Google's complicity with the Castro regime exposed in The Wall Street Journal

"You can make money without doing evil." - ( #6 of Ten things we know to be true by Google)

Google executive Eric Schmidt signs agreement with Castro regime in December 2016

Mary Anastasia O'Grady today in her column in The Wall Street Journal, "Google’s Broken Promise to Cubans" sets the record straight on a controversy that began in late July.

Last month on July 22, 2017 Rosa María Payá Acevedo tweeted that CubaDecide was banned in Cuba, describing it as "the error with which Google joins censorship in Cuba." This led to a flurry of tweets about the question of censorship and Google in Cuba. Mary O'Grady of The Wall Street Journal tweeted "Google bows to Cuban censorship."  

Rosa María Payá criticized Google censorship of CubaDecide

 Michael Weissenstein of the Associated Press replied that it wasn't Cuba but U.S. regulations and Google's Brett Perlmutter doubled down in a tweet blaming the U.S. embargo.  Former Bush Administration official Jose Cardenas contested both Weissenstein's and Perlmutter's claims tweeting "that is simply NOT true. No US regs block websites in Cuba."

Ms O'Grady finally set the record straight on Sunday in her column after following up with Google and the ISP:

Mr. Perlmutter did not cite any provision of the U.S. embargo that requires the blocking of a nonprofit citizens’ initiative—because there is no such provision. On Wednesday a Google spokesperson told me “we can’t say for sure what’s causing the issue with that site but it isn’t something we’re doing on our end . . . If you want more details, I recommend you check with the ISP.”

By Friday the company was no longer blaming the ISP. Instead, Google told me—in a paradox that must be delicious for Castro—that it is Cuba Decide’s use of Google’s Project Shield that is causing the problem. The shield is offered at no charge for “news sites and free expression” against “distributed denial-of-service” attacks. When it is used, it triggers the use of Google’s App Engine even if Google is not the website’s host—which it isn’t in this case—and Cubans cannot access the site.

Google has distanced itself from Mr Perlmutter's statements saying they “do not represent an official Google position” and that the content of his tweet was made “before all the facts of the specific situation were known,” they told Mary O'Grady.  

According to their blog "the Tor network is a group of volunteer-operated servers that allows people to improve their privacy and security on the Internet." On August 28, 2017 the Tor Blog revealed that Google is blocking Cuban websites:

Cuba’s ISP isn’t the only one blocking access to services. OONI’s Network Diagnostic Test (NDT) relies on M-Lab servers, which in turn rely on Google App Engine. Initially, we weren’t able to run NDT tests in Cuba. Once we manually specified the test servers, not only were we able to run NDT, but it also became evident that Google is blocking access to Google App Engine from Cuba.

This confirms Rosa María Payá Acevedo's charge that Google was censoring Cuba Decide in Cuba.
Furthermore it raises the question when will Google lifts its blockade on Cuban dissident websites?

Google's Eric Schmidt signed agreement with Castro regime telecom monopoly

The Notes from the Cuban Exile Quarter blog over the past four years has reported on Google's relationship with Cuba. Sadly it is a series of blog entries beginning with optimism, tempered in later entries by pessimism following Google's engagement with the dictatorship, and finally outrage as Google's collaboration with the Castro regime became evident.

  

American diplomats under attack in Cuba? Did 2014-2017 concessions worsen Castro regime's behavior?

 Keep an eye on this disturbing story.

Are U.S. diplomats under attack in Cuba?

 The results, of the attempt to normalize relations with an abnormal regime in Cuba, according to The Washington Post editorial this evening, "have been dismal" and now "there's another sinister cost to tally" beyond the worsening human rights situation for Cubans since 2014 now apparently U.S. diplomats at the embassy in Havana have been severely harmed.. CBS News reported on August 24, 2017 that they had obtained and reviewed medical records "showing mild traumatic brain injuries and possible damage to the central nervous system as a result of the attacks." Furthermore, the number of injured diplomats identified had risen from an initial five to 16.

On August 9, 2017 State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert in a briefing revealed that two Cuban diplomats were expelled from the United States on May 23, 2017 in response to "incidents in Cuba."  U.S. officials reported initially that five U.S. diplomats were targeted by a "sonic weapon" that led to "severe hearing loss" that led to some of them canceling their tours and returning early to the United States.
 
A day later the Associated Press reported that the Canadian government had reported that at least one Canadian diplomat in Cuba has also been treated for hearing loss.

The attacks began in November of 2016 during the previous Administration which apparently had no knowledge of what was going on or downplayed it out of fear that it would tarnish President Obama's Cuba normalization legacy.

Back on December 17, 2014 this blog made the following observation: "Rewarding the hardline and rogue elements in the Castro regime is unlikely to improve the dictatorship's behavior to the contrary it may worsen."

Congress should hold hearings to find out what happened and if it is still happening and get to the bottom of what happened to 16 U.S. diplomats based in Cuba.

Black Ribbon Day 2017: Remembering some of the new victims of Communist and Nazi totalitarianism

 "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

78 years ago on August 23, 1939 Josef Stalin and Adolph Hitler signed a treaty that was called a non-aggression treaty but it had a secret additional protocol that divided up Eastern Europe. It was a an aggression treaty were Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia plotted against their neighbors leading to the outbreak of WW2 on September 1, 1939 when Poland was invaded and occupied.

Today in Europe, Canada and the United States many observe Black Ribbon Day in remembrance for victims of totalitarian regimes. Sadly, this body count continues to rise in 2017. Even in democracies totalitarian movements attempt to sow chaos and try to destabilize and undermine free societies.

Germany recognizes the evil of the Nazi regime and has sought to pursue reconciliation through truth, memory, and justice. Sadly, in Russia today the Putin regime has backtracked and denied Soviet complicity with the Nazis in the start of WW2. This is dangerous because communist regimes continue to ally with fascist regimes and engage in systemic racism when it suits them.

Neo-Nazis are not in power at the national level but their movements wreak havoc around the world. Communists remain in power in 2017 in China, Vietnam, North Korea, Laos, Cuba, and in Venezuela with a rising body count of victims.

Susan Bro holds up photo of murdered daughter Heather Heyer

Last week I heard the heart breaking testimony of Susan Bro whose daughter Heather Heyer, age 32, was run over and murdered by a white supremacist on August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia while 19 others were badly in the attack.

Earlier today I listened to the heart breaking testimony of Venezuelan exile Maria Eugenia Tovar whose daughter Génesis Carmona, age 22, was shot in the head and killed in Venezuela in 2014 by the Maduro regime and talked about her loss. 

Maria Eugenia Tovar holds up photo of murdered daughter Génesis Carmona

In light of events over the past few months more citizens of good will should organize events on Black Ribbon Day, write letters to the editor, and opinion pieces reminding the world of the need to remember what happened on August 23, 1939 and to denounce totalitarianism of all stripes. I hope that next year there will be a high profile Black Ribbon Day event in Miami.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article168971367.html#storylink=cpy

Fidel Castro's strategic alliance with the Nazis

Fidel Castro is dead but his terrible legacy lives on

Fidel Castro recruited Nazi Death Squad leaders during Missile Crisis

Today marks the 78th anniversary of the Hitler-Stalin Pact when on August 23, 1939 the Nazi regime in Germany and the Communist regime in Russia joined together in a "non-aggression pact" with a secret protocol to divide up Poland, the Baltic States, Finland, and Romania after coordinating to wage aggressive wars against their neighbors. This flirtation between Communists and Nazis did not end until June 22, 1941 when three million German troops invaded Russia abrogating the non-aggression pact.

In 2012 formerly classified documents by the German intelligence service were released to the world revealing that Fidel Castro personally recruited former Nazi SS Waffen members to train Cuban troops in 1962 and that he also reached out to Otto Ernst Remer and Ernst-Wilhelm Springer, in Germany's extreme right to purchase weapons. Did Che Guevara receive security training from Nazis? The Argentine revolutionary did not leave Cuba to spread revolution elsewhere until 1965.


Bodo Hechelhammer, historical investigations director at the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND)—the German foreign-intelligence agency, in an interview with German newspaper Die Welt said: “Evidently, the Cuban revolutionary army did not fear contagion from personal links to Nazism, so long as it served its their own objectives.”

This is not the only racist or fascist ideological regime that the communist dictatorship in Cuba has collaborated with.

Argentina's military dictator Benito Bignone and Fidel Castro chatting

"President" Reynaldo Benito Antonio Bignone Ramayón who, like Fidel Castro then and Raul Castro today , was"President" in name only, but in reality a brutal military dictator in Argentina on April 20, 2010, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for the kidnapping, torture, and murder of 56 people in a concentration camp.

The Castro regime had a strategic relationship with this Argentine military junta that disappeared 30,000 leftists in 1970s and early 1980s should be viewed as not being an aberration but part of a pattern of embracing and seeking to learn from the worse human rights violators on the planet. Furthermore that the Castro dictatorship's hostility to religious belief in general and Judaism in particular may not only stem from its communist roots but other evil associations.
Furthermore the Castro regime and groups like the Workers World Party should be called into question when both support North Korea despite its racist screed against President Obama.

 78 years later the August 23, 1939 Hitler-Stalin Pact remains a specter over the international communist movement exposing its hypocrisy.

Black Ribbon Day 2017: Remembering the victims of Soviet Communism and Nazi Tyranny

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

Seventy eight years ago on August 23, 1939 Josef Stalin, the leader of the Soviet Union, the first communist regime, signed a treaty with Adolph Hitler, the leader of Nazi Germany it was initially named after their respective foreign ministers, V.M. Molotov and Joachim von Ribbentrop, as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. However it also became known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact. It was publicly described by both parties as a non-aggression treaty but it had a secret additional protocol that divided up Poland and the Baltic states. In reality it was a an aggression treaty in which the two aggressors Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia agreed before hand how to divide up the spoils as follows:

Article I.
 In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement in the areas belonging to the Baltic States (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), the northern boundary of Lithuania shall represent the boundary of the spheres of influence of Germany and U.S.S.R. In this connection the interest of Lithuania in the Vilna area is recognized by each party.

Article II.
In the event of a territorial and political rearrangement of the areas belonging to the Polish state, the spheres of influence of Germany and the U.S.S.R. shall be bounded approximately by the line of the rivers Narev, Vistula and San. The question of whether the interests of both parties make desirable the maintenance of an independent Polish States and how such a state should be bounded can only be definitely determined in the course of further political developments. In any event both Governments will resolve this question by means of a friendly agreement.  ...

Nine days later on September 1, 1939 at 4:45 am Nazi Germany invaded Poland and World War II started. Sixteen days later the Soviet Union exercising its secret agreement with the Nazis invaded Poland from the East and met their German allies in the middle of Poland and on September 22, 1939 the German Nazi army joined with the Soviet Communist army in a military parade in Brest-Litovsk and the two sides celebrated together.

Rolling Soviet tanks and Nazi motorcyclists in Poland (September 1939).

Each year on August 23rd beginning in 2009 there is a day of remembrance for the victims of Soviet Communism and Nazi Tyranny across Europe, Canada and the United States. The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation will hold a Black Ribbon Day on Wednesday from 5:00pm to 6:00pm at the Victims of Communism Memorial located at the intersection of New Jersey Avenue NW and Massachusetts Avenue NW, in Washington, DC. If you plan to attend please RSVP.

Soviet soldier and Nazi soldiers fraternize after conquering Poland in 1939

This is an important moment to hold such a ceremony here in the United States when far too many Americans have openly marched in 2017 with Nazi Swastika flags and Soviet hammer and sickle flags there is a heightened need for acts of remembrance at the horrors unleashed by these twin symbols of hate and how the bloodiest and most brutal war in human history was unleashed on the world when these two evil systems conspired together under a banner of peace and non-aggression that was a lie. Between 1939 and 1945 an estimated 50 to 85 million people were killed in this conflict.  Furthermore the anti-racist credentials of the Workers World Party should be called into question when they support North Korea despite its racist screed against President Obama.

Marching with Communist and Nazi flags in Charlottesville, Virginia

In times of great moral confusion it is important to recall past errors to avoid committing them again in the future. The ongoing debate in the United States of how to confront the menace of violent Neo-Nazism finds far too many Americans looking to AntiFa, a violent fringe group, linked to the Communist Party, to violently counter the white supremacists. The belief is that countering a violent and hateful ideologically motivated movement with another violent and hateful ideologically motivated movement will lead to at least the destruction of one or of both.

Hitler and Stalin salute each other over the corpse of Poland in this 1939 caricature

 In the 1920s and 1930s in Germany groups with the same names and carrying the same flags fought in the streets, with each creating their own heroic narratives, in their decade long violent skirmishes. Fires were set, businesses trashed, and brawls carried out with each side portraying the other as dangerous terrorists, but in reality their radical movements fed off one another while weakening German democratic institutions as mob rule co-opted Weimar Germany, eventually it was taken over by Adolph Hitler and the Nazi Party, consolidating power by blaming the communists for burning down of the German Parliament building on February 27, 1933 with the Enabling Laws.

Source: Library of Congress

There were other factors that fueled the rise of Nazism: the Great Depression, the punishing Treaty of Versailles, and the later appeasement of the West but the violent dynamic between the Communist Party and AntiFa against the Nazis in the 1930s helped the rise of Hitler more than impede it.

Nazism and Communism are two ideologies that together have claimed more than 160 million lives and remain a threat to civilization. They should not be underestimated, their histories remembered and condemned. This is why it is so important to observe Black Ribbon Day on August 23rd.