For his documentaries on Fidel Castro and Che Guevara Cuban-American filmmaker Agustin Blazquez’ takes a truly revolutionary approach. Rather than expecting officials of Castro’s police state to reveal facts, Blazquez interviews eye-witnesses to Castroism who are (get this!) free to reveal facts without threat of Castro’s firing squads and torture chambers!

And it’s not an inconsiderable threat. To wit: Castro’s Stalinist regime jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin’s own, murdered more political prisoners its first three years in power than Hitler’s murdered in its first six, and voraciously “devoured its own children,” complete with show trials. The cheeky Che Guevara often signed his correspondence “Stalin II.” (Tee-hee!)

Needless to add, his thoroughly novel approach to revealing what actually happened in Cuba has caused Agustin Blazquez major problems in the film industry. When back in 2001, he  asked the American Film institute to screen his documentary “Covering Cuba,”  the AFI’s President balked that such a documentary was “too controversial” for them to air.

The following week, the AFI cranked out the press releases and snapped on the spotlights to screen Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9-11. Controversy? What Controversy?

“The AFI later denied giving “controversial” as the reason for declining my film,” Blazquez says. “But it’s’ the absolute truth. I remember it like it was yesterday. And I’ll submit to a lie detector test while repeating it.”

In fact when the AFI proudly screened Stephen Soderbegh’s “Che” at Grauman’s Chinese Theater in 2008, the film’s “controversy” was cheekily flaunted by both the AFI and the stars as the film’s main cheeky charm. “Che Guevara is a hugely controversial figure,” snickered a dapper Lou Diamond Phillips in front of the theater. (Tee-hee!)

(more…)

Since the failure on most every front of his latest ode to Marxism, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” Michael Moore’s been desperately scratching around for relevance once again, using every opportunity to get his face on television and name in the paper.

Enter Mr. Wikileaks, Julian Assange.

Any enemy of America has a friend in Michael Moore and what better way to get a little ink and feel the warm glow of those MSNBC studio lights than to post part of Julian Assange’s bail and offer up his own website as an outlet for any and all of this brave truth-tellers leaks. But because there’s a God and because He is a good and noble God with a delicious sense of humor, the best laid plans of rat and liar have just completely blown up in Michael Moore’s face — twice in a single week.

For starters,  in his knee-jerk zeal to defend America’s enemies, Moore brought a public relations nightmare down on his and host Keith Olbermann’s head late last week, earning the label “rape apologist” even from many of his own fans after dismissing some pretty serious rape charges against Assange as nothing more than ”hooey.” 

Then — just when you thought it couldn’t get any better — Moore’s own hero dropped this bomb on the anti-American director regarding his 2007 documentary “Sicko.”

(more…)

If there’s one thing I learned in life, it’s that when a despicable character actually shares your opinion, it might be time to reevaluate said opinion.

Case in point: Fidel Castro’s recent analysis of the midterm elections. In an essay published by the state-run paper Granma (which I always thought carried stories about ribbon candy, shawls, and Triscuits), he announced that the Democrats’ debacle was the consequences of racism. He spouts: “The most reactionary sectors in the United States are sharpening their teeth,” and then warns that “all power (will fall) to the extreme right in the United States.”

Mind you, this is the exact same opinion held by everyone at MSNBC, the batwing-haired boob Graydon Carter, and anyone else who thought “Fair Game” was an accurate portrayal of two self-promoting tossbags. Anyway, for all you folks who still think tea partiers are racist (despite electing two black men to Congress), please reconsider this view, now that a third-rate commie dictator agrees with you.

I mean, this tool has been wrong on everything, while desperately clinging to power and atrocious facial hair. It should make you think that racial politics is old hat – when that diapered chucklehead is wearing it.

Look, I always change my views after hearing from my enemies. When Islamic extremists condemn homosexuality as an abomination, it causes me to embrace gay people even more. And when some nutbag emails me to say that radio signals in his fillings are telling him I look awesome in purple sweaters – I know it’s time to stop wearing purple sweaters. (more…)

The whales, the wolves, the rainforests, the Stephen’s Kangaroo Rat—seems Hollywood-ites are always trying to “save” something.

Save the Castroite Terrorist-Murderer! has become Danny Glover’s latest cause, though he words it a bit differently.  The Cuban convict Gerardo Hernandez, who Glover visited in jail last week, “has been unjustly imprisoned,” asserts Glover. “His sentence is unusually harsh,” bemoans Glover while reciting his Castro-propaganda ministry handout

“His crime was simply acting in self-defense of his sovereign nation, and his family,” anguishes Glover before the cameras, shortly before the “Cut!” and the whoops and high-fives from the Castroite director and film-crew.

Leave Gerardo ALONE! wails Danny Glover, in a manner to shame Chris Crocker himself.  Glover also echoes his Cuban case-officers in accusing U.S. jailers of visiting horrific torture upon Hernandez.

Below please find a few items that somehow didn’t make the final cut of Danny Glover’s Castroite videos and press releases: (more…)

Even in the vast annals of Hollywood sycophantic suckuppery, the recent UK Guardian profile of Oliver Stone by Carol Cadwalladr is in a class by itself.  It is a fawning treatise hailing everything about Ollie, from his unique artistic vision to his unique attitude toward self-love – and, unfortunately, I’m not referring here to his narcissism.  Yet this hagiography still provides some intriguing clues about a question that arises every year or so when Stone puts out a movie:  Why does this pretentious clown still get taken seriously?

I think it’s because entertainment journalists seem to think he’s hot.

I mean, after all, Stone “is a man’s man… a sort of latter-day Ernest Hemingway, an action man with a reputation for women and drugs who won the Purple Heart for bravery in Vietnam “

Wow, a Purple Heart “for bravery” – glad we have the MSM’s famous layers of fact-checkers and editors hard at work making sure reporters don’t make basic, embarrassing errors.  But I digress.

The overriding theme of the profile – and Stone’s own personal narrative – is simply how hunky the auteur is.  Whether he’s palling around with Castro and Chavez or simply talking about his Daddy issues – which, trust me, are nowhere near as terrifying as his Mommy issues – we learn that Ollie is all-man, all the time. (more…)

Like the unhinged Rosie O’Donnell, the waningly influential Michael Moore is almost too easy a target to bother with anymore – and yet he keeps handing us such tempting ammunition. In an interview published the day after Independence Day, which he no doubt spent like the rest of us, celebrating this country and being thankful for our abundance and our freedoms, Moore blathers on predictably in his ongoing campaign against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Correction – his campaign against American victories in Iraq and Afghanistan. If Moore and the anti-war Left were truly anti-war, they would be protesting the real warmongers – Islamic fundamentalists – or at least protesting both sides equally. But they reserve their condemnation for the world’s greatest terrorists. I’m talking about those jack-booted, nuke-happy imperialists America and Israel, of course.

What should we be doing instead of trying to secure lasting victory in those countries? Plucking an estimate out of his sizeable, um, back pocket, Moore says, “$15 billion is what we’ve been spending almost every month on Iraq and Afghanistan. So, one month of the killing machine could give clean water to virtually all the people that don’t have it.”

Yes, if only the American “killing machine” would stop ravaging innocents abroad in order to steal their resources and enslave their peace-loving peoples, we could turn instead to doing some good in the world. For once. Because God knows Americans need to change our greedy, warmongering, rapacious ways and learn us some generosity, compassion and service to others. Then the world will like us again. (more…)

At 58 Chrissie Hynde doesn’t feel up to the rigors of pregnancy and parturition. But hey, it’s the thought that counts. “This is for the baby we’ll never have,” recently proclaimed Hynde’s new bandmate/inamorato, JP Jones. 

His “this” refers to the couple’s new song “Fidelity.” The song and title, they’re proud to announce, bubbled into the puppy-lovers’ consciousness during a recent pilgrimage to Stalinist Cuba, where the cheeky free-spirits and human-rights champions “saw pictures of Fidel Castro everywhere!”

Imagine that!

“I found my perfect lover, but he’s only half my age, “sings Hynde about JP Jones in another recent recording.  (Weren’t Liz Taylor and even Madonna less exhibitionist in these matters?) (more…)

Vicki: Mom, I just did a Tea Party speech in Washington, D.C.  I sang my song, “There’s a Communist Living in the White House!” 

Mom: Oh No!  I don’t want you to get shot! 

Vicki: You see what you just said?  That’s the problem.  “When the people fear the Government it’s Tyranny.  When the Government fears the people, it’s Liberty.”  Thomas Jefferson             

Mom: What?! 

Vicki: When Bush was President they called him horrible names, every day on TV; they even made a movie about him getting shot.  No one was afraid.  That was America; a rude, disrespectful, mean America, but a Free one.  Now, we are actually afraid of the Government, and… 

Mom: Let me get your Dad on the phone…JJJIIIMMM!!  (more…)

In his movie The Lost City, about an upper middle-class Cuban family crumbling during free Havana’s last days, director and star Andy Garcia, along with fellow Cuban-exile screenwriter Guillermo Cabrera Infante, insist on depicting some historical truth about Cuba.

This unforgivable gaffe blasted the bugles for a pile-on by critics. Their fantasies of pre-Castro Cuba, of Che, of Fidel, and of Cubans in general were badly jolted. Their annoyance and scorn spewed forth in review after review.

If only Garcia’s characters had spoken with accents like John Belushi’s as a Saturday Night Live Killer Bee! If only they’d dressed like The Three Amigos! If only they’d hammed it up like Cheech Marin! If only they’d mimicked the mannerisms and gait of Freddie Prinze in Chico and the Man! If only the women had piled a roadside fruit stand on their head like Carmen Miranda in Road to Rio! If only the cast had looked like the little guy who handles my luggage at the hotel in Cancun! Or the guys who do my lawn! Everybody knows that’s what Hispanics look like!

(more…)

“We will obtain the liberty of the Cuban people.” — Doctor Oscar Elias Biscet

Filmmaker Jordan Allott’s documentary, “Oscar’s Cuba” paints a compelling portrait of Cuban dissident Oscar Elias Biscet, whom Armando Valladares, former Reagan administration Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission and himself a former political prisoner of the Castro dictatorship, cites as the most important living figure in the struggle for Cuban liberty.

—–

In 1998 Doctor Biscet dared to publish a report in which he interviewed many Cuban mothers who testified that their infants had been born alive and then killed by the regime. The totalitarian regime that controls Cuba views problematic pregnancies or unhealthy infants as a threat to their much-touted low infant mortality rates. Cuba has the highest abortion rates in our hemisphere, with 6 in 10 pregnancies ending in abortion. Thanks to Dr Biscet, we now know that many of these abortions were not the choice of the mothers involved, that said abortions were coerced, and indeed that many of these infants were born alive…then terminated. When Dr. Biscet made this issue a matter of public record, he gave the regime a black eye. The regime was not going to let this go unpunished. Dr Biscet continued to speak out for human rights and democracy on the island, and he paid a price for it: in 1998 and 1999 he was arrested more than 20 times.

On March 18, 2003, seven years ago today, Dr Biscet was arrested along with more than 70 other dissidents in what has come to be called “la Primavera Negra,” the Black Spring of 2003.  He was sentenced to a 25-year sentence, which he is currently serving in the notorious Combinado del Este prison outside of Havana. Dr. Biscet spends much of his time in solitary confinement, incarcerated in an underground cell. Yet Biscet endures, and continues to defy the regime. (more…)

Well, Soderbergh and Del Toro’s Che was just released on DVD-Blu-ray. As a bonus, the Criterion release contains a behind-the-scenes “Making Che” section, featuring interviews with Soderbergh, Del Toro, the screenwriters, along with audio narration by the film’s chief consultant (except Fidel Castro), author John Lee Anderson. 

An obsession among all involved with this monstrosity (271 minutes), we learn, was “historical accuracy.” As a professional duty, last year I sat through this thing. For the sake of this review  let’s forget the films’ “omissions,” namely the only success in Che’s life: the mass murder of defenseless men and boys. This being a shoot-em up war movie, we’ll instead focus on the battle scenes and the attendant dialogue. 

For starters, the only “guerrilla war” fought in Cuba during the 20th Century was fought, not by Fidel and Che, but against Fidel and Che (more on this shortly.) 

After the glorious victory over Batista some of the Castroite “guerrillas” explained the harrowing battlefield exploits (so “expertly” dramatized by Soderbergh) to Paul Bethel who served as U.S. press attaché in Cuba’s U.S. Embassy in 1959. “We had a helluva time, Paul!” laughed one guerrilla’s named William Morgan. “We used a short-wave radio to broadcast the so-called battle. We yelled fake battle commands into the mic while a few of the muchachos shot BARs and pistols into the air for the sound effects. We really whooped it up!” (more…)

I am a graduate of Brandeis University, a respected institution of higher learning that is also a bastion of liberal and left-wing thought.  It’s a sure bet that most, if not all of Brandeis’ professors are registered Democrats. While never overtly political, I was content to go along with the liberal crowd for years — until September 11, 2001.

During my years at Brandeis, dorm rooms were decorated with posters and photos of rock groups, pop stars, famous actors and a man so handsome that the first time I saw him, my teenage heart skipped a beat. There he was, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, so-called  heroic martyr of the Cuban Revolution. While I never displayed any images of Che, for many years I, too, ignorantly regarded him as an admirable rebel who fought bravely for “the people”.  Then I became a Republican and learned some facts about Mr. Guevara, as the New York Times might respectfully refer to him.  Here’s a list of just a few of the humanitarian acts performed or sanctioned by the Left’s favorite pinup: (more…)

Actress Rachael Leigh Cook entered the lion’s den in the summer of ‘08 – the Republican National Convention in her home town of Minneapolis. For a dyed in the wool liberal, that took some effort. But she’s a member of the nonpartisan Creative Coalition, and she figured it was only right to visit the RNC after making a stop in Denver for the Democratic National Convention.

“A lot of people didn’t even wanna go,” Cook says of her fellow coalition members. “I was really curious to go.”

Rachael Leigh Cook

Director Barry Levinson covered Cook’s visit to both political conventions as part of Poliwood,” his film essay on actors who speak out on the issues of the day. Leigh, who chatted with me earlier this week along with fellow coalition member Richard Schiff (“The West Wing”), says she learned more in an hour at the RNC than her entire time at the DNC. 

“These are people who are generally small business owners,” she says of the GOP convention visitors she met during her visit.

“Poliwood” follows coalition members as they visit the two conventions. The actors discuss why they speak out on political issues, share their hardscrabble roots and, at one point, debate Republican pollster Frank Luntz on how they express themselves in public. (more…)

Before last year’s election, I heard a lot of people claim they didn’t feel they knew who Obama really was.  For my part, I felt I knew him all too well.  Which was why I didn’t like him and wouldn’t have voted for him even if he’d run unopposed, which, now that I think about McCain’s campaign, was pretty much the way it was.

Boneheads would have you believe my opposition to Obama is based on racism.  I, on the other hand, would insist that when a presidential candidate announces that once his energy plan is in place, our energy costs will soar; that he will bury you if you have the temerity to own a coal company; and that he believes, as he told Joe the Plumber, that it is government’s job to re-distribute wealth, what does race have to do with it?  I hated all that stuff back when it was being promoted by such white con artists as Karl Marx, Josef Stalin and Saul Alinsky.

Furthermore, the way that blacks and other liberals label everyone they’re against as racists, I think conservatives should start suing these punks for slander.  Make them either prove it in court or pay through the nose. (more…)

Democracy is built of fundamental principles that allow for growth and change to occur that is beneficial for the good of all the people: the right to vote for our leaders. Honduras is the latest battlefield where democracy quickly and prayerfully used Rule of Law to defeat a heavy-handed attack by would-be Dictator Mel Manuel “Mel” Zelaya. Former left-wing president, Manuel “Mel” Zelaya, was voted into office by the slimmest of margins (1%) and with a new vote coming up he had to move quickly to maintain power. Hugo Chavez provided him with the plan and the money needed to facilitate democratic collapse and implement a democratic transition to Communism by paying people to vote his way. 

Zelaya would call for a vote known as the 4th Box, to change the constitution, eliminate term limits and give him greater power over the government. Deemed unconstitutional and unlawful by Congress and the Supreme Court, Zelaya ordered the ballots to be printed anyway, forcing the issue. Honduran printers refused to print the illegal ballots so Chavez offered printers in Venezuela, and for no extra charge the printers printed a “Yes” vote right in the box marked “Yes.” Zelaya then ordered Military General Romeo Vasquez to distribute the additional ballots to all the polling places. General Vasquez refused the order and was fired by Zelaya. Congress responded by saying he couldn’t be fired for following the law and refusing to obey an unlawful order. General Vasquez was promptly reinstated and the Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant for Zelaya for violating constitutional law. A Supreme Court judge accompanied the military in arresting Zelaya at his home so that his paid supporters could not start a riot. Zelaya was removed to prevent bloodshed and given the choice of what country to go to. He chose Costa Rica.  (more…)

You all know the story to date. Former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya was given the bum’s rush out of Tegucigalpa to Costa Rica by Honduras’ military on June 25th. In the days since, this apparent brutal seizure of power has received worldwide condemnation, most particularly by the Organization of American States, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, Nicaragua president Daniel Ortega, the Castro brothers of Cuba and President Obama. Ya, I know. Bear with me. That’s just the setup.

Manuel Zelaya

July Fourth, the OAS ejected Honduras from its membership for refusing to reinstate Zelaya, but too late. The defiant interim Honduran government, now led by Roberto Micheletti, had already said in so many words, “you can’t fire me! I quit!” In short, the mouse gave the eagle the finger. I can appreciate that. At present, the possibility of sanctions is very real, a fact that could hurt the already hardscrabble nation very deeply, especially if the coffee trade is affected. (more…)

The crime is complete. Judgment has been passed. The killing stones are in hand. As per the harsh stoning penal code of Iran’s Islamist thugocracy (for however long that lasts) where the crime took place, my stones are not so big as to kill right away, not so small you can’t call them stones. And I’m winding up like Nolan Ryan. Feel free to pick up a stone of your own. But wait for it!

And let me make this perfectly clear, even if they do say Jehovah!

Sentence must be read before being carried out. And unlike Soraya M., the board members of the Asylum of Motion Picture Airheads and Stooges will deserve every rock that’s thrown their way. I also believe that, in light of events in Iran today, the following commentary will stand out in much starker prominence than it did when I first started reporting on them in early March, when Team Oscar first set off for the Unfriendly Skies of Islamist Iran. (more…)

Whenever I have suggested that left-wingers aren’t normal human beings, and have wondered if perhaps they’re some weird interplanetary life form like the pods in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” the liberals accuse me of indulging in ad hominem attacks, and I suppose I am.  But I am honestly bewildered.  It just doesn’t seem plausible that Americans could find good things to say about tyrants like Castro, Chavez and Ahmadinejad, while at the same time reviling the likes of Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and General Petraeus.

Left-wingers side with the so-called Palestinians and insist that their country was stolen from them by the Jews, but when you ask them just exactly where the country was located, what their flag looked like and who their president was, they huff and they puff and they denounce you as a tool of the Jewish lobby. (more…)

I ask you, folks, wouldn’t this make a great movie:

Late 1950s, Toledo, Ohio, USA.

The Hero, rugged, blue-eyed, blonde-haired, is a searcher, misunderstood by family and friends. He is a freewheeling, Kerouacian type who in his twenties never kept a job or stayed in one place for long. He did a stint in the US Army: stationed in Japan, he went AWOL, got himself time in the brig and a dishonorable discharge. The Hero tried working on a ranch, scratch. Joined the circus. Nope, not a fit. Everywhere the Hero goes, he confronts the questions: Why am I here? What do I do? Now 30-ish, he needs a purpose in life.

The Hero

One day the Hero learns that another American, a close friend from his Army days, has been murdered by goons of the corrupt dictator of an island nation. The Hero heads down to the Island and joins the rebels to fight against the dictator that killed his buddy. For perhaps the first time in his life, the Hero finds someplace where he is needed, and where he can make a difference. He’s had freedom all his life and has not known what to do with it; he finally finds his purpose: helping others fight for their freedom. The Hero’s military training proves invaluable to the rebels, among whom he eventually rises to the rank of Comandante, the highest rank in the rebel army. He falls in love with, and marries, Olga, a lovely 22-year-old rebel who is as fiery and committed as he is, and they have two daughters. The rebels triumph over the dictator and at first the Hero and his wife are happy in their new life, but the leader of the rebels in due time reveals himself to be a worse dictator than the one who preceded him, turning to the far-right and establishing not just a new authoritarian dictatorship, but an out-and-out totalitarian dictatorship. (more…)

According to my wife, I have a tendency to state my opinion as fact.  She suggests that I begin my sentences by saying “It’s only my opinion, but…” and go on from there.  It’s my opinion, however, that people already understand that it’s my opinion and that they share it if they’re smart, or don’t, if they’re not.  Furthermore, I don’t see my main function as a communicator to convince liberals, who are notoriously as blind as bats, to see the light, but to provide my fellow conservatives with ammunition to use against left-wingers and, whenever possible, to amuse. 

Gloria Steinem

In any case, in the spirit of compromise, let us pretend that each of the following paragraphs begins “It’s only my opinion, but…” 

When Gloria Steinem, who had been lionized by the ladies of NOW for her rather dumb remark about women needing men like fish needed bicycles, finally got married at the age of 66, I thought people should have sent her greeting cards complimenting her on having belatedly grown gills.  (more…)