Alfred Che Newman

Pursuant to the series of 'Che' posts at this blog, including one on the alternate Che images, here is one that is bitingly appropriate-



(via the Newsbusters)

Consensual intercourse can never ever be rape

Can a committee of experts change fundamental nature of reality just by a fiat?
If they willed that an apple instead of falling to earth flies up in the space-that would not happen. But they can get away with calling consensual sex as rape-

Having sex with a girl or a wife under 16 years of age would amount to rape even if she voluntarily joins her partner in love-making.

The Law Commission has recommended that the age for sexual consent should be raised from 15 years to 16 years for girls, regardless of marriage.

Thus, even in cases where an under-16 girl elopes, marries a lover and has sex with her "husband," the girl's "husband" cannot escape punishment by claiming that he made love with his "wife."

Consensual intercourse can never ever be rape no matter what the 'experts' might say.
If the state wishes to outlaw sex under a certain age, it should say so clearly -just say 'sex under 16 is banned'-and not pretend that is a horrible crime they are protecting us against.

Hear all ye wise 'experts' of the law commission-
Rape is forced, unwanted sexual intercourse.
Anything consensual cannot be rape.

The plight of Bilkis Bano is way too horrific to be put in the same category as of a couple of teenagers having a nice time on the sly.

The law commission is getting away with an egregious violation of concepts that the words in a language refer to. Shall we say, rape of the language?

PS -interestingly in the case of our furtive teenagers above, only the male could be accused of rape even if it was the girl who might have initiated the.....ahem, proceedings. Talk about gender justice. All law, little justice -which actually perfectly encapsulates the Indian reality.

Indian artists in support of a murderer, part 3 -alternative Che images

Continued from part 1 and part 2 below.

Here are some alternative Che images one would like to see more of-


Communism killed 100 million but-



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World's greatest T-shirt salesman-


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More images below the fold

Victims of Che Guevara-


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Somewhere in hell, the revolution goes on-

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Fight leftist indoctrination at campus-


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Useful idiots supporting Che(Yes, I am thinking of the artists who took part in Suneet Chopra's Che lovefest)-

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Evolution of the Che myth-

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I wonder how many lefties have become rich selling the Che t-shirt-


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Don't get us wrong, we love revolution too-


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No Ch(e)moking-

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Finally, Che one can love-


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Note- Kindly limit hate-mail to 100 words each.

Part 1 here
Part 2- Che myths here.

Indian artists in support of a murderer, part 2 -Che myths

Continued from part 1 below-

What is it about the Che iconography that is so resistant to facts? Alvaro Vargas Llosa takes apart the Che myths-

1. HE WAS AGAINST CAPITALISM. In fact, Guevara was for state capitalism. He opposed the wage labor system of 'appropriating surplus value' (in Marxist jargon) only when it came to private corporations. But he turned the appropriation of the workers 'surplus value' into a state system. One example of this is the forced labor camps he supported, starting with Guanahacabibes in 1961.

2. HE MADE CUBA INDEPENDENT. In fact, he engineered the colonization
of Cuba by a foreign power. He was instrumental in turning Cuba into a temporary beachhead of Soviet nuclear power (he sealed the deal in Yalta). As the person responsible for the 'industrialization' of Cuba he failed to end the country's dependency on sugar.

3. HE STOOD FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE. In fact, he helped ruin the economy by diverting resources to industries that ended up in failure and reduced the sugar harvest, Cuba's mainstay, by half in two years. Rationing started under his stewardship of the island's economy.

4. HE STOOD UP TO MOSCOW. In fact, he obeyed Moscow until Moscow
decided to ask for something in return for its massive transfers of money to Havana. In 1965 he criticized the Kremlin because it had adopted what he termed the 'law of value'. He then turned to China on the eve of the Cultural Revolution, one of the horror stories of the twentieth century. He simply switched allegiances within the totalitarian camp.

5. HE CONNECTED WITH THE PEASANTS. In fact, he died precisely because he never connected with them. "The peasant masses don't help us at all," he wrote in his Bolivian diary before he was captured, an apt way to describe his journey through the Bolivian countryside trying to stir up a revolution that could not even enlist the help of Bolivian Communists (who were realistic enough to note that
peasants did not want revolution in 1967; they had already had one in 1952).

6. HE WAS A GUERRILLA GENIUS. With the exception of Cuba, every guerrilla effort he helped set up failed pitifully. After the triumph of the Cuban revolution, Guevara set up revolutionary armies in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and Haiti, all of which were crushed. He later persuaded Jorge Ricardo Masetti to lead a fatal incursion into that country from Bolivia. Guevara's role in the Congo in 1965 was both tragic and comical. He allied himself with Pierre Mulele and Laurent Kabila, two butchers, but got entangled in so many disagreements with the latter and relations between Cuban and Congolese fighters were so strained that he had to flee. Finally, his incursion in Bolivia ended up in his death, which his followers are commemorating this Sunday.

7. HE RESPECTED HUMAN DIGNITY. In fact, he had a habit of taking other people's property. He told his followers to rob banks ('the struggling masses agree to rob banks because none of them has a penny in them') and as soon as the Batista regime collapsed he occupied a mansion and made it his own, a case of expeditious revolutionary eminent domain.

8. HIS ADVENTURES WERE A CELEBRATION OF LIFE. Instead, they were an
orgy of death. He executed many innocent people in Santa Clara, in central Cuba, where his column was based in the last stage of the armed struggle. After the triumph of the revolution, he was in charge of 'La Cabaña' prison for half a year. He ordered the execution of hundreds of prisoners, former Batista men, journalists,businessmen, and others. A few witnesses, including Javier Arzuaga, who was the chaplain of 'La Cabaña', and José Vilasuso, who was a
member of the body in charge of the summary judicial process, recently gave me their painful testimonies.

9. HE WAS A VISIONARY. His vision of Latin America was actually quite blurred. Take, for instance, his view that the guerrillas had to take to the countryside because that is where the struggling masses lived. In fact, since the 1960s, most peasants have peacefully deserted the countryside in part because of the failure of land reform, which has hindered the development of a property-based agriculture and economies of scale with absurd regulations forbidding all sorts of private arrangements.

10. HE WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE UNITED STATES. He predicted Cuba would
surpass the GDP per capita of the U.S. by 1980. Today, Cuba's economy can barely survive thanks to Venezuela's oil subsidy (about 100,000 barrels a day), a form of international alms that does not speak too well of the regime's dignity.

Humberto Fontova (linked in part 1) has an excellent article on how the myth of Che is maintained and propagated in popular media. Excerpts-

The History Channel Shills For Che Guevara

[Humberto Fontova is the author of Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the
Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him.]

The regime Che Guevara co-founded stole the savings and property of 6.4 million citizens, made refugees of 20 per cent of the population from a nation formerly deluged with immigrants and whose citizens had achieved a higher standard of living than those residing in half of Europe. Che Guevara's regime also shattered through executions, jailings, mass larceny and exile virtually every family on the island of Cuba. Many opponents of the Cuban regime qualify as the longest-suffering political prisoners in modern history, having suffered prison camps, forced labor and torture chambers for a period THREE TIMES as long in Che Guevara's Gulag as Alexander Solzhenytzin suffered in Stalin's Gulag.

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One signed his name "Stalin II," professed that "the solutions to the world's problems lie behind the Iron curtain," and boasted that "if the nuclear missiles had remained we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City." He also professed that the victory of socialism was well worth "millions of atomic victims."

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Immediately upon entering Havana Che Guevara stole and moved into what
was probably the most luxurious mansion in Cuba. The rightful owner fled
the country barely ahead of a firing squad and a reporter who wrote of Che's new house in a Cuban newspaper was himself threatened with the firing squad. A year later thousands of Cubans were sent to forced-labor camps on Che's orders, based on his whim to fashion "a new man,"

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During a 1961 speech in Cuba, Che Guevara denounced the very "spirit of
rebellion" as "reprehensible." Earlier he had cheered the Soviet
invasion of Hungary and the concurrent slaughter of thousands of
Hungarians who resisted Russian Imperialism. According to Guevara, these
freedom-fighters were all "fascists and CIA agents."

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On his second to last day alive Che Guevara ordered his guerrilla charges to give no quarter, to fight to the last breath and to the last bullet. With his men doing just that, a slightly wounded Che snuck away from the firefight and surrendered with a full clip in his pistol, while whimpering to his captors: "Don't Shoot! I'm Che! I'm worth more to you alive than dead!" He then groveled shamelessly, desperate to ingratiate himself. "What's your name, young man?" Che asked one of his captors.
"Why what a lovely name for a Bolivian soldier!"

"So what will they do with me?" Che asked Bolivian Captain Gary Prado. "I don't suppose you will kill me. I'm surely more valuable alive....And you Captain Prado," Che commended his captor. "You are a very special person ...I have been talking to some of your men. They think very highly of you, captain! And don't worry, this whole thing is over. We have failed." Then to further ingratiate himself, "your army has pursued us very tenaciously....now, could you please find out what they plan to
do with me?"
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So far, subjective matters. Now on to more objective ones.

Despite numerous attempts, nobody has managed to locate any record of
Ernesto Guevara's medical degree. Shortly after his capture Che admitted to his captor's commander, Captain Gary Prado, that he (Che) was not a doctor but "had some knowledge of medicine."

Nonetheless The History Channel refers to Ernesto Guevara as a "newly
qualified Doctor."
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"The Black Book of Communism," written by French scholars and published in English by Harvard University Press (neither an outpost of the vast right-wing conspiracy, much less of "Miami maniacs!") estimates 14,000 firing squad executions in Cuba by the end of the 1960's. "The facts and figures are irrefutable," wrote the New York Times (no less!) about "The Black Book of Communism." A Cuban prosecutor of the time who quickly defected in horror and disgust named Jose Vilasuso estimates that Che signed 400 death warrants the first few months of his command in La Cabana. A Basque priest named Iaki de Aspiazu, who was often on hand to perform confessions and last rites, says Che personally ordered 700 executions by firing squad during the period. Cuban journalist Luis Ortega, who knew Che as early as 1954, writes in his book "Yo Soy El
Che!" that Guevara sent 1,892 men to the firing squad.

Read the whole thing.

Is the terrible state of modern/post-modern art, the utter irrationalism and lunatic-asylum quality about it -I wonder if that because it is people like Suneet Chopra who are it's thekedars *. Historically, the descent of art into irrationalism has followed the descent of intellectuals into the embrace of utopian totalitarianism.

(emphasis mine)

*The colorful Indian language translator-
thekedar - One who decides and sits over judgment(literally- someone who has been given a contract to do something)

Next- in part 3: tired of that 'iconic' image of mass-murderer staring from trendy t-shirts.Here are some Che images we would like to see more of.

See part 1 here

Indian artists in support of a murderer, part 1

• Well known Indian artists and other arty-sharties pay homage to Che Guevara.

Now why am I not surprised.


“The Victims of Che Guevera” poster, produced by the Young America’s Foundation, a collage that uses tiny photos of those killed by Cuba’s communist regime to compose the face of the Marxist icon, Che Guevara.
Larger image here.



First some facts which for some reason are not well publicized or are completely unknown to most(media bias?)-

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was second in command, chief executioner, and chief KGB liaison for a regime that outlawed elections and private property. This regime's KGB-supervised police, employing the midnight knock and the dawn raid among other devices, rounded up and jailed more political prisoners as a percentage of population than Stalin's and executed more people (out of a population of 6.4 million) in its first three years in power than Hitler's executed (out of a population of 70 million) in it's first six.
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One week into power the regime Che Guevara co-founded abolished Habeas Corpus. Guevara commanded his regime's prosecutorial goons to "always
interrogate our prisoners at night. A man's resistance is always lower
at night." He boasted that, "we execute from revolutionary conviction!"
and that "judicial evidence is an archaic bourgeois detail." Edwin
Tetlow, Havana correspondent for London's Daily Telegraph, reported on a
mass "trial" orchestrated by Che Guevara where Tetlow noticed the death
sentences posted on a board before the trial had started.

So who loves this creep?

Famous(why?) communist art-critic, Suneet Chopra, well known artists-Arpana Caur, Krishen Khanna, Vijendra Sharma, Dharmendra Rathore, Anoop Kamath, Mohan Singh, Saba Hasan, Vijayata Bhamri, art critics Vinod Bharadwaj and Nuzhat Kazmi, writer Uma Vasudev film persons Arun Vasudev and M K Raina and a large number of intellectuals, artists, writers and leading gallery owners of the capital.


The occasion for all this roses and love was an exhibition dedicated to this lover of freedom in Delhi opened by the ambassador of that paradise of freedom, human rights, free press, free elections and prosperity known by it's shorter name -Cuba.

Suneet Chopra seemed to be in a grumbling mood-

Today imperialism has invented far worse weapons(than atom bombs) that they have tested on the civilian populations Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon. In the name of regime change, the elected president of the Chilean people, Salvador Allende, was murdered in an army coup that proceeded to murder thousands after that, including the Nobel Prize winning poet, Pablo Neruda. In 1991 the USSR was dismantled, and dismembered, Grenada was invaded, Nicaragua was destabilised and Yugoslavia with its proud anti-fascist record and one of the founders of the non-aligned movement was torn to bits as was Czechoslovakia, and states that Hitler had created have once more emerged in the Balkans, not as a natural process, but with the armed might of NATO behind them. “Democracy” was being imposed on the barrel of a gun with the help of generals like Pinochet, Sucharto and the like. And it was Che who told us that such a global oppression could only be stopped with a global resistance to it, by creating “twenty Vietnams” all over the world.

Warmonger! Calling for more Vietnams. Does he love war or what. Read the whole thing. Chopra is almost cartoonish in his rage against 'imperialism', a fine caricature of a fuming communist, now fuming more than ever since the collapse of the USSR (result of an evil plot, no doubt, though the liberated countries of the eastern Europe love their freedom from the Stalinist nightmare). Communism and socialism have never produced a free and prosperous society anywhere despite a century of experimentation.Misery, poverty, oppression, totalitarianism, midnight knocks, entrenched rule by a vicious elite, slave labor, 'reeducation' camps, gulags, death of tens and tens of millions-yes; happiness and freedom-no. And this is the 'vision' that Suneet Chopra and countless other intellectuals have supported and defended. One of the consistent themes of the last hundred or so years has been the love affair of the intellectuals with totalitarianism- be it that of the Nazis, of Stalin, Mao, Khmer Rouge, Castro or any other power-seeker who mouths the right cliches against 'imperialism'.

But what about the artists who participated in the Che lovefest?
Artistic freedom is one of the first casualties of the kind of regime that Che wanted to establish all over Latin America and elsewhere and helped to bring about in Cuba(Quick-How free are the artists to criticize Fidel in his land of milk and honey?).
So what explains their participation? True conviction? Or pulling the right social levers and supporting the 'right' causes to further their careers?
Or what?

I think it is legitimate to call them 'Artists against freedom'.

To prevent this post from becoming too long, I am breaking it into parts. See the rest of the article here-
Part 2- Che Myths
Part 3- Alternative Che images one would like to see more of

(emphasis mine)

Crossposted at What the Heck is Art?