Hollyweird leftists just love Fidel

[jsalcedo]

I say leave Redford in Cuba and don't let him back into the US

Jan. 26 — HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuban President Fidel Castro, who has charmed some of Hollywood's biggest names, paid a call on actor Robert Redford at his Havana hotel on Monday and discussed his latest film, on revolutionary icon Che Guevara.
Redford was in Cuba over the weekend wearing his producer's hat for a private screening of "The Motorcycle Diaries" for the widow and children of the legendary Argentine guerrilla fighter, who was Castro's comrade-in-arms.

"He came to me. ... He seemed in good health, good humor, good spirit," Redford said of the 77-year-old Cuban leader after their brief encounter at the Hotel Nacional.

Redford last saw Castro in 1988. The actor was said to have gone scuba-diving with the Cuban leader and was questioned by U.S. officials on his return to the United States.

In the 1990 film "Havana" Redford played a high-rolling American gambler during the final days of the Batista dictatorship, when Cuba was a mobster playground.

Castro has fascinated Hollywood stars. Jack Nicholson called him "a genius," Oliver Stone said he was "one of the Earth's wisest people" and Steven Spielberg said he spent "the eight most important hours of his life" with the Cuban leader.

"I came to present the film that I produced on Che Guevara and I am very happy to be in Cuba," Redford said at Sunday's screening of the film made by his company, Southfork Pictures.

The film, directed by Brazilian Walter Salles, is based on the diaries Guevara wrote on a nine-month trip through South America on an ancient Norton motorcycle in 1952 when he was an asthmatic 23-year-old medical student.

Guevara's motorbike journey opened his eyes to poverty in Latin America and he later joined Castro in Mexico, where the Cuban leader was organizing a landing party to launch a guerrilla movement in Cuba that triumphed in 1959.

Guevara was executed by army troops after his capture in 1967 in the Bolivian jungle, where he had tried to trigger another revolution.

"The film is excellent," Guevara's widow, Aleida, who provided the diaries to the film-makers, said after the screening, also attended by Guevara's son and two daughters.

"The Motorcycle Diaries" was filmed at locations in Argentina, Chile and Peru, with Mexican actor Gael Garcia Bernal playing Che. The film received a standing ovation at its world premier at the Sundance Film Festival a week ago.

 

[BerettaNut92]

I'm no expert on Cuban history, but why are so many Cubans trying to get into the US and so few Americans outside of the entertainment industry trying to get into Cuba?

 

[Hkmp5sd]

Hollywood has never met a communist dictator they didn't like.

 

[4570Rick]

I have many friends who have fled Cuba over the last 40 years. They HATE Castro more than you can know. Their property was taken from them, their accounts were seized, all at the behest of and for the benefit of a megalomaniac. Most of the expatriates I know can't wait for Castro to die so they can go home.

 

[BowStreetRunner]

its easy for the Hollywood people to love Castro
they probably stay in lavish hotels and get wined and dined
they havent had their speech restricted or their property seized by the guy, and he stands up to the MEAN Estados Unidos so he must be cool right?



right?



BSR

 

[rock jock]

These people are so blatantly hypocritical, it is simply amazing that they can even exist. I mean, seriously, Redford supposedly champions free speech through his movies (although I think he is really just railing against conservative causes), and then treats one of the worst perpetrators of free speech denial as a good buddy.

 

[BowStreetRunner]

oh, and another thing, whats up with everyone thinking Che is the cats meow?
I mean he's on t-shirts and stuff and hippies love him and rage against the machine has/had him on their shirts
but you want a machine, show me the communist regime this guy worked for and ill show you a machine you aint gonna wish you saw

does rebeling against leaders of a poor nation so you can make everyone poor make you a hero?

someone please help me understand
BSR

 

[Art Eatman]

The ironic thing about the fascination with Che is that he was an incompetent fool. At the time of his capture, he and the few people in the boonies with him were darned near starving.

And his "book" was a ripoff of Mao's, who ripped off Sun Tzu.

Art

 

[Bill Hook]

"I came to present the film that I produced on Che Guevara and I am very happy to be in Cuba,"

Perhaps he should stay, then.

 

[Jeff White]

Someone should make a movie about the real heros...the Special Forces guys who hunted Che down and killed him.....

Jeff

 

[Zundfolge]

I have never been able to understand why artists ... people who's life's work is built on the freedom to express their own individualism ... can so gleefully endorse a form of government and society that requires the complete and absolute destruction of individualism

 

[Bill Hook]

Are these clowns going to do Abamiel Guzman's life story next?

A real champion of the proletariat if there ever was one.

 

[Iain]

What is the official US line on Cuba now? I understand that Cuba is not exactly a bastion of individual freedoms or democracy but it seems to me that Cuba has long been the US's bogeyman, excluded from the America's trade pacts etc whilst regimes that lack the ideological anathema of communism but aren't sweetness and light either have been treated a whole lot better.

Please don't take this as support for Mr Castro, Mr Guevera or even Mr Redford, it just does strike the rest of the world as a little odd at times, especially now that Cuba lacks the support of major communist power.

Again, I am not saying I would like to live there, nor blame any that leave, nor can I argue with the exodus from its shores as evidence that things are not as Castro would like us to believe. Still, there must be a better way for the US to deal with Cuba than the isolation it has imposed on it. Any thoughts?

 

[Khornet]

Hello, St. Johns

how are you feeling these days?

"not exactly a bastion of individual freedoms..."--it is a regime of brutal repression, where imprisonment and torture are routine. It is a society whose racism would make the KKK blush, and I mean repression of blacks.

It is a country ruled by a political philosophy whose express purpose is the subversion of other governments, and the forcible replacement of representative government with a dictatorship. And it's 90 miles from our shore. With all due respect, it's easy to underrate Cuban communism from England. We have contained the virus and isolated it; why should we now release it?

And it always amazes me how leftists who cry that we are "imposing our values" by isoltaing communist states are quick to demand that we impose our values with respect to child labor, how coffee is grown, etc.

Yes, Cuba is a wreck now, but is the US tresponsible for that? How so, when the rest of the world trades with Cuba? It's a wreck because there is no political and economic freedom. And it has been in our (mine anyway, I think it may have ben before your time) lifetime a direct threat to us, installing Soviet nuclear missiles in the 1960s.

As for our relations with other not-so-nice nations,most of them are not founded on undermining America, and the few which are, e.g. Chinese communism, are not manageable by the containment strategy used on Cuba. Just Realpolitik.

 

[Iain]

Hi Khornet, and thanks, twas a interesting post.

When I say 'not exactly a bastion...' I am guilty of a certain amount of ironic understatement.

And it always amazes me how leftists who cry that we are "imposing our values" by isoltaing communist states are quick to demand that we impose our values with respect to child labor, how coffee is grown, etc.

That's a nice point, you will have to excuse me for lifting it wholesale for use around here (possibly without the 'leftist' bit as people are often proud of that)

Yep, Cuban missile crisis occurred nearly 20 years before I was born. Have spoken to my parents some years ago about it, they said that it felt like the world had been brought to a standstill, teetering on the edge of destruction. So obviously I appreciate that viewpoint. Again, I feel no support for Cuba's regime, nor do I really blame anyone but them for the plight of its people.

Was just wondering what the policy is. For example London, Paris, Rio, a US city (not sure which) and Havana have submitted bids to hold the Olympics (2012?). Would the US try to prevent the games being held in Havana should Castro manage to screw his economy further and finance it? And were they to be successful would there be no US team? Curiosity tis all.

 

[trooper]

Just wait a couple more years... El maximo lider ain't gonna live forever.

I don't think Cuban communism will last very long without him. He is not only Cuba's symbol and national icon but also still the central figure in Cuban politics.

Wait till he's gone, then wait a little more until the Cuban people are sick and tired enough of the diadoch wars among his "successors"...


Regards,

Trooper

 

[foghornl]

All of those traitors should STAY in Cuba. See how it REALLY is down there.

Big Boss where I work is Cuban. Goes there a couple of times a year, takes stuff to his family that still lives in Cuba.

Stories he tells are VERY different from what Redford & company say. I trust him far more than any one of those "Left-Coasters"

 

[Apple a Day]

St. Johns,
The current policy of the U.S. is softening. It used to be that you couldn't get a direct flight from the U.S. to Cuba, you had to go through Mexico or one of the other Central American countries. People who are either too young to remember or too ignorant to understand what Castro and communism are all about are pushing to have direct trade and travel.
Why? Cuba is gorgeous and people want to go on vacation there, cheaply. Nevermind the rape of the country, the murders, the tortures, the degredation of the people...
Is there a better way of dealing with Castro? I think something along the lines of a .308 to the head sounds about right.
My mother escaped from Cuba in 1962. A number of my other relatives have made it over one way or another. Even if you could wipe all the old atrocities from memory, it is horrific to see what a communist society does to the human spirit.
God Bless America!
If you ever start to doubt the fundamental greatness of America, ask someone who had to escape from a communist country. They'll be happy and enthusiastic about reminding you.

There's a whole generation of Hollywood, uhm... individuals, who idolize everything anti-traditional-American. It is so prevalent it's become doctrine. I sincerely hope the novelty of anti-family, anti-freedom, anti-American "entertainment" is wearing off.

One more time, just because I can:
God Bless America!

 

[Jonesy9]

it's hardly just leftists who seek out this icon. I have a friend who has legally attended the Habanos SA annual dinner, a big cigar schoomze fest. Cigar boxes signed by Fidel and meet and greets with him are lusted over by the American corporate elite that attend, this is not a left wing group. Bush Pioneers and Rangers abound (guess how they got licences?). The GOP also just upped the amount of cigars and collectibles that Congress critters are allowed to bring back from their "fact finding" missions to the island. No such provision is made for regular US citizens who travel there legally who are allocated a different set of rules than the politicians.

Bush has been cracking down on even legal travel to Cuba, just this week suspending licenses for people who try to go legally.

Of course, it's just political pandering to the Miami exiles for thier votes to ban Americans from traveling to Cuba. Imagine, you can travel to China, Vietnam, Iraq, anywhere in the world except a little island off the coast of FL. Unless of course you are a cuban living in the US, then you can go back and forth and transfer $$ there with impunity. even nicer if you are an illegal alien from Cuba, as long as you make it shore you are free to stay. No other country is afforded this policy, and you can't tell me that their aren't places that are worse off politically and economically than Cuba so the political asylum scam is crapola.

Perhaps one day the votes of Miami county will mean less than the freedom of Americans to travel freely and promote democracy and capitalism. I think Fidel will have to die first and the exiles will have to attempt their invasion first though.

 

[Bacchus]

Well said, Apple a day and 4570Rick.

 

[Cosmoline]

I'm no expert on Cuban history, but why are so many Cubans trying to get into the US and so few Americans outside of the entertainment industry trying to get into Cuba?

Let's do an exchange!

 

[longeyes]

"The film, directed by Brazilian Walter Salles, is based on the diaries Guevara
wrote on a nine-month trip through South America on an ancient Norton
motorcycle in 1952 when he was an asthmatic 23-year-old medical student."

What, no Soviet bloc motorcycle? Che should have listened to his instincts and figured out that good wheels come from freedom and ingenuity and, yeah, business smarts.

 

[Abe]

I think that one reason the Hollyweirdos love guys like Fidel is that they are both super egotists. Dictators are supreme examples of egotists. Fidel has a whole country under his thumb. He and his past buddies like Mao and Stalin get pictures of themselves plastered all over the place, buildings named after them, etc. All power is theirs. I think the Hollyweirdos like this. It appeals to their sense of superiority. Deep down inside they wouldn't mind having a country to run.

Based upon what we've seem from the Hollyweirdos in regard to freedom of speech, I think they like Fidel's form of this. He gets to determine what gets said. This has to be very appealing to this gang.

Also, this bunch likes to have it both ways. They take advantage of the freedoms here to make their fortunes off the sheeple in this country spewing their anti-everything drivel and go and visit Fidel whenever they want. They'd never actually live there permanently. They couldn't live the lives that they do. Imagine them actually having to make a movie in Cuba. The "wonderful" Fidel wouldn't be so wonderful when he started to tell them what they could and couldn't say\do.

And finally, like so many of the useful idiots of the past, Hollyweirdos think that they are just a bit smarter than the rest of us which when coupled with an infantile need to be different for difference sake, results in them falling over themselves to lick Fidel's boot.

Idiots.

If they go there we should deny their return.

- Abe

 

[Henry]

Che Guevara and Fidel Castro are both murderous criminals. Robert Redford is an idiot. :banghead:

 

[Mark Tyson]

Is there a better way of dealing with Castro? I think something along the lines of a .308 to the head sounds about right.

That's your solution to everything! LOL