No, it is not cool

Apparently, the City of Galway is planning to erect a statue to a mass murderer, torturer, rapist and homophobe. His name? As if you didn't know. Che Guevara, of course, the all purpose pin-up of the ignorant left.

Yale Professor Carlos Eire, author of Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy, which won the National Book Award in 2003, wrote this letter and submitted it to the Irish Times in response to plans by the city of Galway to erect a statue honoring Che Guevara. The Times demurred, but it was published in the Galway Advertiser, and Professor Eire has given National Review permission to reprint it.

It is very succinct. Shame on the Irish Times.

Mind you, I think he is a little unfair on Oliver Cromwell.

ADDENDUM: Thanks to a reader for this excellent article on the subject by Kevin Myers who analyzes Che's ludicrous appeal to the left and naive youngsters. He also asserts very firmly that "most of the industrial-scale mass murderers of the 20th century were socialists. Pol Pot, Mao, et cetera, obviously, but also Hitler and his National Socialist Party". This has to be said over and over again.

Even in Cuba ...

... hunger strike works but at a price and with some limitations, as the Economist writes. For some reason we do not hear that much about Cuban political prisoners or those who die as a result of going on a hunger strike there.