First, They Came for the Labor Leaders in Cuba
Good thing he wasn’t a Tea-partier caught on camera saying he wants to vote for Mussolini and clone Pinochet!
Instead he was a union protestor in Madison, Wisconsin, caught on camera saying he wants to vote for Castro and his clone, Che Guevara.
So there’s no kerfuffle from the MSM or Democratic Party. As I recall the (utterly bogus as it turned out) use of the “N” word by Tea-partiers back in March generated quite a kerfuffle.
A much larger, violent, and protracted kerfuffle erupted in Cuba by the union members cursed by fate to live under the regime founded by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Don’t look for this on NPR or The History Channel, much less in your college textbooks, but among the first, the most militant, and the most widespread opposition groups to the Stalinism that Che Guevara (who often cheekily signed his named as “Stalin II”) and Fidel Castro imposed on Cuba came from Cuban labor organizations.
And who can blame them? Here’s a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) report on Cuba circa 1957:
One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class. Cuban workers are more unionized [proportional to the population] than U.S. workers. The average wage for an 8-hour day in Cuba in 1957 is higher than for workers in Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany. Cuban labor receives 66.6 per cent of gross national income. In the U.S. the figure is 70 per cent, in Switzerland 64 per cent. 44 per cent of Cubans are covered by Social legislation, a higher percentage than in the U.S.
In 1958, Cuba had a higher per capita income than Austria or Japan and Cuban industrial workers had the eighth-highest wages in the world. In the 1950s, Cuban stevedores earned more per hour than their counterparts in New Orleans and San Francisco.
Thousands of these took up arms against Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. The MRP (Movimiento Revolucionario del Pueblo) was among these Cuban resistance groups of mostly laborers. But don’t take it from me. Here’s how the FBI and CIA described them:
Heavily weighted labor membership, with socialistic leanings. Aimed for Castro overthrow from within; advocated nationalization of economy, agrarian reform, utopian social reform.
In a TV speech on June 26, 1961, when Che Guevara was Cuba’s “Minister of Industries,” he proclaimed: “The Cuban workers have to start being used to live in a collectivist regimen, and by no means can they go on strike!”
I’m sure the ghost of ACORN will have no problem with running the corpse of Che Guevara for some kind of political office. They already have the dead people to vote for him.
CUBA UNDER the U.S.-BACKED DICTATOR BATISTA:
- Americans owned 70 % of the arable land
- 1% of the population controlled 46 % of the wealth
- Batista’s goons and secret police killed 20,000 Cubans (tortured even more)
- 40 % of the population were illiterate
- 50 % of the population lived in Bohio shacks
- Dissidents were hung and left to dangle in the streets as a warning sign
- The Mafia (Meyer Lansky & Co) ran Havana and used Cuba as a wh0rehouse for rich gringos from the U.S.
… These are the conditions that allowed Fidel and Che to rise to power!
so they merely swaped one murdeous dictator for another
Why Che is needed here in the U$ …
http://motherjones.com/print/99036
the revolution is coming.
I am a democratic socialist and a follower of the ideals of Che!
Che was right, that there is no right to strike against the State. These striking teachers should be thrown into prison or even better put into labor camps to work for the public good. They could easily be replaced with teachers from so-called “private” schools or “parochial” schools (and drafting all those “private” teachers into government service, forcing them to work for the current low-wage contracts that government teachers have, would help shut down those corrupt capitalist schools).
I assume all other progressives who support Che will join me in supporting this modest proposal!
Does he know Che is dead?
Yes he knows Che is dead. Do you know that Che was a racist, murderous, tyrannical, craven, evil thug?
Do you know that Ronald Reagan was a WAR CRIMINAL who’s right-wing Contra Death squads slaughtered 70,000 in El Salvador, 100,000 in Guatemala, and 30,000 in Nicaragua?
If only Che had lived long enough to battle Reagan’s goons and butchers.
Who cares? Ronaldus Magnus was a hero who kept commies out of our backyard and put a stake through the heart of communism. Blame the Soviets for the bloodbath that ensued. Commies LOVE dead people!
I’d love to be able to send these Castro-loving progressives on a virtual 40 years on one of Castro’s conscripted labor work brigades – cutting cane, harvesting tobacco and picking cotton – yes, they do grow cotton in Cuba, so they can get a full, rich and deep experience of life under Castro.
Che was a mass murderer, a communist, and a thug. For anybody, anybody, to see this guy as a “hero” simply shows how stupid they really are. And for universities to allow kids to wear T-shirts with this dirt bag’s picture on it is the same as wearing a T-shirt with either Stalin or Hitler on it. Funny how T-shirts with Hitler or Stalin are not acceptable, but Che is. Shows you what good Public Relations can do, especially when encouraged by ultra-liberal universities. Shameful.
“We should not allow the word ‘democracy’ to be utilized apologetically to represent the dictatorship of the exploiting classes.”
— Che Guevara, ‘Guerrilla Warfare: A Method’, 1963
American right-wingers like to ignore the inconvenient fact that Che Guevara battled 3 U.S.-backed dictators on 3 separate continents (Batista/Cuba, Mobutu/Congo, & Barrientos/Bolivia).
The right-wing also likes to avoid acknowledging that Che’s radicalism was spawned from living in Guatemala during the 1953 overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz by the CIA (Operation PBSUCCESS) on behalf of Secretary of State Dulles and the United Fruit Company.
As the Cuban Revolution and Che proved, when given the decision of backing a democratic government that represents the interests of the majority of a nation’s citizens or a fascist right-wing dictator who will protect the business interests of the United States = the U.S. will always chose the latter. And as many of the recent U.S.-backed dictators and oligarchic “Royal Families” in the Arab World continue to feel the pressure from their people; it’s important to remember that the deposed Hosni Mubarak in Egypt was only one in a long line of U.S. government backed tyrants.
They love it, don’t they?
The urge to control and dominate is probably genetic in people like this. Culture can’t induce this level of hatred and intensity.
And it’s always laced with cruelty and violence. Always.
You seem to forget that it was the U.S. embargo on Cuba that won the revolution. Many of the weapons Batista’s military had, including tanks and planes, could not be maintained for lack of spare parts. You can quote all you want, but Che was a thug, an executioner of civilians, women and children, like Stalin and Mao who trained him. Stalin and Mao were responsible for more deaths in the name of Communism and the poor than any “right wing” you can name. “Radicalism” is one thing. Thuggery, rape and murder on a mass scale using the tactics of Stalin and Mao are much different. And Che was good at what he did.
You should not try to confuse someone like Safeer with facts. He is comfortable quoting people without seeming to realize is that what liberals, communists, progressives and their ilk say rarely represents what they have done and what they believe. When Castro took over, all media came under state control as did the education system (is a system that teaches lies providing an education?) and the economy. I guess that’s the condition Safeer wants imposed on the US. Also, anyone remember Casto executing chickens in his hotel room in New York when he was there to address the UN?
righ it all the great satan americas fault…the great satan should not support dictatorships nor should they put sanctions on them nor should they not recognize them nor should they topple them
The historical list of U.S.-backed dictators includes:
René Barrientos (Bolivia), Fulgencio Batista (Cuba), Hassanal Bolkiah (Brunei), P.W. Botha (South Africa), Humberto Branco (Brazil), Chiang Kai-Shek (China), Jean Claude Duvalier (Haiti), King Fahd (Saudi Arabia), Francisco Franco (Spain), Ferdinand Marcos (Philippines), Hosni Mubarak (Egypt), Islam Karimov (Uzbekistan), Teodoro Mbasogo (Equatorial Guinea), Sese Seko Mobutu (Zaire), Ríos Montt (Guatemala), Manuel Noriega (Panama), Maximiliano Martínez (El Salvador), Georgios Papadopoulos (Greece), Shah Pahlevi (Iran), Augusto Pinochet (Chile), António Salazar (Portugal), Anastasio Somoza (Nicaragua), Alfredo Stroessner (Paraguay), General Suharto (Indonesia), Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic) and Jorge Videla (Argentina) …
While the historical list of democractically elected leaders who the U.S. helped overthrow includes:
Salvador Allende (Chile), Jacobo Arbenz (Guatemala), Víctor Estenssoro (Bolivia), João Goulart (Brazil), Patrice Lumumba (Congo), Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iran) and Kwame Nkrumah (Ghana).
Che also died a cowards death.
“Shoot coward, you are only going to kill a man” — Che Guevara’s LAST WORDS
… The real reason why Uncle Sam had to ensure that Guevara was killed was because Che stood as a heroic example that overthrowing the U.S.-backed tyrants and boot-licking-puppets-of-death was possible! The U.S. gives lip service to “democracy”, but what they really seek are brutal lap dog stooges who will let America rape their homeland for a financial cut = like Fulgencio Batista who killed 20,000 civilians before fleeing Cuba with $300,000,000 in payoffs and $700,000,000 in fine art, after Che defeated him at the Battle of Santa Clara.
“The (U.S.) slogan ‘we will not allow another Cuba’ hides the possibility of perpetrating aggressions without fear of reprisal, such as the one carried out against the Dominican Republic or before that the massacre in Panama — and the clear warning stating that Yankee troops are ready to intervene anywhere in America where the ruling regime may be altered, thus endangering their interests.”
— Che Guevara, one of his last letters, April 16, 1967
Uncle Sam…Guevara was killed…Che stood as a heroic example…U.S.-backed tyrants and boot-licking-puppets-of-death…lip service to “democracy”…brutal lap dog stooges…America rape their homeland…Che defeated him at the Battle of Santa Clara…Yankee troops are ready to intervene anywhere in America
This guy is a charicature of himself. Do they have little phrase books that they have to pick one each from columsn a, b, c, and d?
Can tyranny be far behind? As Gubmint grows and takes over more business and its union ranks swell they will be able to exert more influence over the rest of us. If there are no counter protests who will stop this advance? Will we then be drones? How disgusting and self centered must it look like when the union people of Wisconsin vehemently demonstrate to keep their pay and very lucrative benefits while the people of the Middle East protest over being jobless. Could you imagine Mubarak, Kaddafi, and a few kings demonstrating in some ME square complaining about losing their benefits? Boo hoo I’m losing my power boo hoo I have only 5 billion left!!! Wisconsin’s Gov. should kick the union out and start all over. When business fails it goes under and something new takes its place. When Gubmint fails we all drown.
Fontova is clearly a dishonest revisonist polemicist. His work points him more towards sophistry than scholarship. His clownish work is not taken seriously in the academic community because he purposely omits all information that fails to conform to his desired narrative. He works backwards by starting with his conclusion = “Che is evil” and then inserts any cherry picked information that will help support this view.
Fontova takes advantage of Americans ignorance with regards to Cuba and openly invents hundreds of lies about Che, Fidel, and Cuba in his writing.
Melissa, what are you planning on doing after high school?
Are you truly that ignorant?
If you want to know the truth about Cuba, all you have to do is notice that the leaky rafts were headed towards Florida, not Havana. Well, until the election of 2008, anyway. After 2012 I’m sure traffic will pick up again.
Alanstorm I have been aboard ship twice when we fished Cubans out of the Gulf Stream. Maybe Melissa would look forward to crossing the
Straits of Florida on an inner tube without food and water. There were two men,one inner tube. One had knotty knees and elbows you only get when deprived of enough food over a long period of time. The other,in his fifties said he worked in a restaurant so had enough to eat.
The second time we were north of Miami heading south when our sister ship spotted them just before we met. All we had to do was slow down and pick them up. This time it was two men and a woman who had no chance of making landfall. They were being swept out into the Atlantic. They had three inner tubes tied together with what looked like one by fours.
I had already been in contact with Mr. Fontova at this time and can say he knows whereof he speaks and so do I. Castro was not the revolution against Batista but saved his strength to overthrow the exhausted fighters. That is their way. Lenin used the same tactics in the October revolution and you, Melissa are expendable and so is Obama. There are many voices sounding off here that, if they believe what they say, are in for quite a surprise.
Fontova must’ve overlooked these remarks by John F. Kennedy in Cincinnati, Ohio, from October 6, 1960:
“At the beginning of 1959 United States companies owned about 40 percent of the Cuban sugar lands – almost all the cattle ranches – 90 percent of the mines and mineral concessions – 80 percent of the utilities – practically all the oil industry – and supplied two-thirds of Cuba’s imports.”
“Fulgencio Batista murdered 20,000 Cubans in seven years … and he turned Democratic Cuba into a complete police state – destroying every individual liberty. Yet our aid to his regime, and the ineptness of our policies, enabled Batista to invoke the name of the United States in support of his reign of terror. Administration spokesmen publicly praised Batista – hailed him as a staunch ally and a good friend – at a time when Batista was murdering thousands, destroying the last vestiges of freedom, and stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from the Cuban people, and we failed to press for free elections.”
MELISSA Y PLANTADO MAMBISA (STALINIST APOLOGISTS) Fidel Castro and Che represent failed, murderous totalitarian Thuggery. Useful idiots , like yourselves, who defend these mass murderers, are complicit in barbarism.PUNTO
THE REAL CHE GUEVARA:
- Worked in a Leper colony and treated lepers
- Was instrumental in teaching over 900,000 Cubans to read
- Tended to thousands of sick campesinos
- Helped construct dozens of schools throughout Cuba
- Removed the Mafia and dictatorship of Batista from Cuba which had killed 20,000 Cubans and tortured thousands more
- Desegregated the schools in Cuba before they were in the Southern US
- Called out South Africa’s Apartheid in 1964, 30 years before the West!
- Denounced the racism and KKK in America
- Warned of the dangers of the IMF, 3 decades before most of the developing world realized they had been scammed into debt slavery
- Left a bourgeoisie comfortable life of the upper class, a potential well compensated career as a medical doctor, and a high regarded governmental position, each time to slog through the jungle and fight guerrilla wars against impenetrable odds! … In fact, near the end it took 1,800 rangers to bring down his 25 men.
THE REAL Che’s “CRIMES” were:
~ Stopping American companies from owning 70 % of the arable land in Cuba
~ Teaching peasants to read, by bringing the Cuban literacy rate from 60 to 97 %
~ Having the 200 or so War Criminals who killed 20,000 Cubans for Batista shot against a wall
~ Fighting white mercenaries in the African Congo with an all black army
~ Speaking out against US and eventually USSR Imperialism while demanding that the poor of the world be allowed to live a life of dignity
… For most real Latinos like myself he is a heroic figure (think George Washington minus the slaves) who tried to stand up to US corporate domination of Latin America.
Oh hell Rosa let’s nominate “El Che” for sainthood! By the way if you don’t mind where were you born? And where do you live today? My bet is a real “latina” like you lives here and takes advantage of every goverment program,section 8, food stamps and bitches about how unfair America is. Listen you and your socialist buddies do me a favor and take a one way trip to that paradise that is Cuba today. Then write and tells us how you love it.
SAFEER MUSH:Ronald Reagan DESTROYED communism,something a third world loser and stalinist sympathizer with dreams of becoming aa mass-murdering commissar, can’t forgive. I’m not going to waste my time refuting your castroite rantings and your “facts”;clearly your problem is mental.Thus , I’d like to urge you to get your syphillis treated;judging from your postings, It’s gone tertiary.VIVA CUBA LIBRE!
Cuba is (another) classic illustration of the ideal communist society.
The commisars immediately begin creating a society with 2 classes: themselves, living in luxury, and the rest of the people, living in the dirt. It is absolutely essential to not just subjegate the people, but to turn them into hopeless serfs. There can be no middle class, or even people who approach the middle class, because even small amounts of wealth and freedom can give rise to resistance, and above everthing else, resistance must be squashed.
So of course, unions as the west knows them have to be among the first organizatioal structures to be be eliminated, along with churches and businesses.
Perhaps the only place where it hasn’t happened that way is Europe. I’m not sure why, but it might be related to the Europeans intense distrust of demagogues after the two world wars. When you think about it, there hasn’t really been a compelling Western European politician since WWII other than Thatcher; whereas we have had several in the US. But it doesn’t much matter. Even communism light is so inherently dangersous that we now have the priviledge of seeing it self destruct after only a few years.
And “left-wingers” like Safeer remain blind to the hundreds of thousands of Cubans who crowded onto anything that floats and braved the currents, the sharks, the extreme weather and the leaks in their “boats” to flee the workers’ paradise. They risked their lives, the lives of their loved ones, gave up everything they had known, and held dear to vote with their feet on Cuban socialism. Funny, I don’t seem to recall any such phenomenon under Bautista. But hey, I’m just a “right winger” who can’t see the “social justice” of Safeer’s socialism. I guess I’m just not “progressive” enough.
i guess i am just a fat, stupid and lazy american, you know like the average american, but i just can’t seem to understand why we were wrong to support one murderous dictator and wrong to NOT support another murderous dictator
WATCH THIS CLIP
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=guAcGOTaIts&vq=medium
Mr Fontova has brought a whole new nutter sub-culture to PJM’s shores.
“Good thing he wasn’t a Tea-partier caught on camera saying he wants to vote for Mussolini”
No Tea-Partier would ever say he/she wants to vote for Mussolini, Mussolini was first and foremost a fascist – which is very slightly to the right of socialism.
The biggest danger to Mussolini were the sociaists and communists, Mussolini believed in Free enterprise only to the extent that it agreed with government goals for the individual and the country.
Do not kid yourself, todays american liberals (Politically and economically)are slightly to the right of Mussolini who was slightly to the right of socialists, who are slightly to the right of Stalinists.
The rest of the article may be mostly true – but the first line in this article demonstrates ignorance.
Um, Wayne?
I can’t recall the last time I saw someone miss a point by such a wide margin!
The right-wing fears Che and his example – which is why they constantly try to slander his memory. Luckily most educated people just ignore their lies (hell 50 % of the GOP thinks Obams is muslim) and continue to honor Che as the freedom fighter he was.
“There was no person more feared by the company (CIA) than Che Guevara because he had the capacity and charisma necessary to direct the struggle against the political repression of the traditional hierarchies in power in the countries of Latin America.” — Philip Agee, CIA Agent
Che was fighting against:
- American Oligarchy (United Fruit, Texaco, U.S. Sugar)
- The US based Mafia (1959 Havana)
- The Monroe Doctrine rationale for Latin American Imperialism (Bay of Pigs)
- The idea of Banana Republics (Arbenz 1953 coup)
Hasta la Victoria Siempre!
“Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary.” ~ Ernesto
That about sums about some of Ernie’s apologist here today, no?
Guevara was Hitler, or worse, without the disciplined German industrial machine at his back. Starlin was his hero, but that’s no insult to his staunch defenders who can’t be arsed to be bothered with real history. I don’t discount that US policies were oppressive in some countries, but having someone like Che fix it is like dynamiting your house to the ground because the toilet is clogged.
Communist have murdered over 200 million of their own citizens, they make the Nazi look like pikers when it come to murder, they make serial pedophiles look good in comparison. These punks writing in are wanna be executioners but they would find themselves up against the wall first for who could trust a treasonous rat such as they, you turn on your country and you’d turn on anyone, thats why Che shot those close to the ‘revolution’ first; he’d put you on your knees so you could look down the gun barrel and see it coming. You keep this up and your future will be in a ditch with a bullet hole in the back of the neck, Che style.
Most Cuban exiles are cowards and liars.
Che & Fidel are two of the most heroic men to ever live.
That’s about all you need to know.
#17 CCP4ever(translation for PJMERS: CCP is the Cyrillic alphabet spelling for USSR) Sorry to disappoint you,stalinist degenerate,but Ronald Reagan wiped out your sick, murderous fantasy.Che and Fidel have done to Cuba, what Lenin and Stalin did to Russia : terrorize,slaughter and destroy.You are a defeated, marxist creep who needs a totalitarian paradigm to tolerate his wretched existence.Do us all a favor:Go live in Cuba and stop calling cowards those who refuse to live in communist slavery.What are YOU afraid of hypocrite!
The left will still insist this never happened.