welcome to
hello me here on the Malacca red channel
and welcome to my home which is you
conceded I sure I'm just with my wife
but with my ear oh come on daddy Che
Guevara
that's what I'm talking about today it's
George Galloway on chain
you
welcome to good night with me George
Delaware I hope you're enjoying these
podcasts there on subjects large or
small expected and unexpected and we
need your feedback too in fact we'll
devote to the next podcast more or less
half the show to the feedback the
dialogue that you have been providing
these podcasts are now achieving
something like a thousand heads a day
each which is a lot of business and the
political television business by
anybody's standards and that indicates
that whether or not people are agreeing
with what I've got to say they're at
least interested in hearing work got to
say and I hope that that is because I
have a reputation that I built up or
when he made 40 years in politics did a
little more than 40 years in politics of
saying what I mean and meaning what I
see and I think that there's a market
for that in today's degraded poverty at
least in this country now everybody has
heroes I have many behind me we have
Muhammad Ali one of my all-time heroes
and we're going to do a podcast about
the life of Muhammad Ali others Malcolm
X the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat
South African leader of the African
National Congress doesn't Mandela 93
years young in whose army I was quite
proud to serve for many years in the
struggle against apartheid and many
others but my greatest hero
my number-one hero and arguably the
greatest man of the twentieth century
certainly a part of the greatest
revolution of the 20th century is the
man that I'm going to be talking about
sealing commandant a Che Guevara or
Ernesto Guevara Lynch I say that as I
prepared to fly to the island of Ireland
from which of course the Lynch family
the maternal side of Jays family here
than the Irish people are particularly
proud about that as well they might be
Ernesto who quickly became nickname this
chain because of his virtual addiction
to T was born in Argentina and he was a
very sickly child indeed there were many
moments when it looked like he might not
survive he had very chronic asthma which
afflicted him all of his life didn't
stop him smoking cigars which is
probably the only similarity that I have
with him I don't have asthma but I
shouldn't be smoking neither should he
his doctor once said to him that he had
to cut down to one cigar a day doctor's
orders with which he faithfully complied
except the one cigar a day was about 17
inches long so she was afflicted by poor
health all of his life
which makes the course of our life even
more extraordinary why do I love
changing my life so not just because he
happens to be one of the coolest looking
men that walked suddenly since the
invention of photography not just
because of the spirit of adventure and
independence of mind which seems to have
been visited upon him since childhood
and his teenage years
I remember being one of the first people
in the world actually to read the
Motorcycle Diaries in manuscript form
thinking this would make a great movie
and indeed it did make a great movie
Angie's life undoubtedly his cinematic
or a skill that no work of fiction
actually could be but the reason I love
che guevara most is his spirit of
internationalism which I could sum up
for you if you like in in this sentence
Che Guevara was an object I'm he was not
a human but he risked his life many
times in the battlefield in Cuba trying
to bring about the success of the Cuban
Revolution in which he was an important
indispensable part there were many great
leaders of the Cuban Revolution some
some some unsung but the three most son
were the thing was son for the best of
reasons commandant II Fidel Castro was
of course the commander in chief
commandant a and heavy Che Guevara and
communal Cienfuegos a hundred fires or a
name were his two most important
commandant is working under his
vertical direction she never had at
least military training in his life and
yet he was a truly magnificent military
leader scoring victory after victory
over the military forces of the then
Cuban dictatorship or Batista was the
American puppet who ruled Cuba in the
interests of the Mafia the casino owners
the brothel owners and the American
criminal class as depicted in many
movies like Bugsy like The Godfather and
others he gave his considerable military
and political genius for the greater
part of his life to the people of Cuba
but he was not Cuba he fought alongside
patrice lumumba the greatest of all
African leaders the leader of the
African people of the Congo of the
struggle against Belgium and Western
colonialism and Lumumba of course paid
with his life his young life for that
crime against imperialism the leading of
one's people for the overthrow of the
colonial yoke Che Guevara was there
alongside Lumumba in Africa risking his
life on a daily basis giving his
experience of the Cuban Revolution to
Patrice Lumumba and his forces trying to
defend themselves against imperialist
overthrow interests his life in Africa
though he was not an African and of
course He gave His life famously in
Bolivia though he was not a Bolivian
again he wished to place at the service
of the
of Bolivia his heart and soul and this
he did so let me go back to the
beginning che guevara grew up in a Latin
America which was still though nominally
independent from Spanish colonialism in
fact under the yoke of the Yankee
neighbor to the north the country which
had appropriated the name of the
Americas for itself as if there were no
other Americas secondly given a knew
that the only solution for the peoples
of what we call Latin America the
southern part of the American continent
was unity he knew that as long as the
peoples of Latin America were divided up
salaamed up but like the Arab world that
we've been talking about in these
podcasts as long as they were sliced up
into many states each of them ruled by
one form of dictator or another and
after they depended on young keep our
North American power that there could be
no future for the great mass of
suffering in isolated Latin American
poor he knew that the poisonous racism
and genocide of destruction of the
native peoples of the Americas by the
colonialists whom of course his own
family were one could never be undone
but if it were to be arrested and the
culture and history and presence and
importance of the native peoples of the
Americas were to be recovered defend
saved could only be done on the basis of
a revolutionary program because he
believed that the argued racism
genocidal hatred of the Native Americans
was in the bones of this imperialist
system
I thought they knew that these
dictatorships could not be removed
except by force of arms he knew that
there was not much point in being a
liberal a Liberal Democrat in the Latin
America of the 1950s that anyone who
challenged the oligarchy power of the
small group of Latta foodists of big
landowners and the nascent capital or
places like Argentina that unless that
was challenged by force of arms there
would never be generated the
revolutionary force capable of removing
this oligarchy of removing this skirt of
Latin America and on his motorcycle tour
as a teenager he saw just how Latin
America was he had been fortunate to
grow up relatively speaking in a lower
middle-class income household surrounded
by books and loving parents and siblings
and an extended family even though the
family had to move around Argentina much
looking for a climate in which Jake
could actually live and survive as a
child climbing high into the mountains
going white cross the great option time
to find a place more conducive to his
chronic breathing problems
but when he blow on that motorcycle and
when all that to her
he saw all around in the dark shadows
para Rocklin ilysm had produced in Latin
America and became determined to join
its revolutionary overthrow Che Guevara
was a doctor was a dentist not exactly
the kind of profession that you would
identify with arms he had absolutely no
military experience when in Mexico he
hooked up with his lifelong comrade
Fidel Castro he was taken on by Fidel
for the then upcoming invasion by a very
small group of revolutionaries indeed to
be the doctor to the expedition but he
ended up the second most important
military commander in what was a
victorious revolution he grew very close
to Fidel he talked to them quite a lot
about left-wing theory about political
science Fidel was then much more of a
man of action big basketball player of a
man a man who was ready to get at the
enemy and Tarrant its throat chagum are
provided ideological neurons to Fidel
Castro's thinking and he provided of
course and internationalism which Fidel
at that stage lacked having very largely
spent all this time in his life in Cuba
somewhat in Cuban jails Bogota was able
to tell him what things were like in
other parts of Latin
and what had happened to other previous
anti-imperialist efforts the efforts of
one parole in Argentina the efforts of
Arbenz in Guatemala and elsewhere the
overthrow of whom was personally
witnessed on his motorcycle tour by
d'Ivoire so it was a meeting made in
heaven it was a meeting of minds and
souls of profound significance to the
history of the world and of course as
his famous line or maybe we'll deal with
the Cuban Revolution in a subsequent
podcast the Revolution was almost
snuffed out upon its arrival in Cuba and
the martyrdom of most of the tiny group
of guerrilla revolutionary fighters that
Jay and Fidel had brought with them and
those that survived had to make it
somehow into the Sierra Maestra into the
mountains to try to regroup and try to
continue with their mission and that's
where the greater of che began to be
demonstrated
there are many blue books and there's a
wonderful movie part 1 and part 2 I
could never bring myself to watch part 2
because then you have an unhappy ending
but I commend these movies to you about
Jace so I'm not going to as a word read
out a list of biographical detail I
would our capture the International an
internationalist spirit of Jane he was a
good speaker but not a great one he was
a good writer but not a great writer he
was a thinker of some historic
importance about the nature of
capitalism and how imperialism in a
reluctantly grew out of the capitalist
system and could not be separated from
it but it was as a fighter as a leader
of men
as a man who could rally others to risk
and give their lives in the
revolutionary cause that he was greatest
despite his physical condition despite
the very very considerable hardships of
fighting in the mountains che guevara
always led from the front he was one of
these commanders who stayed back at the
base count until the next objective had
been reached and secured and his passage
made easy he went on foot he went on the
back of a donkey he went on the back of
a horse through the steaming jungle in
conditions which many men even those not
afflicted by chronic asthma would have
fun difficult and he found at times
almost impossible sometimes his men
against his world physically carried him
through
the mountain but they did so because
they knew that he was not asking them to
sacrifice he was asking them to be ready
to sacrifice themselves alongside him
not in front of him but alongside him
and he was prominent in every battle
with his weapon in his head leading from
the front and in between encounters he
practiced justice amongst his men he
meted out punishment condign punishment
sometimes lethal punishment for breaches
of revolutionary ethics morality duty
but he was always just and I have been
lucky in my life having never been able
to meet the commandante himself to come
to know his children and many of his
comrades very closely indeed and all of
them speak of his sense of justice
indeed perhaps something to do with his
Roman Catholic background he had a great
sense of guilt mmm he was constantly
ruminating over this decision or thought
that he had made constantly searching
his soul his conscience as to whether
this decision or that have been the
right one and if he had behaved justly
in such and such a circumstance he
always of course accepted that Fidel was
the leader of the revolution but Fidel
trusted him so completely that he gave
him virtual military carte blanche and
thus in the final days of the
revolutionary war against the
dictatorship it was Jay with the speed
of his military advance and especially
his victory at Santa Clara which tipped
the regime over the edge you may recall
and the move
the Godfather the New Year's Eve party
which goes sour and it goes sour because
of Jays rapid military advance on Havana
which sends all the Mafia bosses and
that is themselves covering for the
airport to escape on New Year's Day on
the day of the triumph of the Cuban
Revolution a scene occurred which is
almost impossible to believe really
happened which Hollywood would probably
have rejected as too far-fetched all the
revolutionary columns Fidel Castro
Camilo Cienfuegos Nestor Che Guevara all
conserved in this huge captured military
base outside Havana and this great crowd
pictures exist on this level we can find
one this great crowd of fighters is
addressed from the back of a truck by
these three great revolutionary heroes
chairs on one side Camilo on the other
Fidel as always in the middle and as
Fidel is addressing this crowd which
have swollen to almost a hundred
thousand so they can imagine the noise
of the tumult a white duck fluttered
overhead and then came to learn directly
on the shoulder of Fidel Castro as he
was addressing the victorious
Revolutionary Army they see a tour video
it's not staged now this was seen by the
fighters present and generation since
something
of enormous significance the victory 1j
Guevara could have enjoyed life as a
government minister indeed he was a
minister for economics industry era for
trade it was even the governor of the
Bank of Cuba his face appearing on the
banknote an Argentine dentist with
chronic asthma appearing on the
banknotes of Cuba and then they up as
the governor of the Bank he could have
grown fat and complacent could have
enjoyed the fruits of the extraordinary
risks that he had T but one day soon
they asked to see Fidel and he told him
that he was Restless that this life was
not for him that he was a revolutionary
fighter
normal estar definitely not the domino
effect and so he asked for Fidel
permission which was given to leave Cuba
and to take his revolutionary efforts
elsewhere and this as I sketched he did
first in the Congo and then finally and
fatally in Bolivia the military effect
of Che Guevara's
intervention in Bolivia was in the end
negligible but the symbolic effect of
his self-sacrifice by going there being
captured and then cruelly murdered in
cold blood there by the Yankee
imperialists has had enormous
significance for the world and the world
he stood for the Bolivians worm already
no doubt as once said quite recently in
my ear shot che guevara came to liberate
us but we were not ready for him and we
let him down and for that we craved
forgiveness but the peasant woman who
said that was being unnecessarily harsh
sure the Bolivian expedition failed but
it planted the seeds on the mainland of
Latin America which directly led to the
great revolutionary tribes of who-ville
chalice and of the many now many
progressive leadership that have emerged
in Latin America including of course in
Bolivia itself now change spoons are now
back in the Cuba how did his bones come
to be Jai was captured
and he could have been taken on prisoner
but his captors from the Bolivian
dictatorship asked Washington what they
should do now that they finally had
their hands on comandante Che Guevara
Washington was in no doubt
and the people who were holding him
having received this order nonetheless
had extraordinary difficulty in carrying
it out
such was the presence such was the
charisma of this man even wounded
bleeding in front of them that it took a
long time to pull the trigger
finally chief said what are you waiting
for I am only a man but if ever a man
was not only a man it has to be Che
Guevara and when finally they killed him
firing bullet after bullet into his
dorsal they laid him out and began
taking his photograph but even the goons
of the Bolivian dictatorship could
quickly see that this Christ looking
bigger later almost as if having been
brought down from a crucifixion that
these pictures could make JD Barra more
dangerous in death even than he had been
in life and Washington got hold of the
pictures and suppressed them and for
many decades we didn't see them but we
can see them know in their extraordinary
power indeed that pictures alive and
dead of Che Guevara are now to be found
on the t-shirts on the flags on the
posters of hundreds of millions of
people from every corner of the globe
the picture the face the image and above
all the example of Che Guevara has
inspired now two generations nearly of
people who want to see liberty and
freedom quite a legacy
for a mother every single person
involved in the mother of Che Guevara
ended up themselves dead violently one
by one in different parts of the world
revenge was had against those but the
ultimate revenge will be when the masses
of the world he said about us cried for
two three four five Viet Nam's
for challenges everywhere to imperialist
rule and us hegemony when the masses
pick up the rifle that I dropped said
Che Guevara then we can say that we have
succeeded in making our revolution Che
Guevara is my you and this is the hero
of many millions of people we will never
forget him we are with him always
hasta la primera LaRoche already
hey America Tina welcome here in a
funeral for another whole family forever
hey Anna Carl Mullaly la primera consume
Estee Kirika Wonder Woman nothing half a
la cara de Medici
[ __ ] it
there's a story to my very soul
horrible
this one
be a part of
Oh
serve evil
awesome
[Music]
you