Oliver Stone's recent visit to Venezuela to premiere his Castro/Chavez infomercial "My Friend Hugo" has brought him under fire in social media. Exasperated beyond endurance by the onslaught Stone recently lashed back with (apparently) the most hateful insult his inflamed mind could conjure. You people are:
"Similar to the right-wing Florida Cuban exiles who’ve helped keep the US in a dungeon of ignorance!" he raved.
For leftists its “right-wing lunatics spreading a dungeon if ignorance!” For normal folks it’s: “people who have actually experienced communism trying to circumvent communist propaganda as disseminated by a media-Hollywood axis—and one not always completely honest about their motives.”
Not that it always requires blackmail to get Hollywood folks of mainstream talking heads to parrot Castroite propaganda, but here’s a few clues to some of it:
"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!"
"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. 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."
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."
"Socialism works. I think Cuba might prove that" (Chevy Chase). "Castro is very selfless and moral, one of the world's wisest men" (Oliver Stone).
"If you believe in freedom, if you believe in justice, if you believe in democracy, you have no choice but to support Fidel Castro!" (Harry Belafonte).
"It was an experience of a lifetime to sit only a few feet away from him (Castro)" Kevin Costner.
"The eight most important hours of my life," (Stephen Spielberg describing his dinner with Castro, as reported in the Wall Street Journal.)
Famous Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodovar was a special target for this bugging but nothing of value came of it for Castro. "Everybody already knows I'm a maricon!" Almodovar laughed at Castro's blackmailers. "So go right ahead! Knock yourselves out!"
"Fidel Castro is a special connoisseur of these tapings and videos," says Fernandez, "especially of the really famous." And not even his closest "friends" are safe from this bugging. The best example is his longtime Castro "friend" Nobel Prize novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In what appeared as a touching act of generosity and friendship, Castro gave his friend "Gabo" his very own (stolen) mansion in Havana.
"We had remodeled it right before," recalls Fernandez, "and we installed more cables for bugging devices than for the normal electrical appliances. We taped everything. Fidel doesn't trust anyone."
Turns out, however, that at least one visiting dignitary foiled Castro's intelligence. On his visit to Cuba in 1998, Pope John Paul's assistants discovered and removed several bugging devices from his Holiness' hotel room. Perhaps Castro had a grudge against the Papacy?
Most don't recall, but on January 3rd, 1962, Pope John XXIII ex-communicated Fidel Castro from the Catholic Church.
“His personal magnetism is powerful!” panted Barbara Walters about Fidel Castro during her 2002 interview with the hemisphere’s top torturer of women. “His presence is still commanding!"
Juan Reynaldo Sanchez, a Lieut. Colonel in Cuba’s Armed Forces who spent 17 years as Fidel Castro’s bodyguard/valet had just been promoted to the position when Barbara Walters visited Cuba for her first interview with the Stalinist dictator in May 1977. Sanchez defected to the U.S. in 2008 and explained to this writer how he was part of the Castroite entourage that accompanied Ms Walters and Fidel to the latter’s island chateau, where they spent the week-end.