MSM Ignores Death of Longest Suffering Female Political Prisoner in Modern History of Western Hemisphere

Humberto Fontova Sep 23, 2023 @ Townhall.com

“Many of you witnessed terrible crimes committed in service of a depraved ideology," continued Trump's remarks, announcing his Cuba policy. "You saw the dreams of generations held captive, you saw what communism has done.  You knew faces that disappeared, innocents locked in prisons, and believers persecuted for preaching the word of God.  You watched the Women in White bruised, bloodied, and captured on their way from Mass.  You have heard the chilling cries of loved ones, or the cracks of firing squads piercing through the ocean breeze.  Not a good sound.

“Among the courageous Cuban dissidents with us onstage here today are Cary Roque, who was imprisoned by the Castro regime….She looks awfully good," he added. 

“Mr. President, on behalf of the Cuban people, the people thank you, and we appreciate your love,” Roque responded. 

“The Castro dictatorship may have taken 16 years of her life in a gulag, but they were never able to take her dignity," wrote Alberto de la Cruz at Babalu Blog. "The indomitable Cary Roque was an inspiration for the Cuban exile community and all women. She passed away in Miami on Wednesday (9/20) at the age of 82, but she leaves behind an incredible legacy of valor and perseverance that we would all do well to follow."

Not only was Caridad Roque a victim of The Left’s premier pin-up boys (Fidel Castro and Che Guevara) but she was also singled out for praise by President Donald Trump. Any more questions about the media black-out of her history, suffering and death? 

On the other hand: 

"She was an early b*llbuster, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. She rattled a lot of cages before women were even allowed into the zoo," said Katie Couric hailing Barbara Walters in Vanity Fair upon her passing on Dec. 30, 2022.

Some women living in the U.S. today (and with long experience in literal cages) strongly differ with Couric. Barbara Walters “interviewed” Fidel Castro in 1977 and again in 2002. But the famous ABC Wicked Witch who interrogated Nixon, Reagan and Bush – when confronted by Fidel Castro – morphed into Ann Margaret in front of Conrad Birdie. No hint of the famous ABC News dominatrix in Washington was evident in the smiley and goo-goo-eyed groupie in Havana. 

Instead this famous “feminist” shamelessly stroked among the most brutal and insatiable male egos in modern history—and within walking distance of where hundreds of his female victims (including Cary Roque) languished in filthy, rat-infested and sweltering torture chambers. 

When feminist icon Barbara Walters sat quivering alongside Fidel Castro in 1977 cooing that “Fidel Castro has brought very high literacy and great health-care to his country. His personal magnetism is powerful!” dozens of Cuban (genuine) feminists suffered in nearby torture chambers. From exile today many of them recall the horrors: 

“They started by beating us with twisted coils of wire," recalls former political prisoner Ezperanza Pena from exile today. “I remember Teresita on the ground with all her lower ribs broken. Gladys had both her arms broken. Doris had her face cut up so badly from the beatings that when she tried to drink, water would pour out of her lacerated cheeks.” 

“On Mother’s Day they allowed family visits,” recalls Manuela Calvo from exile today. "But as our mothers and sons and daughters were watching, we were beaten with rubber hoses and high-pressure hoses were turned on us, knocking all of us the ground floor and rolling us around as the guards laughed and our loved-ones screamed helplessly.” 

“When female guards couldn’t handle us male guards were called in for more brutal beatings. I saw teenaged girls beaten savagely, their bones broken, their mouths bleeding,” recalled prisoner Polita Grau. 

Fidel Castro’s regime, so “magnetic” to Barbara Walters, jailed and tortured 35,150 Cuban women for political crimes, a totalitarian horror utterly unknown—not only in Cuba—but in the modern history of the Western Hemisphere. Some of these Cuban ladies suffered twice as long in Castro’s Gulag as Alexander Solzhenitsyn suffered in Stalin’s. 

Their prison conditions were described by former political prisoner Maritza Lugo: “The punishment cells measure 3 feet wide by 6 feet long. The toilet consists of an 8 inch hole in the ground through which cockroaches and rats enter, especially in cool temperatures the rat come inside to seek the warmth of our bodies and we were often bitten. The suicide rate among women prisoners was very high.” 

“Only minutes after my arrival at the Hotel Riviera in Havana, I was told to be in his (Fidel Castro’s) office within 15 minutes,” wrote Barbara Walters about her first interview with Fidel Castro in May 1977. “There I found a very courtly, somewhat portly Fidel Castro. He apologized for mak­ing me wait for two years and said that now he wanted to cooperate…On Wednesday, Castro himself came to our hotel to pick us up…Then, driving a Russian-made jeep, he took us to the Bay of Pigs, where we boarded an armed patrol boat. We thus became, according to Castro, the first Americans to cross the Bay of Pigs since the U.S.-supported invasion there in 1961.” 

Barbara Walters’ crossing of the Bay of Pigs was probably more than a historical sight-seeing junket. On the other side and near the mouth of the bay sits Castro’s personal island-resort Cayo Piedra, that houses his luxurious get-away chateau. According to defectors, when younger, Fidel Castro often repaired to this remote but luxurious villa for spearfishing among other recreational pursuits. 

Juan Reynaldo Sanchez, a Lt. Col. in Cuba’s Armed Forces who spent 17 years as Fidel Castro’s bodyguard/valet, had just been promoted to the position when Barbara Walters visited Cuba for her first interview with the Stalinist dictator in May 1977. Sanchez defected to the U.S. in 2008 and explained to this writer how he was part of the Castroite entourage that accompanied Ms Walters and Fidel to the latter’s island chateau. Ms Walters does mention that: 

“We stopped at a little island for a picnic lunch of grilled fish and pineapple. During which Castro swapped fish stories with the ABC crew. It was here that we taped our first but brief and candid interview with him.” 

Argentinian journalist Juan Gasparini in his Spanish language book Mujeres de Dictadores (Women of Dictators) writes that, “It is widely supposed that Fidel Castro had several amorous adventures with the North American reporter Barbara Walters who twice visited Cuba to interview him. It is alleged that she later visited Cuba more discretely for private visits. According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Walters has admitted to developing an attraction to the Cuban leader while boating with him on assignment in 1977, but she denies things got physical."

When Castro’s torturers were transferring his female prisoners from cell to cell while Barbara Walters visited Castro’s Bay of Pigs’ “Love Shack,” the guards were forced to drag many of these Cuban women around like dead animals. They were simply incapable of walking. The constant beatings had incapacitated many of them. The excrement and menstrual fluid caked to their legs and bare feet made it more difficult still. Some of the cells called “Tapiadas,” were barely big enough to stand and walk in and were completely sealed except for a few tiny air holes. The women were confined completely underground in total darkness and suffocating heat for weeks at a time. These were tombs by any other name, except that their occupants were still alive, if barely and if only by ultra-human perseverance. 

In marked contrast to Cary Roque’s horrific ordeal in Castroite prisons, the celebrated Nobel Peace Price winner Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar has served a total of 15 years under house arrest. The late celebrated human rights activist Elena Bonner of the Soviet era served a total of 5 years of internal exile. 

So you’ll please excuse these Cuban ladies (most of them U.S. citizens today) if they regard the “struggles” of Betty Freidan, Gloria Steinem – and yes, the “b*llbusting” by Barbara Walters – as a trifle overblown.

The Bay of Pigs Part II—the Battle’s Over but the Heroism Continues

Humberto Fontova  Apr 22, 2023 @ Townhall.com

Outnumbered over 10 to one by Soviet-led forces and betrayed by their sponsor, these mostly civilian volunteers fought till the last bullet. In three days of relentless close-quarter fighting they made monkeys of the Soviet commanders at the scene and their Cuban lackeys and cannon-fodder, inflicting losses of 20 to one. 

Castro and Che were jittery there for awhile, urging caution in the counterattack. From the lethal fury of the attack and the horrendous casualties their troops and militia were taking, the two Soviet satraps assumed they faced at least 20,000 invading "mercenaries," as they called them. 

Yet it was a band of mostly civilian volunteers they outnumbered laughably. But to hear Castro's echo chamber (the Beltway media and leftist academics), Fidel was the plucky David and the invaders the bumbling Goliath!

(We recently discussed the battle in greater detail here.)

In fact, if JFK wanted some genuine Profiles in Courage he might have looked at the men he betrayed on that heroic beachhead. Some of the most jaw-dropping heroics, however, came after the shooting ended, after they’d spent their last bullets and knew no more were coming from their ally, the most powerful nation on earth, the same one that enforced a "no-fly zone" half a country wide on another continent (Iraq) with half the U.S Air Force for a decade—but refused to provide one three miles across, 90 miles away, for half a day with two planes.

At any rate, the battle was over in three days, but the heroism was not.

Now came almost two years in Castro’s dungeons for the captured Brigada, complete with the physical and psychological torture that always comes with communist incarceration. During almost two years in Castro’s dungeons, the freedom-fighters lived under a daily death sentence. 

Escaping that sentence would have been easy: simply sign the little paper confessing they were “mercenaries of the Yankee imperialists” or go on camera denouncing the U.S.  Given these freedom-fighters' betrayal, you might think Fidel and Che Guevara had a cakewalk here.

Hah! None of these men signed the document, or uttered a peep against their “ally.” The freedom-fighters stood tall, proud, defiant, even sparring with Castro himself during their televised Stalinist show trials. “We will die with dignity!” snapped their commander Erneido Oliva (a black Cuban, by the way, Ms. Maxine “VIVA FIDEL!”  Waters” and Jesse, “VIVA FIDEL!” Jackson) at the furious Castroites again, and again, and again. To a Castroite, such an attitude not only enrages but also baffles.

Think about it, amigos: even after that betrayal these men (and boys, some as young as 16-17) refused to utter any anti-American slogan for Castro and Che Guevara’s cameras and propaganda mill. The very slogans that half-wit, grandstanding “woke” celebrities and politicians parrot daily for free publicity, these betrayed men refused to utter even while thinking it might save their lives!

The Castroites also staged a classic Soviet-style show-trial attempting to showcase (for all the world to see) the Bay of Pigs prisoners admitting they were “mercenaries in the pay of the Yankee Imperialists.” And initially they thought they’d get the propaganda bonanza they so desperately desired.  

For this big production the prisoners were thoroughly interrogated beforehand (the KGB had been coaching Castro’s secret police for almost two years by then) to see who’d crack, who’d play along. Only these would get in front of the cameras.

Tomas Cruz, Felipe Rivero and a few other Bay of Pigs freedom-fighters gave every impression of having broken down. They whimpered to their Castroite “interrogators” that they’d be willing to go on camera and denounce the U.S. 

“AHA!”  Fidel and Che snickered while rubbing their hands. “Now we got ‘em!” (Rivero and Cruz were also snickering.)

So the day came. The Stalinist stage was set at Havana’s Sports Arena and the communist cameras rolled. Castro and Che Guevara’s lackey vice President Carlos R. Rodriguez were the opening act. He put the microphone to Felipe Rivero.

"Nobody paid us to do a damn thing!" Rivero blurted…..Whoops! The Castroites’ mouths dropped. They gaped nervously. They looked around. A rumble went through the crowd. 

"We came here to fight communism!" Rivero continued. "Men from every class and race in Cuba volunteered to come here and FIGHT you!"

“Holy s**t! What now?!” the Castroites were frantic! The cameras were rolling but started shifting around nervously. Rodriguez’s lips trembled. He wiped his forehead. He stretched his collar. Some heads would (literally!) roll when the Maximum Leader saw this! The cameras didn’t know where to focus.

"And another thing!" Felipe shouted. "We outfought you!” The Castroites were frantic now, they looked from one to another aghast and cleared their throats. They looked like Democrats during the Ollie North hearings. 

Rodriguez finally caught his breath and with a trembling voice started with the usual commie mumbo-jumbo about "the masses" and "the people…bah…blah…”

"Ok, fine!” Rivero rolled his eyes and waved his hand. "You say you have the people with you? Then hold an election! That’ll really tell us, won’t it!"

Complete pandemonium, amigos. Even the diehard commies in the crowd couldn’t restrain themselves. Che Guevara himself had to snicker. A rumble of laughter, a rustle of claps and hoots erupted from all corners. All this was on Cuban national TV, remember. 

And Cuba – that impoverished and squalid little Third World country Castro’s echo chamber (the mainstream media) always tells us about – besides having net immigration from Europe shortly before the glorious liberation, also had more TVs per capita than Canada or Germany. 

The very island almost shook with a collective roar.

Finally the Maximum Leader himself (Fidel Castro) pranced on the stage. Only he could straighten things out. He had it all figured out. He had an ace up his sleeve. So he approached the black parachutist prisoner Tomas Cruz. "We opened the beaches for you blacks," he sneered. (In 1958 Cuba had a private whites-only country club with a private beach.) "So what on earth are you doing with these Yankee mercenaries?"

Tell it to Obama, the Congressional Black Caucus and Black Lives Matter, Fidel. Tell it to Maxine Waters and Jesse Jackson – they’ll swallow your BS and ask for seconds. But Cruz didn’t flinch. He looked Castro straight in the eye. "I didn’t come here to swim," he glowered. "I came here to fight communism. I came here with my brothers of every race to free my homeland from communism.”

Well, amigos, the Castroites decided to hold these "trials" behind closed doors and with the cameras off after that.

A guilt-stricken JFK finally ransomed the Brigade back from Castro's dungeon. The negotiations took almost two years while the men suffered the mental and physical tortures that always accompany Communist incarceration. One source claims that Castro had agreed to terms seven months earlier. But the Kennedy brothers (both President and Attorney General) feared the Bay of Pigs issue in the news for the November '62 congressional races. They feared the issue of how those men came to be prisoners in the first place might skew the races Republican. So the prisoners were conveniently released Christmas Eve of '62. A few died in prison during those intervening seven months. 

Outrageously, thanks to yet another Democrat administration, Castro might have gotten the last laugh with Rivero. In 1967 Felipe Rivero found himself in a U.S. federal prison. His crime? Organizing attacks from the U.S. trying to overthrow Castro! 

You read that right. The same man accused and jailed by Castro for being a U.S. mercenary and lackey, of being bribed by the U.S. to overthrow communism in Cuba was later jailed by the U.S. for trying to overthrow Communism in Cuba!  LBJ had to honor that Kennedy-Khrushchev Missile Crisis swindle to safeguard Castro, you see.

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

The Brigadistas' ordeal was mostly over by late 1962. But when it came to JFK's lies I'll yield to Bachman Turner Overdrive: "You ain't seen nothing yet! B--ba-ba-ba-BY you just AIN'T seen nothing yet!" 

"I promise to deliver this Brigade banner to you in a free Havana!" That was JFK addressing the recently-ransomed Brigade and their families in Miami's Orange Bowl, Dec. 29, 1962. I guess those people hadn't been subject to enough lies, to enough betrayal. They hadn't suffered enough. And the mothers, widows' children—they hadn't been through enough either. In Camelot's eyes, they deserved more shameless lies. 

Kennedy’s secret deal with Khrushchev to safeguard Castro was made barely a month before JFK made his liberation promises in the Orange Bowl. Yet he addressed those men, their families and compatriots with a straight face. 

Small wonder that these Brigadistas, their families, and most of their compatriots always refused to file meekly into the liberal plantation, like obedient little "hispanics," or “latinos,” or ‘Latinxs” with a nice pat on the head by the condescendingly smirking doyens of the Democrat-Media complex. 

Did the Diabolical CIA Really Try Repeatedly to Assassinate Poor Innocent Little Fidel Castro?

Humberto Fontova Apr 01, 2023 @ Townhall.com

CIA officials get paid pretty handsomely. And their job-description is pretty clear: to assess foreign threats against our national security and defend us against them.

So you’d really hope the American taxpayer was getting an honest return on their “investment” and CIA officials were really  "putting on their thinking caps" and really  "burning the midnight oil" attempting to bump-off a mass-murdering Soviet satrap and terrorist who set up shop 90 miles from our shores during the height of the Cold War.

HAH! Hope again. “So far as I have been able to determine,” revealed E. Howard Hunt who, during the early 1960s, served as head of the political division of the CIA’s “Cuba Project,” “no COHERENT plan was ever developed within the CIA to assassinate Castro, though it was the heart’s desire of many exile groups.”

Interestingly, Hunt stressed that killing Castro was his own recommendation. But he couldn’t get any serious takers within the agency.

Now let’s head over to the famous Church-Committee hearings in the mid 70’s when all these (so-called) assassination attempts were first “revealed.” Sen. Frank Church (D-ID), by the way, was a notorious pinko just panting to smear anti-communists. Yet here’s among the items his (highly-embarrassed) Committee (grudgingly) discovered and reported:

“In August 1975, Fidel Castro gave Senator George McGovern a list of twenty-four alleged attempts to assassinate him in which Castro claimed the CIA had been involved… The Committee has found NO EVIDENCE that the CIA was involved in the attempts on Castro’s life enumerated in the allegations that Castro gave to Senator McGovern.”

“Coherent” is probably the key word by Hunt. All those “assassination plans” the Fake News Media transcribes and parrots from Castro’s disinformation officers (both in Cuba and in the U.S.) were probably mostly brainstorming speculations by half-drunken officials. A few might have gotten half-heartedly halfway off the ground.   

Felix Rodriguez, the Cuban-American CIA man who played a key role in capturing Che Guevara, also noticed the “incoherence” of these assassination plans. “While we were training for the Bay of Pigs me and a friend volunteered to kill Castro,” Rodriguez recalled to your humble servant. “We were given a rifle with a telescopic sight and we attempted to infiltrate Cuba… after the third attempt, we returned and they (CIA handlers) told us that the plan had been changed, had been canceled, so they took the rifle away.” 

Oh, I know, I know, the Fake News Media has been flogging these “finely-tuned dastardly assassination attempts” against poor innocent little Castro for decades, and more recently jump-started the fake-history campaign with the “revelations” from the declassified JFK assassination documents.

In fact, the overwhelmingly liberal and most Ivy League “educated” CIA suits of the time may have found offing Fidel Castro too heart-wrenching of an operational flip-flop. To wit: 

• “Me and my staff were all Fidelistas” (Robert Reynolds, the CIA’s Caribbean Desk chief from 1957 to 1960).
• “Everyone in the CIA and everyone at State was pro-Castro, except [Republican] ambassador Earl Smith” (Robert Weicha, CIA operative in Santiago Cuba).
• “Don’t worry. We’ve infiltrated Castro’s guerrilla group in the Sierra Mountains. The Castro brothers and Ernesto “Che” Guevara have no affiliations with any Communists whatsoever” (crackerjack Havana CIA station chief Jim Noel, 1958).
• “Without U.S. help Fidel Castro would never have gotten into power. The State Department played a large part in bringing Castro to power. The press, the Chief of the CIA Section are also responsible… we are responsible for bringing Castro in power. I do not care how you want to word it" (Earl T. Smith U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, 1957-59).
• “A friendly and persuasive CIA representative who had an opportunity of talking to Fidel Castro for an hour (when the Soviet satrap visited Washington D.C. in April 1959) emerged in a state of ecstasy about Castro’s receptivity, responsiveness and understanding” (Steven Bonsal U.S. ambassador to Cuba 1959-61).

In fact, Raul Castro had a KGB handler since 1954, and when arrested in Mexico in 1956, Ernesto "Che" Guevara was found to have, in his very wallet, the calling card of the KGB's top Latin American agent, Nikolai Leonov. During his Mexico exile, Fidel Castro was also plotting the future Stalinization of Cuba in meetings with both Leonov and with his Cuban KGB colleague Osvaldo Sanchez.

But never mind all those tacky Cuban “deplorables” frantically warning U.S. agencies of the above. They often wore ill-fitting suits and reeked strongly of “McCarthyism,” a most offensive odor to the (mostly) Beltway blueblood CIA suits. Much better, sniffed the CIA suits, to rely on our socio-economic counterparts in Cuba like the Bacardis, who concur with us that the Castro brothers, Che Guevara and their colleagues are all as pure as the driven snow. 

Consequently, thanks in part to recommendations from our crackerjack CIA sleuths based in Cuba, January 7, 1959, marks a milestone in U.S. diplomatic history. Never before had the U.S. granted diplomatic recognition (benediction) to a Latin American government as quickly as we bestowed this benediction on Fidel Castro’s that day. In fact, nothing remotely as fast had been bestowed upon “U.S.-backed” (as the Fake News Media habitually refers to him) Fulgencio Batista.

Oh, I know, I know, the Fake News Media, Fake History Channel and Fake Academics all swear up and down that Castro was a smitten Jeffersonian Democrat strumming his guitar and crooning love songs under our balcony -- until a mean ‘ole Uncle Sam bullied him (kicking and screaming) into the arms of Mother Russia.

In fact, that yarn ranks right up there with “Cuba’s Free and Fabulous Healthcare!” and indeed with the “Dastardly CIA’s Assassination Plots!” in the pantheon of Castroite/Fake News Media fables. 

The CIA /Castro assassination meme (like so many others) was hatched by the KGB and Cuban DI (Directorio de Intelligencia) –more specifically by multi-decorated for meritorious service DI colonel Fabian Escalante, seen here with his commander-in-chief. The fairy-tale/meme really took off with Escalante’s “book” (i.e., KGB-mentored disinformation pamphlet) "638 Ways to Kill Castro."

There was a day when honest historians and reporters laughed-off the obvious propaganda tracts of a totalitarian regime’s counterintelligence executives, especially from one who, far from having defected, still functioned as a full-fledged and high-rolling Stalinist official.

Alas when it comes to documenting Cuban totalitarianism, the normal rules of historiography and reporting, and even of decency, logic and common sense, have long been turned on their heads.

 

A Genuine Heroine for Women’s History Month

Humberto Fontova Mar 18, 2023 @ Townhall.com

Ever heard of Zoila Aguila, also known as “La Niña Del Escambray?”  No?...And yet her story seems to check every box for a Woke feminist super-drama.

You mean to tell me that from the Mainstream Media (so abundant with “feminists”) you didn’t hear about this “Latina” girl who, when younger than Miley Cyrus, courageously took up arms as a guerrilla fighter against a murderous, terror-sponsoring (genuinely) Russia-colluding regime, was captured, horribly tortured in utterly dark, underground dungeons crawling with rats and roaches where she lost her baby and eventually her mind? She suffered 15 years as a political prisoner enduring horrible tortures, alongside the longest-suffering female political prisoners in modern history, in a locale absolutely infested with mainstream “news” bureaus and their intrepid “reporters” and correspondents. Finally she was released in a prisoner exchange and found refuge in the U.S.

You mean the U.S. Mainstream Media didn’t inform you of how her brother and husband, fellow guerrilla fighters against Soviet commanded oppressors, were also captured by Soviet–armed and commanded storm-troopers on orders of the regime whose historic rationale was the destruction of the U.S.—and were murdered by firings squads, well within earshot of the “latina” freedom-fighter, as the murderers taunted her with laughs and jeers? 

Well, gosh?  Doesn’t this story—involving events just 90 miles from U.S. shores and subsequent  legal U.S. resident—seem to have all the villains, heroes, drama and plot the Mainstream Media/Democrat/Hollywood/Publishing-Complex could ever DREAM of—for a smashing, human-interest story, documentary, movie, etc?

AH! But here’s the kicker, amigos: the latina freedom-fighter in question, Zoila Aguila, who passed away in Feb. of  2021 in Miami, fought against and was tortured horribly till insane by the regime co-founded by the Left’s premier poster boys—Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.

Need I say more about the media blackout?

When the hacks who host and narrate programs on The History Channel, NPR, etc. call Che Guevara a "guerrilla fighter" they're quite correct, but unwittingly. After all, the term "Indian fighter" was used for cowboys who fought against Indians right?  Well, did your history professor or The History Channel inform you that one of the bloodiest and longest guerrilla wars on this continent was fought - not by - but against Fidel Castro and Che, Guevara and mostly by campesinos (country folk)?  

Didn't think so. Farm collectivization was no more voluntary in Cuba than in the Ukraine. And Cuba's Kulaks had guns, a few at first anyway. Had these rebels gotten a fraction of the aid the Afghan Mujahideen got, the Viet Cong got — indeed that George Washington's rebels got from the French — had these Cuban rebels gotten any help, some bandits named Fidel Castro and Che Guevara would probably merit less Wikipedia space today than Pancho Villa.

But JFK's Missile Crisis "solution" pledged to Castro and his Soviet sponsors that the U.S. pull the rug out from under Cuba's in-house freedom fighters. Raul Castro himself admitted that at the time of the Missile Crisis his troops and their Soviet advisors were up against 179 different "bands of bandits" as he labeled the thousands of Cuban anti-Communist rebels then battling savagely and virtually alone in Cuba's countryside, with small arms shipments from their compatriots in south Florida as their only lifeline. 

Kennedy's shameful surrender to Khrushchev which “solved” the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis cut this lifeline. The Cuban freedom-fighters working from South Florida were suddenly rounded up for "violating U.S. Neutrality laws." The Coast Guard in Florida got 12 new boats and seven new planes to make sure Castro and his Soviet patrons remained utterly unmolested as they consolidated Stalinism 90 miles from U.S. shores. Think about it: here's the U.S. Coast Guard and Border Patrol working 'round the clock arresting Hispanics in the U.S. who are desperate to return to their native country.

Zoila Aguila was prominent among these lonely and virtually-unknown Cuban freedom-fighters. On the other hand the utterly bogus battles of the utterly bogus guerrillas (the Castro brothers and Che Guevara) had been trumpeted to high heavens by the U.S. media. And this relentless propagandizing was highly appreciated:

“Much more valuable than rural recruits for our Cuban guerrilla force were American media recruits to export our propaganda,” snickered Ernesto “Che” Guevara in his diaries.

This ferocious guerrilla war, waged 90 miles from America's shores, might have taken place on the planet Pluto for all you'll read about it in the MSM and all you'll learn about it from those illustrious Ivy League academics. To get an idea of the odds faced by those betrayed rural rebels, the desperation of their battle and the damage they wrought, you might revisit Tony Montana during the last 15 minutes of "Scarface."

Che had a very bloody (and typically cowardly) hand in this slaughter, one of the major anti-insurgency wars on this continent. Many of these anti-communist guerrillas were executed on the spot upon capture, a Che specialty. "We fought with the fury of cornered beasts," is how one of the lucky few who escaped described this desperate freedom fight against the Soviet occupation of Cuba through their proxies Fidel and Che. 

In 1956 when Che linked up with Fidel, Raul, and their Cuban chums in Mexico City, one of them (now in exile) recalls Che railing against the Hungarian freedom-fighters as "Fascists!" and cheering their extermination by Soviet tanks.

In 1962 Che got a chance to do more than cheer from the sidelines. He had a hand in the following: "Cuban militia units commanded by Russian officers employed flame-throwers to burn the palm-thatched cottages in the Escambray countryside. The peasant occupants were accused of feeding the counterrevolutionaries and bandits." At one point in 1962, one of every 17 Cubans was a political prisoner. Fidel himself admits that they faced 179 bands of "counter-revolutionaries" and "bandits." 

Mass murder was the order in Cuba's countryside. It was the only way to decimate so many rebels. These country folk went after the Reds with a ferocity that saw Fidel and Che running to their Soviet sugar daddies and tugging their pants in panic. That commie bit about how "a guerrilla swims in the sea which is the people, etc." fit Cuba's anti-Fidel and Che rebellion to a T. So in a relocation and concentration campaign that shamed anything the Brits did to the Boers, the gallant Communists ripped thousands of Cubans from their ancestral homes and herded them into concentration camps on the opposite side of Cuba. 

One of these Cuban redneck wives (Zoila Aguila) refused to be relocated. After her husband, sons, and a few nephews were murdered by the Gallant Che and his Soviet-armed and led minions, she grabbed a tommy gun herself, rammed in a clip and took to the hills. She became a rebel herself. Cubans knew her as La Niña Del Escambray. 

For a year she ran rings around the Communist armies sweeping the hills in her pursuit. Finally in 1964 she ran out of ammo and supplies and the communist storm-trooper rounded her up. All this was totally ignored by the foreign media. 

On the other hand, Zoila Aguila’s torturers got no end of adulatory coverage from media “feminists.”

Grammy Winner Bonnie Raitt—Hypocrite Extraordinaire

Humberto Fontova Feb 11, 2023@ Townhall.com

“When Bonnie Raitt won the award for Song of the Year at the 2023 Grammys on Sunday night for her track Just Like That,” The Daily Mail reports this week, “some were shocked that the accolade went to the 73-year-old folk singer - over huge artists like Taylor Swift, Lizzo, Harry Styles, Beyonce and Adele, who were also nominated for the category.”

Much less shocking, given Raitt’s social and political milieu, is this rock and roller’s propaganda ministrations for the only regime in the modern history of the Western Hemisphere to criminalize rock & roll and herd its practitioners and fans into forced-labor camps.

You see, amigos: Back in March of 1999, Bonnie Raitt was among the top acts of a celebrity-studded propaganda extravaganza for Stalinist Cuba titled “Music Bridges Over Troubled Waters." During her visit to the Castro-Family-Fiefdom, Raitt stopped hyperventilating just long enough to compose a song in Fidel Castro's honor titled, "Cuba Is Way Too Cool!" Among the lyrics: "It's just a happy little island!" and "Big bad wolf (the U.S.) you look the FOOL!" 

With Woody Harrelson gyrating drunkenly beside her, the rapidly oxidizing chanteuse, she of the big red hair and the famous gray roots, rasped out her ditty at Havana's Karl Marx theater. "Rock Against Freedom" sounds much better to me. A beaming, waving Jimmy Buffet came on after Bonnie. 

Then came Joane Osborne. R.E.M's Peter Buck, former Police’s Andy Summers and Stuart Copeland all made the groovy scene and took the stage in turn. In between crooning and strumming, these cheeky free-spirits all dutifully recited their propaganda scripts against the U.S. "embargo."  

Against South Africa a decade earlier, of course, their script called FOR an embargo. 

A crowd of 5000 Cubans huddled before them, swaying and clapping. All were Cuban Communist Party members and their families. Let's step back and contemplate the scene: here's these troubadours for human rights, here's the same smarmy gang who boycotted South Africa ("I Ain't Gonna Play Sun City!" thundered Bonnie Raitt herself alongside Bruce Springsteen, Bono, Darryl Hall and scores of similar political imbeciles on the 1985 recording titled, "Artists United Against Apartheid.") 

But she'll GLADLY play in Havana's Karl Marx theater and bask in the applause of an audience pledging proud fealty to the most murderous ideology in human history. Indeed she'll happily compose a song in their honor—and all on the house! 

Here's Bonnie and other shrill foes of capital punishment happily crooning lovesongs to card-carrying members (literally!) of an ideology whose minions shot, starved, strangled, drowned, hacked and worked to death 100 million human beings in the 20th century. According to the late researcher Dr. Armando Lago, many in Bonnie and Jimmy's very audience had a hand in 110,000 of these murders. Here's these do-gooders playing (free-of-charge) because of an invitation from Stalinists! 

These musical hipsters composed gushy odes to coolness and happiness of a nation with the highest (youth) emigration, incarceration and suicide rates on the face of the globe. 

When Cuba's suicide rate reached 24 per thousand in 1986—making it double Latin America's average, making it triple Cuba's pre-Castro rate, making Cuban women the most suicidal in the world, making death by suicide the primary cause of death for Cubans aged 15-48—at that point the Cuban government ceased publishing the statistics on the self-slaughter. The figures became state secrets. The implications horrified even the Castroites. 

But apparently not Diane Sawyer or Barbara Walters. When in his charming presence, neither of these feminists could keep from bursting into those toothy smiles and throwing their arms around the man who drove more women to end their lives than anyone in the world. 

Cuba also has the world's highest (or third highest, depending on the source) abortion rate. I say there's a relationship with the suicide rate. They both smack of hopelessness and despair. 

In Castroland, Jimmy Buffet and Bonnie Raitt proudly authored paeans to the coolness and happiness of a place that also criminalized Beatles' and Rolling Stones' records—where long hair, blue jeans, and/or effeminate behavior got thousands of youths yanked off the streets by secret police and dumped in concentration camps with "Work Will Make Men Out of You," in bold letters above the gate and with machine gunners posted on the watchtowers. The initials for these camps were UMAP, not GULAG. But the conditions were identical. 

Much "wasting away" within their barbed wire, Mr Buffet. But not from Margaritas. Slave labor, disease, malnutrition, beatings, torture and hunger strikes caused the "wasting way." Stepping on pop-tops is no fun, I agree, Mr Buffet. But neither is being bludgeoned to death with the blunt end of bayonets, a pastime much indulged by your charming Castroite hosts. Armando Valladares provides harrowing details of scores of such deaths in his “Against All Hope.” 

The blight is also known as Castroism, and is also known as inspiration for happy little jingles by Bonnie Raitt.

 

Maybe it's time to say a good word about Fulgencio Batista

By Silvio Canto, Jr. January 19, 2023

A lot of things happened in January in Cuban history.   Jose Marti, the leader of independence against Spain, was born in January 28, 1853. In 1959, the so-called "revolution” happened.  The U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Cuba in January 1961.  And we remember that Fulgencio Batista was born in January 1901, one year before Cuba became an independent nation in 1902.  His name is all over 20^th-century Cuban history. It’s also difficult to mention his name without getting a strong reaction. He died in exile in 1973........... I make no excuses for Batista's mistakes.  My parents were not "Batistianos" and were super critical of that coup.  As my late father would tell me, yes we had some problems but the coup was not necessary.  To be fair, it was not the first coup in Cuban history.

What about the rest of Batista's story? Cuba was a young and vibrant country with hope and a future.  In other words, the island of Cuba attracted people rather than driving its citizens away looking for a future.  It is really sad to watch Cuba today. The young escape and look for a better life, preferably in the U.S. The old get stuck behind. 

There were no Cubans packed on rafts arriving in Florida during Batista’s regime. One way or another, Cuba had room for all Cubans. There were disagreements and lots of shouting, but Cubans stayed on the island.  Instinctively, everyone knew that there was a future in Cuba, no matter how passionate the disagreements were............It is even more painful when you realize that pre-Castro Cuba attracted thousands of immigrants from all over the world..................To Read More

Fidel Castro Celebrant Raphael Warnock Neck to Neck With Herschel Walker in Georgia Runoff

Humberto Fontova Dec 03, 2022 @ Townhall.com

“A new poll this week shows Georgia’s Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker tied with his Democratic opponent Sen. Raphael Warnock in the runoff election next week,” Townhall recently reported.

“Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock worked at a church (Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church) that hosted and celebrated late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in 1995, past news stories and Warnock's biography indicate…Warnock's campaign, though, says he was a junior member of the staff at the time Castro spoke at the church and was not a decision-maker," reported Fox News during his initial senatorial race.

Perhaps a recap of that Fidel-lovefest is in order: 

“God Bless you, Fidel!” boomed (head) Pastor Calvin Butts of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church while introducing Fidel Castro during that famous New York visit. The People’s Weekly World provides more fascinating details:

“The audience which included New York Democratic representatives Charles Rangel enthusiastically greeted the Communist leader with a ten minute standing ovation. Chants of ‘FIDEL!-FIDEL! VIVA-FIDEL!’ resounded from the rafters.”

Shortly the delirious ovation rose to the level of an earthquake, to a veritable hurricane. The very walls and rafters shook with shrieks of "FIDEL! VIVA FIDEL!!" You see, Elmore Breathe, head of the "Patrice Lumumba Coalition" and chair for the meeting, asked the audience, "Who would you rather come to Harlem? Fidel or Giuliani?" 

"FIDEL!" They erupted. "FIDEL! VIVA FIDEL!" 

Incidentally: “The U.S. is a vulture preying on humanity! War against the U.S. is my true destiny!” declared Fidel Castro in April 1958, at a time our crackerjack CIA and State Department were helping him both materially and morally.

“VIVA FIDEL!..VIVA FIDEL!” roared and stomped the Abyssinian Baptist Church crowd. 

Incidentally: “You Americans just don’t understand it. The depths of my brother Fidel’s hatred for your country cannot be imagined by you Americans.  His intention—his OBSESSION!—is to destroy the U.S.!”  said Juanita Castro during Congressional testimony in June of 1965.

 “FI-DEL!...FI-DEL!…VIVA FI-DEL!” chanted Pastor Warnock’s flock while standing and whooping and clapping deliriously. 

Incidentally: “What!?” gasped Nikita Khrushchev on Oct. 28th 1962, as recalled by his son Sergei. “Fidel Castro is proposing that we start a nuclear war?! That we launch missiles from Cuba?! But that is INSANE!..Remove them (our missiles) as soon as possible! Before it’s too late. Before something terrible happens!” 

“FIDEL!..VIVA FIDEL!..VIVA FIDEL” boomed Pastor Warnock’s congregation for a deafening ten-minute ovation. 

“Of course I knew the missiles were nuclear-armed. That’s precisely why I urged Khrushchev to fire them at the U.S.!” Fidel Castro told Robert McNamara during a meeting in 1992.

“VIVA FIDEL-VIVA FIDEL!” yelled pastor Warnock’s fellow celebrants in delirious joy. 

Incidentally: “Kneel!--KNEEL DOWN!” the Cuban torturer screamed at the bound and bloodied but unbowed U.S. POW in front of him, Lieutenant Colonel Earl Cobeil, an Air Force F-105 pilot shot down over North Vietnam. “You son of a beech! I will show you!” continued screeching the Castroite torturer. Earl Cobeil was a complete physical disaster when we saw him. He had been tortured for days and days and days. His hands were almost severed from the manacles. He had bamboo in his shins. All kinds of welts up and down all over; his face was bloody. Then the Cuban torturer again began to beat him with a fan belt.The Cubans unmercifully beat a mentally defenseless, sick American naval pilot to death. “The tortures of U.S. POWs by Fidel Castro’s agents were the worst sieges of torture any American withstood in Hanoi," according to the book “Honor Bound.”

“VIVA FIDEL! VIVA FIDEL!... VIVA FIDEL!”  bellowed pastor Warnock’s enraptured congregation till hoarse (with presumable accompaniment from their pastors).

Not that New York’s delirious reception for the mass-murdering, terror-sponsoring dictator who almost nuked New York ended at New York’s Abyssinian Baptist Church. Far from it! 

“The Toast of Manhattan!” crowed a Time magazine story of the day. 

“The Hottest Ticket in Manhattan!” also read a Newsweek story that week. Both articles referred to the social swirl and acclaim that engulfed Fidel Castro upon his visit to New York by the very Manhattan media and business luminaries who barely escaped incineration at his hand. The occasion was the UN’s 50th anniversary celebration. In fact, New York’s Castromania almost recaptured the hysteria for Simon and Garfunkel’s 1981 reunion in Central Park. 

Along with his visit to the Abyssinian Baptist Church, the Stalinist dictator’s itinerary also involved a luncheon at the Council on Foreign Relations. After holding court there for a rapt David Rockefeller, along with Robert McNamara, Dwayne Andreas, and Random House’s Harold Evans, Castro flashed over to Mort Zuckerman’s Fifth Avenue pad, where a throng of Beltway glitterati, including Mike Wallace, Peter Jennings, Tina Brown, Bernard Shaw, and Barbara Walters, all jostled for photo-ops and stood in line for the warmongering mass-murderer's autograph. 

Diane Sawyer was so overcome in the mass-murderer’s presence that she rushed up, broke into a toothy smile, wrapped her arms around Fidel Castro, and smooched him warmly on the cheek. 

"You people are the cream of the crop!" beamed the mass-murderer to the rapt and smiling throng he’d come within a hair of incinerating and now surrounded him. 

"Hear, hear!" chirped the delighted guests while tinkling their wine glasses in appreciation and glee. But many more were left panting, because according to the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, Fidel Castro had gotten over 250 dinner invitations from Manhattan celebrities and power-brokers. 

Everything above—however outrageous it may seem—is meticulously documented here. 

The jailer and torturer of the longest suffering black political prisoners in modern history was bear-hugged by Charles Rangel and cheered (presumably) by Raphael Warnock.

 The jailer and torturer of the most female political prisoners in the modern history of the western hemisphere was hugged and smooched by feminist Diane Sawyer. 

The jailer and torturer of the most journalists in the modern history of the Western hemisphere found everyone from Dan Rather to Mike Wallace to Tina Brown lining up for his autograph. 

The jailer and torturer who abolished private property within his Stalinist fiefdom found David Rockefeller and Mort Zuckerman crowding around him for a handshake. 

The Communist dictator who abolished capitalism under penalty of firing squad and torture chamber was honored in the board room of the Wall Street Journal with a VIP luncheon.

Pigs Are Flying—A Famous Rock Star Denounces Che Guevara!

Humberto Fontova Nov 12, 2022 @ Townhall.com 

“I still don’t like Che Guevara T-shirts. [Expletive] Che Guevara!.. To be in the company of people going, 'No way, man,' I cannot hear it…There’s a funny moment when you realize that as an activist: The off-ramp out of extreme poverty is, ugh, commerce, it’s entrepreneurial capitalism.” (U2’s singer Bono in a recent interview with an instantly disgruntled New York Times Magazine reporter.)

Just maybe, Bono has read beyond Rolling Stone and The New York Times, where he would have never learned that:  

In a famous speech in 1961 Che Guevara denounced the very “spirit of rebellion" as "reprehensible." "Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates," commanded Guevara. "Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service." 

Perhaps Bona can have a word with fellow rocker Graham Nash, famous for the lyrics in his hit Chicago: 

“If you believe in justice, if you believe in freedom, Let a man live his own life "Rules and regulations who needs them!”

This same Graham Nash has long been a vocal champion of the regime Che Guevara co-founded,  which regulates more of its subjects activities than has almost any regime in the modern history of the human race, from what they eat to what they read, from where they travel to where they work, etc. etc. 

Rules and Regulations, INDEED, Mr. Nash! 

The regime celebrated by Graham Nash has bound and gagged more political prisoners than any regime in the modern history of the Western hemisphere.

In 1979, Graham Nash proudly played with his musical cohorts (Stills and Crosby) at Havana Jam, a concert strictly for the Stalinist fiefdom’s nomenklatura and their offspring. Since then, Nash has often visited Stalinist Cuba.

Youth, wrote Guevara, “should learn to think and act as a mass." Those who “chose their own path" (as in growing long hair and listening to Yankee-Imperialist Rock & Roll) were denounced as "delinquents." In his famous speech Che Guevara even vowed "to make individualism disappear from Cuba! It is criminal to think of individuals!" 

On top of jailing political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s and murdering more people in its first three years than Hitler’s in its first six, here’s an (abbreviated) list of the things prohibited under penalty of jail and/or forced labor by the regime co-founded by the man cheeky free-spirit rockers often celebrate: 

1. To say "Down with Fidel!" or “Che Sucks!” Cuba’s constitution mandates 18 months in prison for anyone overheard cracking a joke against Castro or Che. If the neighborhood CDR (Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, imported to Cuba by the East German STASI, who grandfathered it from Hitler’s Gestapo) overhears any such deviation from “ideological purity” the regime “will want a word with you.” 

2. Travel abroad without permission from the government. (which is granted mostly to regime toadies and hacks. 

3. Switch jobs without regime permission. 

4. Switch homes without regime permission.

5. Publish anything without regime permission. 

6. Own a personal computer, a fax machine or a satellite antenna. 

7. Access the Internet. Cuba’s Internet is under constant regime “surveillance.” By the secret police. only a tiny percentage of the Castro regime’s subjects have access to the web, a lower percentage than in Papua New Guinea. This is a nation that pre-Castro/Che had more telephones and TV’s per-capita than most European countries.

8. Send your children to a private or religious school. All schools belong to the Communist party. 

9. Tune in to any free radio or television station. In Cuba, all media is property of the Stalinist regime. 

12. Read books, magazines, or newspapers not approved by the regime. All books, magazines, and newspapers in Cuba are published by the Stalinist regime. 

13. Receive publications from abroad or from visitors. This is punishable by jail pursuant to Law 88. 

14. Openly communicate with foreign journalists. 

15. Visit or stay in hotels, restaurants, beaches or resorts for tourists (regime permission is granted to a tiny number of regime hacks and toadies).

16. Accept gifts or donations from foreign visitors. 

17. Seek employment with foreign companies allowed to do business in Cuba (regime permission is required for employment with these accomplices with Stalinism).

18. Own your own home or business. 

19. Earn more than the wages established by the regime for all employees: $7-12 monthly for most jobs, $15-20 monthly for professionals, such as doctors and government officials. 

20. Sell any personal belongings, services, homemade foods or crafts without regime permission.

21. Fish along the coastline or board a boat without regime permission. 

22. Belong to any independent trade union. The regime controls all unions and no individual or collective bargaining is permitted; neither are strikes or protests. 

23. Organize any artistic performance without regime permission. (Don’t look for this announced at the Sundance Film Festival but before Robert Redford released the Motorcycle Diaries he was mandated to travel to Cuba and give a special screening for approval to one of the film’s co/producers: Fidel Castro. So in effect, this Castroite provision can actually extend beyond Cuba’s borders.) 

24. Select a doctor or hospital. The regime assigns them all. 

25. Seek medical help outside of Cuba. 

26. Hire an attorney. All are assigned by the regime. 

28. Refuse to participate in an event or mass demonstration organized by the Communist Party. (Turn down such an “offer” and watch your food rations shrink and employment status crumble.) 

29. Refuse to participate in "voluntary" work for adults and children. (see above) 

30. Refuse to vote in a single party election featuring only Stalinist candidates nominated by the Stalinist regime. 

31. Transport any food products for either personal or family consumption between provinces. 

32. Slaughter a cow. This "felony" is sanctioned by five years imprisonment. 

33. Purchase or sell real estate or land. 

34. Select a career. In the selection process for universities (all of which belong to the Stalinist regime), regime apparatchiks select it for you, closely reviewing your record of “ideological purity,” as reported to them by regime snitches. 

35. Invite a foreigner to spend the night at your home. 

36. Buy milk in a regime outlet for any child older than seven years. Only Cuban children up to seven years of age have the right to pay a quota for milk. After that, parents can only obtain milk in the black market—if caught and their “ideological purity” (as reported by regime snitches) is in question, jail time is usually in the offing for the hapless Castro subject. 

Today the world’s largest Che Guevara image adorns Cuba’s headquarters and torture chambers for its KGB and STASI-trained secret police. Nothing could be more fitting. 

But Graham Nash has many, many hot competitors in the Cuba stupidity contest. Owing to bandwidth constraints, we’ll only mention the one most closely breathing down Nash’s neck, Carlos Santana. 

So let’s recall the 2005 Academy Awards where the famed guitarist (on hand to perform the sound score for the Robert Redford-produced Motorcycle Diaries) couldn't contain himself. He stopped for the photographers on the carpet grand entrance, smiled deliriously and swung his jacket open. 

TA-DA! There it was:  Carlos' elegantly embroidered Che Guevara t-shirt. Carlos' face as the flashbulbs popped said it all. "I'm so COOL!" he beamed. "I'm so HIP! I'm so CHEEKY! So SHARP! So TUNED IN!" 

Tune in to this, Carlos: In the mid 1960s, Fidel and your charming t-shirt icon set up forced-labor camps in Cuba for, among many others, "anti-social elements" and "delinquents." Besides Bohemian (Haight-Ashbury, Greenwich Village  types) and homosexuals, these camps were crammed with "roqueros," who qualified in Che and Fidel's eyes as useless "delinquents." 

A "roquero" was a  hapless youth who tried to listen to Yankee-Imperialist rock music in Cuba. 

Comprende, Carlos? Do you see where I'm going with this, Carlos? 

Yes, Mr. Santana, here you were grinning widely -- and OH-SO-hiply!-- while proudly displaying the symbol of a regime that made it a criminal offense to listen to music by Carlos Santana!

This Week in History—JFK’s Immorality and Deceit Continue

Humberto Fontova  |  Oct 29, 2022 

“'My Cuban Missile Crisis tryst with JFK': When the United States stood on the brink of nuclear Armageddon during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F Kennedy sent his wife and children away to stay at the family's summer farm in Virginia. But he pulled his 19-year-old mistress (Mimi Alford) close, summoning her from her college while he stared down the Soviet Union.” 

But don’t take this appalling datum from me. After all I’m an “embittered right-wing-Cuban exile with an axe to grind.” Fine. Take it from JFK’s mistress-of-the-minute herself. Details here.

Presidential mistress (while a teenager) Mimi Alford claims the President who remains the most popular in modern U.S. history offered her amyl nitrate poppers during a nude swimming party at the Palm Springs estate of Bing Crosby, the most popular entertainer of America’s Norman Rockwell era. The party took place around “White” Christmas of 1962.

“The shouts and shrieks of the partygoers,” writes Seymour Hersh in his earlier (but corroborating book) The Dark Side of Camelot, “had the California State policeman guarding the estate that night assuming the sounds were actually the nighttime calls of coyotes.”

But as the whoops and shrieks got louder the alarmed state troopers finally called Kennedy’s Secret Service agents Joe Paolella and Larry Newman to ask if some coyotes were bothering the president. The agents, long accustomed to averting their gaze during these frequent episodes, finally went around the back fence and investigated. “(Kennedy’s top aide) Dave Powers was banging a girl on the edge of the pool,” recalled Newman, “while the President was sitting across the pool having a drink and talking to some broads. Everybody was buck**s naked.”

But no word from the Secret Service agents if Bingo’s “Silent Night, Holy Night” played in the background during this solemn Yuletide celebration.

Mere months earlier dozens of Cuban exiles (many of them college kids about Mimi Alford’s age) were infiltrating Cuba and bringing out eye-witness reports of what remains the biggest military threat to the U.S. since 1812. In the process dozens were also dying by firing squad and torture at the hands of Castro and Che Guevara’s KGB-tutored secret police.

For all the good the Cubans did:

“Nothing but refugee rumors,” sneered JFK’s National Security advisor, McGeorge Bundy on ABC’s Issues and Answers on October 14, 1962. “Nothing in Cuba presents a threat to the United States,” continued the Ivy League luminary, barely masking his scorn for these hot-headed and deceitful Cubans and their sensational reports of missiles. “There’s no likelihood that the Soviets or Cubans would try and install an offensive capability in Cuba,” he scoffed.

And for all the thanks the Cubans got:

“There's fifty-odd-thousand Cuban refugees in this country," sneered President Kennedy himself the following day, "all living for the day when we go to war with Cuba. They're the ones putting out this kind of stuff."

Exactly 48 hours later U-2 photos sat on the president’s desk revealing those “refugee rumors,” complete with nuclear warheads, and pointed directly at Bundy, JFK and their entire staff of sagacious Ivy League wizards.

After the Missile Crisis "resolution," the U.S. Coast Guard and even the British navy (when some intrepid exile freedom fighters moved their operation to the Bahamas and Kennedy notified his chum, British PM Harold Mc Millan of their intrepidness) shielded Castro from exile attacks. In the Florida Keys and Bahamas they were arresting and disarming the very exiles the CIA had been training and arming the month before. 

Eighteen months after the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, two months after his deal with Khrushchev (and shortly after Bing Crosby’s party) a guilt-stricken JFK ransomed the surviving Bay of Pigs freedom-fighters back from Castro's dungeons. Living under a daily firing-squad sentence for almost two years, these Cuban freedom-fighters (all volunteers and overwhelmingly civilian) – aware it would probably save their lives – had refused to sign the confession damning the “U.S. Imperialists” (the very nation, which for all they knew at the time, that had betrayed them on that beachhead.) “We will die with dignity!” responded their second-in-command Erneido Oliva to his furious KGB-trained interrogators, again and again and again.

To Castroites, such an attitude not only enrages, but baffles.

On Dec. 29, 1962, these Cuban freedom fighters, many on crutches, others in wheelchairs, gathered with their destitute and traumatized families in Miami’s Orange Bowl to hear President Kennedy address them. “I am here today not to be honored—but to pay honor,” intoned the U.S. president. “I know of no men in modern history who showed more courage under more difficult conditions than those before me today.”

The president continued in this vein and upon completing his tribute the Cuban freedom-fighters handed him their sacred battle flag, a gesture which surprised and seemed to deeply move the U.S. president.

“I will never abandon Cuba to Communism!” declared JFK while addressing the recently ransomed Bay of Pigs freedom fighters and their families in Miami’s Orange Bowl Dec. 29, 1962. “I promise to deliver this Brigade banner to you in a free Havana!”

“That was the first time it snowed in the Orange Bowl,” later wrote CIA man named Grayston Lynch who was in attendance. Lynch helped train many of the Bay of Pigs freedom fighters and he landed on the beach with them, firing the first shots of the invasion. Then — from 1961-64 — he led several dozen commando raids into Cuba, as part of Operation Mongoose. Probably nobody had the “hands-on” experience with the actual nuts and bolts of Mongoose as Grayston Lynch. The “snow” comment appears in Lynch’s book Decision to Disaster published in 1998, after years of analyzing the entire Mongoose matter, and obviously refers to the “snow job” JFK was pulling by claiming he’d help overthrow Cuban communism.

But at Kennedy’s promise on that Dec. 29^th 1962, the stadium had erupted: “CUBA LIBRE!” yelled the delirious crowd while hugging and cheering and sobbing. “CUBA-LIBRE!” yelled men (and boys) who’d snickered in the face of KGB torturers weeks earlier, but now wept openly. The hour of liberation seemed nigh, and with the full backing of “The Leader of the Free World.”

Ah, but unbeknownst to most of them, two months earlier this same Leader of the Free World had made a different pledge to Khrushchev, ensuring anything but a Cuba Libre; promising, in fact, that Havana would remain Communist, as enforced by U.S. arms.

And the following 60 years showed which pledge the U.S. honored. The pledge to the Butcher of Budapest to preserve Castroite Stalinism has proven sacrosanct–while the pledge of liberty to the men who risked their lives to warn the U.S. of the greatest threat in her history was trashed.

This Week in History—JFK Surrenders to Khrushchev During Cuban Missile Crisis

Humberto Fontova  |  Oct 22, 2022

"The biggest defeat in our nation's history!" bellowed Air Force Chief of Staff General Curtis LeMay while whacking his fist on his desk upon learning the details of the deal President Kennedy cut with Nikita Khrushchev regarding the missiles. 

'Aaw come on, Humberto!' Some amigos retort. 'Gen. LeMay was a serious war-monger and NUTCASE!—the model for Gen. Ripper in Dr Strangelove!  Are you saying we shoulda started a worldwide nuclear war with tens of millions incinerated to liberate a two-bit Caribbean island of barely 7 million people?!' 

Nothing of the sort. In fact, the choice at the time was never between nuclear war and surrendering Cuba along with U.S. national security. This was amply recognized by some of LeMay’s fellow Joint Chiefs of Staff, by a diverse array of Republican Party leaders of the time, and even by a few cold-warrior Democrats—though you’d never guess it from the 60 year Democrat-Media-Hollywood juggernaut of pro-Kennedy propaganda.

Let’s do this. Let’s bypass LeMay, “circle-back,” and look at what many of his “less Gen. Ripper-like” colleagues and contemporaries were saying at the time about Kennedy’s “resolution” to the Cuban Missile Crisis:

Joint Chiefs of Staff Generals Curtis LeMay and Maxwell Taylor (a Kennedy favorite) represented opposite poles of the military establishment of the time. Well:

"We missed the big boat," complained Gen. Maxwell Taylor after learning of Kennedy’s deal.

"We've been had!" yelled then Navy chief George Anderson upon hearing on October 28, 1962, how JFK "solved" the missile crisis. Adm. Anderson was the man in charge of the very "blockade" against Cuba.

Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, represented different poles of the Republican Party. Yet both agreed: 

"We locked Castro's communism into Latin America and threw away the key to its removal," growled Barry Goldwater about the JFK’s Missile Crisis “solution.”

"Kennedy pulled defeat out of the jaws of victory,” wrote Richard Nixon. "Then gave the Soviet squatters rights in our backyard." 

"It's a public relations fable that Khrushchev quailed before Kennedy," wrote Defense establishment stalwart Gen. Alexander Haig, who served as Asst. National Security Advisor to Kissinger during Nixon’s term and as Secretary of Defense under Reagan. "The legend of the eyeball to eyeball confrontation invented by Kennedy's men paid a handsome political dividend. But the Kennedy-Khrushchev deal was a deplorable error resulting in political havoc and human suffering through the Americas."

Even Democratic luminary Dean Acheson despaired: "This nation lacks leadership," he grumbled about the famous “Ex-Comm meetings” so glorified in Thirteen Days. "The meetings were repetitive and without direction. Most members of Kennedy's team had no military or diplomatic experience whatsoever. The sessions were a waste of time."

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

In fact, according to Khrushchev’s own son Sergei, his father prepared to yank the missiles before any “bullying” by Kennedy. “What!?” Khrushchev gasped on Oct. 28^th 1962, as recalled by Sergei. “Is he (Fidel Castro) proposing that we start a nuclear war? That we launch missiles from Cuba?” 

“Apparently.” 

“Yesterday the Cubans shot down a plane (U-2 with) without (Soviet) permission. Today they’re preparing a nuclear attack…..But that is insane!..Remove them (our missiles) as soon as possible! Before it’s too late. Before something terrible happens!” commanded the Soviet premier. 

So much for the gallant Knights of Camelot forcing the Russians’ retreat during the Cuban missile crisis. Apparently, the Castro brothers and Che Guevara’s genocidal lust is what prompted the Butcher of Budapest to yank the missiles from their reach. 

In his diaries, Khrushchev snickers further: "It would have been ridiculous for us to go to war over Cuba–for a country 8,000 miles away. For us, war was unthinkable." So much for the threat that so rattled the Knights of Camelot and inspired such cinematic and literary epics of drama and derring-do by their court scribes and court cinematographers.

Considering the U.S. nuclear superiority over the Soviets at the time of the (so-called) Missile Crisis (5,000 nuclear warheads for us, 300 for them) it's hard to imagine a President Nixon — much less Reagan — quaking in front of Khrushchev's transparent ruse a la Kennedy. 

What the situation called for was some mature and low-key “Brinksmanship,” of the type President Eisenhower used to end the Korean War and keep us out of any more during his terms. And (as President in 1962) his top understudy (former Vice President Nixon) would have been just the man to employ it against Khrushchev.

Of course, had Nixon been president since 1960, there would have been no Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962—in fact, there’d been no Castro regime since April of 1961.) 

In any case, the genuine threat in Oct. 1962 came — not from Moscow — but from the Castros and Che. “If the missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.” (Che Guevara to Sam Russell of The London Daily Worker, November 1962.)

“Of course I knew the missiles were nuclear-armed,” responded Fidel Castro to Robert McNamara during a meeting in 1992. “That’s precisely why I urged Khrushchev to launch them. And of course Cuba would have been utterly destroyed in the exchange.” 

"Many concessions were made by the Americans about which not a word has been said," snickered Fidel Castro as late as 1968. "Perhaps one day they'll be made public."

"We can't say anything public about this agreement. It would be too much of a political embarrassment for us." That's Robert F. Kennedy to Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin when closing the deal that ended the so-called crisis.

Castro's regime was granted new status. Let's call it MAP, or Mutually-Assured-Protection. Here’s the exact wording from Khrushchev when gleefully agreeing to Kennedy’s terms:

“You (JFK) in your turn gave (to Khrushchev) the assurances that the so-called 'quarantine' would be promptly removed and that no invasion of Cuba would be made, not only by the U.S. but by other countries of the Western hemisphere either.”

Cuban freedom-fighters working from south Florida were suddenly rounded up for "violating U.S. Neutrality laws." Some of these bewildered men were jailed, others "quarantined," prevented from leaving Dade County. The Coast Guard in Florida got 12 new boats and seven new planes to make sure Castro remained unmolested.

JFK's Missile crisis “solution” also pledged that he immediately pull the rug out from under Cuba's in-house freedom fighters. Raul Castro himself admitted that at the time of the Missile Crisis his troops and their Soviet advisors were up against 179 different "bands of bandits" as he labeled the thousands of Cuban anti-Communist rebels then battling savagely and virtually alone in Cuba's countryside, with small arms shipments from their compatriots in south Florida as their only lifeline.

Kennedy's deal with Khrushchev cut this lifeline. Think about it: here's the U.S. Coast Guard and Border Patrol working 'round the clock arresting Hispanics in the U.S. who are desperate to return to their native country!

It's a tribute to the power of Castroite mythology that, even with all this information a matter of public record for over half a century the academic/media mantra (gloat, actually) still had Castro, "defying ten U.S. Presidents!"

Nothing of the sort. Instead he’d been protected by them.

Is Biden going to rescue the Castro dictatorship from the enraged people of Cuba?

October 3, 2022 By D. Parker

Is Biden going to rescue the Castro dictatorship from the enraged people of Cuba? Hurricane Ian is bringing extraordinary events to the open-air prison that is the island of Cuba.  The people are rising up, and the tyrannical government is begging for help from Biden.  Something strange is happening in the communist "Utopia" that is Cuba.  Despite what many of the anti-liberty left would have you believe, socialist national agendas have never worked in the history of mankind.  Before we see the blunderbuss of BS on the subject from the enemies of liberty on the left, we need to remind everyone of a few facts:

Despite the "embargo" the U.S. trades with Cuba, it exports about $324.1 million's worth of goods to Cuba each year.   The "embargo" has many exceptions.  Cuba also trades with the rest of the world.  So much for the "embargo" excuse............To Read More....

• As always, Democrats are deaf to cries for liberty in Iran October 3, 2022 With exquisitely poor timing, the forces for liberty in Iran keep revolting when Democrats are in power. 

FBI Alarmed by Betsy Ross Flag — but Not by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s July 26 Flag

Humberto Fontova Aug 06, 2022  FBI Alarmed by Betsy Ross Flag — but Not by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s July 26 Flag

“A leaked internal FBI guide about violent extremism lists the Second Amendment, the "Betsy Ross flag" and Jan. 6 protester Ashli Babbitt as "Domestic Violent Terrorism Symbols" used by militant extremist groups in the United States,” reports the Tennessee Star. “The guide, provided by an FBI whistleblower to the investigative media organization Project Veritas, says the symbols are "used by Anti-Government or Anti-Authority Violent Extremists."

But on the other hand:

“Dear Director Wray,” wrote Sen. Marco Rubio this week, “I write to request that the FBI immediately initiate an investigation into the activities of Puentes de Amor (“Bridges of Love”), a group operating in the United States and whose members are acting as unregistered foreign agents of the Cuban regime, in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Yesterday, (July 30) Puentes de Amor held a demonstration in Coral Gables, Florida, as part of a coordinated effort by the Cuban regime to sow division, incite conflict, and influence the foreign policy of the United States. The group also flew flags marking Castro’s July 26th movement, in open support of the Cuban Revolution.

“Puentes de Amor has well known associations with the Cuban regime, and as recent as
 last month, its leaders met with the Díaz-Canel regime in Cuba. The FBI should acknowledge the group and its members for what they are – malign foreign actors inside the United States – and conduct investigations of individuals who may be acting as foreign agents of the Cuban regime so that all FARA violations can be enforced to the fullest extent of the law.”

Better still (worse, actually) the head of this Bridges of Love travels in and out of totalitarian, terror-sponsoring  Cuba at will, and even poses for propaganda pics in Cuba’s KGB-founded and mentored media alongside Cuba’s eunuch/sock-puppet “President” Diaz Canel.

As we go to press, Senator Rubio has not posted a response from Director Wray.

Actually I can easily understand the FBI’s concern. I mean, if the Foreign Agents Registration Act was actually enforced regarding Stalinist Cuba there wouldn’t be enough handcuffs, paddy wagons and bailiffs—to say nothing of jail-cells—to accommodate the processing of all the U.S. celebrity, businessmen, media and governmental players who would amply qualify as agents of terror-sponsoring Cuba. Nowhere near enough. 

As usual for agents of Stalinist Cuba, the main goal of this Bridges of Love is to end the (so-called) Cuba embargo—which, despite the relentless liberal and libertarian propaganda campaign against it, still shines as one of the Crown Jewels of post-war U.S. foreign policy. 

Imagine, if you will, a U.S. foreign policy that—rather than the usual bilking of the U.S. taxpayer-- actually protects the U.S. taxpayer from further depredations by high-living foreign frauds and scoundrels.

Yes, here’s one issue on which the American taxpayer can look across the oceans, touch his nose with his thumb, extend his hand, and fan his fingers while snickering “NEENER!...NEENER!...NEENER!--You SUCKERS!” 

You see, amigos: the taxpayers of nations from France to Spain to Germany, from South Korea to Japan and from Russia to Brazil –taxpayers of all these nations have all been shamelessly burglarized by the Castro-Family-Crime Syndicate (called “Cuba” by the mainstream media and Biden State Dept.) 

Of course we don’t hear or read much about this burglary in the media. What we read is how these economically-sophisticated nations all “trade” with “Cuba,” --and that because of the machinations of the sinister and sleazy “Cuban-Exile Lobby” American businesses and their workers miss out on this financial bonanza of “trading with Cuba.” 

“Yes, Middle America!” goes the mantra. “You are being denied the boons of lucrative financial transactions with Cuba because of a sleazy, foreign-born cabal of snickering, black–mustachioed mobsters we all learned about in Godfather 2 and Scarface! How long will you stand for this!”

Actually, in Oct. 1960—right after Castro’s gunmen stole $7 billion from U.S. businessmen and tortured and murdered a few who resisted-- President Eisenhower imposed the first economic sanctions against the thieving, mass-murdering, terror-sponsoring Stalinists who (still) mostly run Cuba. These sanctions grew into one of the CROWN JEWELS of recent U.S. foreign policy: the Cuba “embargo.” 

President Eisenhower, by the way, at much prodding by Vice President Nixon, was the one who got the ball rolling on what became known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. Unfortunately the ball landed in JFK’s lap. Had Nixon won in 1960, some bandit/murderers named Fidel Castro and Che Guevara would merit less Wikipedia column inches today than Pancho Villa.  

At any rate, these much-maligned  (especially by international elites from the Council on Foreign Relations to The Trilateral Commission to The Davos Group) economic sanctions against Cuba account for the sense of smugness and jocosity with which Americans can view the rest of the world on the issue of “trading” with Cuba. (Actually I refer to the smugness and jocosity displayed by the tiny number of American revelers who actually know what these sanctions do.)

Fortunately, for almost 20 years the so-called U.S. embargo (originally codified as the Helms-Burton Act) has mostly stipulated that Castro’s kleptocratic/Stalinist regime pay cash up front through a third–party bank for all U.S. agricultural products; no Export-Import Bank (U.S. taxpayer) financing of such sales.

Enacted by the Bush team in 2001 (to try and patch up a Clinton loophole) this cash-up-front policy has been monumentally beneficial to U.S. taxpayers, making them—as oft-mentioned hereabouts--among the very few in the world not stiffed by the Castro regime, which per capita-wise qualifies as the world’s biggest debtor nation, with a credit–rating nudging Somalia’s and a relentless record of defaults. 

The Castro-Family-Crime-Syndicate has gleefully fleeced taxpayers from the European Union to Canada, from Mexico to South Africa—in brief, the taxpayers of virtually every nation whose government granted trade credits to these kleptocrats.  

All of those Castroite burglaries are on top of the $30 billion in Castroite debt Putin’s Russia “wrote-off” a few years ago. So, amigos, when you hear or read the usual claptrap in the media about the “Cuba embargo” simply replace that term with “trade credits from the U.S. tax payers to the world’s biggest deadbeat/crooks” and you’ll get to the essence of the issue.

The “Helms-Burton Act,” by the way, refers to its authors, the late great Jesse Helms of North Carolina and the great Dan Burton of Indiana. The latter is shown here in an apparently delighted frame of mind while holding a signed book he patiently stood in line to obtain.

 

Key West Celebrates “Hemingway Days”— but Omits His Communist/KGB Credentials

Humberto Fontova Jul 23, 2022

“The annual Hemingway Look-Alike Contest began in Key West on Thursday, marking the 123rd anniversary of Ernest Hemingway’s July 21 birth,” reports the AP. “Hemingway Days continues through Sunday with events including an offbeat “Running of the Bulls” spoof and the Key West Marlin Tournament.”

Perhaps an “offbeat spoof” of torture and murder in Moscow’s Lubyanka prison would also be appropriate. 

Perhaps some of you weren’t aware that declassified Soviet documents proved that Ernest Hemingway officially signed up with the KGB’s precursor the NKVD as “Agent Argo” in 1941?

Yes, Ernest Hemingway voluntarily joined the most murderous organization in modern history—at precisely its most murderous phase.

OK. But don’t take it from me. After all I’m a “rabidly right-wing-Cuban exile-with-an-axe-to-grind!” Instead take it from the crypto-commie (but well-sourced) UK Guardian.     

According to KGB defector Alexander Vassiliev in a book published by Yale University Press (not exactly a branch of the John Birch Society), “the 42-year-old Hemingway was recruited (by the KGB) under the cover name “Argo” in 1941 and cooperated with Soviet agents whom he met in Havana and London.”

Turns out that Papa failed pathetically at his KGB assignment. But hey, it’s the thought that counts!  And the thought was to be a member of the most murderous organization in modern history during its most murderous phase. (Stalin’s NKVD under Lavrenti Beria.) A singular honor, surely! 

Contrary to the Media-Academia fairy tale about mean ‘ole Uncle Sam pushing the benevolent Cuban revolution reluctantly into the arms of Mother Russia—Raul Castro and Che Guevara had a KGB handler as early as 1956. His name was Nikolai Leonev and until his recent death was often featured with Raul on Cuban media guffawing about the monkeys they made of our crackerjack CIA sleuths stationed in Cuba at the time. To wit: 

“Don’t worry. We’ve infiltrated Castro’s guerrilla group in the Sierra Mountains. The Castro brothers and Ernesto “Che” Guevara have no affiliations with any Communists whatsoever” (crackerjack Havana CIA station chief Jim Noel, 1958).

“Me and my staff were all Fidelistas” (Robert Reynolds, the CIA’s Caribbean Desk chief from 1957 to 1960).

“Everyone in the CIA and everyone at State was pro-Castro, except [Republican] ambassador Earl Smith” (Robert Weicha, CIA operative in Santiago Cuba).

 “Without U.S. help Fidel Castro would never have gotten into power. The State Department played a large part in bringing Castro to power. The press, the Chief of the CIA Section are also responsible… we are responsible for bringing Castro in power. I do not care how you want to word it" (Earl T. Smith U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, 1957-59).

“Castro’s revolution is very pure and beautiful," gushed Hemingway in March, 1960. “I’m encouraged by it. The Cuban people now have a decent chance for the first time. The Cubans getting shot all deserve it.”

Quite fittingly, when Soviet diplomat Anastas Mikoyan finished his courtesy calls on Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in Havana in 1960—this long-time Stalin and Beria confidant made it a point to call on Ernest Hemingway. 

Hemingway knew full well what was going on behind the scenes of Castro and Che’s “pure and beautiful” revolution. Accounts of "Papa” Hemingway’s eager presence at many of the Katyn-like massacres of untried Cubans comes courtesy of Hemingway's own friend, the late George Plimpton (not exactly an “embittered right-wing Cuban exile!”) who worked as editor of the Paris Review, (not exactly a "McCarthyite scandal sheet.")

In 1958 George Plimpton interviewed Hemingway in Cuba for one of the Paris Review’s most famous pieces. They became friends and the following year Hemingway again invited Plimpton down to his Finca Vigia just outside Havana. James Scott Linville, an editor at The Paris Review during the 1990s, while relating how this high-brow publication passed on serializing the manuscript that became Che Guevara’s Motorcycle Diaries, reveals “Papa’s” unwitting role in the rejection.

“I took the paper-clipped excerpt upstairs to the Boss (Plimpton),” writes Linville, “and said I had something strange and good. As I started to tell him about it, his smile faded. I stopped my pitch and said, 'Boss, what's the matter?'"

"James, I'm sorry," Linville recalls Plimpton replying. A sad look came over him, and he said, "Years ago, after we'd done the interview, Papa invited me down again to Cuba. It was right after the revolution. “There's something you should see,” Hemingway told Plimpton while preparing a shaker of drinks for the outing.

“They got in the car with a few others and drove some way out of town,” continues Linville (who is recalling Plimpton’s account.) “They got out, set up chairs and took out the drinks, as if they were going to watch the sunset. Soon, a truck arrived. This, explained George, was what they'd been waiting for. It came, as Hemingway knew the same time each day. It stopped and some men with guns got out of it. In the back were a couple of dozen others who were tied up. Prisoners. 

“The men with guns hustled the others out of the back of the truck, and lined them up. Then they shot them. They put the bodies back into the truck.”

And so it started. Within a few years 16,000 men and boys (some of them U.S. citizens) would fill mass graves after scenes like the ones that so charmed Papa Hemingway with his thermos of specially-prepared Daiquiris. The figure for the Castroite murder tally is not difficult to find. Simply open "The Black Book of Communism," written by French scholars and published in English by Harvard University Press (neither exactly an outpost of “embittered- right-wing Cuban-exiles-with an axe-to-grind!”)

“Pure and beautiful” indeed, Mr Hemingway.