“Non-partisan,” Reverend Wright? Not according to Cuban intelligence defector Juan Vives, who from hands-on experience reports that the Cuba Council of Churches is in fact an arm of Cuba's ICAP (Instituto Cubano de Amistad con los Pueblos) itself an arm of Cuba's DGI, Cuba's secret police, founded and mentored by the KGB and East German STASI. the ICAP's long-time chieftan was Rene Cruz Rodriguez, by the Reverend Jeremiah Wright's own admission, perhaps one of his “friends."

Rodriguez' meteoric rise through Cuba's Stalinist bureaucracy was facilitated by his diligence as an early executioner, often beating out Che Guevara and Raul Castro themselves in his zeal to shatter the firing-squad victim's skull with a coup d' grace from his .45. (Here is some dramatic proof of Rene Cruz Rodriguez' zeal. That's him on the right giving the firing squad their order of “FUEGO!”)

On November 5, 1982 a Dade County, Florida, grand jury indicted Rene Rodriguez Cruz for smuggling drugs into the U.S..

This murderer headed a Cuban agency that Jeremiah Wright “worked with for decades” by his own admission, and whose staff he regards as “friends.” These “friends,” arranged the visit for the Rev. Jesse Jackson's and his 300 person entourage to Havana in 1984, which included Rev. Wright..

“Viva Fidel!” bellowed Reverend Jackson while concluding his speech at the University of Havana during that visit. “Viva Che Guevara!..Long Live our cry of Freedom!”

“He (Jesse Jackson)is a great personality,” reciprocated a beaming Fidel Castro, “a brilliant man with a great talent, capable of communicating with people, very persuasive, reliable, honest. Jackson's main characteristic is honesty. He is sincere and there is not a single bit of demagoguery in his conversations.”

As mentioned, this was summer of 1984, so at the time the world's longest-suffering black political prisoner suffered his incarceration and tortures in stoic defiance. “Nigger!” taunted his jailers between tortures. “We pulled you down from the trees and cut off your tail!”

I do not refer to Nelson Mandela. No, this prisoner was being tortured a few miles away from the Revs. Jackson, Wright and their entourage of black American luminaries. The prisoner was a black Cuban named Eusebio Penalver and he was being tortured by Reverend Wright's gracious hosts. Mr Penalver's incarceration and tortures stretched to 29 years which makes him the longest-suffering black political prisoner in modern history, surpassing Nelson Mandela's record in time behind bars and probably doubling the horrors suffered by Mandela during this period.

"For months I was naked in a 6 x 4 foot cell," Eusebio recalled to this writers. "That's 4 feet high, so you couldn't stand. But I felt a great freedom inside myself. I refused to commit spiritual suicide."

Sr Penalver served several months of this 30 year sentence naked in a "punishment cell" barely big enough to stand in, where he languished naked and in complete darkness. Shortly before his death in 2006, Senor Penalver told this writer, "Castro's apologists, those who excuse or downplay his crimes-- these people be they ignorant, stupid, mendacious whatever--they are accomplices in the bloody tyrant's crimes, accomplices in the most brutal and murderous regime in the hemisphere."

In fact, most who climb to positions of authority in Castro's regime did so as accomplices in mass-murder. It's part of the deal, named El Compromiso Sangriento (The Blood Covenant.) This tried and true Soviet scheme was presented by Soviet GRU agent Angel Ceutah to Che Guevara just days after he and Fidel entered Havana in January 1959. The scene was a meeting at Che's palatial (and recently stolen) estate in Tarara just west of Havana. Every candidate for regime officer, suggested Ceutah, would take his place in a firing squad and pull the trigger with live ammo.

From his prison-cell window Tito Rodriguez Oltmans, a former Cuban freedom-fighter and political prisoner, watched this blood covenant in action. "Every evening the military cadets and regime officials would be bused in and armed with Belgian .308 caliber FALs as they lined up for the firing squad," recalls Mr. Otmans, a prisoner in La Cabana prison in the early 1960s. “As darkness fell the condemned patriot -- shirtless and gagged -- would be dragged to the execution wall and bound. The cadets and officials would line up only four meters in front of the patriot and all had loaded weapons." ... FUEGO!

A brief aside: historically and almost universally, most members of a firing squad shoot blanks, to assuage their conscience. But such assuaging would contradict the Cuban firing squads' most vital purpose.

The point of the Blood Covenant was to bond the murderers, especially those in line for future leadership, with the murderous regime. The more shooters the more murderers. The more murderers thus manufactured the more people on hand to resist any overthrow of their system. After 14,000 firing-squad murders (according to the Black Book of Communism) Cuba's officer and regime official corps was plenty "bonded" to the regime.

And lest I be accused of partisanship here, on their frequent visits to Cuba, Republicans such as Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake, Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter, shake hands every bit as bloody as those of Jeremiah Wright's “friends.”