75 years ago today Mohandas Gandhi was assassinated. 67 years ago today Martin Luther King Jr.'s home was bombed.

"We are ruthless and ask no quarter from you. When our turn comes we shall not disguise our terrorism." - Karl Marx, Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, vol. vi pp 503-5 (The final issue of Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 18 May 1849)

"Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak." - Mohandas K. Gandhi 

Body of Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi lies in state at Birla House in New Delhi.

“In politics you cannot follow nonviolence. You cannot follow honesty. Every moment you have to give a lie. Every moment you have to take a bullet in hand and kill someone.” -  Gopal Godse,  co-conspirator in Gandhi's assassination.

Mohandas K. Gandhi and his assassin Nathuram Godse

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that. The beauty of nonviolence is that in its own way and in its own time it seeks to break the chain reaction of evil”  - Martin Luther King Jr.,  Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community, 1967  

Seventy five years ago on January 30, 1948, Mohandas Gandhi was shot three times in the chest and killed by Hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse at 5:17pm. Godse was part of a team of assassins that had tried 10 days earlier to bomb and kill Gandhi.

Reverend King Jr.'s home after the bombing.

Sixty seven years ago on January 30, 1956, Martin Luther King Jr.'s home was bombed, damaging his home, but thankfully not harming his "wife, Coretta Scott King, who was inside with the couple’s seven-month-old daughter Yolanda." The bomb threats would continue, but his commitment to nonviolence did not waiver. He was a disciple of Mohandas Gandhi.

Both men faced numerous death threats, imprisonment, and assassination attempts, but maintained their commitment to nonviolence.

Despite his successful struggle for independence and the establishment of the world's largest democracy, Gandhi was gunned down as he went to worship, after repeated assassination attempts. They murdered Gandhi because they did not believe India could survive with Gandhi promoting Satyagraha and a Muslim state next door. Gopal Godse, a co-conspirator and brother of the assassin Nathuram Godse, quoted in Time magazine in February 2000: “In politics you cannot follow nonviolence. You cannot follow honesty. Every moment you have to give a lie. Every moment you have to take a bullet in hand and kill someone.” Gopal Godse, the last living conspirator in the Gandhi assassination died in 2005.

Killers’:(1st row, from L) Nathuram, Apte, Karkare; (2nd row) Badge, Madanlal, Gopal; (3rd row) Shankar, Savarkar 

Communists view nationalists as a threat to their revolutionary project, and nationalists often have a critical view of Marxism-Leninism, but they both agreed in their hostility to Mohandas Gandhi. The nationalists were open and transparent about their evil intent, but the communists had more guile, and their reasons for rejecting him more complex. 

The Soviet press published an article written by S.M. Vakar in 1948 following Gandhi's assassination on January 30, 1948 titled "The Class Nature of the Gandhi Doctrine" subtitled "Gandhi as a Reactionary Utopian" in the Soviet philosophy journal Voprosy filosofii (Questions of Philosophy). The Marxist Leninist argument was outlined as follows:

Although Gandhi regarded the union and independence of the Indian peoples as his goal, his reactionary-Utopian social theory and the reformist methods of struggle connected with it caused his activity to fail in facilitating overthrow of the colonial yoke [...] The social essence of the Gandhi doctrine and its fundamentally reactionary role in the history of India's national liberation movement has hardly been treated in Marxist literature. Yet this doctrine still retards the development of class awareness among the Indian masses.

 What was this social essence of Gandhian thought that so troubled the Marxist Leninists in the Soviet Union? First, the reformist methods of struggle referred to in the above quote was nonviolent resistance, and secondly his social theory rejected class struggle as another manifestation of destructive violence. On September 11, 1906 a new word came into existence that would give a better understanding of Gandhi's social theory and method of struggle which he described as:

'Satyagraha.' Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement 'Satyagraha,' that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence, and gave up the use of the phrase 'passive resistance,' in connection with it, so much so that even in English writing we often avoided it and used instead the word 'Satyagraha' itself or some other equivalent English phrase.

 The Marxist-Leninists embrace revolutionary violence and a movement led by a small vanguard of intellectuals and professional revolutionaries that carry out the changes "necessary" by whatever means necessary and reject nonviolence as naive. They follow the doctrine of  Vladimir Lenin as presented in his 1902 revolutionary tract, "What is to be done."

 

Over a century has passed since both sets of ideas were articulated and implemented around the world. Maria J. Stephen and Erica Chenoweth conducted a systematic examination of the strategic effectiveness of both violent and nonviolent campaigns using data from 323 campaigns conducted between 1900 and 2006. [1] Their findings show that major nonviolent campaigns were successful 53% of the time, compared to 26% for major violent campaigns and 7% for terrorist campaigns.

Today, India with all its flaws is the world's largest democracy with a growing economy that presents new competitive challenges to the developed world and Communism has amassed a body count of 100 million dead and counting. It would appear that Gandhi's criticisms of the communists were prescient:

"The socialists and communists say, they can do nothing to bring about economic equality today. They will just carry on propaganda in its favor and to that end they believe in generating and accentuating hatred. They say, when they get control over the State, they will enforce equality. Under my plan the State will be there to carry out the will of the people, not to dictate to them or force them to do its will." - Mohandas Gandhi

"It is my firm conviction that if the State suppressed capitalism by violence, it will be caught in the coils of violence itself, and will fail to develop non-violence at any time. The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence." - Mohandas Gandhi

It is Satyagraha that is relevant today in 2023 and offers an alternative to the conflagrations suffered in the 20th century and the wars that plague the world now. Gandhi's Satyagraha is a call to principled non-violence, but even pragmatists and realists looking over the historical record cannot fail to be influenced by the fact that non-violent civic resistance works and offers a better chance of a better life for more people.

Reverend King's family hold a wake for the martyred civil rights leader

This is not an approach for the timid. Martin Luther King Jr., a Gandhi disciple, followed this path, accomplishing much for African Americans in the United States, but he did not live to see his 40th birthday; he was assassinated by a white racist on April 4, 1968 at the age of 39. 

The following is a 2018 documentary by Deutsche Welle about Mohandas Gandhi's assassination.
It is also offered in Spanish. 

José Julián Martí Pérez at 170: The descendants of José Martí and those who repress them now

 "I think they kill my child every time they deprive a person of their right to think." - José Martí

28 January 1853 – 19 May 1895

José Martí was a poet, journalist, and Cuban independence leader. He had also endured prison for writings critical of the Spanish government. He organized a war of independence, but did so without resorting to dehumanizing his adversary or appealing to hatred. He was also a fierce advocate for civil liberties and especially freedom of thought and expression. Today, January 28 marks 170 years since the day José Julián Martí Pérez was born.

The communist dictatorship in Cuba claims José Martí as its own, but their ideology and actions are in stark contrast to his values. 

Over a thousand sons and daughters of Cuba are arbitrarily and unjustly imprisoned today for exercising their right to free thought and expression in calling for freedom in July 2021. Eleven thousand are jailed for pre-crime in Cuba. The regime jails them for what they might potentially do in the future.  Millions of Cubans have gone into exile, and many are barred from returning home by the Castro regime. The Castro regime continues to kill Cubans for standing up for freedom or attempting to flee Cuba to live in freedom.  It has criminalized free speech, and jailed artists and independent journalists for exercising their profession. 

José Martí with shirt of stars by Camila Ramírez Lobón

Ideas expressed below by José Martí are in conflict with Castroism, but are in accord with the democratic Cuba that helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and struggled for a more just and democratic order, but was damaged by Fulgencio Batista after 1952 then systematically destroyed by the Castro brothers after 1959. 

"Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist."

"Freedoms, like privileges, prevail or are imperiled together You cannot harm or strive to achieve one without harming or furthering all."

"Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy."

"It is the duty of man to raise up man. One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve. Only those who spread treachery, fire, and death out of hatred for the prosperity of others are undeserving of pity."  

 Martí also criticized the writings of Karl Marx, observing they were antithetical to his own values. If one considers that he wrote, "It is the duty of man to raise up man. One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve. Only those who spread treachery, fire, and death out of hatred for the prosperity of others are undeserving of pity." He was a contemporary of Marx who had written in 1849, "We are ruthless and ask no quarter from you. When our turn comes we shall not disguise our terrorism." Martí recognized the dangers of Socialism and its doctrine of envy, observing: 

"Socialist ideology, like so many others, has two main dangers. One stems from confused and incomplete readings of foreign texts, and the other from the arrogance and hidden rage of those who, in order to climb up in the world, pretend to be frantic defenders of the helpless so as to have shoulders on which to stand." 

The observation of José Martí that “A revolution is still necessary: the one that does not make its caudillo president, the revolution against revolutions, the uprising of all peaceful men, once soldiers, so that neither they nor anyone will ever be so again,” is a damning indictment of the 64 year dictatorship of the Castro brothers, but also relevant to free Cubans.  

Martí wrote this before nonviolence was recognized as a powerful force to be used to achieve change. He led the effort to initiate Cuba's second war of independence and was killed in action during an early skirmish in that war in 1895. 

However, the idea of an uprising of nonviolent men and women to carry out a "revolution against revolutions"  that will usher in a democracy, and not another dictator, is precisely what many Cubans want. 

Today also marks five years since nonviolence scholar Gene Sharp died. He taught generations that there was an alternative to bloody conflict and that it was non-violent armed conflict. Professor Sharp practiced nonviolence as a conscientious objector during the Korean War, and studied the examples of Mohandas Gandhi, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and many other nonviolent practitioners. He demonstrated that nonviolent resistance was anything but passive, and that success in a struggle required strategy as well.

January 21, 1928 – January 28, 2018

Gene Sharp presented his case succinctly at the National Conference on Nonviolent Sanctions and Defense in Boston in 1990. 

"I say nonviolent struggle is armed struggle. And we have to take back that term from those advocates of violence who seek to justify with pretty words that kind of combat. Only with this type of struggle one fights with psychological weapons, social weapons, economic weapons and political weapons. And that this is ultimately more powerful against oppression, injustice and tyranny then violence."

Cubans of all ideological stripes claim him as their own, but objectively who has maintained the spirit of his words and ideals? Castroism is the antithesis of all that José Martí represented. 

There is a movement that seeks to restore human rights and liberties using nonviolent means that uphold his values. These are courageous men and women who risk all standing up to the Cuban dictatorship. Many have been jailed, some have been killed, and their families targeted for reprisals in this struggle for freedom.

Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas addresses the EU parliament (2002)

Looking for these values in contemporary statements leads to Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, who said in a speech to the European Parliament on December 17, 2002:

 "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.’"

It also leads to #27N and the San Isidro Movement, and on January 27, 2021, artists, journalists and intellectuals peacefully gathered in front of the Ministry of Culture to read the works of José Martí. They are his descendants.   

The San Isidro Movement

Two years ago on the eve of the 168th anniversary of José Martí's birth, approximately 20 artists, journalists and intellectuals gathered mark the two month anniversary of hundreds of artists and intellectuals protesting at the Ministry of Culture on November 27, 2020 for freedom of expression following the government raid on the San Isidro Movement's headquarters in Havana hours earlier.  Out of this public demonstration, the Vice Minister of Culture agreed to meet with 32 representatives and committed to an ongoing dialogue. The 27N movement was formed that same night, but afterwards the regime official reneged on his pledge.

Carolina Barrero, an art historian, led the group in reading the poem "Dos Patrias," which translates to "Two Homelands," and posted the video on Facebook.

27 de enero de 2021.

Dos patrias tengo yo: Cuba y la noche. ¿O son una las dos?

José Martí @27n #DosPatriastengoyoCubaylanoche pic.twitter.com/Kr0fvyLztI

— Carolina Barrero (@carolinabferrer) January 27, 2022

On January 27, 2021, Diario de Cuba reported on the preemptive arrests, an act of repudiation against the gathered artists and intellectuals, led by the Minister of Culture Alpidio Alonso and his Vice-Minister Fernando León Jacomino, who were caught on camera physically assaulting them. Secret police arrested the dissidents and crammed them into a small bus before beating them up while they were already detained. 

Carolina Barrero was charged with "Clandestine Printing," a crime under Article 210 of the Castro regime's penal code, for distributing the above image, and a case was filed against her.  

 On March 21, 2021 Cuban artist Camila Ramírez Lobón identified herself as the author of the image and challenged regime officials: “The law that you want to apply against the beauty, in the full sense of the word, that Carolina embodies, you will have to use against me, too,” she wrote.

Camila Ramírez Lobón

Other heirs, are to be found in Cuban diaspora, one of them is Patiño Vázquez, a self described "Cuban-American child of mambo and rock & roll." He created his own arrangement, a musical setting for this work of poetry.

Two Homelands

By José Martí

I've got two homelands: Cuba and the night.

Or are both the same? As soon as 

the sun withdraws its majesty, with long veils

and holding a carnation, silent,

Cuba, like a sad widow, appears in front of me

I know which bloody carnation trembles in her hand! 

My chest is empty, it is torn and empty where the heart used to be. 

It's time to start dying. The night is right to say good-bye. 

The light disturbs and the human word. 

The universe speaks better than (the) man.

Like a flag that invites you to battle, the red flame of the sail flatters. 

I open the windows, already tight inside of me. 

Muted, breaking the carnation's leaves, like a cloud that blurs the sky, 

Cuba, a widow, passes... 

In 2023 the heirs of Martí are subjected to political show trials, beatings, forced exile, and extrajudicial executions by the Castro dictatorship that has created an even more draconian penal code to punish those that dare exercise their fundamental human rights in expressing their desire for freedom.

On what side would José Martí have stood?

#WeRemember: International Holocaust Remembrance Day is January 27th

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

Today, January 27, 2023 is recognized by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day and is observed around the world.  

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

Four years later and Neo-Nazis were storming the U.S. Capitol threatening the peaceful transition of power in the United States. 

 

The fragility of a free society was underscored during  the events in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021, and the importance of resisting enemies of freedom both foreign and domestic. 

 

 

This cannot be done by silencing free speech, even if it is hateful, but challenging it and exposing both its intellectual and moral bankruptcy.

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

Vladimir Lenin died 99 years ago today and the Castro regime celebrated his legacy

Vladimir Lenin died 99 years ago today, bringing to an end a blood filled revolutionary career that killed millions in outright murders or politically engineered famines, and condemned the Soviet peoples to seven decades of tyranny.

Castro regime pays homage to Lenin.

Raul Castro's handpicked president, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, today over Twitter observed the death of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin. 

Two days after a high-level delegation of American officials visited Havana to meet with the Castro regime's state security officials, the Cuban president praised Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

"Vladimir Ilyich #Lenin, eternal leader of those who fight for socialism and social justice, died this day in 1924, at only 53 years of age. His social and political work has not ceased to inspire millions of people around the world. #Cuba pays tribute."

The Russian communist revolutionary had several hundred aliases, but Lenin was the one he was best known for, and that he used politically. All the Bolshevik leaders used aliases.  

Soviet leader: Lenin worse than Stalin

Who was this man, whom the Castro regime remembered today on the 99th anniversary of his death?
Molotov, a contemporary who held a leadership position in the Soviet Union, was quoted in David Remnick's 2014 book, Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire. 

"'You know its a pity that Lenin died so early. If he had lived longer, everything would have been normal.' But Molotov said, 'Why do you say that?' My friend said, 'Because Stalin was a bloodsucker and Lenin was a noble person.' Molotov smiled, and then he said, ' Compared to Lenin, Stalin was a mere lamb."

Molotov was born Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Skryabin and took the revolutionary name Vyacheslav Molotov. Molotov was one of the few Bolsheviks in Moscow, and he was part of the group that successfully carried out a coup against the social democrats in October 2017, and he was in the leadership group with both Lenin and Stalin throughout. He held leadership positions in the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1961, when he was expelled from the Communist Party for opposing Khrushchev's de-Stalinization policy. Molotov could assess both Lenin and Stalin's ruthlessness. 

The Library of Congress has communications between Lenin and Molotov. For example in a letter dated March 19, 1922, from Lenin via Molotov to members of the Politburo, he outlined "a brutal plan of action against the 'Black Hundreds' clergy and their followers, who were defying the government decree to remove church valuables (purported by the government to be used to fund famine relief). Lenin proposed the arrest and quick trial of the insurrectionists in Shuia, followed by a ruthless campaign to shoot a large number of the reactionary clergy and bourgeoisie and urged that removal of valuables from the richest churches and monasteries be finished quickly."

Lenin and the Bolsheviks did not depose the Czar.  They overthrew the social democrats who had forced the Czar to abdicate and placed him under house arrest, and were navigating power through democratic processes that were unprepared for the terror and conspiracies of the Bolsheviks.

Lenin's body count

From November 1917 until his death in January 1924, the publication Counting Stars provided a summary of the victims of Leninism.

"The figures of victims of Leninism, from November 1917 to January 1924

• More than a million people murdered for political or religious reasons.
• Between 300,000 and 500,000 Cossacks killed.
• Hundreds of thousands of workers and peasants killed for striking.
• 240,000 killed in the suppression of the Tambov rebellion.
• More than 50,000 white prisoners of war executed.
• Between 3.9 million and 7.75 million deaths from famines among Russians, Kazakhs and Tatars."
  

Lenin at a rally on March 18, 1918.

"A communist coup d'etat that aborted democracy in Russia

To demystify Lenin one must first break other myths. The most basic is that when the Bolshevik coup d'etat broke out on November 7, 1917, the communists did not overthrow the Tsar - which no longer reigned - but aborted the incipient democracy in Russia, taking advantage of the crisis that arose between conservatives and socialists. After the violent assault on power by the communists, a civil war broke out that lasted five years, and in which - already in power - the Bolsheviks - who were victorious - faced all their rivals. It was the beginning of a bloody dictatorship that would last more than 70 years, until the disappearance of the USSR in 1991."

Ideas have consequences 

The body count amassed by Vladimir Lenin and his fellow Bolsheviks was not an accident, but the result of the ideas that animated them, and continue to animate the Cuban communists today.

On October 2, 1920, the first leader of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, stated in a speech to Russian communist youth: 

 "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." 

This is at the heart of communist morality, the ends justify the means, a profound immorality and a pillar of international communism. It also leads to the doctrine of the "big lie." According to Lenin, "To speak the truth is a petit-bourgeois habit. To lie, on the contrary, is often justified by the lie's aim." 

The Third International was founded by Lenin in 1915 and held its first of seven world congresses on March 2, 1919 and was also known as the Communist International, and was known by its abbreviated form the Comintern. It was an international communist organization that advocated world communism. The International intended to fight "by all available means, including armed force, for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie and for the creation of an international Soviet republic as a transition stage to the complete abolition of the State".  

The Soviet State was never abolished, but a new class created, "the nomenklatura" that spent decades ruling over the proletariat with a ruthlessness that led workers in communist regimes, to prefer a return to market systems and democracy. It is a historical irony that Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union was brought to an end by the rise of an independent trade union movement in Poland. 

Castroism's Leninist continuity 

The Castro regime took a country with one of the largest middle classes in Latin America, in part due to a strong labor movement that had existed and grown more powerful for over 50 years. The Batista dictatorship was unable to crush it, but Castro's communist dictatorship over a couple of years crushed this workers movement, and 64 years later the nomenklatura lives with great wealth and privileges while the rest of the Cuban populace is immiserated. 

Fidel Castro, and the rest of the Cuban communists embraced Lenin's "communist morality" and "the big lie." Consider the late dictator's own words on the subject.

Fidel Castro on December 2, 1961 in a moment of frankness confessed: "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."  He was able to "confess" that he had always been a communist because he had consolidated power and killed or imprisoned all his enemies, and shut down all independent media. He had imposed a totalitarian dictatorship on Cubans.

Years later on March 26, 1964, 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."  

Mr. Castro's philosophy is not original, but Leninism with tropical flair, and the speaking style of Benito Mussolini.

Cuban scholar and Christian Democrat Jose Ignacio Rasco, who knew Fidel Castro from primary school and onward, concluded that the Cuban revolutionary had been a committed communist by 1950.

Terrorism and Communism

Author and Journalist Claire Sterling in her March 1, 1981 article in The New York Times,  TERRORISM  TRACING THE INTERNATIONAL NETWORK touched on terrorism's links to international communism beginning with Lenin, but moved on to the pivotal role played by the Castro regime in Cuba.

"Lenin's definition -- 'the purpose of terror is to terrorize' -- is a useful beginning. The terrorist uses violence not to punish the victim but to intimidate the audience, to impose his political will by force when he cannot achieve it by democratic means".

The Castro regime fully embraced terrorism as a global strategy and built an international terrorist network.

..."Fidel Castro had been operating his own schools for guerrillas since 1961, starting with recruits from Latin America and Africa. By 1964, Palestinians and Europeans had joined the ranks." ..."The roots of the terrorist network can be traced directly to the Tricontinental Congress held in Havana in January 1966. More than 500 delegates passed resolutions emphasizing the need for close collaboration between 'Socialist countries' --i.e., the Soviet Union and its satellites -- and national liberation movements." ...  "It was, unmistakably, a call for a Guerrilla International. And the call was heeded. Ten months later, a new cluster of more than a dozen training camps for guerilla fighters from all over the world was opened in Cuba." 

Bombing campaigns were carried out in the United States, and innocents were murdered.  Some of these terrorists were captured, placed on trial, but then broke out of prison and ended up being harbored by the Castro regime. They continue to advocate terrorism, and justify their violence. Worse yet, communist networks claim these killers are "political prisoners."

Lenin died 99 years ago today. The tragedy is that he was able to cause so much harm in his 53 years of life. He is the intellectual author of the Soviet Union,  a system correctly described as anti-human by British conservative Peter Hitchens.

Diaz- Canel is part of a regime that is a continuity of the system created by Lenin.

The Cuban communist channeled Lenin on July 11, 2021 when tens of thousands of Cubans took to the streets nonviolently across Cuba demanding freedom: 

"The order to fight has been given — into the street, revolutionaries! ...They will have to walk right over our corpses. We are ready to do anything if they want to confront the revolution."

Díaz-Canel's call to violence had deadly consequences for Cubans. Regime agents went out into residential neighborhoods firing on protesters. Cuban protester Diubis Laurencio Tejeda, (age 36) was shot in the back and killed on July 12, 2021 by police.