Frugal Café Blog Zone

Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on February 14, 2010

Ruthless Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in his early days

If you’ve not ever read the blog Babalú, an island on the net without a bearded dictator, I recommend it. Excellent source of information on what is going on in Cuba.

Like learning about the spying done by Fidel Castro on left-wing American film stars, directors, and fashion models who visit Cuba to pay homage to and kneel at the feet of dictator Castro. Democrat politicians with the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) visited Castro last spring… no word on whether or not THEIR hotel rooms were bugged, but their freedom to explore the country or talk to citizens was sorely limited. Castro was caught bugging the room of Pope John Paul II’s hotel room in 1998.

Question: If you’re gathering intelligence from someone who is stupid, what do you call that?

Posted by Humberto Fontova at Babalú Blog: Smile!..You’re on……….!!!:

“The American actor Jack Nicholson was another celebrity who was bugged and taped thoroughly during his stay in Havana’s Hotel Meliá Cohiba,” revealed Fernandez, the man in charge of the bugging. “We bugged his room thoroughly. “Famous Americans are the priority objectives of Castro’s intelligence,” reports Fernandez. “When the celebrity visitors arrived at the Hotels Nacional, Meliá Habana and Meliá Cohiba, we already had their rooms completely bugged with sophisticated taping equipment. But not just the rooms, we’d also follow the visitors around, sometimes we covered them 24 hours a day. They had no idea we were tailing them.”

Posted by Fontova at Big Hollywood, Castro Catches Useful Idiot Celebs on Candid Camera:

“My job was to bug their hotel rooms,” disclosed high-ranking Cuban intelligence defector Delfin Fernandez, “with both cameras and listening devices.

“When word came down that models Naomi Campbell and Kate Moss were coming to Cuba the order was a routine one: 24-hour-a-day vigilance. Then we got a PRIORITY alert, recalls Fernandez, “because there was a rumor that they would be sharing a room with Leonardo DiCaprio. The rumor set off a flurry of activity and we set up the most sophisticated devices we had.”

“Delfin Fernandez has not only met some of the most famous men in the world,” says a story in the London Daily Mirror about the Cuban intelligence defector, “he’s also spied on them and been witness to some of their most innermost secrets.”

“Fidel Castro is a source of inspiration for me!” gushed Campbell while concluding her “press conference.”It is a great pleasure to be in Cuba. I’ve really enjoyed myself, and I plan to come back!”

“Fidel Castro is a genius!” said Jack Nicholson after a visit with El Lider Maximo that same year. “We spoke about everything,” the actor rhapsodized. “Castro is a humanist. Cuba is simply a paradise!”

[...]

Interestingly (and tragically) The ECPAT Network – (End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism) in a study titled Child Prostitution and Sex Tourism in Cuba,” reports that: ”In Cuba, the link between tourism and prostitution is perhaps more direct than in any other country that hosts sex tourists.” Such is the desperation of the brutalized and impoverished residents of a nation that prior to the glorious Castro/Che revolution enjoyed a higher per capita income than Japan and half the nations of Europe and who welcomed more immigrants (primarily from Europe) per-capita than the U.S. Prior to the glorious Communist liberation people were as desperate to enter Cuba as they are now to escape.

“Famous Americans are the priority objectives of Castro’s intelligence,” reports Fernandez. “When the celebrity visitors arrived at the Hotels Nacional, Meliá Habana and Meliá Cohiba, we already had their rooms completely bugged with sophisticated taping equipment. But not just the rooms, we’d also follow the visitors around, sometimes we covered them 24 hours a day. They had no idea we were tailing them.”

It escapes me what “intelligence” fashion models like Naomi Campbell or Kate Moss could have that Castro would want. Blackmail is another hobby of Castro’s, however.

Hollywood celebrities who have visited with Castro in Cuba have sung the praises of his compassion, his leadership, his socialism. Some, like actor Chevy Chase and director Oliver Stone, think highly of the dictator and say “socialism works” by pointing to Cuba as an example. Something that many of the Cubans desperate to leave would disagree with. Socialism has, in fact, destroyed what was once a prosperous nation, a hard-working populace.

The beauty of Cuba’s beaches are often cited by American celebrities — and yes, they are beautiful. However, a different story is told when traveling through the cities. Which Cuba did invited Hollywood statist bubbleheads get escorted through… Castro’s elegant, stolen version or the real version, that of poverty and despair?

This aerial photo is reportedly one of the main homes of Fidel Castro. He is thought to have as many as 50 different residences throughout Cuba available to him.

One of the main homes of Fidel Castro. He is believed to have as many as 50 different residences throughout Cuba

Iguara is a small farming village in Cuba. This concrete block home in the first photo below is a one-room, unfinished home with no bathroom or kitchen. The current resident “inherited” this home when her mother died of a heart attack many years ago. In Cuba, homes are “given” to the people living in them, cannot be sold, though may be traded under exceptional circumstances.

Standard one-room home in much of Cuba | Photo credit: Deanna Bean, Flickr

Typical Cuban housing

Housing in Old Havana

Havana housing in 2008 | Photo credit: MrCharly, Flickr

Makeshift shoes, in Cuba | Photo credit: Dissecting Leftism, jonjayray.blogspot.com

Another article written by Humberto Fontova for Canada Free Press in 2009, Hollywood Loves Fidel—But Why?:

“Fidel Castro is a genius!” gushed Jack Nicholson after a visit with the Cuban Fuhrer in 1998. “We spoke about everything,” the actor rhapsodized further. “Castro is a humanist like President Clinton. Cuba is simply a paradise!”

Jack Nicholson has been saying such things for years now. Many of his Hollywood cohorts follow suit. Francis Ford Coppola, Kevin Costner, Steven Spielberg, Woody Harrelson, Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell, Leo DiCaprio, Chevy Chase and Robert Redford, among many others, have all waxed euphoric on Castro and his island prison.

While holding up the book “Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant” on his TV show, Bill O’Reilly called these celebs “Hollywood pinheads.”

But there might be more to these celebrity plugs for a tyrant who jailed more of his subjects than did Hitler or Stalin than the usual celebrity vacuity upstairs.

“My job was to bug their hotel rooms,” says high-ranking Cuban intelligence defector Delfin Fernandez. “With both cameras and listening devices. Most people have no idea they are being watched while they are in Cuba. But their personal activities are filmed under orders from Castro himself.”

And according to some sources, Havana, given the desperation of its brutalized and impoverished residents, has recently topped Bangkok as the world mecca for child sex.

From a January 26, 2010 article in the New York Post, Cuba: A catastrophe in waiting:

Havana is a city of sorrow — a once elegant and prosperous capital brought to despair by 51 years of deliberate neglect and isolation. A country that has been plundered by a succession of foreign powers, homegrown dictators and mobsters imported from America now languishes in a bizarre time warp where little has changed in more than half a century.

Its people go about their daily routines bereft of consumer goods, nutritious foods, meaningful jobs or adequate housing — most of them born after the revolution that swept Castro to power in 1959 and now, thanks to rigid censorship, largely conditioned to accept their impoverished lot.

Prosperity is the last thing that comes to mind as you watch the Cuban people wearing clothing that went out of style years ago. Even shoes are washed and hung on the laundry line along with shirts and pants.

To listen to Castro’s cronies — those among the political and business elite whose loyalty is secured with perks unavailable to ordinary Cubans — the economic situation is solely the fault of the US embargo imposed after the revolution.

More thoughtful Cubans discreetly offer a different explanation: They blame Fidel’s feckless experiments with communism — his initial seizure of $25 billion worth of private property from Cubans and the nationalization of all businesses, forcing the middle class to flee to Miami; his bizarre decision to send 300,000 Cubans out of a population of only 11 million to fight wars in Africa in the 1980s; his Cold War alliance with the Russians that left his country bankrupt and saddled with antiquated technology when the Soviet Union collapsed.

[...]

There’s no advertising in Cuba — unless you count the pervasive propaganda on TV and painted on walls rallying the masses with Stalinist-style slogans that would make a North Korean cringe.

[...]

Meanwhile, the average citizen of Havana goes about his mundane life, lining up at stores whose shelves are often empty, waiting in long lines for Chinese-made buses that never seem to come or trying to hitch rides in 1950s-era American cars that belch black fumes and contribute to the choking air quality that leaves the city covered in grime.

In Havana’s densely populated, older sections, less than half the homes are connected to city sewers. A majority of the buildings are decayed beyond repair.

The government claims that 96 percent of Cubans own their own homes — referring to the crowded apartments where generations of families are forced to live together. Even if that figure were true, no one seems to know who owns the outsides of their once-majestic buildings — so no one takes responsibility for maintaining them. Many fear that, when this regime eventually collapses, a wave of exiles will return from Miami and lay claim to the properties that Castro stole from them.

Political commentator P. J. O’Rourke traveled to Cuba to research Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics, his eye-opening 1998 book on world economies, and made this observation about what he saw there:

The Cuban government has not only eliminated the concept of unemployment, it’s eliminated the concept of jobs, if you don’t count begging or pestering strangers to buy ‘genuine Cohiba cigars’ that ‘a good friend of mine sneaks out of the factory.’ Either the fellow who sneaks Cohibas out of the factory has an unusual number of good friends, or Cohiba-sneaking is Cuba’s largest industry.

There was even less honest economic activity on the streets of Havana than on the streets of Stockholm — no roving food vendors or knickknack merchants, and only occasional kiosks selling cigarettes and newspapers, which they were mostly out of.

Additional reading on Castro and Cuba:
One Man’s Blog: Castro’s Cuba Leaves Nothing to Be Admired
Gateway Pundit: Cuban Marxist Dictator Fidel Castro Praises Obama & Dems on Nationalizing Health Care
Humberto Fontova, Big Journalism: The New York Times — Defending Murderous Dictators Since Walter Duranty
Michelle Malkin: U.N. declares Castro a “World Hero of Solidarity” and Race-baiter Democrat Rep. Diane Watson praises Cuban health system, Castro & Guevara who “kicked out the wealthy” and Castro Watch: Walking Commie corpse appears on TV and Culture of Corruption Watch: Hill edition and CBC: Congressional boot-lickers for Castro and Commie Stooges of the Day Award and Grading the MSM’s Cuban revolution coverage
Reason.TV: Killer Chic, Hollywood’s Sick Love Affair with Che Guevara
Arlenearmy’s Blog: Who are the Members of the Congressional Black Caucus?
Fire Andrea Mitchell!: So that’s why dictators love the US media!
Joe Lima, Big Hollywood: REVIEW: ‘Oscar’s Cuba’ Brings a Hero to Life, Exposes Fidel’s Cuba
Frugal Café Blog Zone: Democrat Liberal Rep. Laura Richardson, Castro Groupie, Under Investigation for Foreclosure Scandal and Cuba, the Musical: CBC’s Fawning over Castro Is Naive, Nauseating and Embarrassment – Dems Have Lovely Chat with Fidel Castro… Blame America for Cuba’s Poverty Because of Embargo and The Sham of Socialism: Save America While There’s Still Time
Humberto Fontova, Babalú Blog, an island on the net without a bearded dictator: “We love you Fidel–Oh yes we do” sings the CBC
Humberto Fontova, Big Hollywood: GLORIA ESTEFAN: ‘Our Gloria’ Betrays Cuban Fans, Jumps On Obama Bandwagon
Pam Meister, Big Hollywood: Sean Penn: Journalists who Call Chavez a Dictator Deserve to Go to Prison
The Astute Bloggers: RAUL CASTRO: SOCIALISM IN CUBA TO STAY!
Blog for Cuba: The U.S. should not negotiate with crazy dictators
Henry Louis Gomez, Babalú Blog, an island on the net without a bearded dictator: Jane, you ignorant slut…
AOL Political Machine: Lawmakers Take Time Out of Their Busy Schedules to Suck Up to Fidel Castro
Founding Bloggers: Which Caucus Visited Cuba? The Black One Or The Progressive One?
Myriam Marquez, Miami Herald: Lawmakers’ Cuba concerns are misplaced
Blue Crab Boulevard: You Know It’s Pretty Bad…
26th Parallel: Note to Congressional Black Caucus: Visit Political Prisoners in Cuba
Val Prieto, Babalú Blog, an island on the net without a bearded dictator: Michelle Malkin on the CBC
Burt Prelutsky, Big Hollywood: Examining Leftist Thinking
American Thinker: Human Rights Watch on Cuba
Free Republic: Socialism Coming Back To Haunt U.S.
John Nolte, Big Hollywood: Spike Lee Slams America, Lays Off Hugo Chavez
Cuban-American Pundits: National Review on The Man Who Invented Fidel

Categories: Business & Economy, Entertainment, Celebrities, Government, International Relations, Social and Political Climate
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