"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
A mass murdering racist, who dined with Mao as millions died of hunger is not someone to celebrate.
"All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." - Matthew 26, 26:52
Some wish to celebrate Ernesto Guevara's birthday today. If he and his comrades had their way the world would have been subjected to a nuclear holocaust in October 1962, and they were bitterly disappointed that it did not happen.
Thankfully, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev reached a peaceful outcome to the Cuban Missile Crisis, but
the Castro regime protested it and was unhappy with their Soviet
allies not launching their nuclear missiles.
"Here is the electrifying example
of a people prepared to suffer nuclear immolation so that its ashes may
serve as a foundation for new societies. When an agreement was reached
by which the atomic missiles were removed, without asking our people, we
were not relieved or thankful for the truce; instead we denounced the
move with our own voice."
In the same essay, the dead
Argentine served as a mouthpiece for Fidel Castro declaring: "We
do assert, however, that we must follow the road of liberation even
though it may cost millions of nuclear war victims." Castro and Che were so outraged that the regime reached out to Nazis to purchase arms and train the regime's security services.
Castro and Che were not alone in their criticism. Mao Zedong also criticized Khrushchev for backing down in the 1962 Cuban
Missile Crisis, and this was the last straw in a series of slights
between the two communist powers that set the stage for the Sino-Soviet split.
However Castro eventually backed off and returned to the Soviet camp whereas Che Guevara embraced the Maoists.
This should not have been a surprise.
Mao Zedong had already been in power in China for a decade when the Castro regime took power in Cuba in 1959. In September 1960 Havana diplomatically recognized the Peoples Republic of China. Between 1960 and 1964 the two communist dictatorships would collaborate closely together.
Mao's regime in 1958 embarked on the Great Leap Forward, a campaign to reorganize the Chinese populace to improve its agricultural and industrial production along communist ideological lines. The campaign was a disaster that led to mass famine and a death toll of at least 45 million.
In the midst of the famine Ernesto "Che" Guevara with a Cuban delegation visited Mainland China and met with
Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other high ranking Chinese officials in
1960 to discuss conditions in Cuba and in Latin America, and the
prospects for communist revolution in the Western Hemisphere. As
millions starved in China the two revolutionaries dined through several
courses of traditional Chinese food.
Che and Mao dine in 1960 while millions starved in China.
Finally, on the question of race and sexuality the Argentine
revolutionary had retrograde views that some today continue
to ignore or excuse.
Unlike Mohandas Gandhi, who truly evolved in his views on race as a young man but is still attacked for them, Che Guevara seems to get a pass despite not showing an equivalent evolution. Politifact on April 17, 2013 quoted from The Motorcycle Diaries, a book based on diaries the Argentine kept while traveling through Latin America in the early 1950s.
"The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have
maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with
bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the
Portuguese. And the two ancient races have now begun a hard life
together, fraught with bickering and squabbles. Discrimination and
poverty unite them in the daily fight for survival but their different
ways of approaching life separate them completely: The black is indolent
and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the
European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as
far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even
independently of his own individual aspirations."
"The Establishment" writing in the publication AfroPunk
cited the above quote but dismissed it as something Guevara wrote when
"he was around 24 years old." He then goes on to say that he " went so
far as to fight with an all black army," but failed to cite his critical
quotes against the Africans he fought alongside.
Politifact in 2013 quoted this comment from Guevara’s writing on his time fighting with black revolutionaries in the Congo that included this line: "Given the prevailing lack of discipline, it
would have been impossible to use Congolese machine-gunners to defend
the base from air attack: they did not know how to handle their weapons
and did not want to learn."
It wasn't the Congolese, but Che's
failure to train them that led to defeat. The other side that defeated
Guevara's forces were also Congolese, but he tried to pass off his own
incompetence with a racist excuse.
However in another area Mr. Guevara has even more to answer for. In the same diary he refers to homosexuality in a negative context:
"The
episode upset us a little because the poor man, apart from being
homosexual and a first-rate bore, had been very nice to us, giving us 10
soles each, bringing our total to 479 for me and 163 1/2 to Alberto."
Fidel Castro in a March 13, 1963 speech was clear in his distaste for the "effeminate" were he openly attacked “long-haired
layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets
wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like
Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of
organizing “effeminate shows” in public places. The Cuban dictator, and Guevara's comrade, warned:
“They should not confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with
weaknesses in the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these
degenerates.” Two years later in 1965, Fidel Castro spoke explicitly about the Cuban Revolution's views on homosexuals:
“We
would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the
conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider
him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of
that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant
communist should be.”
In 1964 the Cuban revolutionaries began rounding up Gays
and sending them to Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades
Militares de Ayuda a la Producción). These forced labor camps were for
those suspected of or found guilty of "improper conduct." Persons with
effeminate mannerisms: what the Cuban government called "extravagant
behavior" were taken to these camps.
Ernesto
"Che" Guevara was in the revolutionary leadership in Castro's Cuba
throughout this process and did not leave Cuba until 1965.
Castro put him in charge of La Cabaña prison and in the first half of 1959 presided over the executions of hundreds of Cubans, reported Andres Vargas Llosa in 2005.
Che Guevara addressing the United Nations on
December 11, 1964 did not mince words: "We must say here something that
is a well-known truth and that we have always asserted before the whole
world: executions? Yes, we have executed people; we are executing
people and shall continue to execute people as long as it is necessary.
Guevara bragged of the executions being carried out in Cuba.
Between
1959 and 1964 the numbers of Cubans executed was in the thousands. This
is nothing to celebrate. However the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) disagrees with this
assessment and celebrated the above speech with an excerpt that ends
with "Fatherland or Death!" This is why I protested the United States rejoining UNESCO in 2003, and celebrated leaving it again in 2017.
#OTD in 1928 the mass murderer Ernesto Che Guevara was born. An innocent child who grew into a plague. Shamefully, institutions like @UNESCO, not only pay homage to this brutal, racist & homophobic mass killer. They also spread his toxic and murderous ideas. #BirthOfAMonsterpic.twitter.com/ELrwqBFJsJ
A mass murdering racist, who dined with Mao as millions died of hunger is not someone to celebrate.
"All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword." - Matthew 26, 26:52
Some wish to celebrate Ernesto Guevara's birthday today. If he and his comrades had their way the world would have been subjected to a nuclear holocaust in October 1962, and they were bitterly disappointed that it did not happen.
Thankfully, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev reached a peaceful outcome to the Cuban Missile Crisis, but
the Castro regime protested it and was unhappy with their Soviet
allies not launching their nuclear missiles.
"Here is the electrifying example
of a people prepared to suffer nuclear immolation so that its ashes may
serve as a foundation for new societies. When an agreement was reached
by which the atomic missiles were removed, without asking our people, we
were not relieved or thankful for the truce; instead we denounced the
move with our own voice."
In the same essay, the dead
Argentine served as a mouthpiece for Fidel Castro declaring: "We
do assert, however, that we must follow the road of liberation even
though it may cost millions of nuclear war victims." Castro and Che were so outraged that the regime reached out to Nazis to purchase arms and train the regime's security services.
Castro and Che were not alone in their criticism. Mao Zedong also criticized Khrushchev for backing down in the 1962 Cuban
Missile Crisis, and this was the last straw in a series of slights
between the two communist powers that set the stage for the Sino-Soviet split.
However Castro eventually backed off and returned to the Soviet camp whereas Che Guevara embraced the Maoists.
This should not have been a surprise.
Mao Zedong had already been in power in China for a decade when the Castro regime took power in Cuba in 1959. In September 1960 Havana diplomatically recognized the Peoples Republic of China. Between 1960 and 1964 the two communist dictatorships would collaborate closely together.
Mao's regime in 1958 embarked on the Great Leap Forward, a campaign to reorganize the Chinese populace to improve its agricultural and industrial production along communist ideological lines. The campaign was a disaster that led to mass famine and a death toll of at least 45 million.
In the midst of the famine Ernesto "Che" Guevara with a Cuban delegation visited Mainland China and met with
Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other high ranking Chinese officials in
1960 to discuss conditions in Cuba and in Latin America, and the
prospects for communist revolution in the Western Hemisphere. As
millions starved in China the two revolutionaries dined through several
courses of traditional Chinese food.
Che and Mao dine in 1960 while millions starved in China.
Finally, on the question of race and sexuality the Argentine
revolutionary had retrograde views that the woke today somehow continue
to ignore or excuse.
Unlike Mohandas Gandhi, who truly evolved in his views on race as a young man but is still attacked for them, Che Guevara seems to get a pass despite not showing an equivalent evolution. Politifact on April 17, 2013 quoted from The Motorcycle Diaries, a book based on diaries the Argentine kept while traveling through Latin America in the early 1950s.
"The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have
maintained their racial purity thanks to their lack of an affinity with
bathing, have seen their territory invaded by a new kind of slave: the
Portuguese. And the two ancient races have now begun a hard life
together, fraught with bickering and squabbles. Discrimination and
poverty unite them in the daily fight for survival but their different
ways of approaching life separate them completely: The black is indolent
and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the
European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as
far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even
independently of his own individual aspirations."
"The Establishment" writing in the publication AfroPunk
cited the above quote but dismissed it as something Guevara wrote when
"he was around 24 years old." He then goes on to say that he " went so
far as to fight with an all black army," but failed to cite his critical
quotes against the Africans he fought alongside.
Politifact in 2013 quoted this comment from Guevara’s writing on his time fighting with black revolutionaries in the Congo that included this line: "Given the prevailing lack of discipline, it
would have been impossible to use Congolese machine-gunners to defend
the base from air attack: they did not know how to handle their weapons
and did not want to learn."
It wasn't the Congolese, but Che's
failure to train them that led to defeat. The other side that defeated
Guevara's forces were also Congolese, but he tried to pass off his own
incompetence with a racist excuse.
However in another area Mr. Guevara has even more to answer for. In the same diary he refers to homosexuality in a negative context:
"The
episode upset us a little because the poor man, apart from being
homosexual and a first-rate bore, had been very nice to us, giving us 10
soles each, bringing our total to 479 for me and 163 1/2 to Alberto."
Fidel Castro in a March 13, 1963 speech was clear in his distaste for the "effeminate" were he openly attacked “long-haired
layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets
wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like
Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of
organizing “effeminate shows” in public places. The Cuban dictator, and Guevara's comrade, warned:
“They should not confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with
weaknesses in the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these
degenerates.” Two years later in 1965, Fidel Castro spoke explicitly about the Cuban Revolution's views on homosexuals:
“We
would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the
conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider
him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of
that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant
communist should be.”
In 1964 the Cuban revolutionaries began rounding up Gays
and sending them to Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades
Militares de Ayuda a la Producción). These forced labor camps were for
those suspected of or found guilty of "improper conduct." Persons with
effeminate mannerisms: what the Cuban government called "extravagant
behavior" were taken to these camps.
Ernesto
"Che" Guevara was in the revolutionary leadership in Castro's Cuba
throughout this process and did not leave Cuba until 1965.
Castro put him in charge of La Cabaña prison and in the first half of 1959 presided over the executions of hundreds of Cubans, reported Andres Vargas Llosa in 2005.
Che Guevara addressing the United Nations on
December 11, 1964 did not mince words: "We must say here something that
is a well-known truth and that we have always asserted before the whole
world: executions? Yes, we have executed people; we are executing
people and shall continue to execute people as long as it is necessary.
Guevara bragged of the executions being carried out in Cuba.
Between
1959 and 1964 the numbers of Cubans executed was in the thousands. This
is nothing to celebrate. However the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) disagrees with this
assessment and celebrated the above speech with an excerpt that ends
with "Fatherland or Death!" This is why I protested the U.S. rejoining UNESCO in 2003, and celebrated leaving it again in 2017.
On this day in 1928 the mass murderer Che Guevara was born. Shamefully, institutions like @UNESCO, not only pay homage to this brutal, racist and homophobic mass executioner. They also spread his toxic and murderous ideas. #ChesDeadpic.twitter.com/flgs1SOpqh
Fidel Castro: Cuba's absolute dictator turned power over to his brother
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
Cuba, President of the Council of State of Cuba, President of the
Council of Ministers of Cuba, Prime Minister, and Secretary-General of
the Non-Aligned Movement, Comandante Fidel Castro is still dead.
Seven years ago, on a Black Friday that fell on November 25, 2016, Cuban
tyrant Fidel Castro died at the age of 90 never having had to answer for
his many crimes against humanity both in and out of Cuba. From Nicaragua, to Ethiopia, to Venezuela,
and in many other places Fidel Castro assisted tyrants and
dictators to take power, hold on to it, and consolidate their rule. One day later in a blog post I predicted what would come next.
"Predictably over the next few weeks inside Cuba the world will see spectacles organized by the totalitarian dictatorship to "mourn the great leader." The regime has already started with nine days set asidefor
official mourning. This will not be the first time that monsters are
mourned by an oppressed people through different methods of command,
control and manipulation. The world has witnessed it before in the
Soviet Union in 1953 and more recently in North Korea with the Kim dynasty. The death of Stalin as dramatized in the film "The Inner Circle" is recommended viewing for those about to follow the circus in Cuba in the wake of Fidel Castro's death. Meanwhile in Cuba as the regime prepares its state funeral the Castro dictatorship's secret police begin to make threats, round up and take dissidents to undisclosed locations and commit acts of violence."
Six years later the fans of the late Cuban dictator are out trying to
defend his legacy and repeating the lies to put him in a positive light.
These apologists of the dictator are silent on the role played by the United States government and The New York Times in undermining Fulgencio Batista's rule and bringing Fidel Castro to power.
On this sixth anniversary of the dictator's death it is a good time to remember some of his more memorable statements.
Relationship with the truth
Fidel Castro in the 1950s repeatedly claimed that
he was not a communist because he knew that advocating a communist revolution would
lead Cubans to abandon him. On December 2, 1961 he explained his reasoning.
"If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists
while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that
we would never have been able to descend to the plains."
On March 26, 1964, after announcing that he had always been a Marxist Leninist, Castro explained:
"I conceive the
truth in terms of a just and noble end, and that is when the truth is
truly true. If it does not serve a just, noble and positive end, truth,
as an abstract entity, philosophical category, in my opinion, does not
exist."
Jose Ignacio Rasco,
who knew Fidel Castro from school and afterwards concluded that the
Cuban revolutionary had been a committed communist by 1950.
Denied universality of human rights , and erased Cuba's role in 1948 codifying them
Fidel Castro in the above interview in Havana in 1986 divided freedoms
i.e. rights as one set being revolutionary liberties and another being
bourgeois liberties and claiming that there are two different concepts
of liberty he is rejecting the Latin American tradition which was best
expounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that there are
basic human rights that are universal and not separated by
political/ideological or as in the Islamic claim by religious
differences but are the same for everyone. Omitted the role played by Cuban diplomats in drafting and lobbying for the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
In 1961 in a speech that became known as "Words to intellectuals" Fidel Castro labeled dissenters "counterrevolutionaries" and explicitly stripped them of their rights.
What are the rights of writers and artists, revolutionary or non-revolutionary?Within the Revolution, everything;against the Revolution, no right (applause).And this is not some special law or guideline for artists and writers.It is a general principle for all citizens. It is a fundamental principle of the Revolution.
Counterrevolutionaries, that is, the
enemies of the revolution, have no rights against the revolution,
because the revolution has one right: the right to exist, the right to
develop, and the right to be victorious." ... "In other words: Within
the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing."
This is not an original statement, but an echo of speeches and writings made by other tyrants. A close parallel is found in Benito Mussolini's 1935 speech: "Everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State."
Consequences of this policy in Cuba were seen internationally in the Padilla Affair in 1971.
HomophobicWe would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the
conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider
him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of
that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant
communist should be.” - Fidel Castro, 1965
On March 13, 1963 Fidel Castro gave a speech were he openly attacked “long-haired
layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets
wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like
Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of organizing “effeminate shows” in public places. The Cuban dictator warned: “They should not
confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with weaknesses in
the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these degenerates.”
Both Gays, and rock n rollers were sent to forced labor camps.
Ended Black Cuban agency
"In
Cuba, the exploitation of man by man has disappeared, and racial
discrimination has disappeared, too." - Fidel Castro, quoted in Castro's Cuba, Cuba's Fidel By Lee Lockwood, 1967
“Of the 256 Negro societies in Cuba, many have had to close their
doors and others are in death agony. One can truthfully say, and this is
without the slightest exaggeration, that the Negro movement in Cuba
died at the hands of Sr. Fidel Castro.” … “Yet this is the man who had
the cynical impudence to visit the United States in 1960 for the purpose
of censuring American racial discrimination. Although this evil
obviously exists in the United States, Castro is not precisely the man
to offer America solutions, nor even to pass judgement.”
Between 1898 and 1959 the relationship between Black-Americans and
Black-Cubans was based on their being part of an international black
diaspora. This relationship ended when the Castro regime ended
autonomous black civil society in 1962, and consolidated totalitarian
rule. It was replaced by Castro and his white revolutionary elite allying with
Black elites in the United States, and Africa while criticizing racism
in the United States.
For decades, the Castro regime expected Black Cubans to be obedient, submissive, and grateful to
the white revolutionary elite, and this was reflected in official
propaganda with racist tropes. Black Cubans who think for themselves are punished.
On Walls and border controls
Fidel Castro visited Berlin in 1972 and encouraged the border guards to
continue shooting Germans trying to flee to freedom by crossing the
Berlin Wall. At Brandenburg gate on June 14, 1972 in the afternoon (pictured above) he addressed the men charged with shooting East Germans fleeing to West Germany as "the courageous and self-denying border guards of the GDR People's Army who stand guard in the front line of the entire-socialist community." Castro addressed the Nikolay Bezarin Barracks in East Berlin:
"It is very important to know that the people of the GDR have great
confidence in you, that they are truly proud of you. The comrades of the
party and the citizens of socialist Berlin have told us with great
satisfaction about the activity of the border troops, speaking with
great admiration for you and for your services."
On November 5, 1975, 30,000 Cuban troops were dispatched to Angola in
what was called Operation Carlota, and today pro-Castro sympathizers
over social media are celebrating this anniversary with excerpts of a speech the Cuban dictator gave announcing the move at the time. Cuban troops, beginning on May 27, 1977, took part in a massacre in Angola following a split in the governing Communist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party. Amnesty International cites reports that 30,000 Angolans "had disappeared" in the purge; other sources place the number at 80,000 killed.
There was a racial component, with those massacred being young, black revolutionaries, and those in power who Castro allied with: mixed race and white Angolans and Eurocentric, although they were Marxist-Leninists so it was not a problem for Leftists, including those in power in Portugal. The definitive account of this massacre in English is found in Lara Pawson's 2014 book, "In the Name of the People: Angola's Forgotten Massacre." A 2017 review of the book by Fernando Arenas published in Luso-Brazilian Review provides the following summary.
In the Name of the People offers major insights regarding the history of May 1977, including the key role played by Cuban military forces, who defended Agostinho Neto and the ruling MPLA against the attempted coup, in defiance of the Soviet Union, while committing atrocities against Nito Alves's supporters. It also highlights the centrality of racial politics in Nito's movement against the perceived political dominance of mixed race and white Angolans in the MPLA to the exclusion of the majority poor black population, emphasizing the movement's rejection of endemic corruption within the MPLA and its betrayal of the socialist revolution.
"Mengistu strikes me as a quiet, serious, and sincere
leader who is aware of the power of the masses. He is an intellectual
personality who showed his wisdom on February 3. […]
The prelude to this was an exuberant speech by the Ethiopian president
in favor of nationalism. Mengistu preempted this coup. He called the
meeting of the Revolutionary Council one hour early and had the rightist
leaders arrested and shot. A very consequential decision was taken on
February 3 in Ethiopia. […]Before it was only possible to support the leftist forces indirectly, now we can do so without any constraints."
Ramiro Valdez, Raul Castro and Fidel Castro with Mengistu Haile Mariam
Amnesty International concluded that
"this campaign resulted in several thousand to perhaps tens of
thousands of men, women, and children killed, tortured, and imprisoned."
Sweden's Save the Children Fund lodged a formal protest in early 1978 denouncing the execution of 1,000 children, many below the age of thirteen, whom the communist government had labeled "liaison agents of the counter revolutionaries."
Advocating for and actively trying to start a nuclear holocaust
Castro freaked out Khrushchev with call for a first strike
If an aggression of the second variant
occurs, and the imperialists attack Cuba with the aim of occupying it,
then the danger posed by such an aggressive measure will be so immense
for all humanity that the Soviet Union will in circumstances be able to
allow it, or to permit the creation of conditions in which the
imperialists might initiate a nuclear strike against the USSR as well.
Thankfully,
Kennedy and Khrushchev reached a peaceful outcome, but the Castro
regime continued to protest and was unhappy with their Soviet allies for
not launching the intercontinental ballistic missiles that would have started a
thermonuclear war.
Comandante Castro ordered students to the streets to chant "Nikita, mariquita, lo que se da no se quita" ("Nikita, little queer, what you give you don't take away").
The Brothers to the Rescue shoot down.
Dan Rather:-The incident of the Brothers to the Rescue
aircraft…But you gave the order.It was
not your brother Rául or a general.
Fidel Castro:-I gave the order to communicate to the Air
Force that what happened on the ninth and thirteenth could not be permitted
again.But these operations are very
quick.They enter in a matter of
minutes and leave.It is very difficult
to establish a mechanism of communication and consultation.They had the general order of not permitting
them…They acted with full awareness that they were following the order.At that moment there was not…The air force
had the responsibility.As a rule they
can communicate with each other, but everyone is not always there.In fact, they had the authority to do it,
and I assume the responsibility.I am
not trying to elude the responsibility in the least, because they were
instructions given in a moment of really great irritation.They were given to the pilots, I believe, if
I remember correctly, on the 14th of January.
Detailed investigation into the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown available here.
Alliances with Fascists and Nazis
Fidel Castro in 1962 when Otto-Ernst Remer was selling him weapons
In the early 1960s the Nazi who saved Adolf Hitler's Third Reich in 1944, Otto-Ernst Remer, had contacts with and assisted Fidel Castro in Cuba with the purchase of weapons. Ernst-Remer along with Ernst Wilhelm Springer sold the Cuban dictator 4,000 pistols. The German
foreign intelligence agency, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), reported
that "evidently, the Cuban revolutionary army did not fear contagion from
personal links to Nazism, so long as it served its objectives."
The Cuban autocrat was friendly with his Spanish counterpart
Francisco Franco, and declared days of mourning when the Generalissimo,
Prime Minister, Head of State, and Caudillo died on November 20, 1975.
In the picture below is Fidel Castro with Argentine foreign minister Nicanor Costa Mendez, one of the planners of the Falkland's invasion, of the Argentine military junta that extra-judicially executed and disappeared as many as 30,000 Argentinians between 1976 and 1983 in the Dirty War meeting in Havana at the Non-Aligned Movement gathering. He died of lung cancer on August 3, 1992.
Whereas Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International sought to expose and end the Dirty War, as well as later document the crimes committed and demand justice on behalf of the victims, the Cuban government did everything possible at the time to obstruct efforts to investigate the disappearances from their perch at the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
What have joint anti-drug operations with Cuba, and sharing intelligence done in concrete terms for US citizens? In 1999, the year when Washington intensified these efforts 3,186 U.S. citizens died of cocaine overdoses. In 2021, after 22 years of this "cooperation" 23,513 Americans died in 2021.
Anti-Semite
Cuban Jewish family targeted by the Castro regime for being Jewish.
From 1959 through 1973, Havana maintained diplomatic relations with Israel while supporting terrorism against Israelis. Castro hailed the establishment of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1965 and established ties with the Palestinian Fatah in Algiers and Damascus. Castro introduced PLO members at the Tri-Continental Conference in Havana in January 1966.
This conference backed revolutionary and terrorist organizations across
Europe, the Americas, and Asia with the objective of changing the world
order in an authoritarian direction.
Fidel Castro compared Israel to Nazi Germany on October 15, 1979.
“From the bottom of our heart, we repudiated the merciless persecution
and genocide that the Nazis once visited on the Jews,” he said. “But
there is nothing in recent history that parallels it more than the
dispossession, persecution and genocide that imperialism and Zionism are
currently practicing against the Palestinian people.”
The Cuban dictatorship’s hostility to Israel was not limited to
rhetoric and its assistance to terrorists. Cuba also involved itself in
direct military action.
Castro severed diplomatic ties with Israel on September 10, 1973, just
days before the Yom Kippur War began. During that war, 3,000 Cuban soldiers participated in the attack on Israel, alongside forces from
Egypt and Syria, and expeditionary forces from Saudi Arabia, Algeria,
Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco, and North Korea.
Until his death in 2016, Fidel Castro was a consistent enemy of democracy and human rights. He had many titles, including First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, President of the Council of State of Cuba, President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba, Prime Minister and Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement, and Comandante, but tyrant is the most appropriate. Fidel Castro, Cuba's despot, is still dead, and good riddance.
May the death cult that has formed around this tyrant soon join him.
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