Read Online Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant by Humberto Fontova - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Humberto Fontova
Tags: Non-Fiction, Politics
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regimes of the century. Supported by an army of thugs and torturers, and aided by American mobster Meyer Lansky, Batista built an island of fantasy dedicated to the seven deadly sins. Batista’s thugs protected their patch with sadistic pleasure—the bodies of those who objected to the corruption or the opulence were often found hanging from lamp posts. By the late 1950s, an evening out could be a disturbing experience. Your driver could turn around at a stoplight and show you photos of bodies bloodied with bullets and young faces ripped apart by tortures so savage that the daiquiris, the sweet roast pork, the yummy yams, the fine Havanas, the hot sex, nothing tasted good any more.” Barraclough wrote this in 2004. Not content with denouncing Batista’s Cuba, the rest of the article promotes travel and trade to Castro’s Cuba.
Just a reminder: Batista’s Cuba had the second highest per capita income in Latin America (higher than Austria’s or Japan’s ) as well as net immigration (in 1958, for example, the Cuban embassy in Rome had applications from twelve thousand Italians for immigrant visas). 3 Castro’s Cuba, on the other hand, has the highest political incarceration rate on earth (as of 1995, 500,000 prisoners had passed through Castro’s gulag, according to the human rights organization Freedom House. 4 Given Cuba’s population, Castro incarcerated at a higher rate than Stalin and is shunned even by Haitian refugees. But the only shortcoming of Castro’s Cuba, according to the Globe and Mail , is that “All car-rental companies are state owned and rates are exorbitant.” And, of course, the Globe and Mail criticizes the American trade “embargo.”
Leftists just love how Castro has transformed Cuba, no matter what it’s done to the Cubans. Armando Valladares, who served twenty-two years in Castro’s dungeons before President Ronald Reagan appointed him U.S. ambassador to the UN Human Rights Commission, wrote:
What shocked me the most about United Nations politics during my time there was the double standard of many governments. One of the most glaring examples was the attitude of the Spanish government under the leadership of Socialist president Felipe González. While I was in Geneva, friends in Spain sent me a copy of a confidential report on the violation of human rights in Cuba, prepared in secret by the Spanish Chancery itself. This report documented systematic torture, crimes, and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of Cuban political prisoners, including religious persecutions. But the Spanish foreign ministry’s official document concluded by stating: “But even so, we cannot condemn Castro because that would be proving the Americans right.”
“A week before this report was leaked to the Spanish press,” continues Valladares, “the Spanish Chancery issued a statement declaring that Spain did not believe that Cuba had human rights problems.” 5
Here you have it, friends. Castro gets away with his wholesale butcheries, lies, repression, and terrorism because for half a century now, his bearded and military-clad figure has symbolized anti-Americanism in its most virulent—hence appealing—form.
But a few facts: Back in the bad old Batista days, so many hundreds of thousands of Spaniards sought immigration to Cuba that flustered Cuban officials finally imposed quotas to stem this flood of Europeans wanting to live in Cuba. From 1910 to 1953, Cuba took in more than one million Spanish immigrants (along with 65,000 immigrants from the United States)—and Cuba’s population in 1950 was only 5.8 million. 6 Here’s another fact that explains all the immigration: In 1958, Cuba had almost double Spain’s per capita income. Quite a contrast from Castro’s paradise. And how about this: Today, Spain’s two biggest retail chains are owned (and were started) by Cuban exiles.
Here’s something else: When the right-wing Spanish dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975, Fidel announced
Just a reminder: Batista’s Cuba had the second highest per capita income in Latin America (higher than Austria’s or Japan’s ) as well as net immigration (in 1958, for example, the Cuban embassy in Rome had applications from twelve thousand Italians for immigrant visas). 3 Castro’s Cuba, on the other hand, has the highest political incarceration rate on earth (as of 1995, 500,000 prisoners had passed through Castro’s gulag, according to the human rights organization Freedom House. 4 Given Cuba’s population, Castro incarcerated at a higher rate than Stalin and is shunned even by Haitian refugees. But the only shortcoming of Castro’s Cuba, according to the Globe and Mail , is that “All car-rental companies are state owned and rates are exorbitant.” And, of course, the Globe and Mail criticizes the American trade “embargo.”
Leftists just love how Castro has transformed Cuba, no matter what it’s done to the Cubans. Armando Valladares, who served twenty-two years in Castro’s dungeons before President Ronald Reagan appointed him U.S. ambassador to the UN Human Rights Commission, wrote:
What shocked me the most about United Nations politics during my time there was the double standard of many governments. One of the most glaring examples was the attitude of the Spanish government under the leadership of Socialist president Felipe González. While I was in Geneva, friends in Spain sent me a copy of a confidential report on the violation of human rights in Cuba, prepared in secret by the Spanish Chancery itself. This report documented systematic torture, crimes, and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of Cuban political prisoners, including religious persecutions. But the Spanish foreign ministry’s official document concluded by stating: “But even so, we cannot condemn Castro because that would be proving the Americans right.”
“A week before this report was leaked to the Spanish press,” continues Valladares, “the Spanish Chancery issued a statement declaring that Spain did not believe that Cuba had human rights problems.” 5
Here you have it, friends. Castro gets away with his wholesale butcheries, lies, repression, and terrorism because for half a century now, his bearded and military-clad figure has symbolized anti-Americanism in its most virulent—hence appealing—form.
But a few facts: Back in the bad old Batista days, so many hundreds of thousands of Spaniards sought immigration to Cuba that flustered Cuban officials finally imposed quotas to stem this flood of Europeans wanting to live in Cuba. From 1910 to 1953, Cuba took in more than one million Spanish immigrants (along with 65,000 immigrants from the United States)—and Cuba’s population in 1950 was only 5.8 million. 6 Here’s another fact that explains all the immigration: In 1958, Cuba had almost double Spain’s per capita income. Quite a contrast from Castro’s paradise. And how about this: Today, Spain’s two biggest retail chains are owned (and were started) by Cuban exiles.
Here’s something else: When the right-wing Spanish dictator Francisco Franco died in 1975, Fidel announced
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