I had a kid in my class wearing a Che Guevara shirt last week. He didn’t know anything about the man whose face he was displaying, or the fact the man was a part of spreading and perpetuating the ideology that killed more people than any other in the 20th century.

Now the famed commie’s family wants to control marketing of the iconic photo that turns up just about everywhere.

With his picture on rock band posters, baseball caps and women's lingerie, Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara is firmly entrenched in the capitalist consumer society that he died fighting to overturn.

The image of the Argentine-born guerrilla gazing sternly into the distance, long-hair tucked into a beret with a single star, has been an enduring 20th century pop icon.

The picture -- taken by a Cuban photographer in 1960 and printed on posters by an Italian publisher after Guevara's execution in Bolivia seven years later -- fired the imagination of rioting Parisian students in May 1968 and became a symbol of idealistic revolt for a generation.

But as well as being one of the world's most reproduced, the image has become one of its most merchandised. And Guevara's family is launching an effort to stop it. They plan to file lawsuits abroad against companies that they believe are exploiting the image and say lawyers in a number of countries have offered assistance.

"We have a plan to deal with the misuse," Guevara's Cuban widow Aleida March said in an interview.

"We can't attack everyone with lances like Don Quixote, but we can try to maintain the ethics" of Guevara's legacy, said March, who will lead the effort from the Che Guevara Studies Center which is opening in Havana later this year.

"The center intends to contain the uncontrolled use of Che's image. It will be costly and difficult because each country has different laws, but a limit has to be drawn," the legendary guerrilla's daughter, Aleida Guevara, told Reuters.

Now let’s wait just one minute here. This is no different than the bin Ladens trying to profit off of pictures of Osama, or of the Hitlers trying to ensure that Adolf’s image is used only in ways consistent with his principles. So while I would be thrilled to never have to look at some smug middle class brat in Old Navy jeans and a pair of Air Jordans ignorantly displaying the visage of an old commie who would have gladly executed the kid as a class enemy, I would don’t want to see the family succeed. After all, allowing th4 family to make money off of Che would be a repudiation of the very principles they seek to uphold – and the fact that the face of the revolution is so commercialized is the ultimate in ironic rejections of the hell-spawned ideology of communism.

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I had a kid in my class wearing a Che Guevara shirt last week. He didnÂ’t know anything about the man whose face he was displaying, or the fact the man was a part of spreading and perpetuating the ideology that killed more people than any other in the 20th century.

Now the famed commieÂ’s family wants to control marketing of the iconic photo that turns up just about everywhere.

With his picture on rock band posters, baseball caps and women's lingerie, Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara is firmly entrenched in the capitalist consumer society that he died fighting to overturn.

The image of the Argentine-born guerrilla gazing sternly into the distance, long-hair tucked into a beret with a single star, has been an enduring 20th century pop icon.

The picture -- taken by a Cuban photographer in 1960 and printed on posters by an Italian publisher after Guevara's execution in Bolivia seven years later -- fired the imagination of rioting Parisian students in May 1968 and became a symbol of idealistic revolt for a generation.

But as well as being one of the world's most reproduced, the image has become one of its most merchandised. And Guevara's family is launching an effort to stop it. They plan to file lawsuits abroad against companies that they believe are exploiting the image and say lawyers in a number of countries have offered assistance.

"We have a plan to deal with the misuse," Guevara's Cuban widow Aleida March said in an interview.

"We can't attack everyone with lances like Don Quixote, but we can try to maintain the ethics" of Guevara's legacy, said March, who will lead the effort from the Che Guevara Studies Center which is opening in Havana later this year.

"The center intends to contain the uncontrolled use of Che's image. It will be costly and difficult because each country has different laws, but a limit has to be drawn," the legendary guerrilla's daughter, Aleida Guevara, told Reuters.

Now let’s wait just one minute here. This is no different than the bin Ladens trying to profit off of pictures of Osama, or of the Hitlers trying to ensure that Adolf’s image is used only in ways consistent with his principles. So while I would be thrilled to never have to look at some smug middle class brat in Old Navy jeans and a pair of Air Jordans ignorantly displaying the visage of an old commie who would have gladly executed the kid as a class enemy, I would don’t want to see the family succeed. After all, allowing th4 family to make money off of Che would be a repudiation of the very principles they seek to uphold – and the fact that the face of the revolution is so commercialized is the ultimate in ironic rejections of the hell-spawned ideology of communism.

Posted by: Greg at 10:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Two archaeological discoveries, only a few hundred miles apart. Both shed light on the region's rich heritage and importance. Notice how differently they are reported.

The first comes from Israel, where a possible palace or fortress from the time of David and Solomon has been discovered in East Jerusalem.

An Israeli archaeologist says she has uncovered in East Jerusalem what may be the fabled palace of the biblical King David. Her work has been sponsored by a conservative Israeli research institute and financed by an American Jewish investment banker who would like to prove that Jerusalem was indeed the capital of the Jewish kingdom described in the Bible.

Other scholars are skeptical that the foundation walls discovered by the archaeologist, Eilat Mazar, are David's palace. But they acknowledge that what she has uncovered is rare and important: a major public building from around the 10th century B.C., with pottery shards that date to the time of David and Solomon and a government seal of an official mentioned in the book of Jeremiah.

The discovery is likely to be a new salvo in a major dispute in biblical archaeology: whether the kingdom of David was of some historical magnitude, or whether the kings were more like small tribal chieftains, reigning over another dusty hilltop.

The find will also be used in the broad political battle over Jerusalem - whether the Jews have their origins here and thus have some special hold on the place, or whether, as many Palestinians have said, including the late Yasir Arafat, the idea of a Jewish origin in Jerusalem is a myth used to justify conquest and occupation.

Notice that the report is loaded with questions about the nature of Israel three millenia ago, its importance, and whether that presence has any real significance. The article even goes so far as to implicitly question the roots of Jews in the region -- something that requires a blind anti-Semitic streak and an ignorance of history. The Jewish presence in the region 3000 years ago is clear, and certainly predates the presence of the Arab jihadi horde that conquered the region some sixteen centuries later. The subtext here is the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, and the discovery of evidence supporting the Hebrew Scriptures as supporting Israel's claim to the a covenant right to the Land of Israel. And given that this discovery is in predominantly Arab East Jerusalem, there are those who want to discredit the discovery.

On the other hand, this Christian era discovery in Egypt receives only slight coverage.

The remains of an ancient church and monks' retreats that date back to the early years of monasticism have been discovered in a Coptic Christian monastery in the Red Sea area, officials said Saturday.

Workers from Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities found the ruins while restoring the foundations of the Apostles Church at St. Anthony's Monastery. The remains are about 2 or 2 1/2 yards underground, said the head of the council, Zahi Hawass.

The monastery, which is in the desert west of the Red Sea, was founded by disciples of St. Anthony, a hermit who died in A.D. 356 and is regarded as the father of Christian monasticism. A colony of hermits settled around him and he led them in a community.

The remains include the column bases of a mud-brick church and two-room hermitages.

The remains of a small oven and a stove for food were found in one hermitage room, Hawass said. Another room had Coptic writing on the walls and a small mud-brick basin.

"These hermitages are the oldest in Egypt and they cast light on the history of monasticism in Egypt," Abdullah Kamel, the head of the council's Islamic and Coptic Antiquities department, told The Associated Press.

Kamel could not offer a precise date for the hermitages.

Christians account for an estimated 10 percent of Egypt's population and belong mainly to the Coptic Church, an Orthodox church that traces its origins to St. Mark.

Notice, there is no question of denying the Christian heritage of Egypt or that Christians have a legitimate place in Egypt. This is a significant find, potentially telling us much about the development of the early monastic tradition within Christianity. Having studied the Desert Fathers and Mother of the fourth and fifth centuries, I can tell you that there are great gaps that could be filled in by the research conducted at this site.

Why the difference in coverage? I would like to suggest that it goes back to the relationship between Islam and the two communities whose presence is revealed by the discoveries. In Egypt, Christians have meekly accepted dhimmi status, living as second-class citizens in their own homeland. Their presence, and their historical place, are therefore accepted by the Muslims. But the Jews of israel have deared to stand on their own feet and challenge the right of the Arabs to dominate them. Rather than wilt in the face of some eighty years of Muslim terror and murder (dating back well before independence to the time of the Balfour Declaration), the Jews have fought back and carved themselves a country after being dhimis in their own homeland for over a millenium. The discovery of evdence which legitimized their presence must therefore be delegitimized by the opponents of Israel and the partisans of the Palestinians.

(Hat Tip: The Anchoress)

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