It seems that our man Che is getting the Hollywood treatment this year. Benicio Del Toro (wicked actor IMO) will play Che, Steven Soderbergh is the director. There’s not much info on it yet, here’s a link:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0374569/
I’m not sure what the angle will be, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s portrayed as a romantic freedom fighter type. I don’t see how Hollywood could do it any other way.
Can anyone on the left become even more mindless!!!
reason.com/hitandrun/2004/02 … ht_c.shtml
[quote]Not one, not two, not three, but four films about Che Guevara will soon hit theaters, all from major studios. And that barely scratches the surface of Che chic. Writing in the Miami New Times, Brett Sokol takes stock of the guerrilla’s media moment:
Meanwhile the same Che T-shirt spotted on several masked anarchists cavorting through downtown Miami during November’s FTAA protests was also sported by actress Elizabeth Hurley as she club-hopped across London. Hurley, though, chose to accessorize her sartorial ode to class struggle with a $4500 Louis Vuitton handbag. And just to add a further dash of the ridiculous, consider the recent sight of supermodel Gisele B
I’ve still got a long way to go in my Che book, but certainly Che’s compassion for peasants, indigenous peoples and the oppressed and his desire to assist them and fight against their oppressors is commendable, even though he may have used misguided means to solve their problems.
While I haven’t gotten yet to the latter part of the above statement (where he is working to solve their problems) I did find interesting what I read last night about Guatemala’s history around the time when Che was in Guatemala. In 1950, for only the second time since Guatemala’s independence a century and a half earlier, the country held a democratic election and Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was elected president.
Upon assuming office, Arbenz promoted a series of social and economic reforms in a country where 2 percent of the population held 70 percent of the land. The new govt initiated a public works program, including building a port and a hydroelectric plant; signed into law an agrarian reform plan which called for expropriation of large estates with compensation based on their declared value, something that greatly upset the US-owned United Fruit Company; established an income tax, for the first time in the nation’s history; and established various workers’ rights, including collective bargaining, the right to strike and a minimum wage.
To support the United Fruit Company, and for ideological reasons (cuz they didn’t like commies) Washington began a policy of harassment against the Arbenz regime, which later became an explicit campaign to overthrow the government. Finally, the CIA financed a coup that forced Arbenz to resign in 1954.
Seems to me that Arbenz had some sound policies, the US corporations and govt were intrusive and oppressive and I can see how exposure to such events could help inspire Che to want to take action. Go Che go!
By the way, don’t bother making stupid responses to the above if you don’t know anything about the subject. But if you’re interested in Arbenz, about whom wilkipedia wrote. . .
[quote]Jacobo Arbenz Guzm
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]I’ve still got a long way to go in my Che book, but certainly Che’s compassion for peasants, indigenous peoples and the oppressed and his desire to assist them and fight against their oppressors is commendable, even though he may have used misguided means to solve their problems.
While I haven’t gotten yet to the latter part of the above statement (where he is working to solve their problems) I did find interesting what I read last night about Guatemala’s history around the time when Che was in Guatemala. In 1950, for only the second time since Guatemala’s independence a century and a half earlier, the country held a democratic election and Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was elected president.
Upon assuming office, Arbenz promoted a series of social and economic reforms in a country where 2 percent of the population held 70 percent of the land. The new govt initiated a public works program, including building a port and a hydroelectric plant; signed into law an agrarian reform plan which called for expropriation of large estates with compensation based on their declared value, something that greatly upset the US-owned United Fruit Company; established an income tax, for the first time in the nation’s history; and established various workers’ rights, including collective bargaining, the right to strike and a minimum wage.
To support the United Fruit Company, and for ideological reasons (cuz they didn’t like commies) Washington began a policy of harassment against the Arbenz regime, which later became an explicit campaign to overthrow the government. Finally, the CIA financed a coup that forced Arbenz to resign in 1954.
Seems to me that Arbenz had some sound policies, the US corporations and govt were intrusive and oppressive and I can see how exposure to such events could help inspire Che to want to take action. Go Che go!
By the way, don’t bother making stupid responses to the above if you don’t know anything about the subject. But if you’re interested in Arbenz, about whom wilkipedia wrote. . .
[quote]Jacobo Arbenz Guzm
So what? Are you saying that all people who lived in Soviet bloc countries are bad? All Soviets, East Germans, Czechs, Poles, etc. are bad people? That’s absurd. To claim that all communists are bad people would be equally absurd. I agree that the experiment of communism has for the most part failed, but in no way does the mere fact that Arbenz was aligned with communists mean that he was a bad person.
I believe the policies that he instituted in Guatemala, as I described above, sound pretty reasonable. In a country where most of the populace are peasants employed under oppressive conditions by a giant foreign company that owns most of the land, it sounds reasonable to institute a program of agrarian reform (buying the land back at the value the owners assigned to it for tax purposes), initiate an income tax system and establish basic rights for workers, including a minimum wage.
As a result of such reforms the big US corporation got upset that their profits (at the expense of the serfs they were taking advantage of) were being threatened, so they got the US to sic the CIA on the president and throw him out of office. To me, Arbenz is definitely the good guy in that scenario, the US is the bad guy, and I can see how that would be a factor in leading Earnesto Guevara, a bright young guy who had graduated from medical school but was traveling around latin america visiting the ordinary local people, the salt of the earth, for whom he felt compassion, to eventually want to take action on their behalf.
Ya, a real man of the people.
nationalreview.com/nordlinge … 050715.asp
He was especially infamous for presiding over summary executions at La Caba
First, Chewbaca, I take it your failure to respond to my points concerning Arbenz means that you concede I am correct – Arbenz was doing good things for Guatemala, the US intervened in a bad way, and it’s understandable how Che witnessing this situation would sour him on the US and help lead to his desire to fight for the common people.
Second, because you are simply regurgitating the same worn-out articles about Che that have already been posted, it is clear that you don’t know anything about him. I admitted that I’m not extremely knowlegable about him, but rather than spew out a bunch of tired cliches and rumors, I decide to rectify the situation by reading a book. I haven’t gotten yet to the part of his life where he’s met Fidel, moved to Cuba or committed any of the acts that your sources allege, so I can’t comment on their veracity. I will report back when I get to that part of his life. But there’s certainly nothing objectionable about the early part of his life. He’s not a pervert or a pampered brat as Fred alleges. He’s bright, handsome, intelligent, popular, graduates from medical school, travels to many lands where he feels compassion for the common people. Perhaps later he committed bad deeds in a misguided attempt to fight for the common people, but until his late 20’s at least it seems he had a good heart and good intentions, though, as I admitted, he may have later gone astray.
I’ll let you know later how true or false your allegations are about deeds in his later life. I don’t idolize him, but nor will I condemn him just becasue Fred does, or just because he was a pal of Fidel. Instead, I decided to find out the truth. You might try doing the same.
Well, MT:
I certainly applaud your “open-mindedness.” Can we also look forward to your avid interest in reading about the death squads in El Salvador and those in Guatemala? I mean, I am sure some of these death squad leaders were “handsome” and “articulate” and “passionate about what they were doing” and no doubt “loving sons” and “devoted fathers” who liked to go “butterfly catching.”
The simple fact is that this kid was messed up for whatever reason. He inspired thousands throughout Latin America to take up the fight for communism. Now, given that you admit that communism is, was and has always been a failure, to you think that was a good or bad thing?
Second, he was PERSONALLY involved in the killings. The US has been associated with governments who have killed indiscriminately in Guatemala and El Salvador. For this, we are given primary responsibility for their actions even though our governments have repeatedly made noisy protests over such abuses. Yet, we have learned that when we did try to turn up the heat as we did with Duvalier, the Europeans and Canadians continued to fund and support him thus lessening any impact we might have made by cutting off aid. Then, Carter stopped supporting the Somozas who we also criticized and tried to get to step down from power voluntarily and what happens? The Sandinistas take over and try to impose a communist system. So if communism is, was and has always been a failure, how can this be good? And in my link under Bush is Time’s person of the year, I show how this happened with Duvalier and also linke to sites showing the Sandinistas ruled like the Soviet commissars or like the Somozas before them. There was not redistribution of land to the hungry peasants.
Guatemala is a tough nut. We were directly involved in removing Arbenz so that is definitely true. I am not sure that this was the right thing to do but given that this was at the height of the most frightening moment of the Cold War when we were fighting battles in Korea and also in serious danger in Europe with out of control countries and Soviet expansioninsm in Turkey/Greece and even Iran, I am not quite sure what we should have done. Hindsight is all well and good but try to be as balanced about the US govt and its actions as you are trying to be about Che who is a known thug and mass murderer and we may actually find some common ground to discuss these very difficult issues.
Finally, if Arbenz was going to institute communist policies, and we all know that communism is, was and always has been a failed system, then by virtue of this fact, weren’t we therefore right to remove him even though he was no threat at the time solely on the basis of the hindsight we have regarding the total lack of success with communist planning and systems? That could be one way to look at it?
And given that Colombia has had a raging civil war for 150 years with or without US involvement, why cannot domestic conditions be the primary reasons for the Guatemalan civil war? Does the US always have to be the prime factor? And given that the civil war and strife existed in Guatemala before the US arrived on the scene and given that despite our removal of Arbenz, it continued long afterward despite the lack of strong US involvement until the 1980s, then who was responsible for all the strife during the interim 25 years?
CAUTION: BLIND COMMIE-HATERS UNINTERESTED IN THE TRUTH: before responding to this post, understand that I
Mother Theresa,
I beg you to stop and reconsider before you fall into the trap of becoming just another:
[color=red]
Apologist For Evil With A Gaping Moral Blindspot!
[/color]
There is no dispensation for evil based on political good intentions. Left, right, front, back – up or down – if you’ve killed or imprisoned innocent people in the name of some greater good then you’re a bad man.
So Che’s charms, intelligence and intended benevolent end goals are completely beside the point if he’s murdered and oppressed other human beings.
I’ve been trying to address this root cause of good people with gaping moral blindspots problem for a long time by repeatedly requesting of my congressman that he sponsor a bill requiring the following warning label be imprinted in gold letters on the outside of all the world’s tomes of utter and undeniable truth: the bible, the Koran, the Communist Manifesto, the collected works of L. Ron Hubbard – the Project For The New American Century:
“It has been determined by Someone Very Wise and Knowledgeable that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
Spook,
I understand that the road to hell is (sometimes) paved with good intentions. And, as I’ve said, I haven’t completed his biography yet so I can’t comment on everything he may have done. But I do know that a number of people on this forum know nothing about Che except that he was a friend of Fidel, so as a result of their intense hatred of communism they feel compelled to post insults and derogatory rumors and pretend they have some deep understanding concerning the subject, when in truth they are ignorant and simply repeating unsubstantiated rumors. As I’ve said, I’m interested in discovering the truth.
I know so far that Fred’s quips about Che being a pervert and a spoiled brat are complete nonsense, as was the line someone else used about him being fat (on the contrary he was extremely fit for most of his life). I realize those issues are trivial, but they’re examples of lies being tossed about on this forum without correction.
Certainly his role in peoples’ deaths is much more significant. I know he oversaw numerous executions and in perhaps the most serious instance signed a warrant for the execution of a few hundred people. But I am confident that it is a lie that he enjoyed such executions as someone alleged previously (someone pasted an unsubstantiated quote about him “loving” to kill people). From everything I’ve read so far that’s completely false. In Cuba, he assisted Fidel and an army of citizens who were opposed to their corrupt and wrongful government to overthrow that government. Naturally such a task would not be easy and would meet serious armed resistance. From what I have read so far, the executions Che and the others performed were mostly of informants (who threatened their own lives) and particularly evil officers from the opposition. The book includes reasonable evidence supporting the view that Che struggled considerably with the decisions over executions in many cases, and if I recall correctly, they let many prisoners go rather than execute them.
Executing human beings is not a nice thing to do, but given the situation – fighting to overthrow a corrupt, wrongful and oppressive government that is using armed force to prevent such overthrow – I can see greater justification for killing informants and evil enemy officers who threaten ones own life. It is completely different from the absurd comparison to Osama Bin Laden, whose people randomly kill innocent civilians that have nothing to do with the struggle. It is more akin to execution of spies or war criminals by the governments of “developed” nations.
I admitted all along that Che may have had a dark side and may have committed evil deeds and my intention was never to justify what he did throughout his entire life. My goal is only to paint a more accurate picture than the one-sided lies told by some and to try to understand who he was and why he did the things that he did. I promise: I will not shy away from addressing atrocities that I may read of, and as I informed Fred, the bio I’m reading is very well-researched and balanced, so if there’s dirt I’ll read about it.
Please be patient. You definitely will not get the truth from Fred and his cohorts. You will from me, eventually, but give me time.