BURNT BISCUITS

When I was a kid, my mom liked to make breakfast food for dinner every now and then. And I remember one night in particular when she had made breakfast after a long, hard day at work.    On that evening so long ago, my mom placed a plate of eggs, sausage and extremely burned biscuits in front of my dad. I remember waiting to see if anyone noticed! Yet all my dad did was reach for his biscuit, smile at my mom and ask me how my day was at school. I don't remember what I told him that night, but I do remember watching him smear butter and jelly on that biscuit and eat every bite! When I got up from the table that evening, I remember hearing my mom apologize to my dad for burning the biscuits. And I'll never forget what he said: "Honey, I love burned biscuits." Later that night, I went to kiss Daddy good night and I asked him if he really liked his biscuits burned. He wrapped me in his arms and said, "Your Momma put in a hard day at work today and she's real tired. And besides - a little burnt biscuit never hurt anyone!" Life is full of imperfect things.....and imperfect people. I'm not the best at hardly anything, and I forget birthdays and anniversaries just like everyone else.  But what I've learned over the years is that learning to accept each others faults - and choosing to celebrate each others differences - is one of the most important keys to creating a healthy, growing, and lasting relationship. And that's my prayer for you today. That you will learn to take the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of your life and lay them at the feet of God.  Because in the end, He's the only One who will be able to give you a relationship where a burnt biscuit isn't a deal-breaker! We could extend this to any relationship. In fact, understanding is the base of any relationship, be it a husband-wife or parent-child or friendship! "Don't put the key to your happiness in someone else's pocket - keep it in your own." God Bless You.....  Now, and Always.... So Please pass me a biscuit,  and yes, the burnt one will do just fine.!.!.!.!   And PLEASE pass this along to someone who has enriched your life....  I just did!

REFLECTION OF LIFE AT THE WORK PLACE!

Reflection:
Looks like some, people will never be satisfied with what they've got.

When it comes to the work place, Employers do not know how to appreciate their people who have served them loyally through the years. I've seen companies lose good people for the simple fact their leaders failed to show appreciation. Employers with big egos enjoy the fact that they have more power and authority than others. They show, in the way they give orders and directions, that they think they are superior. They get a kick out of displaying this superiority. People who do this are fools, and everyone but them knows it. They are never satisfied because they could not be satisfied even if their people perform well.

They don't listen to the opinion and ideas of their subordinates.

Why? Because of their stupid pride and insecurity.

People of this kind will never be satisfied. Why? Because they are so busy wrapped up in themselves and, fact is, the self can never be satisfied. Happy and productive people are always those who are "others-centered" rather than "self- centered." The greatest idea of leadership is not someone who throws his weight around. Rather, he is a servant. As Bible would say, "He who wish to be a leader should first be a servant."

His joy is derived from delivering a job that others benefit from his contribution. Aim for service and success will follow.

HOW TO CHANGE IN FIVE EASY STEPS!

Chapter 1.
I walk down a street and there's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. It takes forever to get out. It's my fault.

Chapter 2.
I walk down the same street. I fall in the hole again. It still takes a long time to get out. It's not my fault.

Chapter 3.
I walk down the same street. I fall in the hole again. It's becoming a habit. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

Chapter 4.
I walk down the same street and see the deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter 5.
I walk down a different street.

"JUST FIVE MORE MINUTES"

While at the park one day, a woman sat down next to a man on a bench near a playground.

“That’s my son over there,” she said, pointing to a little boy in a red sweater who was gliding down the slide.

“He’s a fine looking boy” the man said. “That’s my daughter on the bike in the white dress.”

Then, looking at his watch, he called to his daughter. “What do you say we go, Melissa?”

Melissa pleaded, “Just five more minutes, Dad. Please? Just five more minutes.”

The man nodded and Melissa continued to ride her bike to her heart’s content. Minutes passed and the father stood and called again to his daughter. “Time to go now?”

Again Melissa pleaded, “Five more minutes, Dad. Just five more minutes.”

The man smiled and said, “OK.”

“My, you certainly are a patient father,” the woman responded.

The man smiled and then said, “Her older brother Tommy was killed by a drunk driver last year while he was riding his bike near here. I never spent much time with Tommy and now I’d give anything for just five more minutes with him. I’ve vowed not to make the same mistake with Melissa.

She thinks she has five more minutes to ride her bike. The truth is, I get Five more minutes to watch her play.”

Life is all about making priorities, what are your priorities?
Give someone you love 5 more minutes of your time today!

GOLD AND BLACK BOXES!

I have in my hands two boxes
Which God gave me to hold
He said, "Put all your sorrows in the black,
And all your joys in the gold."

I heeded his words, and in the two boxes
Both my joys and sorrows I store
But though the gold became heavier each day
The black was as light as before.

With curiosity, I opened the black
I wanted to find out why
And I saw, in the base of the box, a hole
Which my sorrows had fallen out by.

I showed the hole to God, and mused aloud,
"I wonder where my sorrows could be."
He smiled a gentle smile at me.
"My child, they're all here with me."

I asked, "God, why give me the boxes,
"Why the gold, and the black with the hole?"
"My child, the gold is for you to count your blessings,
the black is for you to let go."

GRIEVANCES!

GRIEVANCES!

Obama's Enforcer

In Obama’s entire circle of advisers, one man rises above the pack, gaining the reputation as the most ruthless political figure in America today. This man is Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff. Instead of being an impassioned ideologue, he instead enjoys utilizing Machiavellian tactics to achieve more traditional political ends. A classic Chicago-style machine politician, Rahm will do whatever is necessary to get things done his way. With his aggressive tactics, he has earned the nickname of “Rahmbo.”He lost a finger at the age of 17, and since then Emanuel has been a driven man. Working at an Arby’s he sliced his finger but he insisted on attending his prom and swimming in Lake Michigan before going to the hospital. His finger became badly infected, forcing him to have it amputated during a lengthy stay in Children’s Hospital. Never the same after the incident, Emanuel lives with an intense passion for life and a drive that alienates people, but achieves results.Once a skilled and disciplined ballet dancer, he attended college on a dance scholarship. He became involved in his first campaign as an undergraduate, and his political career took off from there. His climb began while working on Richard Daley’s mayoral campaigns in the late ‘80s, where he proved himself an avid fundraiser. As Emanuel called donors, if they gave less than he thought they could, he would refuse to accept their contribution. Then, he resorted to goading them by stating that he thought they were wealthier and bigger donors. Oftentimes donors would call him back, apologize, and then give Emanuel’s desired amount.Cutting his teeth in Chicago machine politics helped him develop his no- holds- barred style of campaigning. As a member of the Daley machine, Obama’s chief of staff has been involved in his share of shady dealings. In Emanuel’s 2002 congressional race, Daley forced city patronage workers to run a get-out-the vote campaign that is still being investigated for campaign violations.Emanuel’s exploits are legendary. Once he had a disagreement with a pollster, so he sent him a rotten fish. At a dinner party in 1992, the day after Clinton’s hard-won election, Emanuel viciously attacked those whom he called betrayers. Spouting their name and shouting, "Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!" he plunged a knife into the table after each name. Now, he is bringing these tactics along with his foul mouth to the White House.This hardnosed political operative employs methods and tactics that would make Karl Rove blush. Rahm fights like a rooster in a cock fight. A political street fighter, he is the enforcer lurking behind Obama’s pretty words about bipartisanship and unity.Emanuel retired from the Clinton White House in 1998 and moved to Wall Street to make his fortune. He worked for Bruce Wasserstein, a major Democratic donor and Wall Street financier. Over the course of two and a half years, he milked his political connections to help broker deals, and he made $18 million. Emanuel is not ashamed to look out for number one. Once rich, he headed back to politics.As the chairman of the Democratic Campaign Committee in 2006, he is largely credited as the architect of the Democratic landslide. He did it, in large measure, by remaking the Democratic Party in his own image. He won by aggressively recruiting candidates and then relentlessly driving his candidates to raise money. With money in hand, they launched a series of negative ads that are unmatched in campaign history.Emanuel famously said, “Rule one: Never allow a crisis to go to waste…They are opportunities to do big things.” He is pushing Obama’s administration to do that now. Obama is the star of the show and Rahm is the one who is directing the play. Rahm is well connected inside DC and uses his friendships with John Podesta, James Carville and Paul Begala to great effect. Obama, the inexperienced “outsider,” is being taught the ropes by Rahm, the insider. One of the best examples of this inside- and outsid- the-White House coordination is the campaign to demonize and target Rush Limbaugh. You can bet that Rahm Emanuel helped to make it happen.Rahm has brought his aggressive attitude to work in implementing Obama’s agenda. He personally was instrumental in rounding up votes for the stimulus bill, by intensely pressuring three moderate Republican senators and threatening conservative Democrats. Now he is working hard to push through the $3.6 trillion Obama budget. Will he be successful? If the past is any indication, Rahm will shout, curse, stab and claw his way to victory no matter what the cost. Washington, D.C. has definitely gotten uglier as Rahmbo storms through it, hell-bent on taking no prisoners.

WHAT I BELIEVE IS COMING TO OUR COUNTRY!

“Experience hath shown, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny” ~ Thomas Jefferson“The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” ~ Joseph Stalin“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.” ~ Abraham Lincoln“One man with a gun can control 100 without one.” ~ Vladimir Lenin
“Firearms are second only to the Constitution in importance; they are the peoples' liberty's teeth.” ~ George Washington“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” ~ Edmund Burke “In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” ~ George Orwell“I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.” ~ Harry TrumanThe following is a fictional narrative of what could be or might be. While perhaps extreme, I doubt anyone would disagree with or discount the potential for some or all of these events to occur. Though none of us wishes for chaos, anarchy or bloodshed, we are only fooling ourselves if we ignore the course of current events.
Tipping PointSummer, 2009 – World financial markets and major corporations are collapsing under a wave of private and state-bank failures in Europe, the UK and the US. Asian markets are woefully anemic and many are teetering on insolvency. Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil, buffeted by a depressed oil market, have been forced to slash social services. In response, violent riots are daily occurrences. Hundreds are detained, dozens killed and maintaining order is slipping away from the overwhelmed governments. In Europe, France, the UK , Spain, the Netherlands and Italy have been forced to declare dusk to dawn curfews to curb violent demonstrations. In particular, France and Britain are the hardest hit due to high social services obligations and large Muslim populations taking advantage of the turmoil to agitate for more power within both governments.In the U.S., national unemployment has pushed ABOVE 10% and in California it’s over 15% and by all indications will rise to all time highs reached during the Great Depression (20%). Unable to stop the hemorrhage of citizens leaving the Golden State due to job losses, suffocating taxes and a devastating drought which has crippled its agricultural base--plus a demand for social services the legislature refuses to consider cutting--Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declares the state officially bankrupt: The world’s eighth largest economy is officially in default.
And So It BeginsFall, 2009 – Illegal immigration fueled by rival gang and drug cartel wars along the U.S. / Mexican border has reached epidemic proportions with Arizona and Texas calling up the entire Army National Guard to protect its borders. California begs for federal assistance, but the ACLU sues in federal court claiming federal assistance is excessive, unwarranted and the governor improperly requested help. Unable to control the raging border violence which has spilled across the border into San Diego, the California National Guard is mobilized to assist in protecting the city’s citizens. President Obama pleads for calm, but offers no federal assistance (fearing his leftist-base's anger at using force to stop the unrest). New Mexico’s governor quietly mobilizes its state’s national guard along its border but little notice is paid by the media.

In the wake of overwhelming chaos and lack of leadership in Washington, seven Southern States—Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and South Carolina—plus Wyoming and Montana officially file secession legislation in their respective legislatures if a companion of bills pending in Congress passes. The first bill would end-run the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution by allowing the president to seek third and successive terms if congress deemed the country’s economic and national security situation were “serious and consequential”. Determination for such circumstances would be the sole responsibility of the Commander-in-Chief. Essentially, the president could merely invoke the trigger of the amendment by executive order and run for a third term of office.The second bill would grant the President extra-constitutional powers during periods of “grave” national crisis, thus federalizing all state National Guard units, state and municipal bureaucracies, and manage all media outlets. Though congress would have the option to repeal this control at any time according to the bill, opponents, most media types and even some supporters (quietly) doubt it would be so easy.
Burn Baby BurnSpring / Summer, 2010 -- Both bills pass the House and Senate. Vice President Joe Biden casts the deciding vote. All Republicans in the House and Senate walk out and refuse to participate in any future legislative activity (including—surprisingly—Senators’ Olympia Snow, Susan Collins and Arlen Specter). In response to the vote, all seven legislatures plus Montana and Wyoming vote to secede from the United States of America. President Obama immediately retaliates by invoking his newly created power and federalizes the states’ Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine National Guard Armed Forces for all 50 states. Protests break out across the nation. Gun ownership—already difficult—is made nearly impossible by a Presidential executive order suspending all gun AND ammunitions sale; including gun shows and private exchanges.Long simmering racial tensions—fueled by gas and commodity shortages, and exorbitant prices driven by runaway inflation—explode in Miami, Memphis, New Orleans, Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, Boston and dozens of smaller cities. Governors and mayors in the affected states and cities declare martial law and install dusk to dawn curfews. Hundreds of civilians and law enforcement officers are injured—including over a dozen killed—in the uncontrolled rioting.Several high ranking Pentagon generals and admirals resign in protest of the congressional vote and declare the President in contempt of the constitution and guilty of high crimes and treason. The Obama administration has the Generals placed under house arrest and ordered to cease ALL communication with the media. White House vetted censors are placed within all media outlets. Fox News refuses and the government immediately blocks its satellite links and shuts down internet domains. Popular conservative talk-show hosts are forbidden to broadcast—particularly Rush Limbaugh—who is placed under house arrest and forbidden to talk to the media.As the severity of economic depression both quickens and worsens, wave after wave of violent and uncontrollable riots spread across the U.S. Several other states join the original nine secessionist states and declare independence. Obama orders all military stationed abroad to immediately return to the U.S. to bring “order and unity” back to a quickly fracturing U.S.A mass arrest of senior military officers is ordered by Obama after the Secret Service and FBI allegedly uncover a high-level military plot to remove him from office. To enforce loyalty, Obama has hand-picked political loyalists appointed to the Pentagon to monitor all troop movements. Senior military officers not arrested are threatened with imprisonment if they defy the president. Secret Service and FBI personnel are also attached to monitor the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence and federal police agencies.As essential services across the U.S. spiral to a standstill and race riots and counter riots intensify, Obama further clamps down by ordering the governors to use all necessary force to stop the violence, including “unrestricted” use of lethal force. Several governors refuse and in reaction, civilian militia groups form to counter heavy-handed federal activity and maintain local order.Taking advantage of the chaos, Iran declares the “Jewish state” must perish immediately and calls on all Muslims to become martyrs by invading Israel. Iran backs up its declaration by firing two nuclear tipped missiles at Israel Both are intercepted by state-of-the-art patriot ground to air missiles and Israel immediately retaliates by exploding high altitude nuclear devices (EMPs) over Iran and Syria. The result is a complete and total meltdown of everything that operates electronically. Iran and Syria are completely defenseless and Israel takes advantage of the situation. Within 48 hours, Israeli fighters and bombers have degraded the military capability and infrastructure of both countries to rubble. It’s estimated it will take 10 years or more to rebuild the countries.
In retaliation, the UN convenes an emergency meeting and demands—in an extraordinary action—that all member nations not only boycott Israel, but the Security Council take up resolutions that would in effect place the world body at a state of war with Israel. Obama’s UN representative advises calm and reason, but does not reject or protest these resolutions. In fact, she criticizes Israel for “excessive and unwarranted” actions in defense against the Iranian provocation.
Return of the JediSpring / Summer, 2011 – Civilian militia groups loyal to secessionist states begin to increasingly—and successfully—confront military units loyal to the Obama administration. These militia groups are often lead by state and local police officers (including federalized military deserters) with substantial military training. As these armed clashes increase in number and ferocity, the Obama administration orders the military to clamp down on “unpatriotic forces” by imprisoning local leaders and quarantining cities and towns that support the freedom fighters. Obama cites Lincoln’s suspension of Habeas Corpus as his precedent.Rumors of massacres and abuses by Obama’s forces circulate in dissident internet traffic, but are not officially reported by the media. In retaliation, heavily armed and well-trained secessionist units begin a campaign of successful hit and run attacks to demoralize and frustrate Obama’s nationalized army. Captured federalized officers are forced to confess atrocities—subsequently broadcast on a heavily censored internet.As Obama’s unfocused attention is split between a Middle East in the throes of all out war, Russian expansion back into Eastern Europe, the Baltic's and southern Europe, and Chinese opportunism against Taiwan, he prepares to attend a conference to seek foreign support to maintain domestic and regional order. In the wake of this unprecedented disorder, nervous administration allies secretly reach out to active and retired military officers. Despite intense Secret Service and FBI scrutiny, a plan is hatched to end the chaos and remove Obama and his administration.A heavily armed presidential security caravan departs the White House headed for Andrews AFB where Obama will board Air Force One for the conference. After all White House personnel and security are loaded and Air Force One is prepared to take off, there is a sudden and violence-free takeover of the air traffic tower. The tower takeover is immediately followed by the sudden emergence of four Apache helicopters from behind two idle hangers. The Apache’s are bristling with laser guided missiles locked on Air Force One and the escort F-15s. With no time to react or negotiate as the Apache’s computer-guided missile systems impatiently ping Air Force One and the surprised F-15s, the tower orders Obama to depart AFO immediately or the Apaches will fire. With no time to negotiate or compromise, Obama is forced to deplane. He reluctantly walks to the bottom of the ramp where a black SUV whisks him away. Two buses pull to within a short walking distance from the ramp of AFO to accept the Secret Service, FBI and White House personnel. Reporters are ordered to remain on the aircraft while patriot forces board and interrogate them.Back in DC, the Vice President and his security detail are ambushed and overwhelmed after leaving a speaking engagement. Unfortunately, though more violent and bloody than the capture of the president, the Veep is secured as well.On vacation in San Francisco, Nancy Pelosi—third in line for presidential succession—is alerted to the putsch and feverishly tries to organize an armed escort back to DC. Her chief of staff is told that if she leaves SF, her plane will be shot down. Military advisors confirm this and advise the speaker not to attempt a return. The Speaker is also cautioned to cease all legislative activities and not to resume her duties—or she will be stopped by any and all means. Forth in line for the presidency—Hillary Clinton—is also notified of the revolt while on official mission in the Middle East. After consultation with the Secret Service and her military attaché, she is advised not to return to the States. She is told that all incoming international air traffic has been stopped and ALL aircraft entering U.S.airspace will be considered hostile and shot down. Secret Service and intelligence services attached to her detail confirm this.
Meanwhile, military forces in the U.S. suspend national legislative activity, but request that state and local activity continue unrestricted. Media restrictions are lifted, but some media outlets are cautioned that they risk censor if they engage in promotion of the Obama administration or its policies. Israel is advised to mop up its operations in Iran and Syria but not to engage in further military activity. U.N representatives are ordered to their home countries immediately with no time-line for return.
All 50 states are ordered asked to send representatives to Washington to debate the future of the U.S. amid historic and nearly uncontrollable chaos. Against this backdrop of strong regional differences, ideological fissures, and U.S./ Mexican border turmoil (aggressively combated by army and civilian militia forces) several petitions are offered that would essentially break the U.S. into semi-autonomous regions. Beyond this series of scenarios, no one can theorize what might happen, but today’s headlines no doubt leave open the very real possibility that any or all of these events might come to pass. Let us hope and pray that we navigate these dangerous and unchartered waters of unfolding events safely to a desirable end.

The Real Che Guevara!

Hollywood is kicking off 2009 with a monumental deception: Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour Spanish-language epic Che, rendering a sadistic Marxist killer as, according to the New York Times, a “true revolutionary through the stations of his martyrdom.”[1] The word “stations” suggests the adoration of Christ in the Stations of the Cross. The movie’s protagonist, Benicio del Toro, does indeed compare “the Cuban Revolution hero Ernesto Guevara” with Jesus Christ.[2]

Soderbergh’s Che is a fiction once created by the KGB community, including my Romanian espionage service, the DIE, and at that time that placed me squarely in the picture. The real Che was an assassin who presided over communist firing squads and founded Cuba’s ghastly gulag system. He was also a coward who called upon others to fight to the death for the communist cause and sent to the scaffold hundreds who did not do that, yet he surrendered himself to the Bolivian army without a fight even though he was armed to the teeth. “Don’t kill me,” Che begged his captors. “I am worth more to you alive than dead.”[3] Soderbergh’s movie omitted this part—it would have demolished his Che.

I could write a book on how the terrorist Che was built into an inspiring leftist idol—like a beautiful monarch butterfly emerging from a disgusting caterpillar—and someday I may well do so. For now, here is a summary of how the KGB community created its fictional Che.

In the 1960s, the Soviet bloc’s popularity stood at an all-time low. The Soviets’ brutal suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising and their instigation of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis disgusted the world, and every bloc ruler tried to save face in his own way. Khrushchev replaced the “immutable” Marxist-Leninist theory of the world proletarian revolution with a policy of peaceful coexistence, and pretended to be an advocate for peace. Dubcek gambled on a “socialism with a human face” and Gomulka on “Let Poland be Poland.” Ceausescu announced his “independence” from Moscow and portrayed himself as a “maverick” among communist leaders.

The Castro brothers, who feared any liberalization, decided to just plaster a romantic revolutionary façade over their disastrous communism, which was starving the country. They chose Che as poster-boy, because he had been executed in Bolivia, at that time a U.S. ally, and could be portrayed as a martyr of American imperialism.

“Operation Che” was launched to the world by the book Revolution in the Revolution, a primer for communist guerrilla insurrection written by French terrorist Régis Debray, which praised Che to the skies. Debray dedicated his life to exporting Cuban-style revolution throughout Latin America, but in 1967 a Bolivian special forces unit trained by the U.S. captured him, along with Che’s entire guerrilla band.

Che was sentenced to death and executed for terrorism and mass murder. Debray was sentenced to 30 years in jail, but he was released after three years following the intervention of French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, a communist romantically involved with the KGB, who was also the ideologue of the Baader-Meinhof terrorist band. Sartre proclaimed Guevara “the most complete human being of our times.”[4] In 1972 Debray returned to France, where he served as adviser for Latin America to French president François Mitterrand, and he dedicated the rest of his life to spreading hatred against the United States.

In 1970, the Castro brothers shifted Che’s sanctification into high gear. Alberto Korda, a Cuban intelligence officer working undercover as a photographer for the Cuban newspaper Revolución, produced a romanticized picture of Che. That now-famous Che, wearing long, curly locks of hair and a revolutionary beret with a star on it, and looking straight into the viewer’s eyes, is the logo advertising Soderbergh’s movie.

It is noteworthy that this picture of Che was introduced to the world by a KGB operative working undercover as a writer—I. Lavretsky, in a book entitled Ernesto Che Guevara, which was edited by the KGB.[5] The KGB entitled the picture “Guerrillero Heroico” and disseminated it throughout South America—Cuba’s area of influence. Italian millionaire publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, another communist romantically involved with the KGB, flooded the rest of world with Che’s picture printed on posters and T-shirts. Feltrinelli became a terrorist himself, and he was killed in 1972 while planting a bomb outside Milan.

I first heard Che’s name in 1959 from General Aleksandr Sakharovsky, the former chief Soviet intelligence adviser to Romania, who afterwards directed Castro’s “revolution” and was rewarded by being promoted to head the almighty Soviet foreign intelligence organization, a position he held for fifteen years. He landed in Bucharest with his boss, Nikita Khrushchev, for consultations on West Berlin and “our Cuban Gayane.” Gayane was the overall code name of the operation for Sovietizing Eastern Europe.

At that time, the Soviet party bureaucracy believed that Fidel Castro was just an adventurer, and it was reluctant to endorse him. But Sakharovsky had been impressed by the devotion to communism of Fidel’s brother Raúl and of his lieutenant, Ernesto Guevara, and he made them the main protagonists in “our Cuban Gayane.” The two were brought black to Moscow to be indoctrinated and trained, and were given a KGB adviser.

Returned to the Sierra Maestra, Che proved to be a real, cold-blooded assassin in the mold of the KGB—which killed over 20 million people in the Soviet Union alone. “I fired a .32 caliber bullet into the right hemisphere of his brain that came out through his temple,” Che wrote in his diary, describing the execution of Eutimio Guerra, a “traitor of the Revolution” whom he shot in February 1957.[6] Guerra was the seventh person Che had killed. “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is not necessary,” he explained. “These procedures are archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolution must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.”[7]

On January 1^st, 1959, the “Cuban Gayane” succeeded, and the KGB charged Che to cleanse the whole Cuba of “anti-revolutionaries.” Thousands were sent to “el paredón” (the wall) and shot. Javier Arzuaga, who was chaplain at La Cabaña prison in early 1959, wrote in his book, Cuba 1959: La Galeria de la Muerte, that he had witnessed “the criminal Che” ordering the execution of some two hundred innocent Cubans. “I pleaded many times with Che on behalf of prisoners. I remember especially the case of Ariel Lima, a young boy who was only 16 years old. Che did not budge. I became so traumatized that at the end of May 1959 I was ordered to leave the parish Casa Blanca, where La Cabaña was located. … I went to Mexico for treatment.”[8]



Che in Moscow in November 1964, just before he secretly left to fulfil his dream of spreading communist revolution to Bolivia.

According to Arzuaga, Che last words to him were: “When we take our masks off, we will be enemies.”[9] It is now time to take off Che’s smiling mask and reveal his true face. The Cuban Memorial displayed at Tamiami Park in Miami, Florida contains hundreds of crosses, each bearing the name of an identified victim of Raúl’s and Che’s communist terror.[10]

It is also time to stop the fifty-year-long lie, reinforced by Soderbergh’s movie, that the Castro brothers and their hangman Che were independent nationalists. In 1972 I attended a six-hour public speech in which Fidel preached the same lie. The next day I went ocean fishing with Raúl. The other guest on the fishing boat was a Soviet who introduced himself as Nikolay Sergeyevich. “That's Colonel Leonov,” Sergio del Valle, my Cuban counterpart, whispered into my ear. Earlier he had identified Leonov to me as Raúl’s and Che’s KGB adviser in the 1950s and 1960s. There, on that boat, it hit me more clearly than ever before or since that the KGB was holding the reins of the Castros’ revolutionary wagon. Ten years later, Nikolay Leonov was rewarded for his handling of Raúl and Che by being promoted general and deputy chairman of the whole KGB.

In the 1970s, the KGB was a state within the state. Today the KGB, rebaptized FSB, is the state in Russia, and Soderbergh’s Che is manna from heaven for its Latin American surrogates. A couple of months ago two Kremlin’s puppets, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Bolivia’s Evo Morales, expelled on the same day the U.S. ambassadors to their countries. Thousands of people carrying the portrait of Soderbergh’s Che took to the streets calling for Russian military protection. Russian military ships are now back in Cuba—and newly in Venezuela—for the first time since the Cuban missile crisis.

“Deception works like cocaine,” Yury Andropov, the father of contemporary Russia’s era of deception, used to tell me when he was KGB chairman. Then he would explain. “If you sniff it once or twice, it may not change your life. If you use it day after day, though, it will make you into an addict, a different man.” Mao put it his own way: “A lie repeated a hundred times becomes the truth.” Soderbergh’s movie on Che is proving both correct.

Notes:

[1] A. O. Scott, “Saluting the Rebel Underneath the T-Shirt,” The New York Times, December 12, 2008.

[2] Guillermo I. Martínez, “Guevara biopic belies his ruthlessness,” The Sun Sentinel, January 1, 2009, p. 13A.

[3] Idem.

[4] Idem.

[5] I. Lavretsky, “Ernesto Che Guevara, “Progress Publishers, 1976, ASIN B000B9V7AW, p. 5. Initially published in Russian in 1973.

[6] Matthew Campbell, “Behind Che Guevara mask, the cold executioner,”The Sunday Times, September 16, 2007.

[7] Mark Goldblath, “Revenge of Che: no amount of Hollywood puferry will change the fact that commies aen’t cool,” The Wall Street Journal, December 19, 2008.

[8] “The Infamous Firing Squads,” p. 1, as published in http://therealcuba.com/page5.htm.

[9] Idem.

[10] Ibidem,

THE REAL HAMAS LEADER: JIMMY CARTER!

Besieged by Israeli forces and rebuked by its Arab League allies, Hamas has seen the worst of the recent fighting in Gaza. But however bleak their present fortunes, the terrorists still have a faithful friend in ex-president Jimmy Carter.

It has become an odious annual routine. On no obvious invitation, the 39^th president inserts himself into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to excuse Hamas terror – the demonstrable source of which is the genocidal jihad against Jews and their national home set forth in Hamas’s founding charter – as the inevitable response to some imagined Israeli provocation. Carter’s latest act of solidarity with terror came last week, when he took to the pages of the Washington Post in a strained attempt to cast Israel as the true instigator of the fighting underway in Gaza.

Presenting the roots of the current conflict, Carter explained that “Hamas wanted a comprehensive cease-fire in both the West Bank and Gaza, and the Israelis refused to discuss anything other than Gaza.” Instead, a brief ceasefire-took hold on June 19, 2008. “And this fragile truce was partially broken on Nov. 4, when Israel launched an attack in Gaza to destroy a defensive tunnel being dug by Hamas inside the wall that encloses Gaza.” To sum up: Hamas had hoped for a broader peace, but Israel, ever the aggressor, resisted, before breaking the ceasefire and triggering the current fighting.

Of all that can be said about Carter’s account of recent history, Mary McCarthy’s famous evisceration of Lillian Hellman – “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘but.’” – is perhaps the most apposite. For starters, the notion that Hamas had wanted a wider ceasefire only to be frustrated by Israel is a perverse parody of the truth. In fact Hamas has never even abided by its previous ceasefires. Back in 2006, when apologists like Carter claimed that Hamas was faithfully honoring the ceasefire of the moment, over 1,000 Gaza-fired rockets pounded southern Israel. The June 19 “state of calm,” as the most recent ceasefire was called, repeated the grim pattern.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, even a single act of terrorism would have constituted its violation. Yet, in the weeks and months after June 19, Hamas fired at least 18 rockets and at least a dozen mortar shells into southern Israel. On July 6, Palestinian snipers opened fire on Israeli farmers in Kibbutz Nahal in southern Israel. On October 31, Israeli soldiers caught Palestinian terrorists trying to plant an “explosive device” alongside the Israeli security fence in the Sufa crossing near Gaza. Each of these attacks constituted a violation of the ceasefire and a casus belli for Israel to retaliate, though Israel held its fire. Each of these attacks, moreover, occurred before the November 4 strike on Hamas’s tunnel that Carter asserts to be the trigger of the current fighting. 

The “calm” before the storm: A Sderot home is damaged by a Kassam rocket fired on June 24, during the Hamas “ceasefire.” (Source: Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.)

It is a measure of Carter’s credulity – or, what is the same thing, his hostility to Israel – that his recounting of the November 4 incident is little more than recycled Hamas propaganda. Contrary to Carter’s claim, the tunnel in question was anything but “defensive.” Located about 800 feet from the Israeli security fence in the Gaza Strip, an unlikely defensive position so close to Israeli forces, the tunnel was actually designed as part of a Hamas plot to abduct IDF soldiers. This was not the first time that Hamas had used tunnels to carry out a terrorist attack. In June 2006, Hamas operativestunneled under the Israeli security fence near Gaza and ambushed an Israeli defense force, killing several soldiers and taking one, Gilad Shalit, hostage. If anything deserves to be called “defensive,” it is the November 4 IDF operation that located the tunnel and killed seven armed Hamas fighters. That Carter considers the successful foiling of a terrorist plot to be an act of Israeli provocation is a revealing glimpse into his morally bankrupt vision.


What “defensive” tunnel? (Source: Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.)

Carter is right that violence escalated after the November 4 operation, but he tellingly omits a critical point: that it took the form of a revived Hamas terror campaign. Between November 4 and 12, Hamas pummeled Israel with a deadly barrage of 91 rockets and 38 mortar shells. By the time the “ceasefire” officially collapsed on December 19, Hamas had fired a total of 223 rockets and 139 mortar shells into southern Israel – all during the “state of calm” it was supposed to be preserving.

All in all in 2008, Hamas fired 1,571 rockets and 1,531 mortars into Israel. This makes for a total of 3,484 rockets that have been launched into Israel from Gaza since 2005, when Israel withdrew from the territory and ended the “occupation” that was then cited, not least by Carter himself, as the principal cause of Palestinian terrorism. If Carter is aware of these details, or their implications for his blame-Israel-first timeline, he is tellingly silent.

This is all par for the course for Carter. Just last April, he paid a call to Hamas’s Damascus-based leader-in-exile, Khaled Meshal, conferring the prestige of a former American president on a terrorist chieftain. So what that Meshal has repeatedly called for Israel’s destruction, promising his followers in taped speeches that “Israel with the help of Allah will be defeated.” Never mind, too, that he is an unapologetic supporter of Palestinian suicide bombers. None of that deterred Carter from seeking out Meshal as a voice of compromise.

Carter has gone even further to extol Hamas. In June 2007, he condemned as “criminal” the Bush administration’s eminently sensible decision to reject all dealings with Hamas. That in itself was part of Carter’s campaign – now three years running – to have Hamas recognized as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Such is Carter’s commitment to this goal that, in January 2006, he went so far as to call for the United States and European countries to skirt international restrictions on financing terrorism and, in effect, launder money to Hamas in the form of relief aid. At every step of the way, Carter has accepted without skepticism the pernicious and self-evidently absurd Hamas spin that what it seeks above all is peace in the Middle East.

It’s easy to ascribe Carter’s one-man ambassadorship for Hamas to the delusions of a failed statesman. But the most unfortunate aspect of his campaign is not that it has shamed Carter or demeaned the American presidency, if only by its tainted association with a onetime occupant, but that it has hurt the people it is intended to help.

At the latest count, nearly half of the 900 Palestinians killed in Gaza are civilians, the victims of Hamas’s calculated strategy of hiding among the general population and goading Israel into a deadly but inevitable retaliation. That number does not even account for the reign of terror that Hamas has been waging against its own people, killing rivals and resisters on trumped-up charges of “collaboration” with Israel, while singlehandedly sinking Gaza further into social sickness and economic despair. Jimmy Carter has certainly emerged as a leading advocate of the Palestinian cause. Woe to a people that finds such saviors.

THE WAR AGAINST JEWS!

The unspoken truth about the fighting in Gaza, which began on December 19, 2008, when Hamas rockets broke a voluntary truce, is that this is the frontline of a much larger war. This war began 30 years ago with the Islamic Revolution in Iran and is now global in scope. Its agenda is the extermination of the Jews and the destruction of the West.

The Islamic terrorist organization Hamas makes no secret of this agenda. Its Egyptian founders and Palestinian inspirers were active followers of Adolf Hitler and enthusiasts of the Nazi Holocaust. The founding charter of Hamas, which promises that “Islam will obliterate Israel,” memorializes the Egyptian admirer of Hitler, Hassan al-Banna, as “the martyr…of blessed memory.” The same document contains the genocidal incitement of the Prophet Mohammed to “kill the Jews,” to hunt them down “until they hide behind the rocks and the trees, and the rocks and trees cry out ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.’”

In 2006, these Islamic Nazis took possession of the Gaza Strip, which is unoccupied except by Hamas and is Jew-less (because the Palestinians would kill any Jews that moved in their state). Hamas has turned Gaza into a terrorist fortress, launching rockets into Israeli schoolyards, hospitals, and townships, and launching them from Palestinian schoolyards, hospitals, and townships to ensure that the maximum number of civilians – both Jews and Muslims – would die for their cause. They will win the Armageddon they are planning, they boast, because “the Jews love life and we love death.”

And all around the world, and across Europe and throughout the United States, Muslim and secular radicals are rallying to this Nazi cause, supporting Hamas and attacking Israel and the Jews. The unholy alliance formed by Muslim fanatics and socialist radicals is the face of the terrorist future in the West. It is a coalition for whom no party is so evil that it does not deserve aid and comfort if its enemies are Israel and the United States, and if it is willing to attack them.

The wars in the Middle East are the frontline of the Islamic Nazi offensive – a 60-year aggression of Muslim Arabs against the Jews, rationalized at each turn by epic lies that resonate with radicals in the West: that the Arab aggressors are the victims; that the Jews stole Arab land (Israel in fact was created out of the ruins of the Turkish empire); that there is a Palestinian entity that wants peace with the state of Israel (there is none – there is not a single Palestinian leader – who supports the existence of a Jewish state).

The Palestinians are the only people in history to have a majority support a national death cult, to worship the murderers of little children (including their own), and to proclaim the murderers saints and “martyrs.” The father of Palestinian Nationalism, Haj Amin al-Husseini, was an acolyte and ally of Hitler who preached the extermination of the Jews and planned to construct his own death camps for Jews in the Middle East. The miseries Palestinians have suffered are self-inflicted, the inevitable consequence of staking their national ambitions on the genocide of another people, while embracing a death cult for themselves.

Their allies in the West are either stupendously ignorant or morally blind. Here is the self-revealing declaration of the Associate Director of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Wisconsin (both an ignoramus and a moral defective): “The state terror unleashed from the skies and on the ground against the Gaza Strip as we speak has nothing to do with Hamas. It has nothing to do with ‘Terror.’ It has nothing to do with the long-term ‘security’ of the Jewish State….” What it has to do with is the evil Jews and their evil American supporters: “Strip away the clichés and the vacuous newspeak blaring out across the servile media and its pathetic corps of voluntary state servants in the Western world and what you will find is the naked desire for hegemony; for power over the weak and dominion over the world’s wealth. Worse yet you will find that the selfishness, the hatred and indifference, the racism and bigotry, the egotism and hedonism…the callousness with which we indulge in them all are endemic to our very culture; thriving here like flies on a corpse.”

The author of this repulsive, traitorous statement, Wisconsin Professor Jennifer Lowenstein, is herself a Jew, but obviously a self-hating member of the tribe, the likes of which have a sordid lineage going back to the “capos” who shoveled their companions into the ovens and collaborated with their murderers. Like many of her political comrades in the secular and religious Left, she has joined the forces of Islamic barbarism that are ranged against the civilized people of America and Israel. And she is only one of many. In the midst of the global war that radical Islam has declared on the West, the conflict in Gaza has revealed the presence of a fifth column in the West so detached from its own communities and civilized values that it now constitutes a clear and present danger to our survival.