rescued by team in Che Guevara t-shirt

First news this morning, Ingrid Bétancourt was freed yesterday.

After 6 years in captivity in the arms of the FARC guerilla group, she and 14 other hostages were released thanks to an audacious and impeccably executed rescue operation by Columbia's army.

Soldiers posed as members of a fictitious NGO sympathetic to the rebels and pretended to fly the hostages by helicopter to meet with rebel leader Alfonso Cano.
The rescue, carried out without a shot fired.

Ingrid Bétancourt was captured in 2002 during her campaign for the Presidential election in Columbia.

Here is a video of her after their landing in Bogota:

Ingrid Betancourt : "C'est un miracle !"
Uploaded by lemondefr

Cuba: an African odyssey

Directed by Jihan El Tahri

Che Guevara in Africa.

300,000 Cubans fighting amongst african revolutionaries, from Congo to Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, and Angola between 1965 and 1991.

The priceless contribution of the Cuban doctors, who set an example for the future. 

The geopolitical issues of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, and the liberation of Nelson Mandela.

This documentary explores a widely unknown area of the relations between Cuba and Africa, in the struggle for Independence. 

The Cuban put a lot of military forces in this actions, but where their real strength reside is that contrary to the Western rulers, they were able to appreciate what could be done with the resources that were always available locally, and to develop these resources in a rational way, working alongside the African revolutionaries rather than trying to impose themselves onto them.

It also gives credit to Jorge Risquet, formidable master of negotiation, and a plethora of other legends.

Only deception is the relations between Castro and Mandela, which I hoped they would elaborate more on, as I saw a picture of Mandela in guerilla outfit in his Museum house of Soweto.