Free Republic

Che Guevara on the Silver Screen By Humberto Fontova Wednesday, December 10, 2008 “SENTENCE first – VERDICT afterwards,” said the Queen. “Nonsense!” said Alice loudly. “Off with her head!” the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. – Alice In Wonderland They say Lewis Carroll was a serious dope fiend, his mind totally scrambled on opium, when he concocted “Alice in Wonderland.” A place where the sentence comes first and the verdict afterward? Where people who protest the madness are sentenced to death themselves ? Such a place rolled out the red carpet for Benicio del Toro this past...

Obama Appoints Castro's Lawyer as White House Counsel By Humberto Fontova Among the throng of Clinton regime retreads recruited for the Obama administration we find Gregory Craig. Craig served as Obama's advisor on Latin American during the campaign, and was appointed last week as chief White House Counsel. The MSM has mentioned Craig's role as Bill Clinton's impeachment lawyer, but mostly has omitted mention of Craig's role as chief facilitator for Fidel Castro's shanghaiing of Elian Gonzalez. Officially Craig served as attorney for Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. This humble man worked as a hotel doorman in a nation where...

McCain's Test By Humberto Fontova FrontPageMagazine.com | Friday, October 31, 2008 Senator Biden's asinine comment about the forthcoming president's “test" provoked John McCain's quick rejoinder: “I've already been tested.” That French video of the wounded John McCain in a Hanoi prison certainly stands as stark proof. While recently endorsing Barack Obama (for the second time), Fidel Castro made a point to insult the brave and grievously wounded man featured in that video as “a tool of the Miami Mafia” (i.e., Americans of Cuban heritage who refused to serve as Castro's tools, and today overwhelmingly refuse to serve as the Democratic...

Barack Obama's Kenyan cousin Raila Obinga did well in naming his son Fidel Castro Odinga. From Havana this week, Obama's nephew's namesake issued his 2nd Barack Obama endorsement. "The only thing that abounds in McCain are years" wrote the Stalinist Cuban dictator in his regime's official paper. "His (electoral) adversary far surpasses McCain in intelligence and serenity. And his health is not guaranteed." So a major concern for Castro is, "that the lady with the rifles, the inexperienced ex-governor of Alaska, could became U.S. President. We observe that she knows absolutely nothing about anything." Castro's favoritism towards Democrats is nothing...

At this year's Cannes Film Festival, Benicio Del Toro won "best actor" for his role as Che Guevara in Steven Soderbergh's film glorifying the Argentine-born "revolutionary," also known by acquaintances as a sniveling coward, an insufferable prig, a military doofus, a Stalinist and a psychotic mass-murderer. "The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind!" raved Che Guevara in 1961. "If the nuclear missiles had remained, we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City," he boasted to the London Daily Worker in November of 1962. "Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination....

Our next Vice President is a lifelong hunter who fills her freezer and feeds her family with the flesh of hooved mammals that she proudly stalked, killed and field dressed herself. Pictures of her posing next to the violently deceased creatures flood the web and blogospheres. Yet her speechwriter is an animal-rightist and vegan activist whose book was hailed by PETA in 2003 as their "Book of the Year!" And for excellent reasons. In his book, Governor Palin's speechwriter denounces hunters as: "assassins ... miscreants... bullies and cowards taking out their problems on animals." Republican speechwriter Matthew Scully denounces the...

Is Obama talking secretly with Raul Castro? August 30, 2008 By Humberto Fontova "As I left Havana earlier this month," writes Dr. Rens Lee, senior fellow at Philadelphia's prestigious Foreign Policy Research Institute, "Cuba was eagerly awaiting the United States' November presidential elections. The buzz around the capital, reportedly from a highly placed source, was that Barack Obama has already talked to Raul Castro by phone." (Note: I notified the Obama campaign of these claims and asked for a response or clarification. It has not responded.) Dr. Rens Lee explains that the buzz was reported by both highly placed Cuban...

Hitler snubbed Michael Phelps at '72 games? By Humberto Fontova Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has always craved the type of news coverage from the Venezuelan media U.S. presidents such as JFK and Jimmy Carter got from the U.S. media – to say nothing of the type presidential candidate Barack Obama currently gets. Alas, a few Venezuelan reporters persisted in covering Chavez in a manner more similar to that of Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Andrea Mitchell's coverage of U.S. Republican presidents such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

As a muscular counterpoint to Obama's weasel-words in Berlin last month, the Rush Limbaugh show featured excerpts from JFK's famous Berlin speech from 1963: “And there are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists. Let them come to Berlin....Freedom is indivisible, and when one man is enslaved, all are not free.“ “At the Brandenburg Gate in 1963, John F. Kennedy tells the communists their days are numbered, “ gushed Rush. “There's not a Democrat alive who would make that speech today anywhere. Democrats today are appeasers. Did you hear any appeasement here?“ We didn't...

"How the Mob Owned Cuba, and Lost it to the Revolution," is the bestselling book's title. T.J. English is the author. Several facts get in the way of the books title and thesis. To wit: Cuba's Gross Domestic product in 1957 was $2.7 billion. Cuba's foreign receipts in 1957 were about $750 million--of which tourism made up only $60 million. Gambling was a small fraction of this $60 million. How could the beneficiaries of that tiny fraction of Cuba's income "own" the entire country, and "infiltrate its levers of power from top to bottom," as the book asserts? Well, we...

Foreign oil causes spills Posted: July 30, 2008 By Humberto Fontova "An oil spill on the Mississippi River made for a powerful talking point for opponents of his (Mc Cain's) drilling plan." Brian Montopoli, CBS News, July 25. "In selling his absurd coastline drilling plan to the American people, " said Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez last week, "McCain has time and again pointed to advanced technology that would supposedly eliminate the threat of massive oil spills. ... Having to cancel your big oil drilling photo op (in Louisiana last week) because of a massive oil spill is like canceling a...

America held hostage – by Nancy Pelosi Posted: July 22, 2008 By Humberto Fontova No sooner did President Bush lift the executive ban on oil exploration in the outer Continental Shelf than Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi put the kibosh to its prospects. "The only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources is action from the U.S. Congress," said President Bush last week. "The president of the United States, with gas at $4 a gallon because of his failed energy policies, is now trying to say that is because I couldn't drill offshore," quickly countered...

The propaganda sheet of Cuba's Stalinist regime has almost outdone the mainstream international media in vilifying Jesse Helms. It's a close-run thing. You be the judge: “To many around the world,” recently wrote London's Financial Times,“he was little less than a monster.” "Few senators in the modern era have done more to resist the tide of progress," concluded the New York Times when Helms retired in 2003. "He fought for the values of the old confederacy. He resisted the new South. He resisted the opportunity to fight for a more perfect union," said Rev. Jesse Jackson (who bellowed “Viva Fidel!-Viva...

Appeasing Stalinist Cuba By Humberto Fontova While Sen. Obama worked a warm audience at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Miami last weekend, protesting Bush and McCain's "tax cuts for the wealthy" and promising billions in federal handouts, a small group of Cuban-Americans stood outside the Intercontinental Hotel protesting Obama himself. More specifically, they protested some of Obama's top advisers: Gregory Craig, who serves as Obama's chief adviser on Latin America, and Eric Holder, who heads Obama's vice-presidential selection team. Both of these gentlemen had key roles in "legally" perfuming the shanghaiing of Elian Gonzalez. At the time, Craig served...

Hollywood once hailed offshore drilling By Humberto Fontova Louisiana takes many hits as "the northernmost banana republic." Yuppies and greenies constitute a rare, exotic and even comical species down here – to the immense benefit of America's energy needs. "Progressive" and "enlightened" would not be terms Obama's Bay Area supporters would use to describe the Bayou state's decision-makers – especially those who made major decisions half a century ago. Yet these rustics and yahoos spurred more revolutionary "change" in the production of (genuine) energy than any Obama supporter could imagine with all his or her hallucinations about solar panels and...

Polar Bears Endangered - By Greenie Bureaucrats By Humberto Fontova There are roughly twice as many polar bears in the world today as thirty years ago. But on May 14th U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, invoking the U.S. Endangered Species Act, proclaimed polar bears as a “threatened species.” In 1972 the creatures had already lost value in the U.S. when the Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibited their hunting in Alaska. (And no, it's not the hunting ban that caused their increased numbers; they proliferated equally in Canada which continued the polar bear season.) After 1972 U.S. hunters started hunting polar...

For fear of oil spills, as of 2008, the U.S. federal government and various states ban drilling in thousands upon thousands of square miles off the U.S. coast. These areas, primarily on the outer Continental Shelf, hold an estimated 115 billion barrels of oil and 633 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. This leaves America's energy needs increasingly at the mercy of foreign autocrats, despots, and maniacs. All the while worldwide demand for oil ratchets ever and ever upward. At times you'd swear that Che Guevara's bloody lesson (not to mention Lenin, Mao, and Pol Pot's) has yet to sink...

Jeremiah Wright's Cuban Friends By Humberto Fontova Was it remotely conceivable that someone with Jeremiah's Wright's worldview and connections had somehow avoided a pilgrimage to the world capitol of Yankee-hatred, to worship and commiserate with its high priests? Not a chance. Reverend Wright was part of Revered Jesse Jackson's 300 person entourage to Havana in 1984. “Viva Fidel!” bellowed Reverend Jackson while concluding his speech at the University of Havana. “Viva Che Guevara!..Long Live our cry of Freedom!” “He (Jesse Jackson)is a great personality,” reciprocated a beaming Fidel Castro, “a brilliant man with a great talent, capable of communicating with...

Body of South American Youth Mutilated Near Guantanamo! By Humberto Fontova Thursday, April 24, 2008 Body of South American Youth Mutilated Near Guantanamo! U.S. Officials Rebuff Inquiries! Bereaved Family of Young Idealist Demand Answers! Havana is 500 miles from Guantanamo so “near” is a relative term. And U.S. officials haven't been grilled on the matter. But everything in the above headline is true. Nonetheless, allow me to apologize to the Bolivian family of the victim for my flim-flammery as an intro. If I 'd started this column with what this family strongly suspects: that the mutilation and possible death of...

Former JFK Speechwriter Joins Obama Tuesday, April 15, 2008 9:09 AM JFK called Ted Sorensen his "intellectual blood-bank." No presidential speechwriter has ever earned such a tribute. Now the 80-year-old Sorensen has jumped aboard the Obama campaign as an enthusiastic adviser. "Senator Obama is the one candidate who can restore America's moral authority and regain the respect essential to our security," he recently declared. "Both JFK and Obama were cerebral rather than emotional speakers, relying on the communication of values and hope rather than cheap applause lines." "The Republicans have allowed a communist dictatorship to flourish eight jet minutes from...