The Outpost of Tyranny Next Door

By Humberto Fontova

The picture from North Korea gets hairier by the week. And you'd think Kim Jong's head would be alarming enough. You'd also think that with Don King, Donald Trump and Al Sharpton constantly in the news, we'd seen it all--coiffure-wise.

But no. Let's face it, when young we all aped our favorite musicians' hairstyles. I was always partial to the Keith Richards look, if only because he never seemed to wash or comb his hair. Most of my chums preferred Mick or John or Paul.

So was Conway Twitty big in the Hermit Kingdom? How else to explain Kim Jong's hair-do?

On a more serious note, last week Jong was basically telling us : "You're damn right, I got nuclear missiles! Built 'em right under your nose. Ha-Ha! Now whatcha gonna do about it, hunh?!"

That's bad enough--but hardly the worst of it. Now I'll quote directly from a December 11, 2004 article in The Pyongyang Times, itself, titled "DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) Military Delegation Visits Cuba,"

"The Cuban army and people will fight shoulder to shoulder with the Korean army and people in an anti-US joint front. Our armed forces exchanged views on strengthening cooperation in military fields."

Now I'll quote from an August/2004 article in London's Jane's Defense Weekly: "the DPRK has long sought to obtain the ability to directly threaten the continental US."

Now I'll quote from an October 5, 2003 "This Week" program on ABC, where host George Stephanopoulos was interviewing CIA Weapons Inspector David Kay regarding what his team found in Iraq.

David Kay: "You know, George....I would contend we've already found things that if they had been known last December, January, February would have made huge headlines: clandestine labs in the biological program, North Korean missiles going to Cuba...There's a whole host of stuff we have found."

Typically, none of this made a splash in the mainstream media. But then Historical knowledge has never been it's strong suit. Connecting the dots between North Korean Missiles going to the regime that came closest to setting off nuclear Armageddon in 1962--a regime that begged pleaded even tried to cajole, the Butcher Of Budapest into incinerating several U.S. cities, simply stumps the likes of Peter Jennings, Katie Couric and Paula Zahn.

Not that Castro's outpost of tyranny is chumming it up only with Jong's outpost of tyranny. "Given its high economic and industrial potentials, Iran is prepared to collaborate with Cuba in all domains." Declared Iranian Majlis Speaker Gholam-Ali Haddad Adel in a meeting with the visiting Cuban Vice President Jose Ramon Fernandez on January 16, 2005. "The solidarity between our nations and governments is the key to overcoming the US hegemonic pressures. Cuban President Fidel Castro is a symbol of resistance against the US throughout the world." For his part, Fernandez expressed his country's interest in bolstering ties with Iran and said, "The Cuban government and nation will stand against the US pressures and stand beside the Iranian nation". Fernandez also expressed his country's support for the undeniable right of the Iranian nation to have access to nuclear technology." All this from the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. 1/16/2005.

"Iran is strengthening her economic and political relations with Cuba, and there exist other areas of interest for cooperation." Cuba is constructing a biomedical plant in Iran, by the way, for "Vaccinations against Hepatitis B and the manufacture of Interferon," we're told.

Almost daily, liberals and farm-state ward healers berate us on how the Cuban "embargo" is so hopelessly anachronistic in this day and age. "Mighta made sense back in the 60's" They admit. "Because back then Cuba was a totalitarian country in league with our cold war enemies."

Well? I answer. What's Cuba today? A totalitarian regime in league with our terrorist enemies. What's changed, except that out terrorist enemies, unlike our cold-war enemies, have actually landed blows against the homeland? Unreal.

Hopefully, friends, I've gotten your attention. But Castro's foreign policy should only be half of it. Let's not forget his in-house butchery and repression in this, the longest running "outpost of tyranny." To that end some very dedicated and selfless folks are staging a memorial service including a mass and vigil at the Memorial Cubano in Miami's Tamiani Park this coming week-end.

A picture's worth a thousand words, they say. One look at that sea of white crosses that span the memorial to Castro's murder victims and you'll understand, amigos--you'll understand instantly why us Cuban-Americans get so "emotional" at times.

Not that all the crosses have Cuban names. Walk amongst these crosses, notice the people with itchy noses and red eyes, pass the grandmothers with the face buried in her grandson's chest and her shoulders heaving--then look at the inscription on the crosses. There you'll find names like Howard Anderson, a U.S. citizen who was head of Havana's American Legion post until 1961, when a Castro firing squad riddled him.

"Death to the American!" screamed Howard Anderson’s Communist prosecutor at his farce of a trial on April 17, 1961. "The prosecutor was a madman!" says a Swiss diplomat who witnessed the trial, "leaping on tables, shrieking, pointing. He called Anderson rotten fruit only good to fertilize Cuban land with his carcass."

Given the rate of firing squad executions in Cuba in those years, thousands of gallons of perfectly good, perfectly valuable, blood were gushing from the bodies of young men only to soak uselessly into the mud, wash into gutters or get sopped up by buckets of sawdust. What a waste! reasoned Dan Rather and Ted Turner's pal. .

And heaven knows, then as now, Castro's government could use some foreign exchange. In two short years Castro ("one of the world's wisest men" according to Oliver Stone."A genius!" according to Jack Nicholson, and The Hemisphere's greatest Hero!" according to Norman Mailer) had rendered a nation with a higher living standard than half of Europe-- utterly destitute, utterly bereft of foreign exchange.

And here was an ocean of fresh, plasma-rich blood freed from it's confines by bullets and spilling in torrents daily. Let's collect it and sell it, Diane Sawyer's future cuddle-bunny reasoned. And so they did. But don't take it from me. Take it from official court records-- from when Howard Anderson's family filed a suit against Baba Wawa's charming chum.

Anderson v. Republic of Cuba, No. 01-28628 (Miami-Dade Cir. April 13, 2003): "In one final session of torture, Castro’s agents drained Howard Anderson’s body of blood before sending him to his death at the firing squad."

After the volley at La Cabana's blood-spattered wall, Howard Anderson's sparse blood soaked into the same soil and bricks as that of Rogelio Gonzalez, Virgilio Companeria and Alberto Tapia, all Havana University students and members of Catholic Action. Like Howard Anderson they refused blindfolds, and perished yelling, "Long Live Christ the King!" 14,000 young men would join them in mass graves shortly on the orders of Diane Sawyer's cuddle Bunny and Burlington industries T-shirt icon.

When Doug McArthur waded ashore on Leyte he grabbed a radio: "People of the Philippines: I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God our forces stand again on Philippine soil – soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples."

Cuban soil was similarly consecrated.


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Humberto Fontova is the author of "Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant," a Conservative Book Club "Book of the Month" for March.

You may reach Humberto Fontova at hfontova@earthlink.net


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