that size. But don't bother asking about measurements.
"I've done it so many times I play it by nose," he says by phone from Miami. "I smell and think, 'It needs more of this or more of that.' "
But it doesn't end there.
His menu also will include a rice-and-bean dish (Prieto uses large brown beans for his recipe). Then there is casabe, a thick tortilla made with dried cassava, eaten by people from the Oriente region in eastern Cuba. He finishes with a large tray of turones for desserts.
Steve, an Anglo friend, probably will bring a dish as well.
"Steve made a coconut flan last year that was the hit of the party," he says, laughing.
Then there's all the nonfood preparations. New paint for the house, poinsettias for the garden and Christmas lights. With 50 guests expected, he sets up tents in case of rain.
"And then the wife might say, 'This bathroom looks so last year,' " he says.
It's been this way since he was 18.
"Once you get old enough, the adults pass the torch and say, 'It's time for you to cook the pig.' "
Not everyone has the ability to cook a pig in the ground, though. Sometimes it's easier to just order out.
For those people, Danny Hernandez is happy to serve. His family - starting with his mother and father, Sinarah and Raymond - has operated Pipo's Cafe restaurants in Tampa since 1979.
"I think Latinos' lives revolve around food," he says. "Ask any Latino housewife what the most popular room in the house is, and she'll say the kitchen."
Last year, Hernandez sold the Pipo's on Davis Islands and took time off. In October, he reopened in West Tampa on North Armenia Avenue in the former Mauricio Faedo's Bakery. Hernandez's brother, Raymond Jr., operates Pipo's restaurants on Northdale Boulevard and Waters Avenue.
Pipo's caters all the components of the meal - from pork shanks to salad, yucca, and black beans and rice. A gigantic oven with six rotating levels will roast about 20,000 pounds of pernil (the hind quarters of the pig) for the holiday, Hernandez says.
He enjoys tostones, which are green plantains that have a salty flavor.
"I like the texture," he says. "I slice them thick and cut them down middle, throw them in the fryer, mash them down when almost cooked and then refry them again. A little garlic, olive oil and salt with a little lemon. It's awesome."
Hernandez is asking customers to pick up their Noche Buena orders by 2 p.m. Dec. 24 so he and his staff can enjoy the night's festivities.
"The holidays are when the food shines," he says.
"It's an incredibly festive night full of food. We're blessed to have all of the family around."
ROAST PORK
1 (8-pound) fresh ham (pork leg)
1 head garlic, broken into cloves, peeled and minced
1 tablespoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon bay leaf powder
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup fresh sour orange juice (Seville) or lime juice
1/4 cup dry sherry
2 large onions, thinly sliced
Preparation time: 2 hours 15 minutes
The day before you plan to serve this dish, trim the excess fat off the pork leg; make shallow slits all over the pork using the tip of a knife. Mash the garlic, salt, oregano, cumin, pepper, bay leaf and olive oil to a paste in a mortar; rub this mixture all over the roast, forcing it into the slits.
Combine the sour orange juice, sherry and onions in a small bowl.
Place the roast in a large, heavy plastic bag; add the sour orange juice mixture, making sure that the whole roast gets covered. Refrigerate and marinate the roast in the bag overnight, turning occasionally.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Drain the roast and pat dry, reserving the marinade. Place it in a lightly oiled, nonreactive, heavy roasting pan and cook the roast for 1 hour, turning once or twice to brown it on all sides.
Reduce the heat to 325 degrees. Pour the marinade and onions over the pork; tent the pan with heavy-duty aluminum foil (tear off a piece that is 1 1/2 times the width of your pan; fold it in half and crease the top; open it up, and place over the pan like a tent, tightly crimping edges to seal). Continue roasting the pork, basting from time to time with the pan juices, until almost cooked, about 1 hour. Add a little water or sherry if the pan dries out.
Uncover the roast and continue cooking until the internal temperature reads at least 150 degrees on a meat thermometer, about 30 minutes more. Let the roast stand for 10 minutes before carving.
Makes 10 to 12 servings.
Note: This is traditionally served with black bean soup and white rice, and fried sweet plantains.
Source: "Miami Spice" by Steve Raichlen
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
Published: Dec 14, 2005
Buena preparations. Christmas Eve, when Noche Buena is observed, is a huge night of food and festivities for Cubans, and he wants everything to be perfect.
But Hurricane Wilma put a damper on his plans. Instead of getting ready to slice through mojito-flavored roast pork at his home in the Miami suburb of Kendall, he has spent a large portion of his time in the past month cutting through Australian pines toppled by the storm's winds. Living without electricity for two weeks didn't help, either.
Most years, he usually takes a head count of invited guests, then multiplies that number by 2 pounds of pork per person. Running behind at the end of November, he did away with invitations and made what he called a "lechonero executive decision" to cook a 150-pound monster of a pig.
"Noche Buena means 'beautiful night,' " he says. "To Cubans, the Christmas Eve celebration is, by far, the biggest and best party of the year."
Prieto has been so excited, he has chronicled the preparations on his blog, Babalú ( www.babalublog.com).
"Oh, yes," he wrote. "I can smell the mojo already."
Ah, yes, the mojo. Prieto's marinade includes lots of naranja agria (sour oranges) as its base. Then come a few limes, healthy amounts of garlic and vino seco (cooking wine), diced yellow onions, cumin, a bit of oregano, crushed cilantro and, of course, sal y pimienta (salt and pepper).
He will make about six gallons of it for a pig that size. But don't bother asking about measurements.
"I've done it so many times I play it by nose," he says by phone from Miami. "I smell and think, 'It needs more of this or more of that.' "
But it doesn't end there.
His menu also will include a rice-and-bean dish (Prieto uses large brown beans for his recipe). Then there is casabe, a thick tortilla made with dried cassava, eaten by people from the Oriente region in eastern Cuba. He finishes with a large tray of turones for desserts.
Steve, an Anglo friend, probably will bring a dish as well.
"Steve made a coconut flan last year that was the hit of the party," he says, laughing.
Then there's all the nonfood preparations. New paint for the house, poinsettias for the garden and Christmas lights. With 50 guests expected, he sets up tents in case of rain.
"And then the wife might say, 'This bathroom looks so last year,' " he says.
It's been this way since he was 18.
"Once you get old enough, the adults pass the torch and say, 'It's time for you to cook the pig.' "
Not everyone has the ability to cook a pig in the ground, though. Sometimes it's easier to just order out.
For those people, Danny Hernandez is happy to serve. His family - starting with his mother and father, Sinarah and Raymond - has operated Pipo's Cafe restaurants in Tampa since 1979.
"I think Latinos' lives revolve around food," he says. "Ask any Latino housewife what the most popular room in the house is, and she'll say the kitchen."
Last year, Hernandez sold the Pipo's on Davis Islands and took time off. In October, he reopened in West Tampa on North Armenia Avenue in the former Mauricio Faedo's Bakery. Hernandez's brother, Raymond Jr., operates Pipo's restaurants on Northdale Boulevard and Waters Avenue.
Pipo's caters all the components of the meal - from pork shanks to salad, yucca, and black beans and rice. A gigantic oven with six rotating levels will roast about 20,000 pounds of pernil (the hind quarters of the pig) for the holiday, Hernandez says.
He enjoys tostones, which are green plantains that have a salty flavor.
"I like the texture," he says. "I slice them thick and cut them down middle, throw them in the fryer, mash them down when almost cooked and then refry them again. A little garlic, olive oil and salt with a little lemon. It's awesome."
Hernandez is asking customers to pick up their Noche Buena orders by 2 p.m. Dec. 24 so he and his staff can enjoy the night's festivities.
"The holidays are when the food shines," he says.
"It's an incredibly festive night full of food. We're blessed to have all of the family around."
ROAST PORK
1 (8-pound) fresh ham (pork leg)
1 head garlic, broken into cloves, peeled and minced
1 tablespoon salt
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon fresh ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon bay leaf powder
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup fresh sour orange juice (Seville) or lime juice
1/4 cup dry sherry
2 large onions, thinly sliced
Preparation time: 2 hours 15 minutes
The day before you plan to serve this dish, trim the excess fat off the pork leg; make shallow slits all over the pork using the tip of a knife. Mash the garlic, salt, oregano, cumin, pepper, bay leaf and olive oil to a paste in a mortar; rub this mixture all over the roast, forcing it into the slits.
Combine the sour orange juice, sherry and onions in a small bowl.
Place the roast in a large, heavy plastic bag; add the sour orange juice mixture, making sure that the whole roast gets covered. Refrigerate and marinate the roast in the bag overnight, turning occasionally.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Drain the roast and pat dry, reserving the marinade. Place it in a lightly oiled, nonreactive, heavy roasting pan and cook the roast for 1 hour, turning once or twice to brown it on all sides.
Reduce the heat to 325 degrees. Pour the marinade and onions over the pork; tent the pan with heavy-duty aluminum foil (tear off a piece that is 1 1/2 times the width of your pan; fold it in half and crease the top; open it up, and place over the pan like a tent, tightly crimping edges to seal). Continue roasting the pork, basting from time to time with the pan juices, until almost cooked, about 1 hour. Add a little water or sherry if the pan dries out.
Uncover the roast and continue cooking until the internal temperature reads at least 150 degrees on a meat thermometer, about 30 minutes more. Let the roast stand for 10 minutes before carving.
Makes 10 to 12 servings.
Note: This is traditionally served with black bean soup and white rice, and fried sweet plantains.
Source: "Miami Spice" by Steve Raichlen
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
U.S. government vetoes Cuban team playing in MLB tournament
By KEVIN BAXTER and FRANCES ROBLES
frobles@herald.com
Cuba's hopes of playing in the World Baseball Classic next spring have been dashed ---- the U.S. Department of Treasury denied Major League Baseball the license required for the island's team to participate, the Herald has learned.
The move came after Cuban-American members of congress urged Treasury to veto the license applpication and asked Major League Baseball to drop the Cuban team from the tournament.
''There's always the option of an appeal. Major League Baseball's official position is: we want Cuba to play,'' said Ronaldo Peralta, who runs Major League Baseball's office in the Dominican Republic.
The first-ever World Baseball Classic is an 18-day, four-round international tournament established by Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association. To be held in March, it will feature 16 teams of professional players from North America, Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa and Latin America.
Games will be played in Tokyo, Puerto Rico, Florida, Arizona and California.
But since the participating teams will reap financial benefit from the tournament, the Cuban team needs a special license from Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which enforces the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
Congress members on all sides of the political spectrum have waded into the issue.
New York's Democratic Rep. José Serrano, had urged the Cubans be allowed to play. ''Let's keep politics out of this,'' he said in a statement.
Miami Republican Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart wrote letters urging Major League Baseball to allow Cuban defectors already playing in professional teams to form a Cuban team and play in the tournament.
''I sincerely hope that Major League Baseball now authorizes free Cuban players, who are currently in the major and minor leagues, to represent Cuba in the tournament,'' he said in an email Wednesday.
In a letter last week to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, Díaz Balart wrote: ``It is difficult to believe that major league baseball would have invited a team from apartheid-era South Africa to participate in a tournament.''
And in a letter to Treasury Secretary John Snow, Díaz-Balart said letting Cuba play in the tournament would ``allow a state sponsor of terrorism to use U.S. currency to finance its machinery of oppression.''
MLB representatives earlier this week told the Herald they could not confirm that their bid on Cuba's behalf for the OFAC permit had been denied. Peralta said the news came late Tuesday.
Baseball officials in New York could not be reached for comment Wednesday morning. The Department of Treasury also refused to comment.
Paul Archey, vice president of MLB International and the point man for the World Classic, has said that the next option is replacing Cuba with either Nicaragua or Colombia, with Nicaragua the most likely choice.
But there are some two dozen Cuban defectors who have played in the majors who are ready to take Cuba's place, an idea the league has shunned because the players would need a national baseball federation representing them.
''We're probably the only players in the world who can't play ball for their own nation,'' said Chicago Cubs pitcher Eddy Oropesa. ``We had to desert our countries and leave our families just to play baseball, and now we're in limbo.''
The league, several Cuban players and agents said, has ignored the Cuban defectors' plea to join the classic.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro ''uses entertainment, athletics, academia, all facets of Cuban life as part of his propaganda. That is why so many athletes have defected to the U.S. whenever possible,'' congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said in an email to the Herald Wednesday. ``Everything under Castro is political, even baseball.''
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
frobles@herald.com
Cuba's hopes of playing in the World Baseball Classic next spring have been dashed ---- the U.S. Department of Treasury denied Major League Baseball the license required for the island's team to participate, the Herald has learned.
The move came after Cuban-American members of congress urged Treasury to veto the license applpication and asked Major League Baseball to drop the Cuban team from the tournament.
''There's always the option of an appeal. Major League Baseball's official position is: we want Cuba to play,'' said Ronaldo Peralta, who runs Major League Baseball's office in the Dominican Republic.
The first-ever World Baseball Classic is an 18-day, four-round international tournament established by Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association. To be held in March, it will feature 16 teams of professional players from North America, Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa and Latin America.
Games will be played in Tokyo, Puerto Rico, Florida, Arizona and California.
But since the participating teams will reap financial benefit from the tournament, the Cuban team needs a special license from Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which enforces the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
Congress members on all sides of the political spectrum have waded into the issue.
New York's Democratic Rep. José Serrano, had urged the Cubans be allowed to play. ''Let's keep politics out of this,'' he said in a statement.
Miami Republican Rep. Lincoln Díaz-Balart wrote letters urging Major League Baseball to allow Cuban defectors already playing in professional teams to form a Cuban team and play in the tournament.
''I sincerely hope that Major League Baseball now authorizes free Cuban players, who are currently in the major and minor leagues, to represent Cuba in the tournament,'' he said in an email Wednesday.
In a letter last week to MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, Díaz Balart wrote: ``It is difficult to believe that major league baseball would have invited a team from apartheid-era South Africa to participate in a tournament.''
And in a letter to Treasury Secretary John Snow, Díaz-Balart said letting Cuba play in the tournament would ``allow a state sponsor of terrorism to use U.S. currency to finance its machinery of oppression.''
MLB representatives earlier this week told the Herald they could not confirm that their bid on Cuba's behalf for the OFAC permit had been denied. Peralta said the news came late Tuesday.
Baseball officials in New York could not be reached for comment Wednesday morning. The Department of Treasury also refused to comment.
Paul Archey, vice president of MLB International and the point man for the World Classic, has said that the next option is replacing Cuba with either Nicaragua or Colombia, with Nicaragua the most likely choice.
But there are some two dozen Cuban defectors who have played in the majors who are ready to take Cuba's place, an idea the league has shunned because the players would need a national baseball federation representing them.
''We're probably the only players in the world who can't play ball for their own nation,'' said Chicago Cubs pitcher Eddy Oropesa. ``We had to desert our countries and leave our families just to play baseball, and now we're in limbo.''
The league, several Cuban players and agents said, has ignored the Cuban defectors' plea to join the classic.
Cuban leader Fidel Castro ''uses entertainment, athletics, academia, all facets of Cuban life as part of his propaganda. That is why so many athletes have defected to the U.S. whenever possible,'' congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said in an email to the Herald Wednesday. ``Everything under Castro is political, even baseball.''
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
Anti-Chavez union boss jailed in Venezuela
By Patrick Markey
Caracas, Venezuela - A Venezuelan labour leader who organized a strike against President Hugo Chavez three years ago was sentenced on Tuesday to nearly 16 years in prison after a trial critics said was political persecution.
Carlos Ortega, one of Chavez's fiercest foes, is the first top opposition leader found guilty of rebellion and jailed for the two-month-long strike that battered the economy but failed to topple the left-wing president.
Authorities are probing hundreds of business and political figures for supporting a short-lived 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chavez and triggered months of political turmoil in the world's No 5 oil exporter.
'I'll keep fighting to preserve freedom'
The government says opposition leaders who supported the coup and the subsequent strike must face rebellion charges for wrecking the economy and sabotaging the country's oil industry in an effort to oust Chavez. Opponents of the soldier-turned-president accuse him of cracking down on foes as he edges Venezuela closer to the model of his ally Cuban leader Fidel Castro through control of the courts and other key institutions.
"From prison, I'll keep working, I'll keep fighting to preserve the freedom, democracy and unity of the people," Ortega told Globovision news station by telephone. "I'm no conspirator or coup plotter and I didn't betray my country."
Ortega was captured in March in a Caracas nightclub after he returned to Venezuela from asylum in Costa Rica.
His attorney said the trial violated due process and that Ortega planned to appeal. Ortega was sentenced to 15 years and 11 months on civil rebellion and instigation charges.
"This is judicial persecution, a political trial," Andres Velasquez, of the Cause R opposition party, told local Union Radio after the sentencing.
Ortega, a grey-haired labor union firebrand, fled Venezuela in 2003 saying he feared for his life after officials ordered his arrest for helping spearhead the December 2002 to January 2003 strike.
The shutdown sent Venezuela's oil-reliant economy into a tailspin after managers at state petroleum company PDVSA joined the campaign to topple Chavez, who was first elected in 1998 promising to fight poverty.
Ortega became a familiar sight at the end of 2002 as he appeared on television nightly to urge Venezuelans to join the shutdown. Strike leaders said it was a legitimate protest against an increasingly authoritarian government.
Chavez said the strike was sabotage and fired thousands of PDVSA workers for taking part. Critics say the oil industry never fully recovered.
The failure of the strike allowed Chavez to consolidate his control over Venezuela's energy sector. A year later, he won a recall referendum on his presidency and vowed to consolidate his self-described socialist revolution.
Published on the Web by IOL on 2005-12-13 23:03:04
Caracas, Venezuela - A Venezuelan labour leader who organized a strike against President Hugo Chavez three years ago was sentenced on Tuesday to nearly 16 years in prison after a trial critics said was political persecution.
Carlos Ortega, one of Chavez's fiercest foes, is the first top opposition leader found guilty of rebellion and jailed for the two-month-long strike that battered the economy but failed to topple the left-wing president.
Authorities are probing hundreds of business and political figures for supporting a short-lived 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chavez and triggered months of political turmoil in the world's No 5 oil exporter.
'I'll keep fighting to preserve freedom'
The government says opposition leaders who supported the coup and the subsequent strike must face rebellion charges for wrecking the economy and sabotaging the country's oil industry in an effort to oust Chavez. Opponents of the soldier-turned-president accuse him of cracking down on foes as he edges Venezuela closer to the model of his ally Cuban leader Fidel Castro through control of the courts and other key institutions.
"From prison, I'll keep working, I'll keep fighting to preserve the freedom, democracy and unity of the people," Ortega told Globovision news station by telephone. "I'm no conspirator or coup plotter and I didn't betray my country."
Ortega was captured in March in a Caracas nightclub after he returned to Venezuela from asylum in Costa Rica.
His attorney said the trial violated due process and that Ortega planned to appeal. Ortega was sentenced to 15 years and 11 months on civil rebellion and instigation charges.
"This is judicial persecution, a political trial," Andres Velasquez, of the Cause R opposition party, told local Union Radio after the sentencing.
Ortega, a grey-haired labor union firebrand, fled Venezuela in 2003 saying he feared for his life after officials ordered his arrest for helping spearhead the December 2002 to January 2003 strike.
The shutdown sent Venezuela's oil-reliant economy into a tailspin after managers at state petroleum company PDVSA joined the campaign to topple Chavez, who was first elected in 1998 promising to fight poverty.
Ortega became a familiar sight at the end of 2002 as he appeared on television nightly to urge Venezuelans to join the shutdown. Strike leaders said it was a legitimate protest against an increasingly authoritarian government.
Chavez said the strike was sabotage and fired thousands of PDVSA workers for taking part. Critics say the oil industry never fully recovered.
The failure of the strike allowed Chavez to consolidate his control over Venezuela's energy sector. A year later, he won a recall referendum on his presidency and vowed to consolidate his self-described socialist revolution.
Published on the Web by IOL on 2005-12-13 23:03:04
"Hanoi" Jane Fonda: U.S. Troops Are 'Killing Machines'
Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2005 11:45 p.m. EST
"Hanoi Jane" Fonda is claiming that ever since Vietnam, U.S. troops have been trained to commit atrocities against innocent civilians as a matter of military policy.
"Starting with the Vietnam War we began training soldiers differently," the anti-American actress says in an email to the Washington Post.
Fonda claims she learned of the policy switch in "secret meetings" she had with military psychologists "who were really worried about what was happening to our combat personnel."
One doctor, she insists, told her U.S. troops had been deliberately trained to be "killing machines."
"This began," Fonda maintained, "because the military discovered that in World War II and Korea, [U.S.] soldiers weren't killing enough."
"So they changed training procedures" to teach troops how to commit atrocities.
Still, the anti-war gadfly cautions, it's important not to blame the soldiers themselves for carrying out war crimes.
Recalling the "Winter Soldier" hearings that she and John Kerry staged in 1971, Fonda lamented: "When you put young people into an atrocity-producing situation where enemy and civilian are commingled, where the 'other side' is dehumanized, we cannot be surprised."
Anti-war vets now returning from Iraq, Fonda cautioned, should be listened to instead of being dismissed as "unpatriotic."
"We have not learned the lessons of Vietnam," she declared.
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
"Hanoi Jane" Fonda is claiming that ever since Vietnam, U.S. troops have been trained to commit atrocities against innocent civilians as a matter of military policy.
"Starting with the Vietnam War we began training soldiers differently," the anti-American actress says in an email to the Washington Post.
Fonda claims she learned of the policy switch in "secret meetings" she had with military psychologists "who were really worried about what was happening to our combat personnel."
One doctor, she insists, told her U.S. troops had been deliberately trained to be "killing machines."
"This began," Fonda maintained, "because the military discovered that in World War II and Korea, [U.S.] soldiers weren't killing enough."
"So they changed training procedures" to teach troops how to commit atrocities.
Still, the anti-war gadfly cautions, it's important not to blame the soldiers themselves for carrying out war crimes.
Recalling the "Winter Soldier" hearings that she and John Kerry staged in 1971, Fonda lamented: "When you put young people into an atrocity-producing situation where enemy and civilian are commingled, where the 'other side' is dehumanized, we cannot be surprised."
Anti-war vets now returning from Iraq, Fonda cautioned, should be listened to instead of being dismissed as "unpatriotic."
"We have not learned the lessons of Vietnam," she declared.
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
Castro, the Mafia, the polls
BY CARLOS ALBERTO MONTANER
www.firmaspress.com
U.S. diplomat Robert Blau was met by a nauseating stench as he walked into his residence in Havana. He soon learned that security agents of the Cuban government had entered his home surreptitiously and filled it with excrement.
The authorization for that repugnant attack had come from Felipe Pérez Roque, the bellicose foreign minister, who was determined to punish the American delegation on the island for the oddest type of crime: allowing a handful of opposition democrats to gain access to the Internet for half an hour, once a week.
It wasn't the first time something like that had occurred. One of Blau's colleagues found his mouthwash had been replaced with urine. Others had their car tires slashed. Offenses and assorted types of harassment are committed almost daily. Diplomats are deprived of electricity, telephone or water at the authorities' whim.
To gain control
And those actions are directed not only against the Americans. The Czechs, Spaniards and Poles have been victims of similar acts. The objective is simple: to mortify the diplomats until they are neutralized and recommend to their governments a total complicity with Castro's policies.
It's a technique that the Mafia uses to gain control and that sometimes works. Several European embassies in Cuba have begged their foreign ministries to go along uncomplainingly with Havana's whims, just so the diplomats accredited to the island can live in peace. It's a variation of the Stockholm Syndrome.
The harassment has increased lately, and there's a reason that may explain it: Fidel Castro suspects that some embassies collaborated with a survey that was carried out clandestinely and that demonstrates the unpopularity of his regime and the desire for change harbored by the citizenry.
The poll was conducted between Oct. 8 and Nov. 3. During that period, about 15 public-opinion researchers, who arrived from Spain in the guise of tourists, interviewed 541 persons chosen at random, in almost all provinces, posing questions from a questionnaire drafted with the rigor demanded by the profession.
Along general lines, the poll's results coincide with common sense. While half of the Cubans surveyed believe that ''things are going very badly or badly,'' barely 20 percent maintain that they ''are going very well or well.'' While 50 percent adopt a very critical attitude toward the economic model and point out that the country's principal problems are the shortages, the cost of life, unemployment and the meager supply of food, 25 percent blame the American ''blockade'' for the nation's ills.
Predictably, the intensity of the discrepancy is markedly related to the age of the respondents. More than half of Cubans 18 to 29 desire a profound change that includes tolerance toward the opposition. Among Cubans 60 and older, that rejection of the system is reduced: about 35 percent of the elderly people don't want any kind of change. It's a minority, but a significant one. Elderly people fear change. Because they have no future and no illusions, they're content with what little they get. In the former Eastern bloc, exactly the same happened.
In reality, the failure of the Cuban government in material aspects is scandalous. In almost 50 years of government, Castro has not managed to provide Cubans with even half of their needs for electricity, telephone, potable water, clothing, transportation, food or housing.
Earning $10 a month
In modern history, no other government has failed so grossly for so long. Everything is rationed. Everything is scarce and of poor quality. Society lives amid the worst discomforts and penuries. To buy a simple light bulb, a thermometer or a pair of scissors is an almost unbelievable feat. Every month, the supply of sanitary napkins for women is enough for only 30 percent of the fertile population. Families have to make do with wages equivalent to $10 a month.
It is true that 7 percent of the population have some college education, but there is nothing sadder and more unfair than to see a professional live under miserable conditions, without the slightest hope of prospering, because half a century of practical experience has taught him or her that tomorrow will always be the same as today, or worse -- unless a raft comes to the rescue.
That's the picture Castro is intent on hiding under a thick cloak of strident propaganda. But sometimes the spectacle cannot be concealed. When that happens, the government reacts with incredible vileness: It soils with excrement the houses of foreign witnesses. It's the Mafia's way.
©2005 Firmas Press
www.firmaspress.com
U.S. diplomat Robert Blau was met by a nauseating stench as he walked into his residence in Havana. He soon learned that security agents of the Cuban government had entered his home surreptitiously and filled it with excrement.
The authorization for that repugnant attack had come from Felipe Pérez Roque, the bellicose foreign minister, who was determined to punish the American delegation on the island for the oddest type of crime: allowing a handful of opposition democrats to gain access to the Internet for half an hour, once a week.
It wasn't the first time something like that had occurred. One of Blau's colleagues found his mouthwash had been replaced with urine. Others had their car tires slashed. Offenses and assorted types of harassment are committed almost daily. Diplomats are deprived of electricity, telephone or water at the authorities' whim.
To gain control
And those actions are directed not only against the Americans. The Czechs, Spaniards and Poles have been victims of similar acts. The objective is simple: to mortify the diplomats until they are neutralized and recommend to their governments a total complicity with Castro's policies.
It's a technique that the Mafia uses to gain control and that sometimes works. Several European embassies in Cuba have begged their foreign ministries to go along uncomplainingly with Havana's whims, just so the diplomats accredited to the island can live in peace. It's a variation of the Stockholm Syndrome.
The harassment has increased lately, and there's a reason that may explain it: Fidel Castro suspects that some embassies collaborated with a survey that was carried out clandestinely and that demonstrates the unpopularity of his regime and the desire for change harbored by the citizenry.
The poll was conducted between Oct. 8 and Nov. 3. During that period, about 15 public-opinion researchers, who arrived from Spain in the guise of tourists, interviewed 541 persons chosen at random, in almost all provinces, posing questions from a questionnaire drafted with the rigor demanded by the profession.
Along general lines, the poll's results coincide with common sense. While half of the Cubans surveyed believe that ''things are going very badly or badly,'' barely 20 percent maintain that they ''are going very well or well.'' While 50 percent adopt a very critical attitude toward the economic model and point out that the country's principal problems are the shortages, the cost of life, unemployment and the meager supply of food, 25 percent blame the American ''blockade'' for the nation's ills.
Predictably, the intensity of the discrepancy is markedly related to the age of the respondents. More than half of Cubans 18 to 29 desire a profound change that includes tolerance toward the opposition. Among Cubans 60 and older, that rejection of the system is reduced: about 35 percent of the elderly people don't want any kind of change. It's a minority, but a significant one. Elderly people fear change. Because they have no future and no illusions, they're content with what little they get. In the former Eastern bloc, exactly the same happened.
In reality, the failure of the Cuban government in material aspects is scandalous. In almost 50 years of government, Castro has not managed to provide Cubans with even half of their needs for electricity, telephone, potable water, clothing, transportation, food or housing.
Earning $10 a month
In modern history, no other government has failed so grossly for so long. Everything is rationed. Everything is scarce and of poor quality. Society lives amid the worst discomforts and penuries. To buy a simple light bulb, a thermometer or a pair of scissors is an almost unbelievable feat. Every month, the supply of sanitary napkins for women is enough for only 30 percent of the fertile population. Families have to make do with wages equivalent to $10 a month.
It is true that 7 percent of the population have some college education, but there is nothing sadder and more unfair than to see a professional live under miserable conditions, without the slightest hope of prospering, because half a century of practical experience has taught him or her that tomorrow will always be the same as today, or worse -- unless a raft comes to the rescue.
That's the picture Castro is intent on hiding under a thick cloak of strident propaganda. But sometimes the spectacle cannot be concealed. When that happens, the government reacts with incredible vileness: It soils with excrement the houses of foreign witnesses. It's the Mafia's way.
©2005 Firmas Press
The poet who took on LBJ
By George Will
Dec 13, 2005
I love you so. ... Gone? Who will swear you wouldn't have done good to the country, that fulfillment wouldn't have done good to you.
- Robert Lowell, "For Eugene McCarthy'' (July 1968)
WASHINGTON -- By August 1968, Sen. Eugene McCarthy was gone and his supporters were left to wonder how -- whether -- his fulfillment was connected to doing good to the country. When the Democratic convention nominated another Minnesotan, Hubert Humphrey -- who in 1964 won the vice presidential nomination McCarthy had craved -- McCarthy went to the south of France, then covered the World Series for Life magazine. Had he campaigned for Humphrey, who narrowly lost, there probably would have been no Nixon presidency.
McCarthy died last Saturday in his 90th year, in this city which he sometimes seemed to include in his capacious disdain but which, for a while, he leavened with a distinctive sensibility. In 1980 he endorsed Ronald Reagan, reasoning that Reagan could not be worse than Jimmy Carter. But even in 1968 he had a sometimes ill-disguised disdain for many who flocked to his diffidently unfurled banner.
Disgusted by Vietnam policy, he laconically announced himself "willing" to be an "adequate" president, and went to New Hampshire to unseat his party's president. McCarthy got 41.9 percent of the vote. Johnson got 49.6 percent -- all write-ins; his name was not on the ballot -- and three weeks later withdrew from the race.
McCarthy's 1968 achievement elevated New Hampshire's primary to the status it has subsequently enjoyed. His death occurred the day the Democratic Party gingerly suggested modifying its primary schedule in a way that might diminish New Hampshire's potency.
The sacramental status of Iowa's caucuses and New Hampshire's primary as the first two nominating events testifies to the power of the mere passage of time to sanctify the accidental, even the unreasonable. Now the Democratic Party suggests allowing one or two states to hold caucuses -- not primaries -- between Iowa and New Hampshire.
The case against caucuses is that they take hours, often at night, and thus disproportionately attract the ideologically fervid -- not what the Democratic Party needs. The case against New Hampshire's primary is that its power is disproportionate for a state so unrepresentative of America's demographic complexities. The case for New Hampshire can be put in a name: Gene McCarthy. The small state gives an unknown underdog challenger, practicing retail politics, a fighting chance.
McCarthy's insurgency, the most luminous memory of many aging liberals, would today be impossible -- criminal, actually -- thanks to the recent "reform" most cherished by liberals, the McCain-Feingold campaign regulations. McCarthy's audacious challenge to an incumbent president was utterly dependent on large early contributions from five rich liberals.
Stewart Mott's $210,000 would be more than $1.2 million in today's dollars.
McCain-Feingold codifies two absurdities: large contributions are inherently evil, and political money can be limited without limiting political speech. McCain-Feingold criminalizes the sort of seed money that enabled McCarthy to be heard. Under McCain-Feingold's current limit of $2,100 per contributor, McCarthy's top five contributors combined could have given just $10,500, which in 1968 dollars would have been just $1,834.30. But, then, McCain-Feingold was written by incumbents to protect what they cherish: themselves.
McCarthy first seized national attention with a theatrical act, a gesture of elegant futility. At the 1960 convention, when John Kennedy's nomination was already certain, McCarthy delivered an eloquent philippic urging a third nomination for the man who had been trounced in 1952 and 1956, Adlai Stevenson.
Witty, elegant and problematic, Stevenson was the intelligentsia's darling and a harbinger of liberalism curdled by condescension toward ordinary Americans. When an aide assured Stevenson he had the votes of thinking people, Stevenson quipped: But I need a majority. A majority of the disdained?
McCarthy's acerbic wit sometimes slid into unpleasantness, as when, after Gov. George Romney, the Michigan Republican, said that briefers in Vietnam had ``brainwashed'' him, McCarthy said that surely a light rinse would have sufficed. McCarthy's wit revealed an aptitude for condescension, an aptitude that charmed intellectuals but not Americans condescended to.
A talented poet, McCarthy's mordant "The Tamarack'' surely summarized his experience of being beaten by Robert Kennedy after New Hampshire:
The tamarack tree is the saddest tree of all;
it is the first tree to invade the swamp,
and when it makes the soil dry enough,
the other trees come and kill it.
Never mind his subsequent lackadaisical presidential campaigns. After 1968, he adhered to the fourth of the commandments in his "10 Commandments":
Do not relight a candle
whose flame has drowned
in its own excess of wax.
Dec 13, 2005
I love you so. ... Gone? Who will swear you wouldn't have done good to the country, that fulfillment wouldn't have done good to you.
- Robert Lowell, "For Eugene McCarthy'' (July 1968)
WASHINGTON -- By August 1968, Sen. Eugene McCarthy was gone and his supporters were left to wonder how -- whether -- his fulfillment was connected to doing good to the country. When the Democratic convention nominated another Minnesotan, Hubert Humphrey -- who in 1964 won the vice presidential nomination McCarthy had craved -- McCarthy went to the south of France, then covered the World Series for Life magazine. Had he campaigned for Humphrey, who narrowly lost, there probably would have been no Nixon presidency.
McCarthy died last Saturday in his 90th year, in this city which he sometimes seemed to include in his capacious disdain but which, for a while, he leavened with a distinctive sensibility. In 1980 he endorsed Ronald Reagan, reasoning that Reagan could not be worse than Jimmy Carter. But even in 1968 he had a sometimes ill-disguised disdain for many who flocked to his diffidently unfurled banner.
Disgusted by Vietnam policy, he laconically announced himself "willing" to be an "adequate" president, and went to New Hampshire to unseat his party's president. McCarthy got 41.9 percent of the vote. Johnson got 49.6 percent -- all write-ins; his name was not on the ballot -- and three weeks later withdrew from the race.
McCarthy's 1968 achievement elevated New Hampshire's primary to the status it has subsequently enjoyed. His death occurred the day the Democratic Party gingerly suggested modifying its primary schedule in a way that might diminish New Hampshire's potency.
The sacramental status of Iowa's caucuses and New Hampshire's primary as the first two nominating events testifies to the power of the mere passage of time to sanctify the accidental, even the unreasonable. Now the Democratic Party suggests allowing one or two states to hold caucuses -- not primaries -- between Iowa and New Hampshire.
The case against caucuses is that they take hours, often at night, and thus disproportionately attract the ideologically fervid -- not what the Democratic Party needs. The case against New Hampshire's primary is that its power is disproportionate for a state so unrepresentative of America's demographic complexities. The case for New Hampshire can be put in a name: Gene McCarthy. The small state gives an unknown underdog challenger, practicing retail politics, a fighting chance.
McCarthy's insurgency, the most luminous memory of many aging liberals, would today be impossible -- criminal, actually -- thanks to the recent "reform" most cherished by liberals, the McCain-Feingold campaign regulations. McCarthy's audacious challenge to an incumbent president was utterly dependent on large early contributions from five rich liberals.
Stewart Mott's $210,000 would be more than $1.2 million in today's dollars.
McCain-Feingold codifies two absurdities: large contributions are inherently evil, and political money can be limited without limiting political speech. McCain-Feingold criminalizes the sort of seed money that enabled McCarthy to be heard. Under McCain-Feingold's current limit of $2,100 per contributor, McCarthy's top five contributors combined could have given just $10,500, which in 1968 dollars would have been just $1,834.30. But, then, McCain-Feingold was written by incumbents to protect what they cherish: themselves.
McCarthy first seized national attention with a theatrical act, a gesture of elegant futility. At the 1960 convention, when John Kennedy's nomination was already certain, McCarthy delivered an eloquent philippic urging a third nomination for the man who had been trounced in 1952 and 1956, Adlai Stevenson.
Witty, elegant and problematic, Stevenson was the intelligentsia's darling and a harbinger of liberalism curdled by condescension toward ordinary Americans. When an aide assured Stevenson he had the votes of thinking people, Stevenson quipped: But I need a majority. A majority of the disdained?
McCarthy's acerbic wit sometimes slid into unpleasantness, as when, after Gov. George Romney, the Michigan Republican, said that briefers in Vietnam had ``brainwashed'' him, McCarthy said that surely a light rinse would have sufficed. McCarthy's wit revealed an aptitude for condescension, an aptitude that charmed intellectuals but not Americans condescended to.
A talented poet, McCarthy's mordant "The Tamarack'' surely summarized his experience of being beaten by Robert Kennedy after New Hampshire:
The tamarack tree is the saddest tree of all;
it is the first tree to invade the swamp,
and when it makes the soil dry enough,
the other trees come and kill it.
Never mind his subsequent lackadaisical presidential campaigns. After 1968, he adhered to the fourth of the commandments in his "10 Commandments":
Do not relight a candle
whose flame has drowned
in its own excess of wax.
Castro Turns to Youth to Save Revolution
Castro Mobilizes University Students for 'Revolution Within the Revolution'
By MARC FRANK
Dec. 12, 2005 — - At midnight on Oct. 14, hundreds of former high school dropouts trained as social workers in recent years were summoned to Havana's convention center. They received a crash course in pumping gas and filling out forms with such data as customer license plates, amount, and type of fuel purchased, in cash or credit. Cuban President Fidel Castro walked in at 3 a.m. to tell the young people they were undertaking a crucial mission for the country. At 4 a.m., they boarded buses, and by 5 a.m. had taken control of every gas station in the capital.
It was the opening shot in what promised to be an important chapter in the Caribbean island's turbulent 47 years of revolution.
Castro now says that more than half the gas pumped in the country is being stolen -- valued at $100,000 per day -- and that the entire fuel distribution system is under the control of his "troop" of social workers, just the first skirmish, he warns, in a do-or-die battle against corruption and illegalities in the state-dominated economy.
"Only we can lose the revolution," Castro recently told university students, stating he would mobilize tens of thousands of them to "confront with masses" corruption and certain "bad habits," like pilfering and purchasing stolen goods.
"We have been signing pledges to go into battle wherever Fidel orders and for whatever time is necessary," said Havana University student Maria Perez.
"A revolution within the revolution," the state-run media recently called the campaign.
An Upside-Down Pyramid
When the Soviet Union collapsed, not only did Communist Cuba's economy fall apart, but so did its relatively egalitarian social structure. The bankrupt government established a dual peso/dollar economy and special dollar stores where goods and services unavailable in pesos were sold at a 240 percent markup.
Family remittances, tourists and capitalist investment were all of a sudden welcomed by the traditionally hermetic island and some small private initiative was allowed. Castro's government avoided collapse and restructured its international relations and trade without taking the reforms further.
"The result is what we call the upside-down pyramid. Hotel workers' daily dollar tips work out to more than a brain surgeon's monthly peso wages. Selling snacks from home garners far more than teaching," said economist Omar Everleny.
"When relatives abroad send a Cuban $100 a month there is little reason to work for the equivalent of $10 to $15 as housing, health and education are free and some food and utilities heavily subsidized," another Cuban economist said, asking that his name not be used.
Some Cubans without dollars demand gifts in exchange for state services and licenses they control or steal to make ends meet and purchase gas, cleaning materials, clothing and other consumer goods available only for dollars or on the black market.
"Most Cubans merely struggle to survive and enjoy a few pleasantries people in developed countries take for granted. A few become addicted to easy money and corrupt," the economist said.
Better Days Ahead
Cuba is relatively flush with cash these days thanks to Chinese credits and generously financed Venezuelan oil, as well as billion-dollar payments for medical and other services it provides to the South American country.
Castro has moved quickly to reassert control over the economy and declared the post-Soviet crisis over.
Now Cuba's president has discovered a great deal of the state's new wealth is being squandered due to the worsening of such classic socialist weaknesses as a lack of work incentives, corruption, excessive subsidies, generalized pilfering, a booming black market, and the illegal odd jobs that feed off it.
Castro isn't blinking, declaring: "It would be a terrible mistake to believe capitalist methods can resolve socialism's problems."
The still utopian-speaking revolutionary, at 79, has promised it won't be long before Cubans can once more earn an honest living as the state raises wages, imports cheap Chinese consumer goods, and eliminates across-the-board subsidies and what he brands as a "new rich class" that needs to be repressed if involved in wrongdoing and more heavily regulated and taxed if not.
Attacks on individual initiative and the better-off within anticorruption campaigns are nothing new in Cuba, but the mobilization of university-aged youth to do the job is. That's clearly scared the thousands of bureaucrats who administer and divert the state's resources.
Mission Impossible
Ordinary Cubans, who have come to depend on the black market, are skeptical and torn.
Some fear the campaign will hurt their immediate interests by eliminating subsidies, closing down vital sources of questionable income, and more heavily taxing private initiative and dollars thus driving up prices.
"Since they clamped down on the gas and other illegal activity, there are no more private taxis, and food prices have gone up," said Rose, a retired aviation worker.
"Fidel may be right, but he should wait until he can provide decent public transportation and more food," she said.
At the same time, other Cubans hope that Castro's pledge to do away with what he calls "chaos" by setting the pyramid right-side-up again is not the mission impossible it appears to be, and that their lives will become a little bit better in the near future.
"We have to straighten this situation out now so that people who work or get a pension can live decently," said Communist party militant Eduardo Machin.
Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
By MARC FRANK
Dec. 12, 2005 — - At midnight on Oct. 14, hundreds of former high school dropouts trained as social workers in recent years were summoned to Havana's convention center. They received a crash course in pumping gas and filling out forms with such data as customer license plates, amount, and type of fuel purchased, in cash or credit. Cuban President Fidel Castro walked in at 3 a.m. to tell the young people they were undertaking a crucial mission for the country. At 4 a.m., they boarded buses, and by 5 a.m. had taken control of every gas station in the capital.
It was the opening shot in what promised to be an important chapter in the Caribbean island's turbulent 47 years of revolution.
Castro now says that more than half the gas pumped in the country is being stolen -- valued at $100,000 per day -- and that the entire fuel distribution system is under the control of his "troop" of social workers, just the first skirmish, he warns, in a do-or-die battle against corruption and illegalities in the state-dominated economy.
"Only we can lose the revolution," Castro recently told university students, stating he would mobilize tens of thousands of them to "confront with masses" corruption and certain "bad habits," like pilfering and purchasing stolen goods.
"We have been signing pledges to go into battle wherever Fidel orders and for whatever time is necessary," said Havana University student Maria Perez.
"A revolution within the revolution," the state-run media recently called the campaign.
An Upside-Down Pyramid
When the Soviet Union collapsed, not only did Communist Cuba's economy fall apart, but so did its relatively egalitarian social structure. The bankrupt government established a dual peso/dollar economy and special dollar stores where goods and services unavailable in pesos were sold at a 240 percent markup.
Family remittances, tourists and capitalist investment were all of a sudden welcomed by the traditionally hermetic island and some small private initiative was allowed. Castro's government avoided collapse and restructured its international relations and trade without taking the reforms further.
"The result is what we call the upside-down pyramid. Hotel workers' daily dollar tips work out to more than a brain surgeon's monthly peso wages. Selling snacks from home garners far more than teaching," said economist Omar Everleny.
"When relatives abroad send a Cuban $100 a month there is little reason to work for the equivalent of $10 to $15 as housing, health and education are free and some food and utilities heavily subsidized," another Cuban economist said, asking that his name not be used.
Some Cubans without dollars demand gifts in exchange for state services and licenses they control or steal to make ends meet and purchase gas, cleaning materials, clothing and other consumer goods available only for dollars or on the black market.
"Most Cubans merely struggle to survive and enjoy a few pleasantries people in developed countries take for granted. A few become addicted to easy money and corrupt," the economist said.
Better Days Ahead
Cuba is relatively flush with cash these days thanks to Chinese credits and generously financed Venezuelan oil, as well as billion-dollar payments for medical and other services it provides to the South American country.
Castro has moved quickly to reassert control over the economy and declared the post-Soviet crisis over.
Now Cuba's president has discovered a great deal of the state's new wealth is being squandered due to the worsening of such classic socialist weaknesses as a lack of work incentives, corruption, excessive subsidies, generalized pilfering, a booming black market, and the illegal odd jobs that feed off it.
Castro isn't blinking, declaring: "It would be a terrible mistake to believe capitalist methods can resolve socialism's problems."
The still utopian-speaking revolutionary, at 79, has promised it won't be long before Cubans can once more earn an honest living as the state raises wages, imports cheap Chinese consumer goods, and eliminates across-the-board subsidies and what he brands as a "new rich class" that needs to be repressed if involved in wrongdoing and more heavily regulated and taxed if not.
Attacks on individual initiative and the better-off within anticorruption campaigns are nothing new in Cuba, but the mobilization of university-aged youth to do the job is. That's clearly scared the thousands of bureaucrats who administer and divert the state's resources.
Mission Impossible
Ordinary Cubans, who have come to depend on the black market, are skeptical and torn.
Some fear the campaign will hurt their immediate interests by eliminating subsidies, closing down vital sources of questionable income, and more heavily taxing private initiative and dollars thus driving up prices.
"Since they clamped down on the gas and other illegal activity, there are no more private taxis, and food prices have gone up," said Rose, a retired aviation worker.
"Fidel may be right, but he should wait until he can provide decent public transportation and more food," she said.
At the same time, other Cubans hope that Castro's pledge to do away with what he calls "chaos" by setting the pyramid right-side-up again is not the mission impossible it appears to be, and that their lives will become a little bit better in the near future.
"We have to straighten this situation out now so that people who work or get a pension can live decently," said Communist party militant Eduardo Machin.
Copyright © 2005 ABC News Internet Ventures
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
China, Cuba, Eritrea, Ethiopia the top jailers of journalists
By AMY WESTFELDT
Associated Press Writer
December 13, 2005, 11:58 AM EST
NEW YORK -- China, Cuba, Eritrea and Ethiopia put the most journalists in jail this year, together accounting for two-thirds of the 125 editors, writers and photojournalists imprisoned around the world, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.
The four countries combined imprison two-thirds of the 125 editors, writers and photographers in jail worldwide, the committee said.
The United States, which is detaining four journalists in Iraq and one in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rose to sixth among countries jailing journalists. Twenty-four countries in all have journalists in jail, according to the Dec. 1 tally, the committee said.
Subversion, divulging state secrets and acting against the interests of the state were the most common charges lodged against the media worldwide, the organization said. The number of jailed journalists around the world rose from 122 in 2004.
"We're disturbed to see the number of jailed journalists rise, and we're particularly troubled that the list of worst abusers now includes Ethiopia and the United States," Ann Cooper, the committee's executive director, said in a statement. "Journalists covering conflict, unrest, corruption and human rights abuses face a growing risk of incarceration in many countries, where governments seek to disguise their repressive acts as legitimate legal processes."
China jailed more journalists than any other country for the seventh straight year, with 32, the committee said. Nearly half the cases involve online journalists.
Cuba ranked second with 24 reporters in jail, many charged in a 2003 crackdown on independent media and dissidents, the committee said. Eritrea has 15 journalists in prison, many for reasons the government has not explained, the committee said.
Ethiopia has jailed 13 journalists, all arrested amid civil unrest in November, the committee said. Ethiopian police raided newspaper offices, confiscated computers and other materials and put out a "wanted" list of editors, writers and dissidents at that time, the committee said.
The journalists longest held in jail were Chen Renjie and Lin Youping, held since July 1983 for publishing a pamphlet on freedom, the committee said.
On the Net:
Committee to Protect Journalists list: http://www.cpj.org/attacks05/pages05/imprison_05.html
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
Associated Press Writer
December 13, 2005, 11:58 AM EST
NEW YORK -- China, Cuba, Eritrea and Ethiopia put the most journalists in jail this year, together accounting for two-thirds of the 125 editors, writers and photojournalists imprisoned around the world, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Tuesday.
The four countries combined imprison two-thirds of the 125 editors, writers and photographers in jail worldwide, the committee said.
The United States, which is detaining four journalists in Iraq and one in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, rose to sixth among countries jailing journalists. Twenty-four countries in all have journalists in jail, according to the Dec. 1 tally, the committee said.
Subversion, divulging state secrets and acting against the interests of the state were the most common charges lodged against the media worldwide, the organization said. The number of jailed journalists around the world rose from 122 in 2004.
"We're disturbed to see the number of jailed journalists rise, and we're particularly troubled that the list of worst abusers now includes Ethiopia and the United States," Ann Cooper, the committee's executive director, said in a statement. "Journalists covering conflict, unrest, corruption and human rights abuses face a growing risk of incarceration in many countries, where governments seek to disguise their repressive acts as legitimate legal processes."
China jailed more journalists than any other country for the seventh straight year, with 32, the committee said. Nearly half the cases involve online journalists.
Cuba ranked second with 24 reporters in jail, many charged in a 2003 crackdown on independent media and dissidents, the committee said. Eritrea has 15 journalists in prison, many for reasons the government has not explained, the committee said.
Ethiopia has jailed 13 journalists, all arrested amid civil unrest in November, the committee said. Ethiopian police raided newspaper offices, confiscated computers and other materials and put out a "wanted" list of editors, writers and dissidents at that time, the committee said.
The journalists longest held in jail were Chen Renjie and Lin Youping, held since July 1983 for publishing a pamphlet on freedom, the committee said.
On the Net:
Committee to Protect Journalists list: http://www.cpj.org/attacks05/pages05/imprison_05.html
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
Even the Liberal Washington Post is going after chavez
Mr. Chavez's Rubber Stamp
Monday, December 12, 2005; A24
VENEZUELA'S democratic system, which has been crumbling under pressure from President Hugo Chavez, has taken another lurch toward collapse. In elections for the National Assembly held Dec. 4, at least 75 percent of voters chose not to go to the polls, despite threats from government officials that state workers would lose their jobs if they did not. A fifth of those who did turn out cast blank ballots rather than support pro-government candidates; opposition parties withdrew from the election days before it occurred. The result is that Mr. Chavez's supporters, with a mandate from 20 percent of the electorate, will occupy all 167 seats in the assembly. The legislature, like the court system before it, will be converted from a check on Mr. Chavez's power to a rubber stamp. Its top priority, National Assembly President Nicolas Maduro said after the vote, would be "to legislate so that Chavez rules not until 2021, but until 2030."
Responsibility for this grievous development lies in part with the Venezuelan opposition, which according to polls stood no chance of defeating Mr. Chavez's party when it chose to boycott the election. Opposition leaders pointed to flaws in the voting system that might have prevented secret balloting, but this seemed a pretext after election authorities agreed to make changes. By withdrawing, the opposition made it impossible to challenge Mr. Chavez through a democratic legislature and renewed questions about whether its commitment to democracy is any greater than that of the president. Like Mr. Chavez, some opposition leaders once backed a military coup. Its disastrous failure ought to have established the principle that only a movement clearly committed to democracy can hope to defeat Mr. Chavez's plans for a "21st-century socialist revolution."
It is those plans that have been the main cause of Venezuela's turmoil and the disintegration of a flawed but free political system. Mr. Chavez's supporters control the national election authority, and missions from both the European Union and the Organization of American States found that much of the public distrusts the electoral system. Mr. Chavez has cowed the privately owned opposition press with a draconian anti-slander law and charged the leaders of the independent election-monitoring group Sumate with treason for accepting $31,000 in funding from the National Endowment for Democracy. Other criminal cases have been brought against prominent opposition politicians, trade unionists and human rights activists.
The OAS mission suggested that Venezuelan democracy might still be rescued through "a frank, inclusive and good-faith dialogue" between Mr. Chavez and the opposition that, among other things, would be aimed at "strengthening of the principle of separation, independence and balance of powers -- a basic principle of all presidential democracies." For now, such a democratic balance is utterly absent in Venezuela; and judging from Mr. Chavez's conduct, that is exactly what he wants.
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
Monday, December 12, 2005; A24
VENEZUELA'S democratic system, which has been crumbling under pressure from President Hugo Chavez, has taken another lurch toward collapse. In elections for the National Assembly held Dec. 4, at least 75 percent of voters chose not to go to the polls, despite threats from government officials that state workers would lose their jobs if they did not. A fifth of those who did turn out cast blank ballots rather than support pro-government candidates; opposition parties withdrew from the election days before it occurred. The result is that Mr. Chavez's supporters, with a mandate from 20 percent of the electorate, will occupy all 167 seats in the assembly. The legislature, like the court system before it, will be converted from a check on Mr. Chavez's power to a rubber stamp. Its top priority, National Assembly President Nicolas Maduro said after the vote, would be "to legislate so that Chavez rules not until 2021, but until 2030."
Responsibility for this grievous development lies in part with the Venezuelan opposition, which according to polls stood no chance of defeating Mr. Chavez's party when it chose to boycott the election. Opposition leaders pointed to flaws in the voting system that might have prevented secret balloting, but this seemed a pretext after election authorities agreed to make changes. By withdrawing, the opposition made it impossible to challenge Mr. Chavez through a democratic legislature and renewed questions about whether its commitment to democracy is any greater than that of the president. Like Mr. Chavez, some opposition leaders once backed a military coup. Its disastrous failure ought to have established the principle that only a movement clearly committed to democracy can hope to defeat Mr. Chavez's plans for a "21st-century socialist revolution."
It is those plans that have been the main cause of Venezuela's turmoil and the disintegration of a flawed but free political system. Mr. Chavez's supporters control the national election authority, and missions from both the European Union and the Organization of American States found that much of the public distrusts the electoral system. Mr. Chavez has cowed the privately owned opposition press with a draconian anti-slander law and charged the leaders of the independent election-monitoring group Sumate with treason for accepting $31,000 in funding from the National Endowment for Democracy. Other criminal cases have been brought against prominent opposition politicians, trade unionists and human rights activists.
The OAS mission suggested that Venezuelan democracy might still be rescued through "a frank, inclusive and good-faith dialogue" between Mr. Chavez and the opposition that, among other things, would be aimed at "strengthening of the principle of separation, independence and balance of powers -- a basic principle of all presidential democracies." For now, such a democratic balance is utterly absent in Venezuela; and judging from Mr. Chavez's conduct, that is exactly what he wants.
Sent by Sr.Cohiba
Monday, December 12, 2005
Marxist pilgrims from China can't wait to get to the capitalist shops
By Kate Connolly in Trier
Filed: 08/12/2005
Thousands of Chinese tourists are exploiting their new freedom to make pilgrimages to the German birthplace of Karl Marx - and squeeze in some shopping as well.
This year more than 30,000 people from across China will have visited Trier, near the border with Luxembourg - an invasion jokingly attributed to the "Marx Factor".
The top priority for the travellers is to be snapped on their digital cameras in front of the baroque villa where the founding father of communism was born in 1818.
They buy plaster busts of Marx and Marx wine from the vineyard bought by his father, Heinrich, as an investment to support him in his old age. However, pralines imprinted with Marx's bearded face do not attract many buyers.
"They say they consider it too disrespectful to eat him," a museum guide said.
The Chinese, who have been allowed to travel to Germany freely only in the past two years, are now the second biggest group of visitors after the Dutch.
After a visit to the museum, most go shopping, spending an average of £135 a day on items such as non-stick saucepans, steel cutlery, chocolate, designer suits and Swiss army knives.
Trier, which is Germany's oldest city and was the capital of the western part of the Roman empire, has made great efforts to accommodate its new guests.
But Beatrix Bouvier, of the Friedrich Ebert foundation, which manages the museum, said: "There is widespread, albeit unspoken, frustration about the fact that they tend to bring their own food.
"Many of those from the countryside who are used to stand-up latrines have no idea how to use our lavatories. Some hotels have despaired of the results but they dare not turn away the custom."
The museum curators say the Chinese visitors are often taken aback by the warts-and-all portrayal of Marx. Last week a group of Beijing aerospace engineers giggled on being told that he had a mistress and an illegitimate child called Freddy.
"I did not know that," said Liu Liyong, 33. "But it makes him seem more human and fallible and I like that. Like the fact that he was born in this posh house, despite being a representative of the poor worker."
Sun Ting Ting, a tour guide, was saddened to learn from one display that two of Marx's daughters committed suicide.
"To think they were disillusioned because their father's dreams did not work out the way they had hoped," she mused. "And he really wasn't liked in his homeland, was he? But then neither was Jesus."
Outside the museum Miss Ting Ting waited impatiently for her group of visitors. "If you don't hurry, the shops will be closed," she said. She added: "I think Marx might have found it difficult to understand this but shopping is our new hobby."
kate.connolly@telegraph.co.uk
Filed: 08/12/2005
Thousands of Chinese tourists are exploiting their new freedom to make pilgrimages to the German birthplace of Karl Marx - and squeeze in some shopping as well.
This year more than 30,000 people from across China will have visited Trier, near the border with Luxembourg - an invasion jokingly attributed to the "Marx Factor".
The top priority for the travellers is to be snapped on their digital cameras in front of the baroque villa where the founding father of communism was born in 1818.
They buy plaster busts of Marx and Marx wine from the vineyard bought by his father, Heinrich, as an investment to support him in his old age. However, pralines imprinted with Marx's bearded face do not attract many buyers.
"They say they consider it too disrespectful to eat him," a museum guide said.
The Chinese, who have been allowed to travel to Germany freely only in the past two years, are now the second biggest group of visitors after the Dutch.
After a visit to the museum, most go shopping, spending an average of £135 a day on items such as non-stick saucepans, steel cutlery, chocolate, designer suits and Swiss army knives.
Trier, which is Germany's oldest city and was the capital of the western part of the Roman empire, has made great efforts to accommodate its new guests.
But Beatrix Bouvier, of the Friedrich Ebert foundation, which manages the museum, said: "There is widespread, albeit unspoken, frustration about the fact that they tend to bring their own food.
"Many of those from the countryside who are used to stand-up latrines have no idea how to use our lavatories. Some hotels have despaired of the results but they dare not turn away the custom."
The museum curators say the Chinese visitors are often taken aback by the warts-and-all portrayal of Marx. Last week a group of Beijing aerospace engineers giggled on being told that he had a mistress and an illegitimate child called Freddy.
"I did not know that," said Liu Liyong, 33. "But it makes him seem more human and fallible and I like that. Like the fact that he was born in this posh house, despite being a representative of the poor worker."
Sun Ting Ting, a tour guide, was saddened to learn from one display that two of Marx's daughters committed suicide.
"To think they were disillusioned because their father's dreams did not work out the way they had hoped," she mused. "And he really wasn't liked in his homeland, was he? But then neither was Jesus."
Outside the museum Miss Ting Ting waited impatiently for her group of visitors. "If you don't hurry, the shops will be closed," she said. She added: "I think Marx might have found it difficult to understand this but shopping is our new hobby."
kate.connolly@telegraph.co.uk
'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Hypocrisy
Dec 11, 2005
by George Will
WASHINGTON -- The entitlement mentality produces petulant insistence on an ever-higher ratio of rights to responsibilities. Unsurprisingly, this mentality flourishes on campuses, where tenured faculty and privileged students live entitled lives supported by the taxes and generosity of others. The mentality was on vivid display in the Supreme Court last Tuesday when an association of 36 law schools and faculties asserted an audacious entitlement.
Many schools bar military recruiters because the schools oppose the ``don't ask, don't tell'' policy that prevents openly gay people from serving in the military. The schools asked the court to declare unconstitutional, as a violation of the First Amendment protections of freedom of speech and association, the law that denies federal funds to any school that denies military recruiters the same access to students that any other employer enjoys.
Federal assistance to institutions of higher education was about $35 billion last year, so the schools flinch from the price tag on their gay rights principles, which in this case dovetail neatly with their anti-military prejudices. The schools cite the principle that government cannot condition receipt of a government benefit on the loss of a constitutional right. The government replies that Congress frequently makes the receipt of federal funds conditional on the recipient doing certain things to further a legitimate government interest, such as recruiting.
And the government denies that the law on recruiters' access abridges schools' rights of speech and association. The schools' lawyer argued that it does because the ``forced hosting'' of recruiters amounts to a ``crisis of conscience'' over compelled and subsidized speech. The schools say they are compelled to communicate a message of support for the military's policy regarding gays, and to subsidize the military's message of disapproval of gays. But last week Chief Justice John Roberts said that ``nobody'' infers an academic institution's support for the views and policies of every employer allowed to recruit on campus. And as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted, schools are free to communicate their moral and political stances constantly. Certainly schools are not bashful about doing so. But the court has held that ``students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the (school) chooses to communicate.''
During oral arguments last week, the schools had many occasions to wince. Regarding the schools' theory that any conduct can be imbued with ``communicative force,'' Justice Antonin Scalia wondered whether the schools might also justify banning military recruiters during a war the faculty disapproved, because allowing the recruiters would be tantamount to the schools endorsing the war.
Or because the professors object to the military barring women from combat, or using land mines. The possibilities are as numerous as the professors' reasons for interposing their moral sensibilities between Congress and its constitutional power to ``raise and support armies.''
Furthermore, more than four other justices probably share Scalia's incredulity concerning this implication of the schools' argument: When an individual or institution gives as a reason for violating the law the fact that he or it wants to send a message, the violation acquires First Amendment protection. By such reasoning, a school barring blacks from campus could say its conduct is infused with an expressive purpose, hence shielded by the First Amendment.
The schools' selective sensitivity about that amendment is amusing, given that many universities use speech codes to enforce ``progressive'' sensibilities and compel students to pay fees that finance speakers and other expressive activities offensive to many of those compelled. Schools eager to ban military recruiters from a few hours of access to students who want to meet them have faculties that expose students to a one-sided bombardment of political views. Furthermore, universities are nurseries of ``progressives'' who support campaign regulations by which government supervises the quantity, content and timing of political speech, and who favor public financing of campaigns, which requires millions of taxpayers to fund political advocacy they oppose.
A striking alteration of America's political landscape since 1960 has been the marginalization -- actually, the self-marginalization -- of the professoriate. An inhospitable campus climate has prompted the growth of public policy think tanks and publications that sustain a conservative intelligentsia that helps elect and staff conservative administrations. And faculties have adopted increasingly adversarial stances toward an increasingly conservative public and its institutions.
Today's schools bristle with moral principles that they urge upon the -- so they think -- benighted society beyond their gates. But as Roberts blandly reminded the schools regarding their desire to bar military recruiters: ``You are perfectly free to do that, if you don't take the money.''
George F. Will is a 1976 Pulitzer Prize winner, whose columns are syndicated in more than 400 magazines and newspapers worldwide.
Copright © 2005 Washington Post Writers Group
by George Will
WASHINGTON -- The entitlement mentality produces petulant insistence on an ever-higher ratio of rights to responsibilities. Unsurprisingly, this mentality flourishes on campuses, where tenured faculty and privileged students live entitled lives supported by the taxes and generosity of others. The mentality was on vivid display in the Supreme Court last Tuesday when an association of 36 law schools and faculties asserted an audacious entitlement.
Many schools bar military recruiters because the schools oppose the ``don't ask, don't tell'' policy that prevents openly gay people from serving in the military. The schools asked the court to declare unconstitutional, as a violation of the First Amendment protections of freedom of speech and association, the law that denies federal funds to any school that denies military recruiters the same access to students that any other employer enjoys.
Federal assistance to institutions of higher education was about $35 billion last year, so the schools flinch from the price tag on their gay rights principles, which in this case dovetail neatly with their anti-military prejudices. The schools cite the principle that government cannot condition receipt of a government benefit on the loss of a constitutional right. The government replies that Congress frequently makes the receipt of federal funds conditional on the recipient doing certain things to further a legitimate government interest, such as recruiting.
And the government denies that the law on recruiters' access abridges schools' rights of speech and association. The schools' lawyer argued that it does because the ``forced hosting'' of recruiters amounts to a ``crisis of conscience'' over compelled and subsidized speech. The schools say they are compelled to communicate a message of support for the military's policy regarding gays, and to subsidize the military's message of disapproval of gays. But last week Chief Justice John Roberts said that ``nobody'' infers an academic institution's support for the views and policies of every employer allowed to recruit on campus. And as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted, schools are free to communicate their moral and political stances constantly. Certainly schools are not bashful about doing so. But the court has held that ``students may not be regarded as closed-circuit recipients of only that which the (school) chooses to communicate.''
During oral arguments last week, the schools had many occasions to wince. Regarding the schools' theory that any conduct can be imbued with ``communicative force,'' Justice Antonin Scalia wondered whether the schools might also justify banning military recruiters during a war the faculty disapproved, because allowing the recruiters would be tantamount to the schools endorsing the war.
Or because the professors object to the military barring women from combat, or using land mines. The possibilities are as numerous as the professors' reasons for interposing their moral sensibilities between Congress and its constitutional power to ``raise and support armies.''
Furthermore, more than four other justices probably share Scalia's incredulity concerning this implication of the schools' argument: When an individual or institution gives as a reason for violating the law the fact that he or it wants to send a message, the violation acquires First Amendment protection. By such reasoning, a school barring blacks from campus could say its conduct is infused with an expressive purpose, hence shielded by the First Amendment.
The schools' selective sensitivity about that amendment is amusing, given that many universities use speech codes to enforce ``progressive'' sensibilities and compel students to pay fees that finance speakers and other expressive activities offensive to many of those compelled. Schools eager to ban military recruiters from a few hours of access to students who want to meet them have faculties that expose students to a one-sided bombardment of political views. Furthermore, universities are nurseries of ``progressives'' who support campaign regulations by which government supervises the quantity, content and timing of political speech, and who favor public financing of campaigns, which requires millions of taxpayers to fund political advocacy they oppose.
A striking alteration of America's political landscape since 1960 has been the marginalization -- actually, the self-marginalization -- of the professoriate. An inhospitable campus climate has prompted the growth of public policy think tanks and publications that sustain a conservative intelligentsia that helps elect and staff conservative administrations. And faculties have adopted increasingly adversarial stances toward an increasingly conservative public and its institutions.
Today's schools bristle with moral principles that they urge upon the -- so they think -- benighted society beyond their gates. But as Roberts blandly reminded the schools regarding their desire to bar military recruiters: ``You are perfectly free to do that, if you don't take the money.''
George F. Will is a 1976 Pulitzer Prize winner, whose columns are syndicated in more than 400 magazines and newspapers worldwide.
Copright © 2005 Washington Post Writers Group
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