Here’s Rupert Wyatt, director of the blockbuster movie Rise of the Planet of the Apes in a recent interview:

“(The script) had become very different and much more exciting to me. It became less a story of domesticization of a pet and more about an uprising and a Che Guevara story.” 

Here’s the Associated Press review of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”: “Raised much like a human child by a researcher, with help from a veterinarian, Caesar becomes a Che Guevara-style revolutionary, leading a rebellion of apes against their human oppressors.” 

Ground control to Director Wyatt: In fact the only genuinely popular rebellion in Cuba in the 20th Century was against Che Guevara’s regime, among the most oppressive in modern history which mandates ( under penalty of prison or firing squad) what its subjects, read, say, earn, eat (both substance and amount) , where they live, travel or work. Wyatt’s inspiration for a freedom-fighter co-founded a regime that jailed more of its subjects than did Stalin’s during the Great Terror and murdered more its subjects in its first three years in power than did Hitler’s in its first six. 

In 1959, with the help of Soviet KGB and GRU agents, Rupert Wyatt’s hero against “oppression” helped found, train and indoctrinate Cuba’s secret police. “Always interrogate your prisoners at night,” Che Guevara ordered his goons. “A man’s resistance is always lower at night.” In 1957 this worldwide symbol of “’anti-imperialism” (who often signed his letters as “Stalin II”) cheered the Soviet invasion of Hungary with its wholesale slaughter of Hungarian freedom-fighting guerrillas. All through the horrifying Soviet massacre, Che dutifully parroted the Soviet script that the workers, peasants and college kids battling Russian tanks in Budapest with small arms and Molotov cocktails were all: “Fascists and CIA agents!” who all deserved prompt execution. 

“Caesar is shown to be compassionate, forbidding his followers from killing innocent humans. “ (Wikipedia on Rise of the Planet of the Apes) 

Ground control to Director Wyatt: “When in doubt—execute! “raved your inspiration for compassion. “Judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail. I don’t need proof to execute a man. I only need proof that it’s necessary to execute him. We execute from revolutionary conviction! To establish Socialism rivers of blood must flow!”

Now here’s Andy Serkis, with the leading role in Rise of the Planet of the Apes:  “I play the character from a child through to a Che Guevara type–How cool is that!” 

Ground control to Andy Serkis: Che Guevara had a very bloody (and typically cowardly) hand in one of the major anti-insurgency wars in this hemisphere. Most of these Cuban anti-communist guerrillas were executed on the spot upon capture, a Che specialty. For my book I interviewed several of the lucky (genuine) rebels who managed to escape the slaughter. “We fought with the fury of cornered beasts,” I titled the chapter, using the phrase one used to describe their desperate freedom fight against the Soviet occupation of Cuba through their Stalinist proxies the Castro brothers and Che Guevara.

Mass murder was the order in Cuba’s countryside. It was the only way to decimate so many rebels. These country folk went after the Castroites with a ferocity that saw Fidel and Che running to their Soviet sugar daddies and tugging their pants in panic. Carlos Machado was 15 years old in 1963 when the bullets from the Communist firing squad shattered his body.  His twin brother and father collapsed beside Carlos from the same volley. All had resisted Castro and Che’s theft of their humble family farm, all refused blindfolds and all died sneering at their Communist murderers, as did thousands of their valiant countrymen.

“Here’s one other thing that sets Rise apart: it’s smart. This isn’t just an angry ape who wants more bananas, but a brave and canny hero who, having been given super intelligence by his scientist guardian, resolves to use it for the advancement of his species. He’s a rebel, a fighter, a simian Che Guevara.”

Ground control to Director Wyatt: the men who captured your “canny” hero with “super intelligence” in Bolivia seem convinced he was unable to apply a compass reading to a map. Under Che’s own gun dozens of defenseless men and boys died. Under his orders thousands crumpled, mostly bound and gagged. At everything else Che Guevara failed abysmally, even comically. During his Bolivian “guerrilla” campaign, Che split his forces whereupon they got hopelessly lost and bumbled around, half-starved, half-clothed and half-shod, without any contact with each other for 6 months before being wiped out. They spent much of the time walking in circles and were usually within a mile of each other. During this blundering they often engaged in ferocious firefights against each other. “You hate to laugh at anything associated with Che, who murdered so many defenseless men and boys,” says Felix Rodriguez, the Cuban-American CIA officer who played a key role in tracking him down in Bolivia. “But when it comes to Che as “guerrilla” you simply can’t help but guffaw.”

Here’s Rupert Wyatt from a recent interview: “I think the (film directors) Christopher Nolans of the world have really allowed filmmakers to explore things in a more…thoughtful way. If I have the opportunity to make further films, the hope that I have is to really explore wonderful themes.”

Ground Control to Director Wyatt: Thank your lucky stars you were born in England in 1972 instead of in Cuba around 1940. Your symbol of freedom jailed and exiled most of Cuba’s best writers, poets and  filmmakers while converting Cuba’s press and cinema–at Soviet-gunpoint–into propaganda agencies for a Stalinist regime.

Following in the footsteps of (among many other flower-children) Stephen Stills, Bonnie Raitt, Chrissie Hynde, Jimmy Buffet, and Carole King (who in 2002 serenaded Fidel Castro with a personal “You’ve Got a Friend”) guitar legend Jimmy Page made the pilgrimage to Fidel Castro’s fiefdom this week.

To Led Zeppelin’s former guitarist the visit probably seemed, not only fitting, but long overdue. Cuba was, after all, the first nation ruled by bearded long-hairs. Jean Paul Sartre, after all, hailed Cuba’s Stalinist rulers as “les Enfants au Pouvoir” (the children in power). Fidel Castro, after all, spoke at Harvard in 1959 on the same bill as pioneer beatnik Allen Ginsberg.

Remove the wispy beard and beret from the (late, thanks to Fidel Castro) revolutionary icon on those posters and t-shirts and you’ve got Jim Morrison of The Doors. Remove the cowboy hat from the (late, thanks to Fidel Castro) Revolutionary icon Camilo Cienfuegos and you’ve got Grateful Dead’s Gerry Garcia. Circa 1959, Raul Castro with his blond shoulder-length locks was a ringer for Joe Walsh circa Hotel California. These Cuban Stalinists were on the cutting edge of fashion. They pre-empted the Haight Ashbury look by a decade.

Castro’s captive (literally!) media, reports that Jimmy Page’s visit: “included tours of historic sites, and purchases of souvenirs such as the famous photograph of Che Guevara.”

In an interview with the BBC last year, Oscar and Cannes-winner Benicio del Toro explained the painstaking intellectual exertion that inspired his Che-mania: “I hear of this guy, and he’s got a cool name, Che Guevara! Groovy name, groovy man, groovy politics! So I came across a picture of Che, smiling, in fatigues, I thought, ‘Dammit, this guy is cool-looking!’”

In all likelihood, similar intellectual toil inspired Jimmy Page’s recent souvenir shopping spree in Havana.

For his role as Che Guevara in Steven Soderbergh’s movie Che, Benicio del Toro was recently honored by the peace-loving crowd in Hollywood and Cannes. For headlining their Concert for Peace. Jimmy Page was recently honored with the “Global Peace Award from the United Nations’ Pathway to Peace organization.

“We reject any peaceful approach! “declared the souvenir icon of the Concert for Peace’s honoree “Violence is inevitable! To establish Socialism rivers of blood must flow! If the nuclear missiles had remained (in Cuba) we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City. The victory of socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”

“Hatred is the central element of our struggle!” raved this icon of flower-children. “Hatred that is intransigent….Hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him violent and cold- blooded killing machine… My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood. Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any surrendered enemy that falls in my hands! We must keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm!”

In fact, Jimmy Page should know that many Cuban youths “tuned-in and turned-on” to (smuggled) Led Zeppelin music in the 60’s and 70’s. But rather than meet with his Cuban fans, Jimmy was hosted by apparatchiks of the Stalinist regime that jailed and brutalized them en masse.

In a famous speech in 1961 Che Guevara denounced the very “spirit of rebellion” as “reprehensible.” “Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates” commanded the KGB –mentored Guevara. “Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.”

Cuban “roquero” of the time Charlie Bravo recalls the process: “When Castro’s goons caught me with a Led Zeppelin record, they led me to a Stairway alright—but at bayonet-point and this stairway hardly led to Heaven, instead it led down into a dark jail cell.”

On the orders of Jimmy Page’s smiling hosts, Charlie was joined by tens of thousands of Cuban youths. A few years earlier the hundreds of Soviet KGB and East German STASI “consultants” who flooded Cuba in the early 60’s, found an extremely eager acolyte in Che Guevara. By the mid 60’s the crime of a “rocker” lifestyle—long hair, blue jeans, etc.–or effeminate behavior got thousands of youths yanked off Cuba’s streets and parks by secret police and dumped in prison camps with “Work Will Make Men Out of You” in bold letters above the gate and with machine gunners posted on the watchtowers. The initials for these camps were UMAP, not GULAG, but the conditions were quite similar.

Today the world’s largest image of Jimmy Page’s souvenir icon adorns Cuba’s headquarters for Cuba’s KGB-trained secret police, a gang of Communist sadists who jailed and tortured at a rate higher than Stalin’s own KGB and GRU—and many of their victims were guilty of nothing worse than listening to music by Jimmy Page.

—–

The real Carlos, born Ilich Ramirez Sanchez in Venezuela, joined the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in 1970 at the age of 21, after years of Marxist student activism and training in guerrilla warfare. An affluent young Latin playboy who enjoyed living large while plotting to rid the world of capitalist oppression, Carlos was an unrepentant killer who idolized the cowardly murderer Che Guevara. He fumbled his way through an assassination attempt, botched (but deadly nonetheless) grenade and bomb attacks in Paris, and two failed RPG attacks at Paris airports, then shot dead two French detectives and fled to Beirut.

There he planned a bold assault on the OPEC headquarters in Vienna in 1975 (for which he donned a beret in the style of his hero). Leading this hostage-taking operation catapulted him to international fame and earned him upwards of $20 million in ransom payout – although his failure to follow orders and to execute specific hostages cost him his membership in the PFLP.

Thereafter and throughout the ‘80s, Carlos connected with a variety of terrorist partners, including Saddam Hussein, to continue his reign of terror. He even spearheaded a plot to assassinate Egypt’s Anwar Sadat, only to have the Muslim Brotherhood beat him to it. Eventually, Carlos went into hiding, faded into impotence, and was snatched from the Sudan in 1994 by French agents who brought him back for trial. He never became the celebrated pop icon that the totalitarian Che is, but in his time Carlos was almost as much a household name as bin Laden is today.

Prior to viewing the miniseries, I was curious to see how Carlos the Jackal would be portrayed – as the egotistical, murdering ideologue he was or as a folk-hero freedom-fighter in the vein of Steven Soderbergh’s Che (in which actor Ramirez also appears). In a clear marketing attempt to ride the coattails of Che’s mythology and popularity, the posters and promotional stills almost all show “Carlos” sporting the Che-inspired beret. The fact that the miniseries was appearing on the Sundance Channel, the spawn of anti-war activist Robert Redford, also fed my cynical suspicion that Carlos the anti-capitalist would be glorified.

A gushing review by Betsy Sharkey of the L.A. Times gave me further cause to expect the usual moral inversion. After commenting breathlessly on Edgar Ramirez’s “feral sexuality” (apparently succumbing to it herself), Ms. Sharkey was quick to assure readers that the miniseries “neither romanticizes nor demonizes” Carlos. Ordinarily, this is media-speak for, “it romanticizes him but we want to spin it as ’non-judgmental.’” In an interview, Ramirez himself offers no condemnation of Carlos, stressing an actor’s need not to judge his character. I braced myself for 315 minutes of “freedom fighter” mythologizing.

Carlos is “cinematic genius,” Sharkey wrote, that is “already destined to stand alongside the greats” like Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. After sitting through all three nights of the Sundance miniseries, I certainly wouldn’t go that far, but I confess that it is extraordinary. Unlike Soderbergh’s Che, Carlos is riveting from the opening frame and relentlessly paced (although the film’s drive and focus begin to flag in Part 3 as Carlos becomes increasingly dissipated and irrelevant on the international stage, you nevertheless cannot tear yourself away from watching it). It is astonishingly authentic and faithful to the research, and the acting is uniformly excellent by the entire cast.

Does the film romanticize him? To a degree it does, in the sense that Edgar Ramirez is better-looking than the real Carlos and impressively embodies his charisma, egotism, ideological fervor and yes, even his feral sexuality. But it doesn’t rationalize or soften the edges of his misogyny, selfishness, and utter indifference to the victims of his class war.

I would have liked to see less moral neutrality and more moral clarity here, but director Assayas did throw a few crumbs my way. During a hostage-taking by members of the Japanese Red Army, for example, a terrorist tries to bond ideologically with the French ambassador whom he’s holding at gunpoint: “You’re a former Resistance fighter. So you understand our struggle, our methods.” The ambassador shoots back: “You personify everything we fought against: terror, blackmail, the taking of civilian hostages.”

Carlos reveled in his fame, and the miniseries depicts that (although it could have hit that note harder). In Part 2, for example, he proclaims his usefulness to a Palestinian terror group: “I have done a great deal for the Palestinian cause!” The leader of the group, who views Carlos as a loose cannon and a liability, corrects him: “You have done a great deal for your own cause. You are famous now.” There was no room for “stars” in the organization, and from boyhood Carlos desired to be known the world over.

And that brings me to the miniseries’ one unfortunate flaw. Ms. Sharkey claims that it “dismantles the myth to reveal and take some measure of the man underneath.” Actually, we get virtually no measure of the man underneath. The roots of his motivations are never explored. We have no idea what drove him to become, as he was fond of describing himself, an “international revolutionary.” The viewer never knows, for example, about Carlos’ fervently Communist father, who named his son Ilich after Lenin, “the biggest man in all humanity,” and set him on a path of ideological hatred and terrorist violence early on.

The real Carlos turned 61 just this week in a French prison, where he has been since being seized in Khartoum. Convinced that fundamentalist Islam is the new wave of anti-imperialism, he has become a Muslim and written a book about “revolutionary Islam,” which he says “attacks the ruling classes in order to achieve a more equitable redistribution of wealth.” In his book he praises bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks, and claims that only a coalition of Islamic and Marxist revolutionaries can bring down America the imperialist oppressor, a pursuit he describes as “the highest goal of humanity.”

The most recent of a spate of excellent European films about terrorists and gangsters like Mesrine, The Baader-Meinhof Complex, and A Prophet, Carlos spans more than twenty years, more than half a dozen countries, and just as many languages, mostly English, French, Spanish, and Arabic. Despite its frustrating moral distance from its subject, the miniseries is a must-see historical epic of the origins of modern terrorism - and of its first repellant celebrity.

In a recent article entitled “Washington-Set Films May Fudge Facts, But Good Ones Speak To Larger Truths,” the Washington Post’s Ann Hornaday discusses how D.C. audiences composed of political insiders scrutinize Hollywood’s D.C.-based historical dramas for fidelity to the facts. “Myth or reality?” she asks. “That’s the question posed by movies based on true events, and it’s a conundrum that Washington officialdom seems to have a perennial problem in reconciling.” As examples, she references such films as Charlie Wilson’s War, Thirteen Days, All the President’s Men, and of course, Oliver Stone’s controversial oeuvre: JFK, Nixon, and W. (I can’t tell you how long I’ve been wanting to use the word “oeuvre” in one of my blogs).

History buffs and D.C. insiders may nitpick about such films, but as Ms. Hornaday writes, “You don’t have to support Stone’s signature brand of revisionism to agree that overweening literalism can sometimes obscure a larger truth.”

Actually, the problem isn’t that adhering to the facts obscures the truth. The problem is that “overweening literalism” bogs down the storytelling. Bringing a fact-based story to the screen necessitates all sorts of manipulation of messy and inconvenient facts in order to compose a compelling, well-ordered tale: compressing time and events, creating composite characters and/or omitting others, putting imagined dialogue in the mouths of historical figures, etc. The trick, and the goal, is to manage all these creative techniques in a way that might “fudge facts,” as Ms. Hornaday says, but stays faithful to the truth.

She quotes The West Wing screenwriter Aaron Sorkin as calling nonfiction drama “a tricky needle to thread. When an audience sits in a theater having been told that ‘The Following is a True Story,’ they should look at it the way they’d look at a painting and not a photograph.” Exactly so, and I believe most audiences do view nonfiction dramas, or docudramas, that way. I believe most people understand that what they’re seeing is not a documentary or an exact record of facts, but an “artist’s rendition” of historical reality. (Even documentaries are not strictly collections of facts, of course; they too are carefully pieced together and shaped to tell an entertaining story from a particular point of view).

About All the President’s Men, which Hornaday says is considered the masterpiece of political drama, she notes that “it barely matters that the film’s most iconic piece of dialogue – ‘Follow the money’ – was never spoken in real life”:

Contrast this with the Left’s response to the 2006 ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11, which dramatized the chain of events that led to the Islamic attacks of that terrible morning almost exactly nine years ago (a morning the Left would like us to “get over”). As I’ve written about before, and as John Ziegler’s documentary Blocking the Path to 9/11 brilliantly depicts, Democrats hallucinated that the $30+ million miniseries was a hit job on the Clinton administration, concocted by a cabal of conservative filmmakers and somehow financed by a non-profit, Christian (gasp!) relief mission.

Without having seen a frame of The Path to 9/11, Democrat pit bulls like Senators Harry Reid and Louise Slaughter went into pre-emptive attack mode to protect their legacy, claiming that the miniseries was a pack of libelous lies, and threatening to pull ABC’s license if the show aired. Meanwhile an internet-fueled smear campaign spearheaded by the unscrupulous character assassin, blogger Max Blumenthal, ramped up a mob mentality among the lonely and the impotent in the blogosphere. Ultimately, Bill Clinton himself boiled over about it in his infamous interview with Chris Wallace.

They pulled out all the stops not only to censor The Path to 9/11, but to bury it, because the Left knows how critical it is to control the “consensus history,” that “usable past” that Ann Hornaday mentioned. In the end, none of their threatened lawsuits materialized, because the miniseries was faithful to the larger truth and they knew it. But the damage had been done – the show aired only once, and it remains unavailable on DVD.

This is the third time I’ve written about Fair Game for Big Hollywood. Why bother to devote so much space to a movie that’s fated for box-office oblivion anyway? Because it’s important to call out the Left’s persistent efforts to establish their ideologically correct narrative when the historical evidence doesn’t conform to it. Facts may be stubborn things, to paraphrase John Adams, but they don’t stop the Hollywood Left from spinning a “larger truth” out of a lie.

But before I get into the stomach-churning details of the Hollywood Left’s shattered moral compass vis-a-vis directors Polanski and Panahi and other Iranian film artists, I would like to take a moment to honor more of the true heroes who have spoken out loudly on Mr. Panahi’s behalf and signed petitions for his release. The National Society of Film Critics. The Boston, L. A. and  Toronto Film Critics Associations. Arin Paul of the New York Times. Filmmaker Ken Loach. Rutger Wolfson, director of the Rotterdam Film Festival. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. Human Rights Watch. French Minister of Culture Frederic Mitterand. Iranhumanrights.org. The list really is long.

Of course, noticeably absent from those petitioning and publicly calling for the release of Mr. Panahi from his unjust tomb-like captivity in Tehran are all of the prominent Hollywood A-List petitioners for Polanski. So Mr. Polanski’s arrest for child rape is worthy of international pressure and outrage, but famed director Jafar Panahi being tossed into a crypt in Tehran on “unspecified charges” is not? Welcome to Lefty Hollywood. And it only gets worse. The most tragic case of Jafar Panahi is yet one more sorry, perplexing and infuriating chapter in leftist Hollywood’s incredible blind side to any human rights violations in Iran, never mind only those perpetrated against Iranian filmmakers today.

Gay rights zero Sean Penn’s PR jaunt for the Mad Mullahs in Tehran in 2005, praising the Islamists even as then president-elect Mahmoud “No Gays in Iran” Ahmadinejad was jacking up the regime’s barbaric anti-gay pogrom. The sordid and embarrassing Team Oscar trip to Iran in March 2009, in which actress Annette Bening praised the regime’s women’s rights record even as Roxana Saberi rotted in Evin prison across town, and as Iranian-American filmmaker Esha Momeni awaited an Islamist kangaroo court for the crime of filming a women’s rights documentary. She awaits trial still.

The Academy’s posting of the self-aggrandizing Road to Isfahan promo last summer, with no mention that many of the Iranian filmmakers featured in it had been blacklisted by the regime. In essence, the Academy profited from their McCarthyite misery. AMPAS knew, in the same way that you now know. I told them. The Academy’s emailed response? They don’t get into politics, don’t you know. Same with the AMPAS Iran film seminar in L.A. last October. Two blacklisted Iranian film artists, including renowned actress Fatemeh Motamed-Aria, were barred from leaving Iran to attend.

The show went on, the blacklisted whitewashed from the Academy’s program in Orwellian fashion. Also noticeably absent from Hollywood’s list of cause celebres’ is renowned Iranian director and President of the Asian Film Academy Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who now serves as official spokesman for Mir Hussein Mousavi and the Greens outside Iran. Who in Hollywood has invited Mr. Makhmalbaf to speak on the plight of the Greens and Iranian film artists? None I can find. How can you explain any of this to where it makes any sense at all? Why not any peep out of Hollywood on Iran at all?

Theo Van Gogh

Is it the Islamist Fear Factor? Are they just too enamored of blood-drenched dictators like Chavez, Castro and Ahmadinejad that they can’t find it within themselves to say a bad word about them? Or is it just plain endemic Hollywood racism? Polanski is white, after all. Panahi and most Iranians are not. I’d like to believe that, but I don’t really. I just believe leftist Hollywood is so morally corrupt that child rape and cop killing are morally defensible, yet dissent in a fascist dictatorship is not. Perhaps if Mr. Panahi had drugged and raped a tween, he would be getting the rabid and unqualified support of the lefty Hollywood establishment today. How I only wish to God that were a sick joke.

For those of you who do still have some shred of morality and human decency left in your souls (unlike some people), here are two petitions for the release of entombed director Jafar Panahi. One is at Facebook, the other at Petitions Online. Thank you, on behalf of Mr. Panahi and his family. And thanks to the many worldwide voices who have NOT remained silent in the face of this abomination of justice for a cutting-edge director, whose only crime is being cutting-edge in a fascist dictatorship where such innovation is rewarded with the death of a thousand cuts. I can think of many lefty Hollywood film types more deserving of that fate than the brave Jafar Panahi.

Here’s an idea. Why don’t we petition the Iranian government and work out a trade? They send us Jafar Panahi and all their blacklisted film artists, and we send them all the signatories to Roman Polanski’s petition. Let’s Make a Deal! And no, I’m not joking. I would make that trade in a heartbeat. I am at my wit’s end with Lefty Hollywood, people. For over a year now I have been pressing the case of Iranian film artists, and they were all just as dead silent on the subject then as they are toward Jafar Panahi and other persecuted filmmakers in Iran today, some of whom they once called friend.

I have even tried to shame them into action. But how do you shame the shameless? How do you explain morality to moral reprobates who equivocate the drugging and anal rape of a child? Who believe critics of dictator Hugo Chavez should be thrown in jail? Who believe that we were as racist and terrorist as the genocidal Imperial Japanese in the Pacific War? Who believe America is evil and everything it stands for sucks, even as they lead lives of freedom and luxury not possible anywhere else on earth? What happened to the Hollywood heroes of old who made fun of fascist dictators, often at risk to their own lives, instead of jaunting off to run PR campaigns for them?

Maybe it’s time for a new and revolutionary tack, people. Maybe it’s time to found a new Hollywood built on the principles of the old. The Hollywood in which the brave Victor Laszlo was a hero, not the murderous Che Guevara. In which America’s greatness and heroism was praised, not vilified. In which the American people were enlightened with great film stories that made them proud to be Americans, not browbeat with leftist anti-American propaganda. There is a great hunger in America for that brand of storytelling in film. A market of hundreds of millions just waiting to be tapped.

A huge undertaking, no doubt. But nowhere near the task faced by our Founding Fathers, and look at the miracles that ragtag band of rebels wrought. We Americans can do anything we put our minds to. But that is a piece for another time. For now, forget those useless leftist Hollywood idiots. We can deal with them later. Right now, Jafar Panahi and his family need each of us to speak out on his behalf. His life is hanging in the balance. Please sign the petitions at Facebook and Petitions Online linked above. As I have said in Part One, concerted voices raised in outrage have saved lives in Iran before, and can do so again. To save one life is to save the world entire. That is all that matters now. Hollywood lefties can go fuck themselves. History and their silence will damn them for all time.

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.

In the film, Gorki Aguila, lead singer of Cuban punk group Porno Para Ricardo, testifies that Biscet was “like a light” when he met him during his own imprisonment. When we see Biscet interviewed we, too, get a sense of this light, and of the God-given Grace that animates and sustains the deeply religious and avowedly non-violent Dr Biscet- Charisma in the true sense of the word: a divine gift.

We see Elsa Morejon, Oscar’s wife, preparing “la jaba,” the supply of food, water, toilet paper and other necessities that Elsa brings to Oscar when she is allowed to visit, only once every two months. Given that the food provided Oscar by the regime is largely inedible and perhaps even poisoned or drugged, la jaba is all that physically sustains Dr. Biscet.

“Oscar’s Cuba” shows us harrowing evidence of the repressive tactics of the Castros. We have known for years that the regime employs hand-picked mobs of citizens to terrify dissidents; in “Oscar’s Cuba” we see such a mob firsthand, gathered in front of Dr Biscet’s house. An old man yells, bizarrely, “down (abajo) with human rights!” “¡Abajo!” answers another viejo in a Che Guevara t-shirt. A younger man starts chanting, “¡Esta calle es de Fidel! ¡Esta calle es de Fidel!” (“This street belongs to Fidel!”) A couple of middle-aged women join in hysterically and soon the whole crowd is shouting the inane mantra. In a normal society, you would call the police to break up such an unhinged mob in front of your house. In Cuba, the police were the ones who organized and sent this mob in the first place. If the mob gets violent and physically beats you, there is nobody to call for help. In fact, the actions of the mob are considered those of model citizens by the regime.  This is a society that is upside down, crazy.

In Cuba, to shout something as inarguable and universal as “¡Que vivan los derechos humanos!” “Long live human rights!” becomes a deeply courageous and downright subversive act. Indeed, we do hear Dr. Biscet bravely cry out “¡Que vivan los derechos humanos!” just before he is forced into a police car and whisked away. We come away from Mr Allott’s film with an almost palpable sense not only of the courage and determination of Biscet, but of the fear the regime has of him. Biscet knows that he faces a thoroughly ruthless adversary, and yet remains undaunted. What’s most striking about the man is his hope. Not a naive hope, but rather a serene faith that bad ideas fail, and good ideas win.

“Oscar’s Cuba” suggests that the hour of that victory of good ideas over bad may be at hand: Ambassador Valladares affirms that every day more and more Cubans lose their fear of the dictatorship, and begin speaking up.

Beautifully scored by Emmy and Grammy Award-winning Cuban jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, “Oscar’s Cuba” will screen on Sunday, March 21, 2010, from 5:00pm – 7:30pm in Hollywood, California. Cuban-born actress Maria Conchita Alonso will host the event.

For more information on Sunday’s screening of “Oscar’s Cuba” visit their website and Facebook page.

Steven Soderbergh made certain his new movie, “Che,” about the life of revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, couldn’t be attacked — at least on a factual level. (CNN Entertainment, January 1, 2009)

“I didn’t mind someone saying, ‘Well, your take on him, I don’t really like,’ or ‘You’ve left these things out and included these things.’ That’s fine,” Soderbergh said. “What I didn’t want was for somebody to be able to look at a scene and say, ‘That never happened.’ “(CNN Entertainment, January 1, 2009)

Well, Mr Soderbergh (and CNN), pull up a chair.

Soderbergh’s movie shows Che Guevara steely-eyed and snarling with defiance during his capture. Why, only seconds before, Che’s very M-2 carbine had been blasted from his hands and rendered useless by a fascist machine gun burst!

Then the bravely grimacing Guevara jerks out his pistol and blasts his very last bullets at the approaching hordes of CIA-lackey soldiers!

The (typical) viewer gapes at the spectacle. His eyes mist and lips tremble at Soderbergh and del Toro’s impeccable depiction of such undaunted pluck and valor.

OK, but just where did Soderbergh and del Toro—utterly obsessed with historical accuracy–obtain this version of Che’s capture?

Why the notoriously shrewd and canny, the immensely suspicious and cagey, the infamously clever and perspicacious, Steven Soderbergh transcribed this sterling and utterly indisputable account of Che’s capture exactly as penned by: Fidel Castro!

And you yokels who think that the testimony of a Communist dictator should merit the same skepticism as that of, say, a U.S. industrialist, have obviously never been subject to Soderbergh’s multiple-Oscar-nominated Erin Brockovich.

Why the man who mentored Soderbergh’s film for impeccable historical honesty is also on record for the following testaments:

“Again I STRESS! I am NOT A COMMUNIST!  And Communists have absolutely no influence in my nation!” (Fidel Castro, April 1959)

“Political power does interest me in the least! And I will NEVER assume such power!” (Fidel Castro, April 1959)

But as evidenced by Steven Soderbergh’s films, the author of these proclamations merits his version of Che’s capture transcribed on the silver screen as gospel. As for any skeptics…? Hah! Only those insufferable Tea-Partiers could conceivably swallow the laughable propaganda questioning Che’s heroism and Fidel Castro’s integrity and honesty!

Fidel Castro, you see, wrote the forward to Che‘s Diaries wherein this Davy Crocket-esque-at-the-Alamo version of events appears. These diaries were published in Castro’s Cuban fiefdom by the Stalinist dictator’s very own propaganda ministry. So lest they unwittingly fudge their film’s historical accuracy, Soderbergh and co-producer Benicio Del Toro were scrupulous in repeatedly visiting Castro’s Stalinist fiefdom to get the unvarnished truth straight from Castro’s own propaganda ministry!

On the other hand, a mental defect, diagnosed by my physician as “not believing Communist dictators, especially after living under them,” led your humble servant here, while researching my book, to dig-up and study the actual records of the men actually on the scene of Che Guevara’s capture, and who today live in places where they need not fear Castro’s firing squads and torture chambers for the crime of telling the truth.

As might be expected, (but mostly by Tea-Partiers and other such yokels,) this mental defect led to the discovery of major “discrepancies” between Soderbergh and del Toro’s Fidel Castro-mentored film and the historical truth.

In fact, on his second to last day alive, Che Guevara ordered his guerrilla charges to give no quarter, to fight to the last breath and to the last bullet. With his men doing exactly that, Che, with a trifling flesh leg-wound (though Soderbergh’s movie depicts Che’s leg wound ghastlier than Burt Reynolds’ in “Deliverance”) snuck away from the firefight, crawled towards the Bolivian soldiers doing the firing, then as soon as his he spotted two of them at a distance, stood and yelled: “Don’t Shoot! I’m Che! I’m worth more to you alive than dead!”

His captor’s official Bolivian army records that they took from Ernesto “Che” Guevara:  a fully-loaded PPK 9mm pistol. And the damaged carbine was an M-1—NOT the M-2 wrote he was carrying in his own diaries. The damaged M-1 carbine probably belonged to the hapless guerrilla charge, Willi, who Che dragged along—also to his doom.

But it was only after his (obviously voluntary) capture that Che segued into full Eddie-Hasquell-greeting-June-Cleaver-mode. “What’s your name, young man?!” Che quickly asked one of his captors. “Why, what a lovely name for a Bolivian soldier!”

“So what will they do with me?” Che, desperate to ingratiate himself, asked Bolivian Captain Gary Prado. “I don’t suppose you will kill me. I’m surely more valuable alive…. And you Captain Prado!” Che commended his captor. “You are a very special person!… I have been talking to some of your men. They think very highly of you, captain!.. Now, could you please find out what they plan to do with me?”

From that stage on, Che Guevara’s fully-documented Eddie Haskell-isms only get more uproarious (or nauseating). But somehow none of these found their way into Soderbergh’s film.

And oh!  Didn’t Che Guevara mount his steed and grab his lance as the (self-appointed) liberator of South America’s indigenous peoples fro  exploitation by the continents’ Europeans descendants?

Well, based on this picture, taken by the men who captured and killed him—Che’s message seemed woefully under-appreciated by his intended “beneficiaries.” I only note one obviously European-descendent person in the picture.

Hollywood doesn’t seem very interested in the life stories of conservative icons unless they’re slandering them as in Oliver Stone’s hit piece on George W. Bush called “W.” which was released (sheerly by coincidence) a month before the 2008 presidential election.

Stone is currently working on a documentary series about Hitler, Stalin, Mao and other fiends which is, in his own words, designed to educate the American people so we can learn to “empathize” with them. Well isn’t that just ducky? I can hardly wait to be taught how to empathize with Hitler and Stalin.

In recent years we were treated to biographies like Steven Soderbergh’s heroic homage to Che Guevara, the murderous villain whose face can be seen on numerous t-shirts at your local hipster joint. And who could forget the Ed Harris tribute to the poor misunderstood genius Jackson Pollock? He revolutionized the art world when he wasn’t getting drunk and abusing his wife.

The 1996 film “The People Vs. Larry Flynt” made some interesting points regarding the first amendment but otherwise portrayed Flynt as a victim of censorship and therefore some sort of hero. Couldn’t Director Miloš Forman find a better subject for a movie about free speech than a pornographer?

There’s a movie about Howard Stern but no movie about Rush Limbaugh, a man whose story of overcoming addiction and deafness is the very stuff great biopics are made of. There’s a movie about the Marquis De Sade but no movie (other than a television film) about the life of Pope John Paul II — a man whose leadership was pivotal in the liberation of Eastern Europe from Communism. There’s a movie about John Wayne Gacy but no movie about John Wayne — who’s as popular today as ever! Julia Child rates but not Margaret Thatcher?

Has anyone noticed that there’s not a single decent film about the life of Ronald Reagan? Is his life story not compelling enough? He only brought down the Berlin Wall, won the Cold War and led America to one of its most prosperous ages. Not to mention that prior to his political career, Reagan was a movie actor so well regarded by his colleagues that he was elected to leadership roles in the Screen Actors Guild in the 1940’s.

Am I crazy for thinking that William F. Buckley’s life story would make a great movie? Here’s a man who spoke Spanish and French as his first languages and didn’t begin to learn English until he was seven, yet went on to become known for his brilliant writing and speaking style. Buckley had tremendous wit which he displayed on television as the host of “Firing Line” for over thirty years. Imagine the challenge to an actor to convincingly imitate Buckley’s distinct mannerisms and way of speaking. Buckley worked in the intelligence industry for the CIA and then went on to found National Review, a conservative political journal of unmatched regard.

Speaking of National Review, Heaven forbid anyone in Hollywood make a film about someone like Whittaker Chambers. An American Communist and Soviet spy, Chambers ultimately defected from Communism and became one of its fiercest opponents. He was befriended by William F. Buckley and was part of National Review’s founding editorial board. He was also responsible for identifying former assistant to the Secretary of State, Alger Hiss as a Communist spy in 1948. That’s a pretty compelling story.

What’s that? You’ve never heard of Whittaker Chambers?

Maybe someone should make a movie about him.

Facts matters little to diehard, teen-beat type Castro/Che fans. Many “document” their rebuttals to my blasphemies with scenes from Godfather II, that famous documentary on pre-Castro Cuba. “Fidel, I love you,” gushed a young Francis Ford Coppola. “We both have beards. We both have power and want to use it for good purposes.” Not that such sentiments could have possibly flavored his masterpiece. 

To depict Havana streets on New Year’s Eve 1958, Coppola cast more people than stampeded through a battle scene in Braveheart. For what it’s worth, Havana streets were deathly quiet that night. Not to be outdone, in his Havana, Sydney Pollack cast Cuban President, Fulgencio Batista, with light skin, blond hair and blue eyes. The late Cuban-exile novelist (and screenwriter for Andy Garcia’s The Lost City) Guillermo Cabrera Infante, later bumped into Pollack at a Hollywood party where the learned director flinched and went red-faced when a laughing Cabrera informed him that Batista was, in fact, a Black.  

“But these are merely movies, Humberto,” Some might counter. Yes, fine. But Pollack boasted of his knowledge of Cuba, often visiting Castro’s fiefdom starting in 1977 and even meeting with Fidel Castro himself. 

Well, prepare yourselves. I fear the imbecilities of both Coppola and Pollack (and perhaps even those of Soderbergh and Del Toro) will be seriously trumped in a forthcoming movie based on the bestselling Havana Nocturne; How the Mob Owned Cuba, and Lost it to the Revolution.  

This “owning,” of Cuba, as we all know from Copolla and Pollack and every MSM and “scholarly’ mention of pre-Castro Cuba, issued from the Mob’s oligolopic ownership of Cuba’s gargantuan gambling “industry.”  

“Havana Nocturne has the air of a thriller with the bonus of being true,” gushed Tom Miller in The Washington Post. 

“A multifaceted true tale,” boast the publisher, Harper Collins. 

“Thoroughly and impressively researched,” attests The Miami Herald. 

True to form, most of author TJ English’s sources for his recently-optioned bestseller are officials of Cuba’s Stalinist regime, which English visited often. Indeed, English dedicates his book to one such Castroite official, Enrique Cirules, who he calls a “Cuban author.” Fine, I’ll call Julius Streicher “a German author.” and Ilya Ehrenburg “a Russian author.” 

Now let’s have a look at English’s “research” and how his findings compare with those issued from all sources except the propaganda ministry of a Stalinist police-state. In 1955 Cuba contained a grand total of three Gambling Casinos, the biggest was at the Tropicana and featured ten gambling tables and 30 slot machines, the Hotel Nacional, featured seven roulette wheels and twenty-one slot machines.

By contrast, in 1955 the single Riviera Casino in Las Vegas featured twenty tables and 116 slot machines. This means that in 1955: one Las Vegas Casino had more gambling action than all of Cuba.

More interestingly, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor Commission the typical tourist spends five days in their city and spends an average of $580 ($75 in 1957 dollars) on gambling, the main motive for 90 per cent of visitors.

Throughout the 1950’s Cuba averaged 180,000 tourists a year. For the sake of this “study” let’s forget Cuba’s beaches, fishing, dining, palm-studded countryside, old world architecture, sightseeing etc. etc. etc. Let’s say all those tourists—men, women, adolescents, children—did nothing but gamble, and at the Las Vegas’ rate.

Well, my calculator shows a total of $13 and a half million for Cuba’s gambling industry annually. But in 1957 Cuba’s Gross Domestic product was $2.7 billion, and Cuba’s foreign receipts $752 million . How could the beneficiaries of that tiny fraction of Cuba’s income OWN the entire ‘freakin country, and “infiltrate its levers of power from top to bottom,” as author TJ English (no-doubt goaded by his Castroite mentors) claims, and as producers Eric Eisner and Gil Adler will dramatize?

Another interesting statistic – in 1953, more Cubans vacationed in the U.S., than Americans vacationed in Cuba.

Also, there’s no mention by TJ English of how the Castroite nomenklatura, in cahoots with Colombia’s cocaine cowboys throughout the 70’s and 80’s, made multiple times that measly $13 million a year. “We lived like kings in Cuba,” revealed Medellin Cartel bosses Carlos Lehder and Alejandro Bernal during their trials. “Fidel made sure nobody bothered us.”

The cocaine cartel’s deal with Castro made Meyer Lansky’s with Batista look like a nickel and dime gratuity. Now THAT would make a rollicking and intriguing film! But we all know better.

From its Castroite mentors and “consultants, the optioned book dutifully transcribes (and Eisner and Adler surely plan to show in tear-wrenching detail) pre-Castro conditions. “U.S. business owned much of the prime land in Cuba,” writes English.

In fact, of Cuba’s 161 sugar mills 1958, only 40 were U.S. owned. And United Fruit – the outfit generally cast as the Snidely Whiplash/Darth Vader in this episode – owned only a third of these. And according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in 1958 U.S. investments in Cuba accounted for only 13 per cent of Cuba’s GNP.

“The financial largess that flooded Cuba could have been used to address the country’s social problems” continues author TJ English, who lists them while checking off the list his helpful Castroite hosts so helpfully provided:

“High infant mortality” – (In fact, Cuba’s infant mortality in 1958 was the 13th lowest – not in Latin America, not in the Hemisphere – but in the world.)

“Subhuman housing” – (In fact, Cuba’s per capita income in 1958 was higher than half of Europe’s. “One feature of the Cuban social structure is a large middle class.” starts a UNESCO study of Cuba from 1957. “Cuban workers are more unionized (proportional to the population) than U.S. workers. The average wage for an 8-hour day in Cuba in 1957 is higher than for workers in Belgium, Denmark, France and Germany. According to the Geneva-based International Labor Organization, the average daily wage for an agricultural worker was also among the highest in the world, higher than in France, Belgium, Denmark, or West Germany. Cuban labor receives 66.6 per cent of gross national income. In the U.S. the figure is 70 per cent, in Switzerland 64 per cent.”

“Dispossession of small farmers,” continues Havana Nocturne. – (in fact, Cuba’s agricultural wages in 1958 were higher than half of Europe’s. And – far from huge latifundia hogging the Cuban countryside – the average Cuban farm in 1958 was smaller than the average in the U.S.)

“Illiteracy” – (In fact, in a mere 50 years since a war of independence that cost Cuba almost a fifth of her population, Cuba managed 80 per cent literacy and budgeted the most (23% of national expenses) for public education of any Latin American country. Better still, Cubans were not just literate but also educated, allowed to read George Orwell and Thomas Jefferson along with the arresting wisdom and sparkling prose of Che Guevara.

So just in case Eric Eisner and Gil Adler read Big Hollywood, I provide all of the above as a public service, so you wont go red-faced like Sydney Pollack.

Note:  No, I do not actually think that George W. Bush was a war criminal. Even though I was undercover, I felt dirty just wearing the shirt.