News

By Kathleen Gilbert

NEW YORK, June 22, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Posing semi-nude with bandoliers of carrots slung across her shoulders, Lydia Guevara, the granddaughter of Cuban communist revolutionary Che Guevara, has become the face of PETA's latest campaign against the killing of animals.

The new campaign, with the tagline “Join the vegetarian revolution,” is set to launch in October. PETA spokesman Michael McGraw said the campaign was “an homage of sorts” to Che Guevara, the icon of “progressive” revolution responsible for the deaths of thousands of political opponents.

Some are wondering, however, why the animal-rights group chose as their mascot the granddaughter of a man whose fascination with bloodshed is well-documented.

In April, the Polish government moved to ban images of Guevara, one of the most popular faces of Communism, and other Communist leaders, as part of a propaganda ban against what one Parliament member called the “terrible, murderous system that claimed millions of lives.”

“He loved executions so much that he had a window in his office in La Cabana prison overlooking the yard where the firing squads were at work,” noted Gerald Warner in an April 28 column for the Telegraph.

“Whenever a distraught woman came to plead for the life of her totally innocent son, Che's sense of humour prompted him to have the young man shot immediately in front of his mother.”

In his will, the Cuban Communist leader praised the “extremely useful hatred that turns men into effective, violent, merciless and cold killing machines.”

PETA also made the news last week after the animal-rights group chided President Obama for swatting a fly that was interrupting a CNBC interview.

“We support compassion even for the most curious, smallest and least sympathetic animals,” PETA spokesman Bruce Friedrich said. “We believe that people, where they can be compassionate, should be, for all animals.”

Historian Humberto Fontova pointed out the irony in a WorldNetDaily column Saturday.

“PETA and Lydia might get a tingle up their leg to learn how Cuban blackbirds also benefited from Lydia's granddad's policies,” wrote Fontova. He recounted the testimony of former political prisoner Hiram Gonzalez, who said it “didn't take long for the birds to catch on” to Havana's daily executions under Che.

“Flocks of them had learned to perch atop the wall that surrounded La Cabana Fortress and in the nearby trees. The firing squad volleys became their dinner bell. After each volley they swooped down to peck at the bits of bone, blood and flesh that littered the ground. Those birds sure grew fat.”