Tip of the iceberg: Two Cuban diplomats expelled for conducting "influence operations"

"We feel great pride that the first, very modest draft officially submitted to serve as the basis for the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man was written by Dr. Ernesto Díhigo, an eminent professor at the University of Havana and a member of the Cuban delegation." - Guy Pérez-Cisneros

Cuban diplomats have engaged in assaults, acts of repudiation and terrorism

Today the United States announced it is expelling two Cuban diplomats and is restricting travel of members of Cuba's permanent mission to the United Nations.  Reasons cited for the expulsions and travel restrictions were that they were trying to "conduct influence operations against the United States." 

After 2 members of Cuba’s UN mission engaged in activities harmful to U.S. national security, we asked them to leave the U.S. Members of Cuba’s UN mission are also restricted to stay in Manhattan. We take any & all attempts against the National Security of the U.S. seriously.

— Morgan Ortagus (@statedeptspox) September 19, 2019

The Castro regime and their apologists will attempt to come to the defense of these diplomats that have a long track record of not being diplomatic, and on occasion behaving more like secret police, a violent mob or a mafia operation.

Cuban diplomats for more than 50 years have plotted and facilitated terrorist attacks, beaten up peaceful protesters, threatened and bitten protesters using homophobic language, and participated in the cover up of extrajudicial killings.

Consider the following partial chronology of malfeasance:

New York City (2018)
On October 16, 2018 Cuban diplomats led an "act of repudiation" at the United Nations to prevent a discussion on the plight of political prisoners in Cuba at a side event organized by the United States.

Cuban "diplomats" try to shout down side event on political prisoners

Panama (2015)
On April 8, 2015 Cuban diplomats streamed out of the the Cuban Embassy in Panama attacking civil society representatives who at the time were laying flowers at a bust of Jose Marti in a public park nearby. Several activists were injured and at least one required surgery. During the Summit of the Americas Cuban diplomats disrupted official meetings in order to block Cuban and Venezuelan dissidents from taking part, despite being officially accredited. 

Cuban diplomats assaulted nonviolent protesters in Panama

Dominican Republic (2012)
On January 28, 2012 in the Dominican Republic the Cuban ambassador physically assaulted a 70 year old Cuban exile who had screamed "Down with Fidel! Down with the Castros!" This same diplomat had been already expelled by the United States in 1995 for beating up peaceful demonstrators in New York City. 

Mexico (2012)
In January of 2012 there were reports in the media of Cuban, Iranian and Venezuelan diplomats meeting in Mexico to discuss cyber attacks on U.S. soil and allegedly seeking information about nuclear power plants in the United States. 

Cuban diplomat bit a young Norwegian woman of Cuban-Norwegian descent in 2010.

Oslo, Norway (2010)
On May 22, 2010 Norwegian media reported that Cuban diplomat, Carmen Julia Guerra, insulted, threatened, and bit a young Norwegian woman, Alexandra Joner age 19, of Cuban descent on her mother's side while she was across the street from the Cuban embassy in Oslo. She was filming a non-violent demonstration in solidarity with the Ladies in White and in remembrance of martyred Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo. The main national newspaper in Norway, Aftenposten,  photographed the young girl with bite marks on her hand.

San Jose, Costa Rica (2004)
Cuban counsel Rafael Dausá Céspedes utilized groups with ideological affinities with the Cuban revolution in Costa Rica to physically storm a pro-democracy event using physical intimidation and threats of violence to shut it down after it had started in what was an attempted act of repudiation. This led to a two and a half hour stand off. Meanwhile in another part of the same building the event went off without a hitch.  

Geneva, Switzerland (2004)
On April 15, 2004 when the United Nations Human Rights Commission  decided by a single vote to censure the communist regime for its human rights record a Cuban human rights defender Frank Calzon was physically attacked by members of the Cuban diplomatic delegation. According to Freedom House: "Witnesses said a Cuban delegate punched Mr. Calzon, knocking him unconscious. UN guards reportedly protected him from further assault by additional members of the Cuban delegation."

Paris, France (2003)
At the Cuban embassy in Paris on April 24, 2003 Cuban diplomats engaged in the brutal beating of nonviolent protesters with iron bars and threatened them with deadly force. "Not only did members of the embassy come out with iron bars to hit us, but one of them was carrying a firearm, which he loaded while outside the embassy," RSF Secretary-General Robert Ménard said. "This new element is extremely serious. It is unacceptable that persons linked to a foreign embassy should commit such offences on French territory."

Washington, DC (2000)
On April 14, 2000 nonviolent protesters gathered in front of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington DC. In the early evening, a band of about 10 Cuban diplomats, alleged to have been drinking took off their coats, ties and jewelry, began screaming obscenities and yelling threats, and indiscriminately attacked 20 peaceful protesters  with fists and sticks, even injuring a Secret Service officer. Among the Cuban diplomats engaged in the violent assault, according to one of the victims, was Gustavo Machin Gomez.

Senior Cuban diplomat engaged in violent physical assault of US citizens in 2000

Mexico City, Mexico (1996)
On March 8, 1996 a group of Mexican students belonging to various universities,  a federal representative of the PAN Cristián Castaño Contreras, and a Cuban journalist were brutally assaulted by officers and employees of the Cuban embassy during a peaceful demonstration outside of the embassy. The attack left many injured. The Cuban embassy staff even attacked a student displaying a Mexican flag and tried to destroy it. The behavior was reminiscent of a Rapid Response Brigade in Cuba used to beat down dissidents in the island.

New York City, USA (1994)
 The United States expelled two Cuban diplomats on April 12, 1995, for having assaulted people last August (1994) protesting in front of Cuba's mission to the United Nations. The diplomats, Edmundo Suarez Hernandez, a counselor, and Saul Hermida Griego, an attache, and their families were told are to leave by midnight Sunday.  On August 30, 1994 protesters chained themselves to the Cuban Mission door. Cuban diplomats attacked them with sticks, screaming, "Cuba Our Way!" Two diplomats wielded a crowbar and ax handle. More than a dozen police officers suffered injuries. Four Cuban Mission employees were arrested on assault charges. All four were released after claiming diplomatic immunity.  US officials said it's unusual for diplomats to be expelled for violent behavior.

Cuban diplomats implicated in 1969 bombing plot in New York City

New York City, USA (1969)
A Black Panther plot to bomb five Manhattan department stores on April 3, 1969 during the Easter shopping rush was broken up by the indictment of 21 members of the militant group on April 2nd. The Chicago Tribune reported that they had planned to "set off bombs in the midtown stores of Macy's Alexander's. Bloomingdale's, Korvette's and Abercombie & Fitch. The bombings were to be accompanied by gunfire in the crowded stores." They had also planned to dynamite the tracks of Penn Central railroad at six location and bomb a police station in the Morrisania section of the Bronx to divert police from the railroad bombings. On April 10, 1969 Andrew Tulley reported in the Reading Eagle that that the Communist Cuban mission to the United Nations has become a financial and propaganda headquarters for promoting revolution by black militants and white radicals. ... Specifically, it was said, these include the Black Panther Party. The United States denied re-entry visas to two Cuban U.N. diplomats ..."as a normal reaction to evidence that the Cuban mission is engaged in extensive subversive activities.

Cuban diplomats planned terror attack in New York City in 1962

New York City, USA (1962)
Cuban diplomats Elsa Montera Maldonado and Jose Gomez Abad, a husband and wife team at the Cuba Mission in New York City, who in reality were State Security agents who plotted to murder large numbers of Americans. Both were expelled for their role in a planned terrorist attack on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1962 which sought to detonate 500 kilos of explosives inside Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal.

Cuban diplomats Guy Pérez-Cisneros, Ernesto Dihigo played crucial role for UDHR

It was not always this way. Seventy years ago, a democratic Cuba helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and establish the UN Human Rights Commission.

Cuba’s last democratic president, Carlos Prio Socarras, was elected in free and fair elections and assumed office on Oct. 10, 1948. President Prio respected human rights, and this was reflected by the actions taken by his diplomats at the founding of the UN.

Cuba, Panama, and Chile were the first three countries to submit full drafts of human rights charters to the Commission. Latin American delegations, especially Mexico, Cuba, and Chile inserted language about the right to justice into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in what would become Article 8.

Cuban delegate Guy Pérez-Cisneros addressed the UN General Assembly on Dec. 10, 1948 proposing to vote for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Cuban Ambassador celebrated that it condemned racism and sexism, and also addressed the importance of the rule of law:

“My delegation had the honor of inspiring the final text, which finds it essential that the rights of man be protected by the rule of law, so that man will not be compelled to exercise the extreme recourse of rebellion against tyranny and oppression.”

This democratic Cuba was overthrown on March 10, 1952 by Fulgencio Batista and hopes of a democratic restoration frustrated by the Castro brothers in 1959.

Guy Pérez-Cisneros died of a stroke in 1953.

Ernesto Dihigo, like Pérez-Cisneros, left the diplomatic corps following the 1952 coup, but returned as Cuba’s Ambassador to the United States in January of 1959 retiring in 1960. He left Cuba in 1989 and died in Miami in 1991.

Democrats should share this history with Cubans on the island to demonstrate that civil and political rights are an intrinsic part of a shared Cuban heritage that in 1948 made world history and that the regime in the island today would like erased.

80 years ago today the Soviet Union invaded Poland in alliance with the Nazis

"The ruling circles of Poland boasted quite a lot about the ‘stability’ of their state and the ‘might’ of their army. However, one swift blow to Poland, first by the German Army and then by the Red Army, and nothing was left of this ugly offspring of the Versailles Treaty which had existed by oppressing non-Polish nationalities." - Vyacheslav Molotov, Soviet Foreign Minister in October 31, 1939  speech

On September 17, 2019 the Soviet Union invaded Poland.

80 years ago today in the early morning hours of September 17, 1939 the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the East. According to the History Channel, "the 'reason' given was that Russia had to come to the aid of its “blood brothers,” the Ukrainians and Byelorussians, who were trapped in territory that had been illegally annexed by Poland."

On September 17, 1939 with "between 600–650,000 soldiers and over 5,000 thousand Red Army tanks  [of the Soviet Union] invaded the Second Polish Republic, which had been fighting against German aggression since 1 September."



This invasion was in accordance with the secret protocols of the Hitler-Stalin Pact also known as the  Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that divided up Central Europe between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.

Nazi and Soviet troops met in the middle of Poland and exchanged pleasantries on September 22, 1939 and held a joint military parade in Brest-Litovsk. Soviet troops paid their respects as the Swastika flag was lowered, and Germans moved west to their agreed upon line of partition.



About 230,000 [Polish] soldiers and officers and thousands of military service representatives were taken captive by the Bolsheviks."

The Soviet precursor to the KGB intelligence service was the NKVD. "From October 1939, the delegated NKVD officials from Moscow heard the prisoners, encouraged them to cooperate and collected data. Only a few of the prisoners agreed to collaborate. The commanding officers’ reports included opinions about hostile attitudes of the Poles and a minimal chance of them being useful to the USSR authorities."

Nazi and Soviet soldiers salute raising of the Nazi flag on September 22, 1939 in Poland

The decision to shoot the prisoners was signed on March 5, 1940 by seven members of the All- Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) authorities: Joseph Stalin, Lavrentiy Beria (proposer), Kliment Voroshilov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Anastas Mikoyan, Mikhail Kalinin and Lazar Kaganovich.

The lists of those sent to death were to be prepared and signed by Piotr Soprunienko, commander-in-chief of the Prisoners of War Board of People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, which was created by the order of Beria in September 1939

In the Spring of 1940 the Soviet secret police began to shoot the prisoners in the back of the head or in the neck and burying them in mass graves. This war crime became known as the Katyn massacre.

 

The secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact not only partitioned Poland but also divided up Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland and Romania into Nazi and Soviet "spheres of influence." The Soviet Union was an ally of the Third Reich during the first 18 months of World War Two.

17 September 1939 | The Soviet Union invaded Poland, assisting the Germans, as agreed in the #Ribbentrop-#Molotov Pact & its secret protocol that divided Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland & Romania into German and Soviet "spheres of influence." https://t.co/yxr87GBN03 pic.twitter.com/syabhoa5AL

— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) September 17, 2019

Wall Street Journal reports that "Venezuela's Hugo Chávez worked to flood U.S. with Cocaine"

Where do you think he got the idea to do that from?

Hugo Chavez was mentored by Fidel Castro

Juan Forero and José de Córdoba in The Wall Street Journal have written an important expose on the role played by Hugo Chávez in flooding the United States witch cocaine. The report is based on documents provided by federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York. According to The Wall Street Journal report:

In 2005, Chávez convened a small group of his top officials to discuss plans to ship cocaine to the U.S. with help from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, said a participant in the meeting who, at the time, was a justice on Venezuela’s supreme court, according to the papers. The Bush administration was strongly criticizing his governing style then and had publicly approved of a 2002 coup that failed to oust him.
“During the meeting, Chávez urged the group, in substance and in part, to promote his policy objectives, including to combat the United States by ‘flooding’ the country with cocaine,” said an affidavit in the documents written by a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent. The former supreme court justice was identified as Eladio Aponte, who fled to the U.S. in 2012 and has been a witness on drug cases, said a person familiar with his role in the investigations.

Nicolas Maduro has continued this practice, and family members have been caught smuggling cocaine. Reuters reported on December 14, 2017 "[t]wo nephews of Venezuela’s first lady were sentenced to 18 years in prison following their convictions in New York on U.S. drug trafficking charges."

There are those who are questioning what is the motive for the Chavista regime in Venezuela to flood the United States with cocaine. The answer requires a broader and strategic look through the perspective of the Chavista regime in Venezuela and the Castro regime in Cuba. 

The Wall Street Journal argues that Bush Administration criticism of the Chavez regime and public approval of a failed 2002 coup were the reasons for the cocaine smuggling, but relations between the two countries remained normal, and U.S. diplomats had warned the Chavez regime of the threat. Furthermore this policy continued during the Obama Administration.

One needs to go further back and look at a key Chavez ally.

On March 1, 1982 the Cuban dictatorship was placed on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. This was less than three months after the US State Department confirmed that the Castro regime was using a narcotics ring to funnel both arms and cash to the Colombian M19 terrorist group then battling to overthrow Colombia’s democratic government. 

Drug traffickers: Raul Castro with Aldo Santamaria-Cuadrado

According to the UPI in 1982 the following high ranking Cuban officials were indicted by the United States for operating a drug ring out of Cuba: Aldo Santamaria-Cuadrado, head of the navy and a member of the Communist Central Committee; Fernando Ravelo-Renedo, ambassador to Colombia; Gonzalo Bassols-Suarez, a former staff member at the Cuban embassy in Colombia; and Rene Rodriguez-Cruz, a Central Committee member and president of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the People. 

According to  the July 18, 1989 Heritage Foundation report, Castro's Show Trials Do Not Mean an End to Cuba's Drug Trade, the links to building narcotics networks to the United States stretch back to the earliest days of the dictatorship.

"Documented evidence of Cuba's role in drug trafficking dates back to the early 1960s. According to a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) intelligence report released in 1982, a meeting was held in Havana in 1961 between communist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Moises Crespo of the Cuban Secret Police, and future Chilean socialist president Salvador Allende, to.discuss creating a narcotics network to smuggle illegal drugs to the U.S."

This was at a time when Soviet aid to Cuba made the U.S. Embargo irrelevant to the Castro regime, and the purpose of sanctions was to increase the cost to the Soviet Union to operate in Latin America.

Despite receiving massive and increasing Soviet subsidies between 1960 and 1987 the Castro regime engaged in massive arms smuggling and drug trafficking in the service of ideological objectives and as can be seen in Venezuela today in establishing a Cuban imperial presence in the hemisphere, and striking at the soft underbelly of the United States.
In a 1991 Frontline documentary, Cuba and Cocaine, U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Commander Jeff Karonis, stated, "We would observe in the middle of the day an air drop going on inside Cuban waters. The scenario would be for a small twin-engine airplane with maybe 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of cocaine to fly over Cuba, drop the drugs to a predesignated rendezvous point to several boats. Then it would exit back down off Cuba, and many times a Cuban military vessel would be in the immediate vicinity, right on scene with them.'' 

The results of this decades long effort can be seen in reports on drug abuse in the U.S. military and the wider American populace. Members of elite units with drug addictions committing suicide. Flooding the United States with drugs is an effective way to reduce military readiness.

When the FBI broke up the Wasp Network in 1998 it discovered, among other things, that they were "compiling the names, home addresses, and medical files of the U.S. Southern Command’s top officers and that of hundreds of officers stationed at Boca Chica Naval Station in Key West." It is a safe bet to make that there are other networks of Cuban spies monitoring U.S. military facilities and personnel, and their readiness.

The links between the Castro regime and narcotics trafficking stretch back decades and across the Americas.

Manuel Noriega and Fidel Castro embrace

During Panamanian strong man General Manuel Noriega's 1992 trial information emerged publicly implicating the Castro regime in drug trafficking that Sun Sentinel reported at the time:

"Federal prosecutors say Noriega traveled to Havana to ask [Fidel] Castro to mediate a potentially deadly dispute with top members of Colombia`s Medellin cocaine cartel. They say the cartel chiefs were upset because a major drug lab had been seized in Panama despite payment of millions of dollars in protection money to Noriega. According to the Noriega indictment, Castro negotiated a peace accord between the cartel and Noriega at the 1984 meeting. The allegation forms a cornerstone of the racketeering and drug trafficking charges against Noriega."

At the same time convicted cartel leader Carlos Lehder implicated Raul Castro and U.S. fugitive Robert Vesco "to route cocaine flights through Cuba." Capitol Hill Cubans blogged how two years later, a federal indictment listed General Raul Castro as part of a conspiracy that smuggled seven and a half tons of cocaine into the United States over a 10-year period.
This would not be the first time that drug trafficking was carried out to advance political objectives.

In the mid-19th century the British Government imposed the trade of opium upon China, generating huge numbers of addicts, weakened and compromised China’s territorial sovereignty and economic power for almost a century. This was done in order to redress the trade imbalance between the two countries that favored China.  Great Britain  in the 19th century had a population of 10 million and China had a population of 300 million. These population numbers are approximate to the population of 11 million in Cuba today and 327 million in the United States today.

The Castro regime sees itself as a revolutionary world power that has projected itself into conflicts in Asia, Africa, and the Americas over the past sixty years with successes in Vietnam, Nicaragua, Angola, Ethiopia, and Venezuela.

The Cuban dictatorship has also viewed the United States since 1959 as an existential enemy and has sought out creative means to effectively attack and destroy the fighting capacity of the United States.
 
This is what the Castro regime has sought to do to the United States since at least 1961, and is using its client state of Venezuela to carry on its agenda of undermining the United States. 

It is not surprising that Hugo Chavez, who was mentored and guided by Fidel Castro, would collaborate with Cubans in advancing this long term objective of flooding the United States with deadly drugs. It is also not surprising that the Castro regime would deny all of this and gas light the American public. It has done the same thing with the case of U.S. diplomats who have suffered brain injuries at the Embassy in Havana. What is surprising is that this is not understood by either the mainstream media or many policy makers in the United States who seek to downplay it.

Jackson Diehl in The Washington Post reported on Venezuela, the FARC, Cuba trafficking axis on May 24, 2015 in the article "A drug cartel’s power in Venezuela":

Ever since Colombian commandos captured the laptop of a leader of the FARC organization eight years ago, it’s been known that Chávez gave the Colombian narcoguerrillas sanctuary and allowed them to traffic cocaine from Venezuela to the United States with the help of the Venezuelan army. But not until a former Chávez bodyguard [ Leamsy Salazar] defected to the United States in January [2015] did the scale of what is called the “Cartel of the Suns ” start to become publicly known. [...] The day after Salazar’s arrival in Washington, Spain’s ABC newspaper published a detailed account of the emerging case against Cabello, and last month, ABC reporter Emili Blasco followed up with a book laying out the allegations of Salazar and other defectors, who say Cuba’s communist regime and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah have been cut in on the trafficking."

Consider the following: the Castro regime provides safe haven for the FARC in Cuba because it has appeared in Wikileaks. The close relationship between the regimes in Havana and Caracas has been long and well documented. Tens of thousands of Cuban advisers have been operating in Venezuela for years. Drugs are flooding into the United States at unprecedented levels fueling overdoses and an epidemic endangering American lives.

Shouldn't their role and the shared strategic objectives of the Castro and Chavez regimes be reported on?

Martin Luther King Jr.,Ernesto "Che" Guevara and their contrasting visions of struggle

“Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary.” - Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1967)

"We aren't engaged in any negative protest and in any negative arguments with anybody. We are saying that we are determined to be men. We are determined to be people. We are saying -- We are saying that we are God's children. And that we are God's children, we don't have to live like we are forced to live." - Martin Luther King Jr. (1968)

Both died at age 39 but their legacies could not be more different.

Cuba Archive has taken on an important educational campaign. In recent months Mia Farrow, Mayor Di Blasio and now Barnes and Noble have been caught promoting Che Guevara. The Ernesto "Che" Guevara cult is not only offensive to the families of victims he murdered, but dangerous for free societies. Che Guevara's writings were borrowed from Mao Zedong and were all about guerrilla warfare. This cult celebrates violence, killing and dehumanization. In 1967, as on many other occasions the Argentine spoke clearly celebrating brutality: “Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary.”

Guevara was also an advocate of nuclear war if it meant destroying the imperialists declaring in November 1962: "What we affirm is that we must proceed along the path of liberation even if this costs millions of atomic victims.”

Many were not taken in by this call to mass murder. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. told his staff in 1968 to combat the “romantic illusion” of Che Guevara style guerilla warfare among young radicals concluding: “We must not be intimidated by those who are laughing at nonviolence now.”

Critics of nonviolence like to point out that Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in 1968, but fail to mention that he succeeded in transforming the United States into a better country by successfully and nonviolently addressing historic injustices.

What did Reverend King accomplish? He led the successful Montgomery bus boycott that ended segregation on buses in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956. He led the Birmingham campaign in 1963 that faced off with the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene “Bull” Connor, who used high-pressure water jets and police attack dogs on children. The campaign ended with Connor losing his job and the city’s discriminatory laws were changed.

Reverend King played an instrumental role in the August 28, 1963 march on Washington, D.C. with over 250,000 participants. It was done to pressure for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 in Alabama demonstrated African Americans desire to vote. The violence by local authorities, racists, and the Klu Klux Klan and the nonviolent resistance of the civil rights activists were key to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. These laws gave African Americans political power that had been denied them.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was executed in Bolivia in 1967. What did he accomplish? Installing a communist dictatorship that killed thousands, and left millions in misery. Inspired guerrilla wars and international terrorism across the world that in Latin America helped give rise to a new generation of military dictators to combat the guerrilla threat. Che Guevara and Fidel Castro created the conditions for Augusto Pinochet to become the dictator of Chile. This is but one example.

Reverend King spent the last few hours of his life making the prophetic Mountaintop speech courageously predicting that he would not lead a long life and campaigning for the rights of poor people. What about Che? He was hunted down, while trying to overthrow the Bolivian government to impose a communist dictatorship and executed while trying to beg for his life.

Both the civil rights leader and the communist revolutionary died at the age of 39. However their legacies could not be more different.

The Barnes and Noble bookstore, Mia Farrow and Bill Di Blasio should not be promoting this individual or his ideology. Worse yet the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) decided on June 18, 2013 to add “The Life and Works of Che Guevara” to the World Registrar in order to provide funds to preserve and disseminate Che Guevara’s papers.

Need to celebrate non-violent icons like Oswaldo Payá

This is literally spreading hate and fanaticism to new generations that will result in more bloodshed, and already has in the past. The Che Guevara cult needs to be fought with facts, historical context and when necessary economic boycotts and social ostracism.

What the world needs is less Che Guevara and more Martin Luther King Jr. In the Cuban context that would mean elevating the writings of martyred Cuban opposition leader Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, who advocated love and freedom not hatred and tyranny. It would also mean sharing the facts surrounding his untimely death and demanding justice. Not to mention more friends of freedom wearing Oswaldo Payá t-shirts.

Cubans arrested to stop them gathering with sunflowers in parks across Cuba for human rights

Why we resist the regime in Cuba.

Santiago de #Cuba like #MartinLutherKing these courageous #Cubans have a dream: Freedom!@jdanielferrer @CarlosAmelOliva & a group of #UNPACU activists/@CUBADECIDE promoters arbitrarily arrested on their way to the March of the #Sunflowers 🌻 #8S #8SPaLaCalle #CBC #Canada #hrw pic.twitter.com/Bg4GXGkxKW

— Michael Lima Cuadra (@ngotranslations) September 8, 2019

Witnessing the events that unfolded today in Cuba brings to mind the words of George Orwell: "If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever." This is what Castroism seeks to perpetuate in Cuba and has succeeded over six decades. Orwell's dystopian vision realized.

Photos of repression in Cuba from the 1980s, the 1990s, and the 2000s.

However, witnessing the resistance to Castroism, the words of Mohandas Gandhi come to mind: "When I despair, I remember that all thru history the way of truth & love have always won. There have been tyrants & murderers, & for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it--always."

Prisoner of conscience and MCL nat'l coordinator Eduardo Cardet meets with compatriots

We must never forget that Communism in Cuba wasn't accepted but imposed, first by the lie, then by firing squads, concentration camps, and political terror.  These are the tools that the Castro dictatorship's agents are still using today to hang on to power.

First the lie, then the firing squad, and political terror.

Think of it. They unleashed forces of repression to prevent Cuban citizens from peacefully gathering in parks across Cuba, with sunflowers, to show their solidarity with the Ladies in White, who Sunday after Sunday are mistreated for peacefully assembling to call an end to the laws that run afoul of international human rights standards.

Police investigating "suspects" discovered with sunflowers.

Dozens of activists and human rights defenders have been taken and are missing. The full tally is still not known. Rosa María Payá  reported over Twitter in Spanish below that the "detained and disappeared ascends to 72 in Cuba just hours before EU high representative Federica Mog 's arrival to meet with dictators in Havana."

Detenidos/Desaparecidos asciende a 72 en #Cuba a solo horas de que llegue @FedericaMog alta representante de la #EU á reunirse con los dictadores en #LaHabana@hermanntertsch @cayetanaAT @Telicka @ALDEParty @YouthEPP @TonoEPP @CNNEE @EditaHrdaEU @europapress @EFEnoticias @EPP https://t.co/KvNliVxQhr

— Rosa María Payá A. (@RosaMariaPaya) September 8, 2019

However there are some questions that must be asked as the EU's representative arrived in Havana to meet with the dictatorship and not the democrats. "What will Federica Mogherini do? Speak out for human rights? remain silent and complicit? or worse actively embrace the dictatorship again?"

.@FedericaMog History will record whether you seized this moment to speak out for Cuba’s brave opposition, the human rights activists who are beaten and brutally arrested, and the political prisoners, or not. https://t.co/ai1vgha0OA

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 8, 2019