Correcting some of Chuck Offenburger's errors about the Cuban revolution and the dictatorship in Havana - Part 2

 Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” - Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Three wise men replaced with images of Fidel Castro,other revolutionaries

Chuck Offenburger has written a blog entry "Banning Christmas in Cuba was an ‘error’ that Fidel Castro fixed: It’s time for the U.S. to correct our own errors there" that regurgitates Cuban communist propaganda. I do not believe that was his intent.

Totalitarian regimes have a track record of effectively using tourism, athletic events, and academic exchanges to present their regimes in a manner that legitimizes them and covers up their hostile objectives. 

An excellent accounting of these practices and their impacts on national and international politics is found in Paul Hollander's book Political Pilgrims that should be required reading for anyone traveling to Cuba, China, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela, or Vietnam.

There is much to address, and it will be broken up into a series of blog entries. 

These blog entries will review a number of the claims Mr. Offenburger makes in chronological order, and provide documented sources to test them.

 This blog entry will explore two claims made by Offenburger that Fidel Castro banned organized religion in 1959, and that Eisenhower's "blockade" led Cuba to the Soviet Union for help. 

First, the Catholic Church was not clinging to the Batista regime in the 1950s, as some communists claim. It was a Catholic priest who saved Fidel Castro's life following the disastrous July 26, 1953 assault on the Moncada barracks. Castro portrayed himself as a Jeffersonian democrat who would restore the preexisting democratic order.

Restrictions on religion began slowly in 1960 and continued to increase.

Fidel Castro canceled Christmas in 1969 under the pretext to prevent work shortages for the 1970 ten million ton sugar harvest but continued the ban until 1997, and sent mobs to intimidate Cubans who attended religious services. Three Kings Day and Easter were also abolished. Priests who stayed behind often paid a terrible price.

In 1976 the Castro dictatorship adopted a constitution which turned Cuba into an atheist state. 

Today, the Office of Religious Affairs (ORA), an arm of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, still oversees religious affairs in Cuba, and exists to monitor, hinder and restrict religious activities. 

Richard Nixon met with Fidel Castro in April 1959.

 

Mr. Offenburger got it backwards. Castro's alliance with the Soviet Union and Beijing to overthrow governments in Latin America led to sanctions on Havana.

Fidel Castro visits Caracas on January 23, 1959 and meets with Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt "to enlist cooperation and financial backing for 'the master plan against the gringos.'"

 

On March 3, 1959 the Castro regime expropriates properties belonging to the International Telephone and Telegraph Company, and took over its affiliate, the Cuban Telephone Company.

 

Fidel Castro visited the United States for eleven days in April 1959, culminating in a three-hour meeting with Vice President Richard Nixon on April 19, 1959. 

 

Havana beginning in 1959 sent armed expeditions to Panama, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic to overthrow their governments. 

 

On February 6, 1960 talks began publicly between the U.S.S.R and Fidel Castro. The Soviet Union agreed to buy five million tons of sugar over five years. They also agreed to support Cuba with oil, grain, and credit. 

 

 

On July 6, 1960 the Castro regime passed a nationalization law authorizing nationalization of U.S.- owned property through expropriation. Texaco, Esso, and Shell oil refineries were taken.

 

In September 1960 the Cuban government diplomatically recognized the People's Republic of China.

 

The Eisenhower State Department in response to the above actions imposed the first trade embargo on Cuba on October 19, 1960, and it "covered all U.S. exports to Cuba except for medicine and some foods." It was not a blockade.

 

On November 19, 1960 Ernesto "Che" Guevara heading a Cuban delegation in Beijing met with Mao Zedong between 4:20pm and 6:30pm and discussed revolutionary objectives in Latin America.

 

 

Offenburger's trips to Cuba filled him with disinformation, and it should not be a surprise. The Castro regime came to power using lies, and continues power through systematic misinformation. 

 

Communist morality

Fidel Castro at the time was repeatedly claiming that he was not a communist because he knew that speaking the truth 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."

Years later on March 26, 1964, after announcing that he had always been a Marxist Leninist, Fidel 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.

Castro is copying Lenin. The first leader of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin on October 2, 1920 in a speech to Russian communist youth stated:  "The class struggle is continuing and it is our task to subordinate all interests to that struggle. Our communist morality is also subordinated to that task. We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building up a new, communist society." He also addressed the necessity of the lie observing: "'To speak the truth is a petit-bourgeois habit. To lie, on the contrary, is often justified by the lie's aim."

R.I.P. María Victoria Garcia, truth-teller and survivor of the tugboat "13 de marzo" massacre.

María Victoria Garcia passes away in Miami. She was a survivor of the tugboat "13 de marzo" massacre, which remains an unpunished atrocity.

Three Cuban families totaling about 70 persons seeking a better life in freedom boarded the Cuban tugboat "13 de Marzo" on July 13, 1994. 17 were members of the Garcia family. The captain of the tug was among those who wanted to depart. Despite their best efforts, an informant had already reported them to State Security.  The Cuban dictatorship's actions on July 13, 1994, were premeditated.

The "13 de Marzo" left the port at 3:00am and almost immediately were being pursued by other tugboats of the Ministry of Transportation. Seven miles from the Cuban coast line the “13 de Marzo” tugboat was confronted by the tugboats. Amnesty International in their 1997 investigation reported that the vessels which attacked the “13 de Marzo” were Polargo 2”, “Polargo 3″ and “Polargo 5″ and identified as belonging to the Ministry of Transport. According to the IACHR report the attack did not appear improvised. The Amnesty International report mentions another vessel that "appeared to be directing operations was believed to belong to the Cuban Coast Guard, which is part of the Ministry of the Interior.”

 

Despite the “13 de Marzo” tugboat stopping and passengers attempting to surrender the other tugboats continued to ram the tug and use high pressure hoses to blast them overboard. Following this the attackers began to circle the wreckage with the aim of creating a whirlpool effect to ensure that all would drown. Sergio Perodin, one of the survivors who lost his wife and young son during the incident, explained how the massacre stopped when a boat with a Greek flag appeared in the area. "lt looked like the boat was watching what they were doing, the murder they were committing. So they stopped and decided to pick us up." It was then and only then that the attack was suspended and the survivors were picked up by the Cuban Coast Guard.

María Victoria García, was one of three members of the García family who survived the massacre. Fourteen members of the García family were murdered, including her 20 year old brother, and María Victoria's ten-year-old son Juan Mario Gutiérrez García.  

Juan Mario Gutiérrez García

Her father, Jorge García who survives his daughter also sat down and spoke on camera about what he had learned about the actions of the Cuban government both before and after the massacre.  He had been detained and interrogated on several occasions by state security. His longest detention was for 15 days.

María Victoria García spoke out but it nearly came at a great cost according to Jorge, "[t]hey tried on several occasions to kill my daughter, because she was the first to speak out and contradict the regime’s official narrative.

The massacre and the aftermath left her physically and psychologically scarred for the rest of her life..

Jorge and his daughter left Cuba for exile. He wrote a book about this crime that is a must read. During a question and answer session at Florida International University on July 13, 2004 he spoke of the need for justice:

''There are those who think that we should be full of rancor and a thirst for vengeance but I don't want revenge. I feel sorry for the people who assassinated my family. I can never be compensated for my loss. I will never be happy again with my family surrounding me. There will always be a tinge of sadness but I do want there to be a trial so that this situation can serve as a lesson and that these people or others like them in other parts of the world, don't do this kind of thing again. Not in Cuba. Not anywhere.''

María Victoria described what happened to Voces de Cuba in an interview nine years ago, about when she confronted an official saying, "I told the colonel that it had not been an accident, that they sank us."

The following persons were executed extrajudicially by the Castro regime on July 13, 1994, in the "13 de Marzo" tugboat massacre, and thirty years later justice has still not been provided them and their loved ones.

Helen Martínez Enríquez ( 5 months)
Cindy Rodríguez Fernández (age 2)
José Carlos Nicole Anaya (3)
Angel Rene Abreu Ruiz ( age 3)
Yisel Borges Alvarez (4)
Caridad Leyva Tacoronte (age 5)
Juan Mario Gutiérrez García (age 10)
Yousell E. Perez Tacoronte (age 11)
Yasser Perodin Almanza (age 11)
Eliecer Suarez Plasencia ( age 12)
Mayulis Mendez Tacoronte (age 17)
Miladys Sanabria Cabrera ( age 19 )
Odalys Muñoz García (age 21)
Yuliana Enríquez Carrazana (age 22)
Yaltamira Anaya Carrasco (age 22)
Lissett María Álvarez Guerra (age 24)
José Gregorio Balmaceda Castillo (24)
Joel García Suárez (age 24)
Ernesto Alfonso Loureiro (age 25)
María Miralis Fernández Rodríguez (age 27)
Pilar Almanza Romero (age 28)
Leonardo Notario Góngora ( age 28)
Jorge Arquímides Lebrijio Flores (age 28)
Rigoberto Feut Gonzáles (age 31)
Omar Rodriguez Suarez (age 33)
Lázaro Enrique Borges Briel (age 34)
Julia Caridad Ruiz Blanco (age 35)
Martha Caridad Tacoronte Vega (age 36)
Eduardo Suárez Esquivel ( age 39)
Martha M.Carrasco Sanabria (age 45)
Augusto Guillermo Guerra Martínez ( age 45)
Rosa María Alcalde Puig (age 47)
Estrella Suárez Esquivel (age 48)
Reynaldo Joaquín Marrero (age 48)
Manuel Cayol (age 50)
Amado Gonzáles Raices (50)
Fidelio Ramel Prieto-Hernández (51) 

María Victoria García, survivor of the July 13, 1994 “13 de Marzo” Tugboat massacre, courageously spoke out about what had happened while still in Cuba. She denounced this mass murder carried out by the Cuban dictatorship. María Victoria died on January 4, 2023 at age 58 due to complications arising from heart surgery performed in December.. My prayers go out to her, her father Jorge A. García, and her friends and family. My sincerest condolences on this terrible loss.

 

 Requiescat in pace María Victoria Garcia, and the 37 victims of the July 13, 1994 tugboat massacre.

 

72 Years of Dictatorship in Cuba: 65 Years of the Castros and 7 Years of Batista

 From bad (authoritarian dictatorship) to worse (totalitarian dictatorship)

#TheyAreContinuity #SonContinuidad

 Cuba has been under a dictatorship for 72 years. On March 10, 1952, Fulgencio Batista brought an end to Cuban democracy. Carlos Prio, the last democratic president, and his first lady were forced into exile. An increasingly unpopular authoritarian and corrupt regime ruled Cuba for the following seven years. 

The hope for the restoration of democratic governance came to an end when Batista refused to cede power nonviolently through a dialogue process, opening a path for Fidel and Raul Castro to take it by force. Although they had repeatedly pledged to restore the 1940 Constitution, and Cuban democracy they imposed a communist dictatorship.

Cuba's official motto was changed from Homeland and Liberty (Patria y Libertad) to Homeland or Death, We Shall Triumph (¡Patria o Muerte, Venceremos!).

Presidents of Cuba from 1902 to 1952 and dictator Batista

Fulgencio Batista, the authoritarian dictator, fled Cuba early on January 1, 1959, thanks to the conspiracies of the Communist International, The New York Times pro-Castro propaganda, an arms embargo imposed on him by the United States in March 1958, and pressure for him to go from the U.S. Ambassador to Cuba in December 1958.

Since the beginning of their struggle on July 26, 1953, the Castro brothers promised a democratic restoration, but all along planned a Marxist-Leninist takeover. They imposed a totalitarian communist dictatorship, killing tens of thousands of Cubans. The Castro regime systematically denied human rights to all Cubans while exporting their repressive model to Africa and Latin America, creating misery for millions more.

The communist regime has re-written the history of Cuba, creating myths to justify its tyranny. The reality is that between 1902 and 1952, there existed a system that oversaw rising living standards for five decades and had been on the cutting edge of human rights. 

The Marxist-Leninist dictatorship in Cuba declared war on human rights at home and abroad to the present day.

From 1959 till now, generations of Cubans have resisted this communist regime.

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans risked everything in July 2021, taking to the streets in nonviolent protests demanding an end to the dictatorship. The Castro regime responded by firing on unarmed protesters, imprisoning over a thousand, and condemning many of them to 20 and 30 year prison sentences for exercising their right to peaceful assembly.

Remembering this sad past, we resolve to work even harder to bring democracy back to Cuba, replacing Homeland or Death (¡Patria o Muerte!) with Homeland, Life, and Liberty (Patria, Vida y Libertad). 

Please take two actions: 1) sign this appeal for an end to repression in Cuba and release of all Cuban political prisoners and 2) sign this petition to expel Cuba from the UN Human Rights Council. 

Both petitions are addressed to members of the international community.

On the streets of Cuba on July 11, 2021

Wishing you all a happy new year in 2024, and through the continuing work and struggle for a free Cuba may freedom be restored that will finally fulfill Cuban exiles goal of "this year in Havana!"

Correcting some of Chuck Offenburger's errors about the Cuban revolution and the dictatorship in Havana

 Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” - Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

 

Reverend Raul Suarez with Fidel Castro

Chuck Offenburger has written a blog entry "Banning Christmas in Cuba was an ‘error’ that Fidel Castro fixed: It’s time for the U.S. to correct our own errors there" that regurgitates Cuban communist propaganda. I do not believe that was his intent.

Totalitarian regimes have a track record of effectively using tourism, athletic events, and academic exchanges to present their regimes in a manner that legitimizes them and covers up their hostile objectives. 

An excellent accounting of these practices and their impacts on national and international politics is found in Paul Hollander's book Political Pilgrims that should be required reading for anyone traveling to Cuba, China, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela, or Vietnam.

There is much to address, and it will be broken up into a series of blog entries. 

These blog entries will review a number of the claims Mr. Offenburger makes in chronological order, and provide documented sources to test them.

They will also highlight some of the errors made by the United States in dealing with the Cuban revolution (1953 - 1959) and the Communist dictatorship (1959 - present).

 Mr. Offenburger begins his blog entry with the claim that "religious and church life in Cuba is thriving, and has been since the 1990s." He then goes on to cite as a source for this claim Reverend Raúl Suárez.

This blog entry will explore who is Reverend Raúl Suárez and his claims about Fidel Castro "fixing" the error of banning religion.

Reverend Raúl Suárez was expelled in 1986 from the Baptist Convention in Cuba for "apostasy and heresy" for his unconditional support for the regime.  He had created within the Baptist Church an Association of Churches with that political purpose. Suárez, far from complying, robbed the Baptist Convention of the Temple, the house and its bank account of 25,000 pesos, and with the support of the Government - which did not pursue the accusation of theft presented by the Baptist Convention - he registered the new convention."

Reverend Suárez in 2022 was described by Cuban independent journalist Yoe Suárez (no relation) as being an example of one of the pastors who emerged from historic churches, "who support the regime."

Human Rights Watch in their 1999 report Cuba's Repressive Machinery: Human Rights Forty Years After the Revolution provided more context, and the leverage placed by Havana in advancing a policy for sanctions to be lifted, and democracy promotion ended.

Cuba grants the Department of Attention to Religious Affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Departamento de Atención a los Asuntos Religiosos del Comité Central del Partido Comunista) a prominent role in overseeing religious institutions. Not surprisingly, religious leaders who support the government face fewer impediments to their activities than do believers who find themselves at odds with the ruling party. 

At the 1991 Communist Party Fourth Congress, the party decided that religious belief would no longer pose an obstacleto membership.84 In the wake of this decision, some religious figures are now members of the Communist Party or even political leaders themselves, such as Pablo Odén Marichal, the president of the Cuban Council of Churches (Consejo Cubano de Iglesias), who is a deputy in Cuba's National Assembly. Baptist Minister Raúl Suárez Ramos, with the Cuban Council of Churches, also is a deputy in Cuba's National Assembly, and heads the Martin Luther King Memorial Center, a nongovernmental group with close ties to the government.85 Suárez Ramos earned government acclaim in 1990 when he lauded the revolution as "a blessing for our poor people" and criticized U.S. policy toward Cuba as an "economic, political, radio, and television aggression."86 

Both deputies often travel internationally and participate in conferences on religion in Cuba. But the party treats distinctly those who do not share its political views. The current head of the party's religious affairs office, Caridad Diego, criticized an American Catholic priest who had worked in the Villa Clara area for supporting "counterrevolutionary groups."87 The priest, Patrick Sullivan, had posted copies of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights in his church and had urged his parishioners to defend those rights. In April 1998, facing increasing government pressure, Sullivan chose to leave Cuba. Although Cuba and the Vatican had agreed that the pope would visit Cuba in 1989, the Catholic church's failure to condemn the U.S. embargo at that time apparently contributed to the several-year delay in finalizing the visit.88 When the pope did travel to Cuba in early 1998, the Cuban government trumpeted his criticisms of the U.S. embargo.

Let us briefly review the steps taken by the Castro regime to crush religion in Cuba, and those measures that remain in place.

In May 1961, the Cuban dictatorship confiscated private schools ( both religous and secular) and most seminaries in an effort to eliminate religion.  Private religious schools remain illegal in Cuba in 2023, and some Cubans in the island are demanding their return due to the low quality of the public schools. There are private schools for the children of foreign diplomats, and foreign business people.

In September 1961, the Castro regime at gunpoint collected 131 priests, brothers and a bishop, placing them on board the Spanish ship Covadonga and deported them from Cuba. Many of the remaining priests were sent to forced labor camps. Over 300 priests, brothers, and nuns were expelled from Cuba in 1961 alone.

The communist dictatorship declared itself an atheist state in 1962, and openly hostile to religion. Christmas ended as a holiday in Cuba in 1969.  

The collapse of the Eastern European communist block in 1989, and the Soviet Union in 1992 led Havana to seek bankrolling from the West, and necessitated a limited opening on the religous front in 1992. The restoration of Christmas in 1997 was a concession granted to the Vatican to obtain a state visit by Pope John Paul II, in which he called for the World to open to Cuha, and for Cuba to open to the World..

Today, the Office of Religious Affairs (ORA), an arm of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, still oversees religious affairs in Cuba, and exists to monitor, hinder and restrict religious activities. They also continue to demolish churches with bulldozers and organize mobs to harass Christians in acts of repudiation coordinated with the Ministry of the Interior. 

On April 9, 2015 on the eve of the Summit of the Americas in Panama, agents of the Castro regime carried out various acts of repudiation against Cuban and Venezuelan members of civil society that they deemed unacceptable due to their dissent or opposition with either Havana or Caracas.

Physical violence ensued, and people were hurt.

Reverend Raúl Suárez in an interview published in a pro-regime blog on April 28, 2015 celebrated his own participation in these actions, saying "he had never been closer to God," and gave it a pro-regime spin. Below is a translation excerpted from that interview.

In a meeting that recently took place at the Ministry of Culture, where the attitude of the Cuban delegation in Panama was recognized, you said that you had never been closer to God in those days. Why?

I said it for two reasons. Because when I am among people who do not have religious beliefs, I like to place the topic of faith in an attractive way, so that there is the highest level of understanding and empathy among everyone. On the other hand, in churches there is sometimes the opinion that a Christian's participation in politics is a mistake, some even say that it is a sin. That is not right. I am not interested in politics that has to do with political campaigns, fundraising, fights between politicians... The politics that interests me is that which starts from the etymology of the term, referring to the people, the polis, which is the organization of the people for the common good, in this case, the quality of life of the Cuban people. That is why I felt that presence of God in Panama, when I opposed in a fair fight against those who wanted to turn the “house of prayers into a den of thieves”, against those who want to bias the right of Cubans to choose their own system. 

In 2015 the dictatorship ordered that five churches in the Abel Santa Maria neighbourhood of the city of Santiago de Cuba be demolished. According to Christianity Today the order was issued on November 27, 2015 and pastors and their families, living on Church grounds, were evicted.

Homeschooling, to avoid anti-Christian indoctrination taught in the schools, is prohibited in Cuba. Two Christian pastors were jailed for homeschooling their children, and an independent journalist was beaten and jailed for covering their trial in April 2019. Pastor Ayda Expósito was released from prison nearly a year later on April 3, 2020, and her husband Pastor Ramón Rigal was released three months later on July 1, 2020.  Independent journalist Roberto Quiñones Haces was released on September 4, 2020 in an emaciated state, compared to when he entered prison on September 11, 2019.  

Unable to destroy religion, the Castro dictatorship now manipulates it, similar to Communist China. There is an official Church, and the underground Church that continues to be persecuted. Reverend Raúl Suárez is part of the official church, that uses the name of Martin Luther King Jr. while celebrating violence against pro-democracy activists, remaining silent before the demolition of Churches on the island,.and denying ongoing religious persecution.

Mr. Offenburger should reach out to other religious figures on the island who bear witness for the persecuted Church.

Would recommend speaking to, and reading about Reverend Mario Felix Lleonart, a Cuban pastor who obtained political asylum in the United States in 2016, but maintains connections with the island.  If you had followed his social media you'd know that religious figures in Cuba were visted on Christmas day, and told to report to state security the following day.

Would also recommend reading the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report on the murders of Catholic laymen, and human rights defenders Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, and Harold Cepero Escalante that was published in June 2023 that holds the Cuban government responsible for their killings.

Cuba is a totalitarian communist dictatorship that also successfully oversaw the dismantlement of democracies in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and continues to sponsor and support international terrorism through alliances with Iran, North Korea, and Syria.

This is the first in a series. Stay tuned.

A Christmas Miracle: The End of the Soviet Union

"My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him. " - Mohandas Gandhi

Christmas returned to the Kremlin

 

Thirty two years ago, on December 25, 1991, a regime born in 1917 and formerly named in 1922 came to an end. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), or as it was also known, the Soviet Union, was formerly brought to an end on Christmas day and replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent States. The last day of the Soviet Union was on Christmas day. Let that sink in for a moment.

Now there are those who claim that the world is a less stable place without the Soviet Union, and Mikhail Gorbachev claims that it could have been reformed. Academic Stephen F. Cohen goes further and quotes approvingly both Putin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky with the adage: "Anyone who does not regret the breakup of the Soviet Union has no heart. And anyone who thinks it can be reconstructed has no head." Vaclav Havel, a man who had both head and heart, understood why this kind of regime was so profoundly inhuman: "As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension, and man began to lose control of it."

The optimism expressed by Gorbachev and the nostalgia of Cohen fails to take into account the human cost of the USSR. The Soviet Union took the lives of an estimated 61 million human beings. It was a brutal and evil system that allied with Nazi Germany to start WW2 in 1939, and afterwards spawned other brutal regimes around the globe that claimed over 100 million lives. Their lives mattered. Vaclav Havel, in his 1990 New Years Speech, called on his countrymen not to forget:  

"The rivers of blood that have flowed in Hungary, Poland, Germany and recently in such a horrific manner in Romania, as well as the sea of blood shed by the nations of the Soviet Union, must not be forgotten. First of all because all human suffering concerns every other human being. But more than this, they must also not be forgotten because it is these great sacrifices that form the tragic background of today's freedom or the gradual emancipation of the nations of the Soviet Bloc, and thus the background of our own newfound freedom." 

The number of lives lost is only the material accounting and does not take into account the spiritual ruin visited upon billions and its aftermath to the present day. The late Czech president  explained it in the very same address.

"The worst thing is that we live in a contaminated moral environment. We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought. We learned not to believe in anything, to ignore one another, to care only about ourselves. Concepts such as love, friendship, compassion, humility or forgiveness lost their depth and dimension, and for many of us they represented only psychological peculiarities, or they resembled gone-astray greetings from ancient times, a little ridiculous in the era of computers and spaceships."

The destruction, both material and spiritual, generated by the Soviet Union over seventy years will take centuries to repair and transcend. That hard truth may not be cause for celebration, but the end of the system that wreaked so much damage is cause for celebration, not regret. To do otherwise is to be heartless. The fact that it happened without violence on Christmas Day in 1991 is also cause for joy. 

Sadly, Vladimir Putin on February 24, 2022 expanded his war into Ukraine in what some view as an attempt to resurrect the Soviet empire and the rivers of blood are flowing again, and we do not know how it will end. Gorbachev passed away on August 30, 2022 a respected figure abroad, but reviled in Russia. He was in many ways the polar opposite of Vladimir Putin.

Secondly, the largest remaining communist regime, the Peoples Republic of China, remains in power and  with the aid of smaller communist powers (Cuba, Laos, Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela, Vietnam, and their networks) is backing Putin's invasion of Ukraine. The Chinese Communist Party celebrated the 100th anniversary of its founding in 2021. It is a tragedy that they did not go the same way as the Soviet Union in 1991.

Over 6.8 million people have died due to a pandemic unleashed by the communist dictatorship in Beijing. However, this is a small number for the Communist Chinese Party that has killed more than ten times as many Chinese people to advance communist policies in China alone. 

People of goodwill must continue to work for and pray for the day that a second miracle can be celebrated with the the end of communism in China, and a third miracle with the defeat of the Russian invaders in Ukraine.