Liberals Loving Murderous Dictators--A Short History

With the long overdue death of Fidel Castro, we finally get a chance to peek inside the minds of liberals and see how they tick. Generally, what we are seeing is well hidden and dressed up to look like what it is not, lipstick on a pig essentially. But when an event of this magnitude occurs, they really can't control themselves.

The latest version seems shocking because it's been a long time since we saw the behavior. It started when Canadian PM Justin Trudeau eulogized Castro thusly:

“It is with deep sorrow that I learned today of the death of Cuba’s longest serving President. 

“Fidel Castro was a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century. A legendary revolutionary and orator, Mr. Castro made significant improvements to the education and healthcare of his island nation. 

“While a controversial figure, both Mr. Castro’s supporters and detractors recognized his tremendous dedication and love for the Cuban people who had a deep and lasting affection for “el Comandante”. 

“I know my father was very proud to call him a friend and I had the opportunity to meet Fidel when my father passed away. It was also a real honour to meet his three sons and his brother President Raúl Castro during my recent visit to Cuba. 

“On behalf of all Canadians, Sophie and I offer our deepest condolences to the family, friends and many, many supporters of Mr. Castro. We join the people of Cuba today in mourning the loss of this remarkable leader.”

That is what you call instant revisionist history. There is nothing in that press release that is remotely true except that he was larger than life and a good orator. But note the line about education and healthcare. That will be a recurring theme. 

It continues on with Obama, Kerry, Carter and the head of the UN Ban ki-moon.

It's embarrassing actually but the left always loved Castro for several reasons, which I'll get into in a second. 

Let's go back and look at the history of liberals supporting communist dictators. We can start with the overthrow of the Russian Czar and the first really true experiment where communism was instilled on a massive scale. From the beginning liberals trumpeted the successes of Soviet communism. From Lenin through Stalin and finally with Gorbachev, they would do anything they had to do to put a pretty face on the ideology. 

The most famous example was NY Times writer Walter Duranty. He was the Times' man in Moscow and he was an unabashed communist. Stalin didn't need to sell propaganda, all he had to do was direct Duranty and a few days later glowing reports would show up in the Times. Meanwhile, Stalin was exiling normal Russians to the gulags in Siberia or allowing millions to starve in Ukraine. Wrote Mark Herring:

After these stories, Duranty got an interview with Lucifer incarnate, Stalin himself. In the interview, Duranty praised Stalin's progressive ideals, his firm control of a wild country, and his brilliant political instincts. Stalin came out of the subsequent story a world figure on the order of Roosevelt or Churchill. 

Duranty had accomplished the impossible: he had taken a mere thug whose bloodshed was unparalleled in Europe at the time, and unsurpassed until Mao, and lifted him to the status of world leader, superpower. What Duranty had done for Stalin did not begin to compare with what Stalin did for Duranty. Once the story appeared, Duranty went from well-known reporter to world-class celebrity. 

For the record, Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting that the Times to this day has refused to return. He was just the most notable of what Lenin allegedly called the "useful idiots"--westerners who would parrot his talking points and defend communism.

It continued and in 1959 a revolution was going on 90 miles from the shores of the US. A vile despot named Batista was overthrown by young communist revolutionary who enlisted the help of a murderous doctor named Che Guevara. The media fawned over the new Cuban leader and then they started hiding his atrocities. This continued through the early sixties when several ill-fated attempts by the US to take him out eventually led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

Throughout the 1970's, Castro continued his iron grip and Cubans continued to float to the US. Liberal writers wrote loving stories of how cute it is that Cubans all drive 1950's cars and have excellent healthcare and education. They reported on the nightlife in Havana and exulted Castro while ignoring his atrocities and the overall drab existence and utter despair of the people the system was supposed to protect. 

Meanwhile, communism was destroying nations and killing millions of people. From Vietnam to Cambodia, from North Korea to South America the hateful ideology brought only death and misery. But the liberal media didn't cover it that way. Not until the real terror of the Cambodian killing fields were exposed were they forced to report the truth and then they blamed the man--Pol Pot--but defended the ideology. 

Which brings us to the fall of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc. 

While the world rejoiced when the Berlin Wall came down and Poland was freed, liberals were upset.  They blamed Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II. They said that Soviet Communism didn't prove the failure of the ideology but indeed proved that it was put into practice wrong. It would work if implemented correctly they argued then and still do. 

So here we are today, we have liberals and the media (but I'm redundant) already revising the the dictatorship of a murderous thug who raped, killed and destroyed. You will start seeing more and more of these stories eventually leading to t-shirts with an iconic picture of Castro being worn by uneducated college kids. 

Further Proof That Liberals Abhor America

The first paragraph of this WaPo piece sums it up:

He was a courtly State Department intelligence analyst from a prominent family who loved to sail and peruse the London Review of Books. Occasionally, he would voice frustration with U.S. policies, but to his liberal neighbors in Northwest D.C. it was nothing out of the ordinary. "We were all appalled by the Bush years," one said.

So he was a typical lib upset with the Bush policies over the last eight years, how many of those are there?

But wait, the guy has been indicted as a spy for Fidel Castro:

What Walter Kendall Myers kept hidden, according to documents unsealed in court Friday, was a deep and long-standing anger toward his country, an anger that allegedly made him willing to spy for Cuba for three decades.

"I have become so bitter these past few months. Watching the evening news is a radicalizing experience," he wrote in his diary in 1978, referring to what he described as greedy U.S. oil companies, inadequate health care and "the utter complacency of the oppressed" in America. On a trip to Cuba, federal law enforcement officials said in legal filings, Myers found a new inspiration: the communist revolution.

See that nice little piece of bias thrown in by the WaPo. They mention that the guy was "appalled" the policies laid out by Bush but he started spying against his nation and for Cuba during the Carter administration so it's just not jibing all that well. He began his espionage activities while we were suffering through the most socialist presidency in history (since surpassed by the present CINC) and the guy didn't think we were communist enough.

Let's flesh this out for a sec: the guy was pissed about "greedy oil companies", health care and the lack of radicalism in the "oppressed" so he decided to make it better by spying for Castro? I call bullshit on this. He did it partly for ideological reasons but he did it for money as well as I'm sure we'll find out.

Plain and simply the guy is a fucking traitor and should be locked up next to Robert Hansen at the Colorado Supermax where he can be neighbors with Ramzi Yousef and Ted Kazinsky. There were two Democrats and the start of a third when he spied so the hatred of conservative policies excuse doesn't fly even an iota.

The Post should be ashamed of themselves for writing a puff piece on a traitor but of course they won't. Liberals will always back other liberals when it comes to treason and this is no different. Liberals hate America and the principles we were founded on and I have no hesitation in saying that the majority of the State Department leads the charge. They have a long history of protecting spies against America in their midst. They still believe Alger Hiss was innocent in spite of the myriad evidence showing the guy was on the Soviet dole for years and I expect nothing different from them this time.

Update: More thoughts at the Weekly Standard without the profanity.

Cuba, Korea and Iran Warm up to Obama

Two thirds of the Axis of Evil seem to like the new man we have in the White House:

In his inaugural address, President Obama signaled conciliation to America's foes by promising an outstretched hand if they unclench their fists.
Already, there are signs that some of those foes were listening, sensing an opening for improved relations after eight combative years with George W. Bush as president. Fidel Castro is said to like the new U.S. leader, and North Korea and Iran sounded open to new ideas to defuse nuclear tensions.

Unclear is what they will demand in return from Obama, and whether they will agree to the compromises that the United States is likely to require in exchange for warmer relations.

Are the Castro brothers really willing to move toward democracy? Can Russia and the West heal their widening estrangement? Will Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stop being a thorn in America's side?

Oh, I bet every nation in the world that wishes us harm is very willing to talk with us, some without preconditions or so Obama said. Ahmadinejad, Castro and Kim Jung Il are probably busy putting out the red carpet for Hillary as we speak.

Kudos to the Inqy for following suit and buying into the Obama hype, they've chose to run the latest AP piece that's so over the top in support of Obama as to be nauseating to anyone that has a shred of pride left in the newspaper industry.

North Korea continued building nukes even though they "befriended" Clinton, Carter and Madeline Aldull. Hugo Chavez abhors the US and has been sowing discord throughout South America countering our aims and Iran has been building centrifuges and looks to become friends so they can continue to do so without having to worrying about us prying.

Friends? I leave you with one picture of their ideas of friendship:

New Years Day News and Notes

Happy New Year. While shaking the hangover away and drinking your sixth cup of coffee, peruse the links below.

Microsoft seems to have begun 2009 the way they ended 2008. This is anecdotal but my wife mentioned the Apple store was packed the other day.

What the hell is wrong with the British left? The term "inmates" is considered offensive to those convicted of crimes and serving time in prison. Read it all to see the opposition comments, they are priceless.

And the Enemy of the Year is...

Fifty years of oppression, murder, poverty and backward government...let's celebrate!

The most corrupt politicians of 2008. Alas, 2009 looks to be more of the same.

Finally, here's hoping for a Penn State win over the heavily favored Trojans. Do it for Joe Pa:

100 Acres & a Fool

The legacy media has always been fixated on Cuba and Fidel Castro. Since the communist revolutionary led an uprising out of the hills that forced out the Batista regime, they have fawned over Castro in spite of a human rights record that has been stunningly oppressive and has turned a once vibrant island nation into a dreary "workers paradise" where land can't be owned and words spoken against the Castro junta will result in imprisonment or death. The media crows about the literacy rate but airbrushes the crackdown on dissidents. They hail the Cuban model while not reporting the squalid living conditions of most residents.

But jeez, if an American even misses one meal--even when they could afford to miss several--it's a major story.

Here, in another puff piece on Cuba, the media exalts the Cuban regime for allowing up to one hundred acres of "government land" for private use by farmers:

HAVANA - Communist officials decreed yesterday that private farmers and cooperatives can use up to 100 acres of idle government land, as President Raul Castro works to revive Cuba's agricultural sector.

While the individual parcels are small, the widespread transfer of farmland from public to private hands could change the face of farming in a country where the government controls more than 90 percent of the economy.
...

Landless Cubans can be given a bit more than 33 acres, while those who already have fully producing plots can add enough state lands to bring their total holdings to 100 acres.

Wow, they will be "given" up to 100-acres for growing use? Maybe the government under Raul Castro is softening their stance on private land ownership and loosening the reins on the strict communist monetary system. Or maybe not:

The new measure does not say where farmers will sell their output. Nearly all private farmers are now required to sell most of their produce beyond what they eat themselves to the state.

Marxian indeed.

Now ask yourself this why the hell this piece was even published. If it had been Mugabe giving white farmers back their land it would be news. The AP/Inqy wanted nothing more than to print a headline that sounded as though there were actually reforms happening in the island prison and this non-story allowed them to do that.

Obama's Open Flank

One of the dirty little secrets that has not been fully addressed by the Obama campaign nor the media is Obama's problem with Latinos--a bloc that could be easily exploited over the illegal immigrant issue (a major reason McCain is on the fence on border control).

The estrangement was on display earlier this week:

While Senator Obama worked a warm audience at the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Miami this week-end, protesting Bush and Mc Cain's “tax-cuts for the wealthy” and promising billions in federal hand-outs, a small group of Cuban-Americans stood outside the Intercontinental protesting Obama himself.

More specifically, they protested some of Obama's top advisers: Gregory Craig, who serves as Obama's chief advisor on Latin America, and Erich 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 as lawyer for Elain's (sic) father, (i.e Fidel Castro), and Holder served as Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno.

"That was eight years ago,” Obama responded when plans for the Cuban-American protest were announced last week. “Obviously it was a wrenching situation for the families, but I'm running for president in 2008 and my focus is: how do we create a Cuba policy that will create political freedom on that island and allow the people who live there to prosper?"

Granted, that was eight years ago but it still is an open wound to many in the Cuban community. A child was sent to an island prison run by a despot against the wishes of his dead mother and her living family. He was sent with a gun to his head and he was sent because of the actions of two of Obama's advisers. That's not very appealing to the Cuban-Americans in Miami. Besides, exactly what timeframe are we allowed to re-visit, five years, seven years? That would leave McCain's history with the Keating Five off-limits, would it not?

But that's just one case of Hispanics challenging the Obama campaign. The secret that no one speaks about yet is a known fact for those who live in areas of large Hispanic populations is that many Hispanics just plain don't like African-Americans and vice-versa. They've been living in the inner cities with one another for decades but have never quite learned to trust each other.

Without the Hispanic-American vote, Obama will have a difficult time in battleground states such as New Mexico and Colorado and having two major players in the Elian Gonzalez tragedy working for you probably isn't going to help.

I leave you with this, an incident that shouldn't have happened that Craig and Holder were directly responsible for. I would say an incident that did much harm to our international standing:

Castro to Step Down

It sounds weird to say an authoritarian dictator is "resigning" from a position he was never rightfully elected to but there you have it.

This is another important issue that will face our next President whomever that may be. Will Obama have the foreign policy experience to secure more freedom for the island nation? Will McCain seize the opportunity to bring true democracy to a land ninety miles off the coast?

Nothing will ever really change until the bearded despot kicks the bucket but the time to prepare for this is now and the actions taken in the next few months could mean freedom for the impoverished in that country or decades more of failed socialist policies.

Let's hope Hillary doesn't head down there to learn the intricacies of the Cuban health care system before Fidel takes a dirt nap.

Cuba's Environmental Nightmare

The environmental circle jerk meeting in Bali drew to a close and they settled on some asinine agreement or another. I wonder why they didn't mention anything about this major problem:

HAVANA - For six miles, the Luyano River wends past a panorama of Havana - residences, businesses, industry - before it spills into Havana Bay, one of the busiest but most polluted ports on the Caribbean.

The Luyano exerts a substantial influence on Havana's environment as the largest of three rivers feeding the capital's bay.

Now, after a decade of studies, the watershed's dirtiest river is receiving its first wastewater-treatment plant, funded with $4 million from international partners and $20 million from Cuba's government, according to the international financing body Global Environment Facility.

But wait, I thought Castro's Cuba was like eden. I mean, leftists are adamant that they have an excellent health care system and education system. Evidently, Marxian theory doesn't help when dealing with real life situations like sewage treatment for residents.

Sewage isn't the only problem, it seems their capacity to handle garbage and more importantly hazardous waste is at crisis levels. I couldn't find much on the hazardous waste end, but I suspect they are disposing of that type of waste in either landfills or in the ocean which is a direct threat to the US.

So the next time some irritating liberal says something about US environmental policies, retort by saying that almost every significant environmental law was signed by a Republican President and that the US has the most strict environmental standard of any nation on earth. You may also want to point out that Bill Clinton refused to reauthorize the law that funds Superfund. Even though he talked a good game on environmental issue, he was just giving lip service as this shows.