Raul’s “Sing a Song”

My father always told me that it was easy being a communist, and the first thing you had to do was loose your shame.-“lo primero que se pierde es la vergüenza.”

When you have no shame, no principles, it’s easy to hate and to let the means justify the ends. Everything is relative in the Marxist philosophical heaven of dialectic materialism.

It is estimated, for example, that in Red China, the ends, absolute and total power, justified the means, the deaths of about 65,000,000 to 70,000,000 lives, give or take a few million, under the leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong.

That’s more deaths than are attributed to Stalin and Hitler combined!

Yet in Cuba, Mao Zedong is revered by the regime’s new leader, Raúl Castro.

While the “president” of China, Hu Jintao was visiting Havana, Raúl felt compelled to sing a song of praise and adulation to the Chinese mass murderer:

President Raul Castro was in such good spirits on Tuesday that he led 200 Chinese students learning Spanish at a Cuban school in an impromptu sing-along of a Chinese song about late China leader Mao Zedong.

He said he learned the song from a Chinese delegate at a youth rights conference in Austria in 1953.

"I don't have the memory that Fidel has, but I remember that song," he said.

Raúl can sing for his supper anytime he likes, but singing a song praising Chairman Mao is shameful.

Oh, that’s right communists have no shame. The only thing that matters is the millions that the Chinese are pouring into Cuba so that the Castro family can remain in power.

And yes, Raúl doesn’t seem to have as “the same memory” as Fidel, especially when it comes to Mao.

When the USSR and China had an ideological falling out, (probably on which was the best method to eradicate opposition, executions or starvation), Fidel, who knew where his bread was buttered and preferred Stalinism, sided with the USSR in the squabble.

Fidel began, like his Soviet masters, to openly criticize Mao’s policies. At one point, Fidel even accused Mao of murdering innocent people.

But, everything’s good now since the Chinese come bearing dollars and Fidel has never had had a problem with selling Cuba to the highest bidding tyranny.

Video of Raúl’s “sing a song” performance:

Maybe he’ll duet with singing tyrant Hugo Chavez and sing songs in praise of Hitler when he visits Venezuela on his first trip there.

Tremenda “sing a song” that would be.

Letting The Lying Corps Lie

The Cuban regime’s propaganda machine is working overtime these days.

The propaganda machine has always had two purposes. Internally, its role is to lie to the Cuban citizens. Externally, it lies to the world by marketing the “revolution” and its chief architect, Fidel. They have been very successful at both. Lying is to communists as hammers are to carpenters.

Right now the emphasis is being placed on the marketing.

They’re selling oil, tons of it. They’re not sure exactly where it is or if you can even get at it but they have lots. And for a fee, any country or company that wants to try their luck on the drill baby drill roulette can have a go at trying to find the coveted crude.

They’re also marketing a book by non other than Cuba’s blogger in chief, Fidel.

Yes.

The 81 year old, terminally ill, tracksuit clad, retired despot wrote a book about Columbia, “La Paz en Columbia”. Destroying Columbia has always been one of Fidel Castro’s obsessions. In fact, one of his first “revolutionary” acts was his participation in “El Bogotazo.” And ever since he took power he has been trying to export his revolutionary disease to the South American country which is finally on the verge of eradicating the progress destroying Castro-virus.

Talk about ghost writing.

Talk about an unbelievable sub plot.

The regime is selling a story that an 82 yr. old, terminally ill man who is reported to have undergone almost a dozen intestinal surgeries, who is too weak to appear in public and who, in his last interview, could not keep a train of thought, even though the interview was highly edited, (In the middle of the interview he starts to talk about Einstein and the theory of relativity and interrupts himself and says: “he was born in Germany, you know”), spent 400 hours penning the 259 page book. Amazing! Not only that, he also penned hundreds of “reflections” too. (in his spare time, between changing the colostomy bag, hurricane forecasting and bossing his little brother around.)

But it gets better. The book markets the idea that Castro and his regime are the good guys in Columbia’s struggle to fight the armed Marxist-narco-trafficking insurgency that has devastated Columbian society for nearly 50 years. You see, Castro in the book tells of his regime’s efforts in bringing about a political solution to the conflict.

That’s rich. Castro exports his Marxist revolution to democratic Columbia, he trains and arms the rebels in a guerrilla war that spans decades and kills thousands. Then, when it’s clear that the guerrillas will never win, Castro tries to force the Columbian government to negotiate and share power with a bunch of hostage taking, narco-trafficking, bomb throwing communist criminals and sink Columbia by using its democratic institutions, like he did Venezuela, against them. And he’s the good guy. Even more amazing!

If the regime can sell that one, well, then they can sell just about anything, like the idea that Cuba is a worker’s paradise or a vast underwater oil field.

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Oh well. Never mind.

More on Barry O.’s Barrio Watch…

About a week late and about a trillion dollars short, an American politician has called President –Elect Obama’s “plan” for a National Civilian Security Force” Marxist. No kidding.

A Republican congressman from Georgia said Monday he fears that President-elect Obama will establish a Gestapo-like security force to impose a Marxist dictatorship.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Rep. Paul Broun said of Obama in an interview Monday with The Associated Press. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may—may not, I hope not—but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Rep. Broun, having never lived in a Marxist totalitarian dictatorship, cannot quite put his finger on it, but something in his gut tells him that a “national civilian security force” sounds, well, un-American and he’s right.

Over at the conservative web-site Hot Air, Ed Morissey contends that Rep. Broun’s statement hails the onset of ODS, Obama Derangement Syndrome. He also finds the Obama July 3, comments, “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded,” rather innocuous:

In the context of Obama’s remarks above, though, he fairly clearly meant to at least include a volunteer force in outreach within and outside the US as some sort of Department of Peace-like indirect boost to national security…

…Nothing in that speech hints at a Gestapo-like organization at all.

Rep Broun’s remarks are likened to “hyperbole:”

If we plan to offer a rational alternative to the coming debacle of the next two years, then we’d better stick to facts and eschew hyperbole. We need to oppose the reality of the radical agenda proposed by Obama and the Democratic majorities in Congress, not fantasies spun out of context-free snippets of speeches. The more critics invoke Hitler and Stalin instead of Jimmy Carter and Lyndon Johnson, the better the reality of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi will seem in 2010.

Ok. Facts. I like Facts. I like jokes better: a Department of Peace?!? Very funny. We can call it the Ministry of Peace, the “minipeace” for short,-it has a certain familiar ring to it, no?

I agree with Rep. Broun that Obama’s proposal for a Civilian National Security Force has a Marxist ring to it, though I disagree with him that it will be Gestapo-like. You see, I had the misfortune of experiencing a “civilian national security force” in the flesh in Cuba. For the same reason, I also disagree with Morissey’s dismissal of the proposal as harmless.

The first Marxist red flags (hehehe...get it? red flags?) tactics can be found in the “official” script of the candidate Senator Obama’s speech on July 3. Back in July, I thought I had heard the Senator call for the civilian force in an audio of the speech and it made the hairs in the back of my neck stand at attention because of my Post Castro Stress Syndrome. I went to the Obama campaign website to make sure that I heard what I thought I heard and could not find the passage. Not thinking I was hearing things, I kept searching and thankfully, some intrepid citizens had preserved the given speech on a Youtube video. After the initial relief that I still had most of my marbles, I was shocked that the campaign had not included the potentially controversial passage in the “official” transcript. It seems like the Obama campaign already had a Department of Truth to go along with its proposed Department of Peace. The fact that the campaign tried to hide the words of the then presidential candidate by omitting them from the official transcript reeks of the kind of truth manipulation that occurs in Marxist regimes.

Obama, given his background as a community organizer, probably envisions a community based “security force”

Now, for folks that think like Senator Obama, National Security is a totally different thing than it is for folks with a more conservative mind set. Most lefties I know believe that the reason that America is being attacked by terrorists is because of our misguided and failed foreign policies. They keep telling me that the CIA created Bin Laden and that Saddam’s Iraq was our “client state.” They also argue that Iran had been our client state back in the days of the Shah and before the Islamic Revolution and that our backing of the despotic Shah caused the revolution and the ensuing hatred for America. They also tell me that our allegiance to Israel causes more problems than it is worth and that America’s insistence in holding despots to our standards of liberty and progress is antagonistic and counterproductive because it makes the rest of the world not “like” us. Evil manifests itself in the world not because it is inherently evil but because America causes it. It’s the Flip Wilson doctrine; the devil, America, The Great Satan, makes them do it.

Since these folks on the left are of the belief that America’s actions cause the security threats in the first place, In order for a civilian national security force to protect America, it has to change America so that it doesn’t offend any potential enemies out there and cause them to do evil things and so they “like” us. It also has to protect America from those who see the world in judgmental black and white and not in the enlightened relative shades of gray that the liberals do. It’s these people that believe in the antiquated notions of good and evil, right and wrong, that get us into these “security” messes in the first place.

You can see how the civilian national security force can morph and take on a different more ominous role. In order to protect America from these backward thinking, un-nuanced black and white type of folks, they would help protect the liberal ideals that would usher in a changed and transformed America.

They would “organize” the community in order to “educate” the citizenry into thinking less about themselves and more about the community, less about their individual happiness and more about collective purposes. What’s more secure than having everyone pull together as team towards a common goal?

Meetings at homes would be organized, community projects would be planned, neighborhood night watches would be instituted, T-shirts and hats would be distributed, programs for children would be started, workplace security details would be proposed.

These programs would, of course, all be coordinated through a national network funded by the Federal government with stipends, incentives and perks to the members of the “civilian national security force.” Perhaps even a new web-based group would be started.

The new community organization would then be responsible form promoting a mission and accomplishing a vision through different programs designed to keep people employed and busy-protecting an ideology and a cult of personality.

There would be voter registration and education drives along with massive get out the vote drives.

Those that are not interested in going to the meetings or volunteering or put posters up their homes would be shunned, ostracized, ridiculed and watched as potential “security” risks.

This is all very easy to organize when you have millions of “followers” who see a politician as the solution to all their problems and the answer to all their questions.

The "civilian security force" could be easily merged into existing non-profits and programs. No one would have to carry a gun or break your down in the middle of the night to make you comply with their programs. Their results are achieved much more subtly, by intimidation and peer pressure. You would not need thugs armed with night sticks or rifles to persuade you to tow the party line. But you would get neighborhood snitches with whistles, notepads and cell phones.
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I have seen this “civilian national security force” at work. In Cuba, they call it the CDR, Committees in Defense of the Revolution, and I know the kind of pressure that these kinds of organizations can put on citizens. They don’t have guns like the Gestapo, they just have a bunch of radical and committed individuals who have been organized to serve as the eyes and ears of the government and protect an ideology. I also know the kind of people that are attracted to it.

I know it sounds absurd and paranoid to the uninitiated, but it is not. And I’m not saying that it is going to happen in America, but I am saying that the idea of “civilian national security force” could have dangerous repercussions and detrimental effects on our constitutional rights, or “negative liberties” as our new president thinks of them.

And for those of you who say it cannot ever happen here, take a look at a homeowner's association. If people will agree to give up some of their property rights and freedom of expression as a trade off for some security, it is possible.

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UPDATE:

OK. So it's even a little more authoritarian than I thought. In Cuba, being a regime snitch is encouraged, but not compulsory. The Obama plan, according to Rahm Emmanuel, the incoming chief of staff, calls for a mandatory 3 month "Universal Civil Defense Training".

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UPDATE2:

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It seems I underestimated the Internet component of Obama's organizing plan. This article tells on how the Obama campaign plans to pioneer organizing the Presidents followers by using its vast e-mail phonebook to "convert his army of online activists into a viral lobbying and communications machine."

Stock Up On Toilet Paper ... (por si las moscas)

Wow. So like Obama kicked some Republican butt.

The left has entrenched itself into power in America.

The White House is about to get a tenant-a superhero- who is a deliberate stranger and whose secret identity has been protected from the public by a media that has willfully disregarded the powers entrusted to them by the Constitution- Their “negative liberties” in Barackspeak.

And so, I stay up real late to listen to the speeches. (Yawn). It occurs to me that McCain might have been working on this concession speech since March. The Caribou Barbie was there. She seemed to be holding back tears, like a woman who just found out her husband has been cheating on her and will not give him the satisfaction of crying in front of him. She doesn’t like to loose, this lady. She’s grown on me.

Finally, the President-elect of the United States comes out for his coronation speech. I’m listening intently for the Marxist code words that he tends to throw out in his speeches. I’m waiting for him to lay out his plans for a collective utopia and for the upcoming formation of his national civilian security force.

None of that, though, just the same ol’ “America is the best country on Earth so let’s change it” speech with some contrived “samplings” of Lincoln and King, sob stories and bumper sticker slogans -but in a new hopeful and changeful tone.

The only potentially collectivist words were in this passage:

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change.

And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.

It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other.

I wonder if Peggy Joseph from South Florida was aware that President Obama, rather than write her a monthly check so she doesn’t have to worry about her mortgage and filling her gas tank, was expecting her to “work harder and look after not only after ourselves but each other” “with a new spirit of service and sacrifice.” In Barackspeak, that basically means that Peggy now gets to worry about her neighbor’s mortgage and gas tank as well. I bet she never thought that this day would ever happen, either.

I have no idea how far President Obama is willing to act on his obvious socialist instincts.
But, stock up on toilet paper just in case.

Socialist countries are notorious for toilet paper shortages. Toilet paper is practically non-existent in Cuba and its considered a luxury. Maybe Obama will institute a luxury "sin" tax on toilet paper. That's called "a Florio" after a New Jersey Governor who did started to tax toilet paper (and raised everything else) in the 80's and wound up getting kicked out of office.