The genocidal Assad regime in Syria was ideologically inspired by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

A reflection on the 54 year alliance between the Assad and Castro regimes.

Hafez al-Assad seized power in November 1970 in a bloodless coup, and remained in power through brutal means until his death on June 10, 2000. The Syrian dictator ruled his country for over 30 years, and when he died in power, was succeeded by his equally brutal son Bashar al-Assad who ruled Syria for another 24 years.  Throughout these 54 years, the Castro brothers maintained a close relationship with the Assad regime.

Hafez al-Assad visit to Iran, 1 August 1997

 

Fidel Castro broke relations with Israel on the eve of the Yom Kippur War in 1973. This was required for all Soviet-aligned regimes, as the international communist line defined Israel as a colonial state and an arm of U.S. imperialism. However, the Cuban dictatorship went above and beyond in their hostility to the Jewish state.  Noticias de Israel (News of Israel) provided a more in-depth description of what took place next.

From the highest levels of power in Havana, a secret operation was orchestrated to send military support to Syria. A tank brigade, helicopter pilots, communications agents, and intelligence and counterintelligence officers were meticulously selected for this mission. It was imperative that these men did not arouse suspicion and that they were perfectly prepared for the task entrusted to them.

The Military Brigade of Senén Casas Regueiro was mobilized, and under the command of General Leopoldo Cintra Frías, a recognized name in military circles, this surreptitious plan was put into action. In a carefully planned diversionary maneuver, the soldiers left Cuba dressed in civilian clothes, with forged passports that identified them as university students. They traveled on separate flights to East Germany, where they made a technical stopover, before reaching their final destination: Syria.  

Once on Syrian territory, Soviet military equipment, including modern T-62 tanks and SAM rocket artillery, was ready for operation. Figures vary, but it is estimated that between 1,800 and 4,000 Cubans were present in Syria during the 1973 confrontation.

The surprise of this operation resulted in a series of significant losses for Israel, both in human lives and military equipment. Some civilian areas were also hit during the clash. 

On March 31, 1974, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan announced on US television that 3,000 Cuban troops had been dispatched to support Syria during the Yom Kippur War. The Economist published two articles in its Foreign Report in 1978 that highlighted Cuba's role in Syria beginning shortly after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Cuban tank crews fought with Syrian troops. According to Foreign Report, 180 Cubans were killed and 250 were injured.  

Cuban combat troops remained in Syria until 1975. 

Havana remained quiet when Assad invaded Lebanon in 1976, and occupied the country for the next 30 years. In 1979, Hafez Al Assad traveled to Cuba and met Fidel Castro. Castro, and other Cuban officials made no mention of the then ongoing Syrian occupation.

The bodies of hundreds of victims of the 1982 massacre that Hafez al-Assad ordered against Palestinians and Lebanese in the Tel al-Zaatar Palestinian refugee camp, northeast of Beirut, Lebanon are still interred in unidentified graves. Between 1,500 and 2,000 people, primarily civilians, are thought to have been killed, although some estimate that the total number of victims during the siege may exceed 4,000.

No criticism was made by Havana regarding the massacre of these Palestinians by Assad. On the contrary the relationship between Havana and Damascus remained strong.

Since 1975, 17,000 Lebanese have been disappeared by the Assad regime, according to Romy Haber, of the Catholic News Agency.

In the July 1986 issue of Commentary magazine, professor and commentator Daniel Pipes wrote an article with a title that asked a provocative question: "Syria: The Cuba of the Middle East?" and offered the following data point on relations between the two regimes.

"An August 1985 cable from Assad to Fidel Castro on the 20th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Syria and Cuba praised the two countries' friendship as beneficial 'for the two peoples in their joint struggle against world imperialism and its allies.' A telegram from the Syrian foreign minister on the same occasion expressed 'Syria's admiration for the fraternal Cuban people's great achievements and their firm stands against imperialist aggression on the Latin American people.'”

Syria continued its dominance over Lebanon after 1990 with the assistance of Iran and their terrorist proxy Hezbollah. Bashar al-Assad's succession to power in July 2000 was met, less than a year later, by a visit by Fidel Castro to Damascus in May 2001 where the Cuban dictator met with his Syrian counterpart.

Lebanese nationalists rose up nonviolently against the Syrian occupation beginning in 2000, and by 2005 had forced the withdrawal of the Syrian army in what became known as the Cedar Revolution, but it was not conclusive.

On June 28, 2010 Bashar al-Assad visited Cuba for two days, and met with Raul Castro.

In 2011, a nonviolent movement against the Assad regime emerged, which was met with extreme brutality, and resulted in a civil war. When the international community, belatedly, demanded an accounting for the rights violations committed by the Assad regime in Syria, the regime in Havana was one of a handful of governments that voted against investigating the crimes of the dynastic dictatorship in Damascus.

On August 23, 2011 the Cuban government along with China, Russia and Ecuador voted against investigating gross and systematic human rights violations in Syria.

On February 5, 2012 ALBA Countries reiterated rejection of "foreign interference" in Syria's internal affairs, expressing support for President Bashar al-Assad and confidence that he would resolve the Syrian crisis. ALBA Countries include Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. Meanwhile in Syria President al-Assad  engaged in massacres throughout the country

On June 1, 2012 at a Special Session on the deteriorating human rights situation in Syria with a special focus on the massacre in El-Houleh the Cuban regime and its allies took a stand against holding the Assad regime accountable for its gross and systematic human rights abuses.

  

Bashar al-Assad

The Associated Press reported that the U.N. Human Rights Council voted overwhelmingly on September 25, 2014, to share its evidence of Syrian atrocities in hopes it will be forwarded to the world's war crimes tribunal. By a vote of 32-5, with 10 abstentions, the 47-nation council adopted the resolution condemning the lack of cooperation by President Bashar Assad's government with a U.N. commission investigating rights violations since March 2011 in Syria.  Cuba was one of five nations—the other four being Algeria, China, Russia, and Venezuela—that voted against sharing evidence of  gross and systematic human rights violations in Syria.

Ten years of civil war and bloodshed with tens of thousands disappeared, millions displaced, and over 500,000 killed, yet the Syrian regime was being normalized in 2023 by too many in the international community.

 

Bashar al-Assad on December 8, 2024 fled to Moscow, and his dictatorship crumbled. Now the mass graves are being discovered, and the full scale of the horror is beginning to be understood.

 

It is also important to remember that Fidel Castro "was a source of ideological inspiration" for the Assad regime.

On December 8, 2024 I made the following observation in a thread of four Tweets on X:

It appears that the Assad dynasty that ruled Syria over two generations of incredible levels of brutality and terror has come to an end. Let us pray that what comes next after so many decades of depravity and repression is an improvement. Assad's decision to engage in the mass murder of the Syrian nonviolent opposition in 2011 sparked a civil war that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.  Now is the time to make an assessment of the governments who backed the Assad regime, and call them out as we learn of the crimes of this dynastic dictatorship. This includes the dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. All supported Assad, and legitimized his rule.

"It appears that the Assad dynasty that ruled Syria over two generations of incredible levels of brutality and terror has come to an end. Let us pray that what comes next after so many decades of depravity and repression is an improvement." https://t.co/5dO3DpvHFn
1/4

— John Suarez ن (@johnjsuarez) December 8, 2024

Holodomor Remembrance Day: Memory and witness for the victims of Stalin's 1932-33 Ukrainian Famine 91 years ago, and calling out Putin's genocide today

"There are pages in our history that are too painful to remember; but cannot be forgotten. The crimes that prove: the cruelty and cynicism of tyrants know no bounds. No words have yet been invented to fully describe the pain that Ukrainians have endured. In 1921, 1922, 1923. In 1946 and 1947. And in the darkest years of the Holodomor genocide of 1932–1933." - Volodymyr Zelenskyy, November 23, 2024 

#HolodomorRemembranceDay 

 

Holodomor Victims Remembrance Day is held on the fourth Saturday of November, at 4:00pm, the memory of more than 10,5 million Ukrainians killed during Stalin's genocide is commemorated with a moment of silence and lighting of candles.

The genocide in Ukraine is known as the Holodomor and took place ninety one years ago between 1932 -1933. Millions of children died in he artificial famine. This crime was ignored by the United States as it formally recognized the Soviet Union in 1933.  The Economist in 2012 reported on the 80th anniversary of this man-made famine:

Holodomor literally means death by hunger. In 1932 and 1933, a vast famine in Soviet Ukraine killed three to seven million people, according to estimates. While people starved, the grain was shut away in barns for export.

The deadliest famines in the 20th century were not in Africa but in Europe (Ukraine) and China.

Social science research has demonstrated that famines "happen only with some degree of human complicity."  Human decisions "determine whether a crisis deteriorates into a full-blown famine."

According to Felix Wemheuer, professor of Modern China Studies at the University of Cologne, in his book Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union," during the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union." 

Millions starved to death under brutal famine imposed by Joseph Stalin

However, to understand the nature of famine politics in communist regimes the monograph of Andrea Graziosi and Frank E. Sysyn in the East/West: Journal of Ukranian Studies titled "Communism and Hunger" is required reading. Consider the following:

"In fact, with the exception of the 1943 Bengal famine with its approximately two million victims, all of the other major famines of the twentieth century are directly connected to socialist "experiments": in 1921 and 1922 in Russia and Ukraine ( 1million - 1.5 million deaths); in 1931, 1932, and 1933 in the USSR (6.5 million - 7.5 million deaths, of which 4 million were in Ukraine and 1.3 million - 1.5 million in Kazakhstan); in 1946 and 1947 in the USSR (1 million - 1.5 million deaths); from 1958 to 1962 in China (30 million - 45 million deaths); from 1983 to 1985 in Ethiopia (0.5 million - 1.0 million deaths); and from 1994 to 1998 in North Korea ( estimates vary from a few hundred thousand to more than 2 million deaths)."

This was not due to poor central planning and socialist inefficiencies, but a deliberate policy of genocide against targeted population to consolidate political control by eliminating those who do not support their regime. The percentage of victims in the USSR and China relative to their respective overall populations were the same (5%). In the case of the USSR that meant around 7 million deaths out of a population of 160 million and in the case of China  estimates between 30 million and 45 million deaths out of a population of 600 million. 

The Ukrainian Research and Documentary Center on the 50th anniversary of the Holodomor released the documentary Harvest of Despair.

 We must also remember those who bore witness and spoke truth, and those who covered it up. Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist broke the story on the Ukranian famine on March 29, 1933 despite official denials. Walter Duranty of The New York Times wrote an article a day later rebutting Jones's claims that was published in the paper of record on March 31, 1933. Duranty knew that what Jones published was true, but he sought to appease his Soviet hosts, and remain in the country.

The Russians, under the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin, are engaging in genocide again. People of goodwill cannot remain silent, or worse try to minimize what is taking place. 

It also saddens me that the dictatorship in Cuba is not siding with the small country attacked by a superpower, but is backing the aggressor, and doubled down repeatedly in support of Vladimir Putin's criminal war on Ukraine on the diplomatic and misinformation fronts, and with thousands of Cuban soldiers fighting for Putin in Russian uniforms.

I stand in solidarity with Ukraine, and against Russian aggression.

 

There are pages in our history that are too painful to remember; but cannot be forgotten. The crimes that prove: the cruelty and cynicism of tyrants know no bounds. No words have yet been invented to fully describe the pain that Ukrainians have endured. In 1921, 1922, 1923. In… pic.twitter.com/ovztDcYSX0

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 23, 2024

Karl Marx in his own words at 206: Nothing to celebrate, much to remember and condemn

Anti-Semite, racist, advocate of terrorism, and genocide honored in Cuba.  While Castro regime agents spread anti-Jewish tropes over the internet, and back Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah in their war against Israel.

Miguel Diaz-Canel and Raul Castro (center) Photo by Abel Padrón Padilla

The Castro regime celebrated May Day, but Cuban workers have nothing to rejoice about. In Cuba, there are no legal independent unions, and workers do not have the right to strike or bargain collectively. 72% of Cubans live in poverty, defined by the World Bank as a daily income of less than $1.90. 

Pro-Castro travel agencies encourage visitors to attend May Day celebrations in Havana, and talk of hundreds of thousands of Cuban workers participating, but make no mention that it is obligatory, and if one fails to attend they can be fined, or fired. 

Nor is any mention made that non-authorized protests are brutally put down, live streaming it can get you a 15 year prison sentence, and officials are threatening the death penalty for taking part in nonviolent protests.

Prior to Cuba's 1959 communist revolution, that was supposed to empower workers, but stripped them of their rights and agency, Cuban trade unions for over a half century had achieved much for their members, and Cuban society at large.

Labor legislation passed in 1938 guaranteed workers' rights such as the minimum wage, pensions that assumed a constitutional character; and the creation of the Central of Workers of Cuba  Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC in Spanish) on January 28, 1939. All of the above made trade unionism an important factor in Cuban civil society. 

In 1940 a new Constitution was drawn up that respected labor rights, and strengthened them, and ushered in a period of competitive elections in which power was contested. The right to strike was recognized in the 1940 Constitution. This translated into real world gains for Cuban workers. For example, the sugar union "managed to impose a guarantee clause, thanks to which the workers of the sector obtained an extra salary of 13.42%, known as the sugar differential." In 1945, with half a million affiliates, the CTC was the second largest trade union in the region.

Professor James W. McGuire and Laura B. Frankel in their paper published in the Latin American Research Review, “Mortality Decline in Cuba, 1900-1959: Patterns, Comparisons, and Causes” found that “Cuba's progress relative to other Latin American countries at reducing infant mortality was even greater from 1900 to 1960 than from 1960 to 1995. During the earlier period, Cuba led all Latin American countries for which data are available at raising life expectancy and reducing infant mortality. From 1960 to 1995, by contrast, it came in fourth and fifth respectively.”

#Cuba celebra el #1deMayo.#PorCubaJuntosCreamos 🇨🇺 pic.twitter.com/7liIZuGnFD

— Presidencia Cuba 🇨🇺 (@PresidenciaCuba) May 1, 2024

Marxism-Leninism took power in 1959, and worker's rights began to evaporate along with wealth generation in the wider society.

On January 22, 1959 the CTC was replaced by the CTC-Revolucionaria. In the X Congress, held in November 1959. And in the XI Congress, November 1961, the delegates renounced almost all the achievements of the labor movement: "the nine days of leave for sickness, the supplementary Christmas bonus, the weekly shift of 44 x 48 hours, the right to strike and an increase of 9.09%, among many others.

The Hotel Habana Libre that had been owned by the Hotel Workers Labor Union (Sindicato Cubano de Trabajadores de la Gastronomía ) retirement fund was seized by the revolutionary government. The Hospital Maternidad Obrera (built 1939) was taken and fell into disrepair without adequate funding and maintenance by the revolutionary government.Workers were required to do "voluntary work" that was not voluntary.

The original intellectual author of this debacle is Karl Marx, and unfortunately despite the repeated disasters his ideology has caused around the world, many continue to advance his political agenda. This includes the communist dictatorship in Cuba, and their fellow travelers in the western media.

 

 Marx's writings demonstrate that the German philosopher is the father of the Communist ideology that has cost over a 100 million lives, and other endemic problems found in Marxist regimes.  Marx's early formulation of communism is antisemitic and offers a "solution" to the "Jewish Problem."

"Money is the Jealous God of Israel, beside which no other God may exist. Money abases all the gods of mankind and changes them into commodities.  The god of the Jews has been secularized and has become the god of the world. In emancipating itself from hucksterism and money, and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself...by destroying the empirical essence of Judaism, the Jew will become impossible." Source Karl Marx-Engels Collected Works (London 1975ff),vol. iii,pp146-74

His early defense of using terror, one of the key elements of Totalitarianism is also problematic.

"We are ruthless and ask no quarter from you.  When our turn comes we shall not disguise our terrorism." Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, vol. vi pp 503-5

"Far from opposing the so-called excesses, those examples of popular vengeance against hated individuals or public buildings which have acquired hateful memories, we must not only condone these examples but lend them a helping hand." Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, vol. vii p 239

The communist dictatorship in Cuba has followed this tradition repressing Jewish people in Cuba and collaborating with their enemies abroad to destroy the Jewish state of Israel, and members of its official media spread anti-Semitic tropes worldwide.

This genocidal impulse is not limited to Jewish people, and can also be found elsewhere in Marx's writings.

Karl Marx in the essay “Forced Emigration,” in the New York Daily Tribune, 22 March 1853 seems to view the elimination of classes and races as a necessary part of revolution:

Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way. 

In a July 30, 1862 letter to Frederick Engels, his chief benefactor, Marx described nineteenth-century German socialist, Ferdinand Lassalle, in a racist manner:

The Jewish Nigger Lassalle . . .fortunately departs at the end of this week . . . It is now absolutely clear to me that, as both the shape of his head and his hair texture shows – he descends from the Negros who joined Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or grandmother on the paternal side hybridized with a nigger). Now this combination of Germanness and Jewishness with a primarily Negro substance creates a strange product. The pushiness of the fellow is also nigger-like.

This may explain why the Soviet Union, the first communist regime, allied with Nazi, Germany in 1939 to divide Poland and plunge the world into World War II. It also might explain why 23 years later Fidel Castro would contract former Nazi SS Waffen members to train Cuban troops in 1962.

Winston Churchill recognized the historic context of Marxism observing, "Fascism was the shadow or ugly child of Communism… As Fascism sprang from Communism, so Nazism developed from Fascism." In more concrete terms Benito Mussolini, the first fascist dictator, was a Marxist before he evolved into a fascist.

There is much to remember and condemn on the 206th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. There is nothing to celebrate. 

“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?" - Matthew 7:15-16

If you want to help Cuban workers, and the Cuban people more broadly then sign the petition to call on international labor unions to call on the Castro regime to restore labor rights in Cuba.

 

#WeRemember: International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27th

"It happened, therefore it can happen again: this is the core of what we have to say. It can happen, and it can happen everywhere." - Primo Levi, 1986 The Drowned and the Saved

Never Again is Now.

Today, January 27, 2024 is recognized by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day and is observed around the world.  

We must never forget what happened,  6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and remain vigilant now and in the future to battle against the mass destruction of innocent human beings.

 

 

Primo Levi was right, it can happen anywhere - even in Israel, and even here.  

Three months and twenty one days ago on October 7, 2023, Hamas, an Iranian proxy, invaded and attacked Israel killing 1,200 and taking 240 hostages. This strike ignited a Middle East war between Israel and the terrorist organization Hamas, which has its base of operations in Gaza. This was the largest mass killing of Jewish people since the Holocaust. Two days after the Hamas terrorist attacks, before Israel had responded to the attacks, on the steps of the Sydney Opera House in Australia over a thousand protesters chanted, “Gas the Jews.” Sadly, the Cuban dictatorship backs Hamas, and is spreading anti-Semitic tropes.

Three years and twenty one days ago on January 6, 2021, when the citadel of American democracy was laid siege by an angry mob that resulted in five deaths - Nazis where there in the crowd. Robert Keith Packer, age 56, was wearing a "Camp Auschwitz" t-shirt, making light of the notorious death camp. Auschwitz was the largest of the German Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers. Over 1.1 million men, women and children lost their lives there.

“The moment infants are killed in their beds, women are raped, people are thrown on the ground and murdered, cruelly, satanically, and having done no wrong - that is a Holocaust”

Ruth Haran survived both the Holocaust and the October 7 Hamas massacre. pic.twitter.com/hOP2Q4IbY5

— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) January 26, 2024

 Five years and three months ago on October 27, 2018, Robert Bowers entered the Tree of Life synagogue with an AR-15, and three handguns shouting anti-Semitic slurs and opened fire killing eleven, and wounding six others. It was believed to be the deadliest attack against Jewish people in U.S. history, but it was not the first.

Unfortunately the international community has failed more than once since 1945 to prevent another mass slaughter. Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge murdered between one fourth and one third of its population between 1975 and 1979, civil libertarian Nat Hentoff pointed to another genocide that could have been stopped in Rwanda in 1994, and in 2016 we witnessed another in Syria where religious minorities, including Christians were being targeted. Today, we are witnessing the genocide of Muslim Uyghurs in China.

It is also important to remember that antisemitism is on the rise world wide and people of the Jewish faith need our solidarity and support now more than ever in confronting rising hatred and intolerance to ensure that what Nazi Germany did never be repeated. 

At the same time it is important to remember and honor the martyrs and heroes who resisted the Nazis.  Including Raoul Wallenberg, who saved 140,000 Jewish people, and was disappeared by the Soviets in January 1945. They are exemplars in moral courage that are much needed today. 

In 2017 in the United States we saw Neo-Nazis on the march in Charlottesville, North Carolina first in a torchlight parade chanting anti-Semitic rants that the following day turned deadly in violent clashes that claimed an innocent life. We must remain vigilant and denounce this evil ideology wherever and whenever it arises.

It can happen here. It can happen anywhere. We are not "OK".

When violence erupts in a society where the rule of law exists, it must not be tolerated, but dealt with an expeditious manner through the judicial system. However, where the poisonous tropes of anti-Semitism, and hatred against the Jewish people arise, it must not be censored by the government, but challenged by people of good will in the battle of ideas to expose both its intellectual and moral bankruptcy. 

Hate speech has Marxist origins that are in opposition to free expression. Perversely, it claims that language can be violence to censor speech while at the same time defending physical violence as justified. When you outlaw speech and drive it underground you imbue it with power and credibility it does not deserve. They tried this approach in Wiemar Germany and it only helped the Nazis take power.

"To forget the victims means to kill them a second time. So I couldn't prevent the first death. I surely must be capable of saving them from a second death." - Elie Wiesel

 

Holodomor Remembrance Day: Memory and witness for the victims of Stalin's 1932-33 Ukrainian Famine 90 years ago, and calling out Putin's genocide today

 "In the future, there will be fewer but better Russians." - Greta Garbo, Ninotchka, 1939

#HolodomorRemembranceDay

Holodomor Victims Remembrance Day is held on the fourth Saturday of November, at 4:00pm, the memory of more than 10,5 million Ukrainians killed during Stalin's genocide is commemorated with a moment of silence and lighting of candles.

The genocide in Ukraine is known as the Holodomor and took place ninety years ago between 1932 -1933. Millions of children died in an artificial famine. This crime was ignored by the United States as it formally recognized the Soviet Union in 1933.  The Economist in 2012 reported on the 80th anniversary of this man-made famine:

Holodomor literally means death by hunger. In 1932 and 1933, a vast famine in Soviet Ukraine killed three to seven million people, according to estimates. While people starved, the grain was shut away in barns for export.

The deadliest famines in the 20th century were not in Africa but in Europe (Ukraine) and China.
Social science research has demonstrated that famines "happen only with some degree of human complicity."  Human decisions "determine whether a crisis deteriorates into a full-blown famine."

 According to Felix Wemheuer, professor of Modern China Studies at the University of Cologne, in his book Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union," during the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union." 

Millions starved to death under brutal famine imposed by Joseph Stalin

However, to understand the nature of famine politics in communist regimes the monograph of Andrea Graziosi and Frank E. Sysyn in the East/West: Journal of Ukranian Studies titled "Communism and Hunger" is required reading. Consider the following:

"In fact, with the exception of the 1943 Bengal famine with its approximately two million victims, all of the other major famines of the twentieth century are directly connected to socialist "experiments": in 1921 and 1922 in Russia and Ukraine ( 1million - 1.5 million deaths); in 1931, 1932, and 1933 in the USSR (6.5 million - 7.5 million deaths, of which 4 million were in Ukraine and 1.3 million - 1.5 million in Kazakhstan); in 1946 and 1947 in the USSR (1 million - 1.5 million deaths); from 1958 to 1962 in China (30 million - 45 million deaths); from 1983 to 1985 in Ethiopia (0.5 million - 1.0 million deaths); and from 1994 to 1998 in North Korea ( estimates vary from a few hundred thousand to more than 2 million deaths)."

This was not due to poor central planning and socialist inefficiencies, but a deliberate policy of genocide against targeted population to consolidate political control by eliminating those who do not support their regime. The percentage of victims in the USSR and China relative to their respective overall populations were the same (5%). In the case of the USSR that meant around 7 million deaths out of a population of 160 million and in the case of China  estimates between 30 million and 45 million deaths out of a population of 600 million. The Ukrainian Research and Documentary Center on the 50th anniversary of the Holodomor released the documentary Harvest of Despair.

 We must also remember those who bore witness and spoke truth, and those who covered it up. Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist broke the story on the Ukranian famine on March 29, 1933 despite official denials. Walter Duranty of The New York Times wrote an article a day later rebutting Jones's claims that was published in the paper of record on March 31, 1933. Duranty knew that what Jones published was true, but he sought to appease his Soviet hosts, and remain in the country.

 The Russians, under the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin, are engaging in genocide again. People of goodwill cannot remain silent, or worse try to minimize what is taking place.

Olena @ZelenskaUA and I joined the commemoration of the Holodomor genocide.

Today, the Ukrainian people are united in their prayers, desire for justice, and the flame of our national memory.

Ukraine will never forget the millions of our people who were killed by starvation. pic.twitter.com/YlOYJvGmzS

— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 25, 2023

It also saddens me that the Castro regime in Cuba is not siding with the little country being invaded by a superpower, but is instead siding with the aggressor, sending Cuban soldiers to fight for war criminal Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.

If you are in the Washington DC area today then please consider joining in a nonviolent act of remembrance marking 90 years since this Russian act of genocide.

Karl Marx in his own words at 205: Nothing to celebrate, much to remember and condemn

 Anti-Semite, racist, advocate of terrorism, and genocide honored in Cuba and in Germany.

Karl Marx's heirs in Cuba: Miguel Diaz-Canel (left) and Raul Castro (2nd from left).

 The Castro regime finally celebrated May Day, four days late, on Friday, but Cuban workers have nothing to rejoice about. In Cuba, there are no legal independent unions, and workers do not have the right to strike or bargain collectively. 72% of Cubans live in poverty, defined by the World Bank as a daily income of less than $1.90. 

Prior to Cuba's 1959 communist revolution, that was supposed to empower workers, but stripped them of their rights and agency, Cuban trade unions over a half century had achieved much for their members, and Cuban society at large.

Labor legislation passed in 1938 guaranteed workers' rights such as the minimum wage, pensions that assumed a constitutional character; and the creation of the Central of Workers of Cuba  Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (CTC in Spanish) on January 28, 1939. All of the above made trade unionism an important factor in Cuban civil society. 

In 1940 a new Constitution was drawn up that respected labor rights, and strengthened them, and ushered in a period of competitive elections in which power was contested. The right to strike was recognized in the 1940 Constitution. This translated into real world gains for Cuban workers. For example, the sugar union "managed to impose a guarantee clause, thanks to which the workers of the sector obtained an extra salary of 13.42%, known as the sugar differential." In 1945, with half a million affiliates, the CTC was the second largest trade union in the region.

Professor James W. McGuire and Laura B. Frankel in their paper published in the Latin American Research Review, “Mortality Decline in Cuba, 1900-1959: Patterns, Comparisons, and Causes” found that “Cuba's progress relative to other Latin American countries at reducing infant mortality was even greater from 1900 to 1960 than from 1960 to 1995. During the earlier period, Cuba led all Latin American countries for which data are available at raising life expectancy and reducing infant mortality. From 1960 to 1995, by contrast, it came in fourth and fifth respectively.”

Cuba celebrates International Workers' Day

Thousands of Cubans filled the country's squares on Friday to celebrate International Workers' Day and the 205th anniversary of Karl Marx.

#ALaPatriaManosYCorazón 🇨🇺❤ pic.twitter.com/Tij1xTvPtM

— Embacuba_Turquia (@Embacuba_Turqui) May 5, 2023

Marxism-Leninism took power in 1959, and worker's rights began to evaporate along with wealth generation in the wider society.

On January 22, 1959 the CTC was replaced by the CTC-Revolucionaria. In the X Congress, held in November 1959. And in the XI Congress, November 1961, the delegates renounced almost all the achievements of the labor movement: "the nine days of leave for sickness, the supplementary Christmas bonus, the weekly shift of 44 x 48 hours, the right to strike and an increase of 9.09%, among many others.

The Hotel Habana Libre that had been owned by the Hotel Workers Labor Union (Sindicato Cubano de Trabajadores de la Gastronomía ) retirement fund was seized by the revolutionary government. The Hospital Maternidad Obrera (built 1939) was taken and fell into disrepair without adequate funding and maintenance by the revolutionary government.Workers were required to do "voluntary work" that was not voluntary.

The original intellectual author of this debacle is Karl Marx, and unfortunately despite the repeated disasters his ideology has caused around the world, many continue to advance his political agenda. 

Bronze statue of Karl Marx given to German town by Communist regime in China.

Karl Marx's 18-foot bronze statue was unveiled in his hometown of Trier, Germany, on April 13, 2018. The statue was a gift from China's Communist regime to commemorate the 200th anniversary of German communist theorist Karl Marx's birth on May 5th. Communist China has the highest absolute death toll of any communist state.

Marx's writings demonstrate that the German philosopher is the father of the Communist ideology that has cost over a 100 million lives, and other endemic problems found in Marxist regimes.  Marx's early formulation of communism is antisemitic and offers a "solution" to the "Jewish Problem."

"Money is the Jealous God of Israel, beside which no other God may exist. Money abases all the gods of mankind and changes them into commodities.  The god of the Jews has been secularized and has become the god of the world. In emancipating itself from hucksterism and money, and thus from real and practical Judaism, our age would emancipate itself...by destroying the empirical essence of Judaism, the Jew will become impossible." Source Karl Marx-Engels Collected Works (London 1975ff),vol. iii,pp146-74

His early defense of using terror, one of the key elements of Totalitarianism is also problematic.

"We are ruthless and ask no quarter from you.  When our turn comes we shall not disguise our terrorism." Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, vol. vi pp 503-5

"Far from opposing the so-called excesses, those examples of popular vengeance against hated individuals or public buildings which have acquired hateful memories, we must not only condone these examples but lend them a helping hand." Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, vol. vii p 239

Karl Marx in the essay “Forced Emigration,” in the New York Daily Tribune, 22 March 1853 seems to view the elimination of classes and races as a necessary part of revolution:

Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way. 

In a July 30, 1862 letter to Frederick Engels, his chief benefactor, Marx described nineteenth-century German socialist, Ferdinand Lassalle, in a racist manner:

The Jewish Nigger Lassalle . . .fortunately departs at the end of this week . . . It is now absolutely clear to me that, as both the shape of his head and his hair texture shows – he descends from the Negros who joined Moses’ flight from Egypt (unless his mother or grandmother on the paternal side hybridized with a nigger). Now this combination of Germanness and Jewishness with a primarily Negro substance creates a strange product. The pushiness of the fellow is also nigger-like.

This may explain why the Soviet Union, the first communist regime, allied with Nazi, Germany in 1939 to divide Poland and plunge the world into World War II. It also might explain why 23 years later Fidel Castro would contract former Nazi SS Waffen members to train Cuban troops in 1962.

There is much to remember and condemn on the 205th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx. There is nothing to celebrate. 

If you want to help Cuban workers, and the Cuban people more broadly then sign the petition to call on international labor unions to call on the Castro regime to restore labor rights in Cuba.