Free Republic

Brainchild of the KGB As Ion Mihai Pacepa, onetime director of the Romanian espionage service (DIE), later explained, the PLO was conceived at a time when the KGB was creating “liberation front” organizations throughout the Third world. Others included the National Liberation Army of Bolivia, created in 1964 with help from Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and the National Liberation Army of Colombia, created in 1965 with help from Fidel Castro. But the PLO was the KGB’s most enduring achievement. In 1964, the first PLO Council, consisting of 422 Palestinian representatives handpicked by the KGB, approved the Soviet blueprint for a Palestinian...

Students Fight to Keep UCSD Landmark Open SAN DIEGO -- A group of UCSD students is fighting to keep an eccentric landmark open. "It's that one last place at UCSD that sort of exudes that college atmosphere," said Alex Peterson, UCSD student. "It sort of represents the revolutionary, liberal, young college student." The Che Cafe opened in 1980 as a co-operative run by students and volunteers. It was named after Ernesto "Che" Guevara, an Argentinian doctor who was a major figure of the Cuban revolution. It's one of the oldest structures on campus. Built in 1960, the building was turned...

Today, I learned of Steve Pichan's new music video, "You Don't Know 'Ché'," that sets the record straight about murdering revolutionary Ernesto 'Ché' Guevara.

On the eve of the French Revolution, the aristocrats inhabiting the palace of Versailles enjoyed, “as an ironic lark, sporting the clothing of the working classes,” according to writer Charles Stenson. These pampered elites were undisturbed by the fact that their peasant getups mocked the real peasants, many of whom were dying as a result of the elites’ self-serving policies. These clueless aristocrats have descendents in spoiled college kids who think it’s trendy to idolize Communist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara. Che’s face is emblazoned on T-shirts, he was glamorized by the movie “The Motorcycle Diaries,” and Time magazine described him...

"Del Toro was fascinated with Che Guevara from the first time he heard his name mentioned in the Rolling Stones song Indian Girl," reads the introduction to an interview with Benicio del Toro last month in Britain's Guardian. "Of course he found himself fascinated by Ernesto Che Guevara - he loved the Stones, and Emotional Rescue was the first album he'd bought. "I hear of this guy and he's got a cool name. Che Guevara!" Del Toro as good as swoons when he says it. "Groovy name, groovy man, groovy politics!" "So I went to a library and I was...

December 19, 2008, 0:30 p.m. Revenge of CheNo amount of Hollywood puffery will change the fact that commies aren’t cool. By Mark Goldblatt Hollywood’s latest round of “Che-mania” kicked off last Friday in New York with a one week preview of Steven Soderbergh’s epic four hour biopic on the life and times of Ernesto Che Guevara. The film opens nationwide, edited into two halves, in January. When asked why the movie needed to be so long, co-producer and star Benecio Del Toro replied, “That is a question for Che. Why such a fulfilled life? We believe that this is...

Just a pretty face? For 40 years he has been a sex symbol, heroic victim and the ultimate poster boy of revolutionary chic. But behind the myth of Che Guevara lie darker truths. On the eve of a new film, it is time to reassess the Sixties' most enduring icon Sean O'Hagan Sunday July 11, 2004 The Observer On the outskirts of Vallegrande, a mountain village in Bolivia, there is a single airstrip, little more than a long ribbon of rubble and dirt. It was there, seven years ago, that a team of forensic scientists from Argentina and Cuba began...