CHE GUEVARA

If your kid ever comes home in a Che Guevara T-shirt, ask him if he knows what the Cuban murderer actually stood for. Sit him down, strip the gauze of ignorance from his eyes and have him read some of these Guevara quotes:


10 Che Guevara quotes the left would rather not talk about


Here are a few I pulled out:

• “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary … These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution!”

• “A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The Wall!” The Wall is a reference to the wall where Che’s enemies stood before his firing squads.

• “If any person has a good word for the previous government that is good enough for me to have him shot."

The only good Che Guevara is a dead Che Guevara


That not good enough to do the trick? Here's some more Che-ism the Left would rather not be publicized:


13 reasons you should throw away your Che Guevara T-shirt

• Soon after Batista was overthrown, Guevara had hundreds of Cuban government officials executed. Notice that the phrase “fair trial” was conspicuously absent from the previous sentence.

• Che was a brutal murderer. He trained and commanded firing squads that executed thousands of men, women and children deemed enemies by the new Castro regime. He once put a bullet in the head of a fellow guerrilla he suspected of disloyalty.

• Che was not a fan of our First Amendment. He opposed freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly and protest. Can you say North Korea?

This photo was taken in an Obama campaign office in Texas. The volunteer who put the poster on the wall might be surprised to learn that her hero opposed free elections.


But if your kid MUST wear a Che Guevara T-shirt, there's THIS brilliance:

Che Guevara in death, with CIA agent Gustavo Villoldo (left) and an unknown U.S. Special Forces officer.


At CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia they have a very interesting museum, which includes some displays dedicated to the campaign, capture & death of Che Guevara, to include personal artifacts. Che was such a threat, his remains a visible high-profile personality file in an otherwise sea of anonymity . . . S.L.



Today's Bird HERE.


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STRANGE DAYS IN CUBA AND VENEZUELA

Strange statements are coming out of Cuba these days. Fidel Castro, in the course of a five-hour interview in late August, reportedly told Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic and Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations that “the Cuban model doesn’t even work for us anymore.”

Once that statement hit the headlines, Castro backtracked. Dressed in military uniform for the first time in four years (which we suspect was his way of signaling that he was not abandoning the revolution), he delivered a rare, 35-minute speech Sept. 3 to students at the University of Havana. In addition to spending several minutes on STRATFOR’s Iran analysis, Castro addressed his earlier statement on the Cuban model, saying he was “accurately quoted but misinterpreted” and suggesting that the economic model doesn’t work anymore but that the revolution lives on.

Sustaining the Revolution

There is little hiding the fact that Cuba’s socialist economy has run out of steam. The more interesting question is whether the Cuban leader is prepared to acknowledge this fact and what he is prepared to do about it. Castro wants his revolution to outlive him. To do so, he must maintain a balance between power and wealth. For decades, his method of maintaining power has been to monopolize the island’s sources of wealth.

But that control has come at a cost: For the revolution to survive — and maintain both a large security apparatus and an expensive and inefficient social welfare system — it must have sufficient private investment that the state can control . . .

Many Cubans, including Castro, blame the island’s economic turmoil on the U.S. embargo, a politically charged vestige of the Cold War days when Cuba, under Soviet patronage, actually posed a clear and present danger to the United States. There is a great irony built into this complaint. Castro’s revolution was built on the foundation that trade with the imperialists was responsible for Cuba’s economic turmoil. Now, it is the supposed lack of such trade that is paralyzing the Cuban economy. History can be glossed over at politically opportune times, but it cannot so easily be forgotten.

The Cuban-Venezuelan Relationship

Cuba and Venezuela face very similar geographic constraints. Both are relatively small countries with long Caribbean coastlines and primarily resource-extractive economies. While Venezuela’s mountainous and jungle-covered borderlands to the south largely deny the country any meaningful economic integration with its neighbors, Cuba sits in a sea of small economies similar to its own. As a result, neither country has good options in its immediate neighborhood for meaningful economic integration save for the dominant Atlantic power, i.e., the United States. In dealing with the United States, Cuba and Venezuela basically have two options: either align with the United States or seek out an alliance with a more powerful, external adversary to the United States.

Both countries have swung between these two extremes. Prior to the 1959 revolution, the United States dominated Cuba politically and economically, and although relations between the two countries began to deteriorate shortly thereafter, there were still notable attempts to cooperate until Soviet subsidies took hold and episodes like the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco sunk the relationship. Likewise, until the 2002 coup attempt against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela had long maintained a close, mutually beneficial relationship with the United States. With U.S. urging, Venezuela flooded the markets with oil and busted the 1973 OPEC oil embargo, helping bring about the fall of the Soviet Union. That energy cooperation continued with the U.S. sale of Citgo in the 1990s to Venezuela’s state oil firm PDVSA, a deal designed to hardwire Venezuela into the U.S. energy markets. Venezuela obtained a guaranteed market for its low-grade crude, which it couldn’t sell to other countries, while the United States acquired an energy source close to home.

Read more: A Change of Course in Cuba and Venezuela?





A Change of Course in Cuba and Venezuela? is republished with permission of STRATFOR



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SEA CHANGE

Greetings.

As often stated over these past ten-odd months that I've pursued the modern phenomena of blogging, STORMBRINGER is not a political blog.


In fact, as I have often stated on this blog that generally, I avoid politics; on account that it generates Dark Energy within me. Instead, I embrace military themes, philosophy, and a healthy dose of irreverent humor.






Some Men Fear Wars - Some Wars Fear Men


- unofficial team motto, Operational Detachment Alpha 175, Ft. Lewis Washington





I am not a political shill or activist; I am a soldier, a philosopher, a businessman and a laissez-faire capitalist. Recently however, I have become aware of an extremely disturbing development - a thing so vile, so evil, so insidious that the Obama Administration has embraced and unleashed upon our children.


I have struggled with this thing; it is not my desire to stir up controversy. For the past two weeks I have sought counsel of those I respect and admire, and of YOU - the readers of Blog STORMBRINGER, who communicate with me regularly via email.


I can no longer remain silent.


It is no longer possible to discuss national security and the international geopolitical situation, and keep it separate from the unassailable offensive against all that is good and decent and normal of our society and our great Western Civilization. You know - the same civilization that brought humanity such oppressive concepts as Human Rights, the Social Contract, and Enlightenment.


Often I have stated that I am not a hero, but I have served with heroes. What kind of a hero would I be, what honor would I do to the heroes I have served with, if I stood by and said or did nothing while this horrible, horrible thing advances upon those we serve to protect and defend?


There is a revolution brewing out there.












Not THIS kind of a revolution - this is what we are up against!












O'Riley calls it the Culture War; this is apt. What kind of a philosopher would I be if I stand blithely by as the nihilists and the socialists continue their assault on everything decent, freedom-loving people stand for?

As much as I'd like to avoid becoming a revolutionary, it seems that revolution has sought me. In a previous existence, I was a counter-insurgent. Very well, in this struggle, I will be a counter-revolutionary.

I will post on the issue that I refer to, late tomorrow evening, to catch the Monday morning wave. Oh yes - now it all matters. If I am to climb down from my ivory tower to roll up my sleeves and join the bloody fray, I am going to turn a buck doing it: Laissez-faire Capitalism, Baby! There is nothing dishonorable about making money - STORMBRINGER is going commercial.

Stand by for updates, coming REAL SOON.

- Sean Linanne









No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.


John Donne 1572-1631

FRUM CHALLENGES CHAVEZ's VENEZUELA

David Frum is down there inciting revolution . . . I just hope things don't get to the point where I have to drop everything, go down there and spring him . . .


In a speech in Caracas Venezuela yesterday, Frum said: “The time for blaming shadowy international forces for your problems – bankers and imperialists; the Jews, the Jesuits or the Freemasons; British, the Spanish or the NorteAmericanos – has long past.” Venezuela’s future lies “in the labor of liberated people who are allowed to own for themselves what they create and invent, under accountable governments where power checks power.” more


. . . . . . . . . . . . . S.L.