35 years ago on November 9, 1989 the Berlin Wall did not fall, it was torn down by free Germans

  "It is your duty to use your combat … skills in such a way as to overcome the cunning of the border breacher, to challenge or liquidate him in order to thwart the planned border breach... Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past.” Order to Border Guards October 1, 1973.

"If we get shot, will you write about us?" - E. German Student, demonstrating against GDR regime 

Tearing down the Berlin Wall in November 1989

Thirty five years ago tomorrow the Berlin Wall began to be physically torn down. It was a great day for freedom and the triumph of long years of nonviolent resistance throughout Eastern Europe.

The Berlin Wall had been constructed beginning on August 13, 1961. with barbed-wire fence followed by a 100-mile wall and more than 300 watchtowers to spot and shoot escapees and the East German communists called it the "Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart." Minefields were laid in some sectors.

The destruction of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 was not inevitable. It did not fall down. It was torn down.

With their courage & desire for freedom, the people of the #GDR brought down the #BerlinWall-which we will be celebrating tomorrow! The division of #Germany 🇩🇪 is history. The commitment to #freedom is more important today than ever. Freedom cannot be taken for granted.… pic.twitter.com/gRmhbR9VmF

— GIC Africa (@GermanyInAfrica) November 8, 2024

Remember that between 1961 and the very year it was torn down, at least 140 Germans were extrajudicially executed by the East German border guards for trying to cross the Berlin Wall to freedom. There is the Berlin Wall Museum, which offers a complete listing of the 140 known victims with details about them and their deaths.

We should also remember those who celebrated or ignored this scar that ran through the heart of Germany for 28 years and defended or rationalized the murder of unarmed civilians while hobnobbing with the East German leadership. What is their moral responsibility for these horrors?

Fidel Castro on the Berlin Wall in 1972

Fidel Castro's first visit to Berlin began on June 13, 1972 and at various points, the Cuban dictator addressed the border guards that policed the Berlin Wall to prevent East Germans from escaping to the West. At Brandenburg Gate on June 14 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." Later in the evening, Premier 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.

Later in the same speech Mr. Castro offered his take on what he saw there and the prospects for the future:

We have no doubt that a great political and revolutionary victory has been won in the GDR. You have created the foundations for the future, a truly revolutionary state, a border state to whom the future belongs. You are the new generation, which will continue this work.

He spent most of his time there, accompanied by Erich Honecker, who, as Central Committee secretary for security matters in 1961, was in charge of constructing the Berlin Wall and, by 1971, had become the dictator of East Germany through a power struggle and Soviet support the de facto head of state.

Erich Honecker and Angela Davis in 1972

Angela Davis also paid visits to East Germany (in 1965 and 1972).  During her 1972 visit, she was received by Erich Honecker. She celebrated the East German communist regime and refused to criticize, or recognize its shortcomings on human rights. She refused to make any mention of the Berlin Wall in her autobiography.

This practice extended beyond East Germany.

Angela Davis also visited Cuba in 1972, and Fidel Castro made her an honorary member of the infamous Committee in the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). Neighborhood committees that spied on Cubans to ensure their loyalty to the dictatorship.

Innocent people were being killed in Germany until 1989, and are still massacred in Cuba today.

 

Chris Gueffroy killed at the Berlin Wall on Feb 5, 1989

 

One of the last victims, Chris Gueffroy, was born on June 21, 1968, and shot dead by East German border guards on February 5, 1989, while trying to cross on the Britzer Zweigkanal, near the small garden colonies "Harmonie" and "Sorgenfrei" on the sector border between Berlin-Treptow and Berlin-Neukölln. At the age of 20, he was executed for the crime of wishing to live in freedom. 

A memorial column in memory of Chris Gueffroy was erected at Britzer Zweigkanal in Berlin-Treptow in 2003 in honor of his 35th birthday. A biography and account of the circumstances that led to his death and the aftermath are available online.  

Memorial Column for Chris Gueffroy

The process of the Berlin Wall being torn down was both a struggle of ideas, nonviolent resistance, and international solidarity. Germans crossed the wall seeking freedom in an act of nonviolent defiance. Many escaped, but others paid the ultimate price for freedom. The Order to Border Guards from the East German regime was clear:

"It is your duty to use your combat … skills in such a way as to overcome the cunning of the border breacher, to challenge or liquidate him in order to thwart the planned border breach... Don’t hesitate to use your weapon even when border breaches happen with women and children, which traitors have often exploited in the past."

Thirty five years have passed, and the words of the late Czech dissident Vaclav Havel remain relevant for our times, and in defiance of the inhumanity represented by the Berlin Wall. In 2003, he addressed a gathering at Florida International University that was prescient.

"Our world, as a whole, is not in the best of shape, and the direction it is headed in may well be quite ambivalent. But this does not mean that we are permitted to give up on free and cultivated thinking and to replace it with a set of utopian clichés. That would not make the world a better place, it would only make it worse. On the contrary, it means that we must do more for our own freedom, and that of others."

The legacy of the Berlin Wall reverberates strongly among Cubans because, since 1959, the Florida Straits have been turned into a killing zone by the communist regime in Cuba, along with the border with the U.S. Guantanamo Naval Base.  

Finally, let us denounce the watery Berlin Wall in the Florida Straights created by the Castro regime that continues to kill Cubans seeking freedom. Less than five years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, on July 13, 1994, thirty-seven Cubans were massacred for trying to flee Cuba. The most recent massacre in Cuba occurred a little over two years ago, on October 28, 2022, killing seven Cubans, including a two-year-old.

 

However, we must commemorate the tremendous days of liberation that took place in the heart of Europe in 1989, the winds of change that emancipated tens of millions of people, and the fact that these free societies are still flourishing in freedom after 35 years.

While honoring and remembering tomorrow the events and heroes of November 9, 1989, I will also remember the struggle for liberty and justice never ends.  

From Ukraine, to Taiwan, to Venezuela, to Cuba, and too many other places around the world the struggle for freedom continues. 

Remembering the Messenger of Truth 40 Years Later: Father Jerzy Popiełuszko

 "A man who tells the Truth is a free man despite external slavery, imprisonment or custody." -  Fr. Jerzy Popiełuszko, Sermon,  October 31, 1982  

 

Father Jerzy Popiełuszko ( September 14, 1947 - October 19, 1984)

At the Mass celebrated on the 40th anniversary of the death of Solidarity's chaplain in the Church of St. Stanisław Kostka, President Andrzej Duda, representatives of the PiS leadership (Jarosław Kaczyński and Przemysław Czarnek), family of the priest Jerzy Popielłuszki, representatives of Solidarity, clergy of the Archdiocese of Warsaw, and numerous faithful gathered.

Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz's homily underscored that Cardinal Jerzy Popiełuszko was a "witness to the gospel of love and a defender of human dignity who taught to us to overcome evil with good."

Forty years ago today on October 19, 1984 the communist regime in Poland murdered a saint in the expectation that they could hang on to power. They had murdered Father Jerzy Popiełuszko for being the chaplain to the fledgling Solidarity Movement.

The Institute of National Remembrance tweeted what is known about the extrajudicial killing of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko by agents of the communist dictatorship in Poland.

"After a Holy Mass in the Parish of the Holy Polish Martyr Brothers in Bydgoszcz, on their way to Warsaw, Father Jerzy Popiełuszko and Waldemar Chrostowski, the driver of Volkswagen Golf, were pulled over and kidnapped in Górsk by three security service officers (Grzegorz Piotrowski, Leszek Pękala and Waldemar Chmielewski) who were dressed as policemen. The agents operated under Independent Group "D" (disintegration) from the 4th Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. At that point the trail ends. Nobody knows what really happened to Father Popiełuszko."

They had thought killing a symbol of freedom and terrorizing the Polish people would silence the opposition. They counted wrong. Less than five years later on June 4, 1989 Poland would be the first country in Eastern Europe to hold free elections and sweep the communists from power nonviolently. 

This was due in no small part to the teachings of the martyred priest Jerzy Popieluszko who called for an authentic reconciliation:

"Our Fatherland and respect of human dignity must be the common objective for reconciliation. You must unite in reconciliation in the spirit of love, but also in the spirit of justice. As the Holy Father said five years ago, no love exists without justice. Love is greater than justice and at the same time finds reassurance in justice."

Father Popiełuszko has been recognized as a martyr by the Catholic Church, and was beatified on Sunday, June 6, 2010 in Warsaw with more than 150,000 in attendance.

 Beatification is an act of the Pope who declares that a deceased person lived a holy life and is worthy of public veneration. It is a first step toward canonization. The video above shows Poles marching with relics of the now beatified priest on their way to the main ceremony.

The following fragments, which may provide a better insight into the thinking of this moral exemplar,were taken in 2010 from a page dedicated to him by two Polish organizations - The Institute of National Remembrance and The National Centre for Culture, but is no longer up and running.

A fragment from the Sermon of 28 February 1982

"The church always stands on the side of truth. The church always stands on the side of people who are victimized. Today the church stands on the side of those who have lost their freedom, whose conscience is being broken. Today the church stands on the side of the Solidarity, on the side of the working people, who are often placed in one line along with common criminals.

Dedication to freedom is tightly knit with human nature and with mature national awareness. This dedication is intertwined with the law and duty. It is intertwined with the law, and thus every man and every nation must experience the suppression of freedom as painful and unjust."

A fragment from the Sermon of 27 March 1983

 
"Our Fatherland and respect of human dignity must be the common objective for reconciliation. You must unite in reconciliation in the spirit of love, but also in the spirit of justice. As the Holy Father said five years ago, no love exists without justice. Love is greater than justice and at the same time finds reassurance in justice.

And for you, brothers, who carry in your hearts paid-for hatred, let it be a time of reflection that violence is not victorious, though it may triumph for a while. We have a proof of that standing underneath the Cross. There too was violence and hatred for truth. But the violence and hatred were defeated by the active love of Christ."

A fragment from the Sermon of 4 December 1983

"Work, especially hard work, shapes love and social justice. It happens only when work is ruled by the proper moral order. If there is no moral order at work, in place of justice creeps hurt, and in place of love - hate. That is why those who in recent decades have destroyed and are still destroying the moral order do such harm to the working people and the whole society. 

When they want to replace Christian morality, rooted in a thousand years of tradition, against the will of all with so-called secular morality, in a Christian country there will always be a purulent wound. They do harm when they exclude God from the workplace, and believers are discriminated and usually can not occupy high positions. The workers of August 1980 called more for moral order than for higher wages. 

The world opinion was struck by the fact that the events of August were free of aggression, violence, that nobody was injured or died, that they bore the clear stamp of religion. The Holy Father, John Paul II, spoke of this in Katowice."

A fragment from the Sermon of 24 June 1984

"A condition for peace of conscience, peace in the family, peace in the Homeland and the world is justice based on love.(…)

(…) Justice dictates each to be granted the rights they are due. And so the right to work in accordance with your profession and not be thrown out of work for your beliefs. The Primate of Poland spoke of this on 2 January 1982 in the following words: 'There is one matter which lies heavy on the heart of the Church. It is the matter of the dismissals of those who do not want to resign from the Solidarity trade union. And we stand against this injustice which is an abuse of human rights'...”. 

Let us celebrate and remember how Father Jerzy Popiełuszko and the message he shared with us.

He was a messenger of truth.

Remembering Laura Pollán, Cuba's Lady in White thirteen years after her killing

 They can either kill us, put us in jail or release them. We will never stop marching no matter what happens." - Laura Inés Pollán Toledo (2010) 

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, February 13, 1948 – October 14, 2011

 

Thirteen years ago today, Cuban opposition leader and human rights defender Laura Pollán died under circumstances that Cuban dissident and medical doctor Oscar Elias Biscet described as "death by purposeful medical neglect" in the custody of Cuban State Security at the Hospital Calixto García in Havana.

Today, on her death anniversary, she is remembered in Cuba by her compatriots, and around the world.  
Laura Inés Pollán Toledo, a courageous woman spoke truth to power and protested in the streets of Cuba demanding an amnesty for Cuban political prisoners. She had been a school teacher, before her husband was jailed for his independent journalism in 2003 along with more than 75 other civil society members. Laura was greatly admired both inside and outside of the island.
 

But when one opposes the regime in Cuba not only is their physical life in danger, but their reputation is systematically slandered. The dictatorship claimed that she was a stateless "traitor." She became ill and died within the space of a week under circumstances that raise the question of foul play by Castro's secret police.

Following her death the official media of the dictatorship began a slander campaign asserting that she was a common criminal.

Following brutal repression, in an effort to prevent them from marching through the streets of Havana in 2010, Laura Pollan directly and nonviolently challenged the regime declaring, "we will never give up our protest. The authorities have three options — free our husbands, imprison us or kill us."  

Unfortunately beginning in 2010 a new and deadlier pattern of oppression presented itself with the extrajudicial death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo. 

Laura Pollán's "criminal" behavior was to start the Ladies in White movement after the Black Cuban Spring of 2003 and nonviolently challenged the Castro regime in the streets of Havana at the beginning, and eventually across the island. Laura reached out to the wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters of the 75 prisoners of conscience jailed in March of 2003 along with her husband and they carried out a sustained nonviolent campaign that after nine years obtained the freedom of their loved ones.

Just like she didn't break up the Ladies in White when her husband came home. Because she recognized that the laws had not changed, that political prisoners remained behind bars, and that she would continue her human rights activism, the Castro regime did away with her on October 14, 2011.

Today, the current leader of the Ladies in White, Berta Soler, honored the memory of her predecessor over Face Book and Twitter.

 

Berta Soler Fernandez: "October 14, 13th Anniversary of the assassination of our Leader Laura Pollan, ordered by Fidel and Raul Castro.
The Ladies in White pay tribute and homage to our unforgettable Laura
Forbidden to forget
Eternal Glory
#DamasdBlanco
Archive photos"

 

Let us remember that Laura put into action over eight years in Cuba nonviolent resistance to tyranny.

"They tried to silence 75 voices, but now there are more than 75 voices shouting to the world the injustices the government has committed." (2004) "We fight for the freedom of our husbands, the union of our families. We love our men." (2005)

"They can either kill us, put us in jail or release them. We will never stop marching no matter what happens." (2010) "We are going to continue. We are fighting for freedom and human rights.” (September 24, 2011)

"As long as this government is around there will be prisoners because while they've let some go, they've put others in jail. It is a never-ending story." (2011)

“If we must give our own lives in pursuit of the freedom of our Cuba that it be what God wants.” (September 24, 2011)

"We are not going to stop. If you have imprisoned our sisters thinking that we would give up, they are mistaken. We are very united (...) all the women's movements are very close." (October 2, 2011)

"My life has changed a lot, now I have learned to love the country much more, the prisoners, the humanity. That's how I have so much work, that I don't have much time to think about myself, what really satisfies me, in short, I owe myself to other more important tasks. Now I understand much more, before I could not understand these things, you have to live and feel them to be able to dedicate soul heart and life to this beautiful cause." (2011)

The regime in Cuba is the most misogynist government in all of Latin America. Women who speak out and exercise their fundamental rights are regularly slandered, physically assaulted and sometimes die under suspicious circumstances as Laura did thirteen years ago today.

 

Celebrating a Free China: Taiwan's 113th National Day

 For a free China!

October 10th is observed in Taiwan as the National Day of the Republic of China. 2024 commemorates 113 years since the start of the Wuchang Uprising on October 10, 1911 which is known as the (10-10 or double ten) and the theme this year is "A Beautiful Taiwan Today. A Better Taiwan Tomorrow." 

This uprising led to the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in China following a 268 year reign and the establishment of the Republic of China on January 1, 1912. Before this China had known imperial rule for 2,133 years beginning in 221 BC. The founding father of the Republic of China was Sun Yat-sen.

This Free China was driven out by the communists from the mainland in 1949, but has been maintained on the island of Taiwan, a beacon of freedom for all Chinese. The Republic of China remains today a living national symbol of what a free China would look like on the mainland. Below is the footage of the 100th anniversary celebrations in 2011 in Tapei.

Therefore all friends of freedom in China can raise a toast to the Republic of China on its national day in praise of all their accomplishments over the past century and pray for the day that all of China is free.

 

 

Note to His Admirers: Comandante Ernesto "Che" Guevara is still dead, and his ideals are toxic.

 "I'd like to confess, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing." Ernesto "Che" Guevara, in a letter to his father after executing an unarmed man.  

Che Guevara executed for trying to overthrow Bolivian govt on October 9, 1967

 

Ideas have consequences and those ideas are sometimes represented in iconic images. This is the case of the image of Ernesto "Che" Guevara and his toxic philosophy of political action that others seek to emulate.  He embraced hatred and dehumanization of the other as the means to carry out what he thought necessary actions.

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

Hamas terrorists launched indiscriminate rocket attacks on October 7, 2023 across Israel then invaded the Jewish nation beating, killing innocent people, raping women, kidnapping civilians, and parading the naked, battered body of a young woman they had murdered through the streets and spitting on her. These are war crimes. Over 1200 Israelis were killed, and 251 civilian hostages taken in this act of terrorism.

Leticia Martinez, head of communications for Miguel Diaz-Canel posted a message celebrating a “Free Palestine” in the midst of the terrorist attacks on October 7th over her social media.

She was not alone.  

In the midst of this barbarism and evil, official Cuban journalist  Pedro Jorge Velázquez , who goes by the pseudonym  El Necio on X.cites Che Guevara's visit to Gaza in 1959 as an inflection point that turned Palestine into a world cause, and posts photos of the Argentine guerilla with Middle East leaders during a visit there at the start of the Cuban dictatorship. 

He lies about Israel calling it a "Zionist colonization" without recognizing Jewish people as indigenous to this their ancestral lands. He claims that Guevara is the inspiration for the "resistance" i.e. terrorist barbarism taking place today, and concludes his rant with "Che Lives."

The only truth to what El Necio argues in his social media post is the role that Che Guevara plays in inspiring barbarism and cruelty against the innocent that over 65 years later has failed to provide Palestinians their nation state, and left them in a worse state than in 1959.

Guevara's claim to fame was the role he played alongside Fidel and Raul Castro in installing a totalitarian communist dictatorship using violent means, including terrorism, in Cuba then attempting to spread this model using violent means to Africa and Latin America. His efforts failed.

Castro executed thousands of Cubans, locked up hundreds of thousands of Cubans, built a police state, with the assistance of the KGB and the East German Stasi, and imposed revolutionary terror to consolidate power. Credible and conservative estimates of the Castro regime’s death toll against Cuban nationals ran from 35,000 to 141,000, with a median of 73,000. In the beginning executions were televised in Cuba to terrorize the populace. This is the model the Palestinian leadership chose to emulate. They chose poorly.

Che Guevara addressing the United Nations on December 11, 1964

 Che Guevara, speaking to the United Nations on December 11, 1964, did not mince words: "We must express here something that is a well-known truth and that we have constantly asserted before the entire world: executions? Yes, we have executed individuals; we are currently executing others, and we will continue to do so as long as required. We know what the outcome of a losing struggle would be, and the worms must know what the outcome is today in Cuba." 

 

In addition to the Hellscape in the Middle East, Ernesto "Che" Guevara laid the groundwork for much of the additional misery in Latin America today.

Guevara with a Cuban delegation visited Mainland China and met with Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, and other high ranking Chinese officials in November 1960 to discuss conditions in Cuba and in Latin America, and the prospects for communist revolution in the Western Hemisphere.

Guevara meets Mao Ze Dong in November 1960.

Mao Ze Dong caused the deaths of an estimated 45 million Chinese people in his communist project through famine and mass executions.  He is the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century, and someone Guevara stayed allied to, even after the Castro regime cooled relations with Beijing siding with Moscow.

Months after the world came perilously close to a nuclear holocaust in October 1962, Che Guevara was disappointed. The Argentine declared in November 1962: "What we affirm is that we must proceed along the path of liberation even if this costs millions of atomic victims.”

Ernesto Guevara was executed  summarily on October 9, 1967 in La Higuera, Bolivia after he and his band of guerrillas were captured trying to overthrow the legitimate government there and install a Castro style dictatorship. His legacy at the time was already one of blood and terror that should be lamented not celebrated.

Comandante Ernesto "Che" Guevara is still dead, his ideals are still toxic, and need to be buried along with him. The barbarism visited upon the Israeli people by Hamas and Hezbollah, both receiving support from the Cuban dictatorship, demonstrates how the cult of violence and hate Guevara promoted are an obstacle to a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.