Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant
by Humberto Fontova
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Book Summary Information
Author: Humberto FontovaEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-02-25
ISBN: 0895260433
Number of pages: 229
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Book Reviews of Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant
Book Review: Deconstructing Castro
Summary: 5 Stars
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Book Review for Amazon.com
Book: FIDEL: HOLLYWOOD'S FAVORITE TYRANT
Author: Humberto E. Fontova
Reviewer: Gordon Hutchinson...
If either of outdoor writer Humberto Fontova's first two books are given to those faint of heart who identify with the Earth Movement, PETA, or The Fund for Animals, they should be delivered in plain brown wrappers with labels warning the reader they are "...not suitable for `ear-play.'" Reading Fontova aloud in some liberated circles can result in group apoplexy and mass aortic carnage.
Fontova's books "The Helldiver's Rodeo," and "The Hellpig Hunt" are orgiastic feastings of political incorrectness-paeans to the brotherhood of maleness and the religious fervor of the hunt.
If in the defense of hunting, the enemy is at the gate, Fontova is the leather-clad, crossbow-wielding shooter from the parapets lighting the vat of oil and gleefully pouring its contents over the side on the screaming hordes of anti-hunters. He laughs maniacally as their missiles/insults bounce harmlessly from his absolute certainty in the just and correct path of his cause.
Fontova's writings are so frenetic, so hyper-active, and more than frequently so doggone funny, it's surprising to learn he has a masters degree in Latin American studies from Tulane University, and is a frequent contributor to conservative websites on the world wide web.
He takes such great pleasure in puncturing inflated egos and embracing the politically incorrect when it comes to the blood sports, even his myriad of fans from his prolific writings in outdoor magazines are sometimes taken aback, and can only shake their heads, saying "That's Humberto."
For these reasons, and more, his latest book, "Fidel-Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant," is a downright surprise.
While his writings are neither measured or controlled, his expose' of the dictator that has ruled the nation of his birth since he was six years old is a surprisingly entertaining and incredibly educational read. And it still retains more than a hint of the Fontova flavor-in other words, barely controlled hysteria. One gets the feeling throughout the heavily researched and annotated book that Fontova is barely restraining himself from reaching out of the pages, grabbing the reader by the throat, shaking him, and shouting in his face, "Can you believe this? Can you believe the American public has allowed this complete atrocity to occur in their hemisphere? That the liberal elite has played up to this murderous Communist assassin that resides only 90 miles from our shoreline, and has pointed weapons of mass destruction at us, begging his Russian protectors to rain nuclear fury on our country?"
If Fontova's writings on Cuba and the man some call "The Monster of the Caribbean" seem overwrought at times, it is not without reason. He begins the book with a little known incident in the first chapter titled "The Terrorist Next Door."
Agents of Fidel Castro had targeted Manhattan's busiest subway stations -including Grand Central Station-for rush hour explosions. Remember the subway bombings in Madrid in 2004 by Al Qaeda? Some 2000 individuals were killed or wounded in that horrific attack. The Al Qaeda terrorists used approximately 100 kilos of TNT to set off ten blasts-approximately ten kilos per blast.
Castro's agents would have put that incident to shame if they had been able to pull off their 1962 terrorist incident. In fact, they could have easily killed more people than died in the World Trade Center in September, 2001. Blasts were timed for the Friday after Thanksgiving, planning the fiery maiming and death of thousands of New Yorkers with the placing of twelve detonators and 500 kilos of TNT at such busy Christmas shopping centers as Macy's, Gimbel's, Bloomingdale's, and in the subways.
Thank God for J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. This was November, 1962-just weeks after the Cuban missile crisis, and the country was still severely rattled. But the FBI had gained knowledge of the plot, and managed to capture all the ringleaders and confiscate the explosives and detonators before they could carry out their murderous plan. After breaking up the group of conspirators, it was found their list of targets was even bigger than anyone had guessed-it included Manhattan's main bus terminal, oil refineries on the New Jersey shore, and the Statue of Liberty.
Had these would-be murderers not been infiltrated by the FBI, and carried out their plots, as Fontova so succinctly pens it: "...September 11, 2001 would be remembered as the second-deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil."
While he doesn't go into his own background very much in the book, Fontova's personal history identifies deeply with the Cuban expatriate community in both Miami and New Orleans-thus the tenor of the book sounding as if it was written by someone personally wronged by Castro and his minions.
He was.
After Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista, Fontova's father, an architect, and his uncle, a Cuban Naval Officer, and a member of the Cuban Foreign Service, were each arrested at different times, and thrown into La Cabana fortress in Havana where every day dozens of men were stood before la paredon (the wall) and executed by firing squad. Thousands of men were executed over the years by Castro's butchers, and thousands more women and children were driven from the island with little more than the clothes on their backs while their men awaited death by bullets in the chest.
Fontova's mother and his aunt ended up in New Orleans (the aunt came over first) with few possessions, no money, and no understanding of English, to be embraced by the blue-collar neighborhood where they were placed, sheltered and fed by working-class folks frequently mislabeled as typical deep-South racist types.
As Fontova puts it, their neighbors--Irish, Italian, Cajun people of the working classes fed them, clothed them, gave them rides to school and stores, helped the adults find work and translators, and generally adopted these Hispanic victims of cultural genocide.
Small wonder, as Fontova frequently points out, that Cuban-Americans are loudly pro-American, Republican-leaning, and vehemently anti-Castro. They were taken in by this country and allowed to prosper through their own hard work while their brethren in Cuba suffer today under a regime so repressive that refugees from Haiti will not emigrate or attempt escape into Cuba.
Fontova's uncle was released first, and his father at a later date. They had been spared the firing squads due to their connections with some higher-ups in Castro's hierarchy, so they were banned from the country--penniless, but alive.
This review could go on and on-but better to get the book and read it for yourself-to be amazed that such atrocities and murderous behavior could occur so close to our shores, and be ignored by successive generations of glitterati and liberals in the media and entertainment industry.
Fontova documents erratic behavior and violent retribution by Castro, his brother Raul, and the liberal's favorite guerrilla poster-child, Che Guevera until one reads in amazement, turning the pages to discover what evil these Communist assassins will unleash next on the beaten masses of the Cuban populace, and what terrorist plots they will next export against the United States and other countries.
Fontova's descriptions of the bravery of the freedom fighters executed by Castro and Guevera's orders at La Cabana will bring tears to your eyes and heart-rending admiration of the men who faced the firing squads unbowed, pulling their shirts open, pointing at their chests, and shouting "Here traitors! Communist cowards! Shoot me here-right in the chest! Like a man!"
The bravery of these men and their hatred of Castro and Communism is an incredible story. It is a story of how an evil man and an equally evil social system took what some called an island paradise-a country with one of the highest levels of education per capita in the world, with an immigration rate so prolific from western Europe it had to be limited severely in the late Fifties, and one of the highest levels of personal income in the Latin Americas, into a country thousands risk their lives yearly to flee, and where people have been known to inject themselves with the AIDS virus to go to an isolated hospice to die, away from the crushing misery and drudge-filled life of existence in a now sub-standard Communist country.
Castro, Fontova points out, has imprisoned more people per capita in his reign than either Hitler, or Stalin. The longest-imprisoned political prisoners in the world come from Castro's Cuba, and his human-rights violations rank with the very worst in history.
Fontova has told an amazing story. Even more amazing because it is true, and has been so conveniently ignored by the liberal elite in the media and the entertainment industry.
Throughout the book, as he details Castro's atrocities and terrorist plots against this country, his exportation of torture, Communism, and revolution to third-world countries (Castro sent KGB-trained interrogators to North Vietnam during that conflict to assist in the torture and questioning of American captives) Fontova juxtaposes the ignorant bleatings of media and Hollywood apologists for Socialism like Danny Glover, Steven Spielberg, Dan Rather, and Chevy Chase who have praised, and continue even today to praise Castro, and his government.
"Fidel-Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant" is beyond timely. With Communism dead almost everywhere in the world except right here on our doorstep, and with governors and scions of business traveling to Cuba to be wined and dined by a 78-year-old torturer and murderer, one can only wonder what will happen in this formerly beautiful Caribbean nation once its despotic tin god of a dictator passes into what will surely be a special form of everlasting punishment.
Perhaps that will be the subject of Fontova's next book. It is likely the only way he'll be able to top this one.
Gordon Hutchinson is the author (with Todd Masson) of The Great New Orleans Gun Grab
Summary of Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant
Osama bin Laden got credit for the terrorist outrage of September 11, 2001, but as author and journalist Humberto Fontova reveals in his landmark new book Fidel, Fidel Castro - Hollywood's favorite tyrant - had planned a similar terrorist attack forty years earlier, with a plot to explode 500 kilos of TNT at Grand Central Station, the Statue of Liberty, and four Manhattan subway stations. Fidel gives a litany of such shocking facts about Fidel Castro - the facts you won't hear from the fawning liberal media that covers up for Castro and that praises Castro's Cuba for its fine cigars, beautiful beaches, and free health care, while overlooking its tyranny, support for terrorism, and impoverishment of its people.Political Books
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