"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)
Holodomor literally means death by
hunger. In 1932 and 1933, a vast famine in Soviet Ukraine killed three
to seven million people, according to estimates. While people starved,
the grain was shut away in barns for export.
The deadliest famines in the 20th century were not in Africa but in Europe (Ukraine) and China.
Social science research has demonstrated that famines "happen only with some degree of human complicity." Human decisions "determine whether a crisis
deteriorates into a full-blown famine."
According to Felix Wemheuer, professor of Modern China Studies at the University of Cologne, in his book Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union," during the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union."
"In fact, with the exception of the 1943
Bengal famine with its approximately two million victims, all of the
other major famines of the twentieth century are directly connected to
socialist "experiments": in 1921 and 1922 in Russia and Ukraine (
1million - 1.5 million deaths); in 1931, 1932, and 1933 in the USSR (6.5
million - 7.5 million deaths, of which 4 million were in Ukraine
and 1.3 million - 1.5 million in Kazakhstan); in 1946 and 1947 in the
USSR (1 million - 1.5 million deaths); from 1958 to 1962 in China (30
million - 45 million deaths); from 1983 to 1985 in Ethiopia
(0.5 million - 1.0 million deaths); and from 1994 to 1998 in North
Korea ( estimates vary from a few hundred thousand to more than 2
million deaths)."
This was not due to poor central
planning and socialist inefficiencies, but a deliberate policy of
genocide against targeted population to consolidate political control by
eliminating those who do not support their regime. The percentage of
victims in the USSR and China relative to their respective overall
populations were the same (5%). In the case of the USSR that meant
around 7 million deaths out of a population of 160 million and in the
case of China estimates between 30 million and 45 million deaths out of a population of 600 million. The Ukrainian Research and Documentary Center on the 50th anniversary of the Holodomor released the documentary Harvest of Despair.
We must also remember those who bore witness and spoke truth, and those who covered it up. Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist broke the story on the Ukranian famine on March 29, 1933 despite official denials. Walter Duranty of The New York Times wrote an article a day later rebutting Jones's claims that was published in the paper of record
on March 31, 1933. Duranty knew that what Jones published was true, but
he sought to appease his Soviet hosts, and remain in the country.
The Russians, under the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin, are engaging in genocide again. People of goodwill cannot remain silent, or worse try to
minimize what is taking place.
Olena @ZelenskaUA and I joined the commemoration of the Holodomor genocide.
Today, the Ukrainian people are united in their prayers, desire for justice, and the flame of our national memory.
Ukraine will never forget the millions of our people who were killed by starvation. pic.twitter.com/YlOYJvGmzS
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) November 25, 2023
It also saddens me that the Castro regime in Cuba is not siding with the little country being invaded by a superpower, but is instead siding with the aggressor, sending Cuban soldiers to fight for war criminal Vladimir Putin in Ukraine.
If you are in the Washington DC area today then please consider joining in a nonviolent act of remembrance marking 90 years since this Russian act of genocide.
Fidel Castro: Cuba's absolute dictator turned power over to his brother
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
Cuba, President of the Council of State of Cuba, President of the
Council of Ministers of Cuba, Prime Minister, and Secretary-General of
the Non-Aligned Movement, Comandante Fidel Castro is still dead.
Seven years ago, on a Black Friday that fell on November 25, 2016, Cuban
tyrant Fidel Castro died at the age of 90 never having had to answer for
his many crimes against humanity both in and out of Cuba. From Nicaragua, to Ethiopia, to Venezuela,
and in many other places Fidel Castro assisted tyrants and
dictators to take power, hold on to it, and consolidate their rule. One day later in a blog post I predicted what would come next.
"Predictably over the next few weeks inside Cuba the world will see spectacles organized by the totalitarian dictatorship to "mourn the great leader." The regime has already started with nine days set asidefor
official mourning. This will not be the first time that monsters are
mourned by an oppressed people through different methods of command,
control and manipulation. The world has witnessed it before in the
Soviet Union in 1953 and more recently in North Korea with the Kim dynasty. The death of Stalin as dramatized in the film "The Inner Circle" is recommended viewing for those about to follow the circus in Cuba in the wake of Fidel Castro's death. Meanwhile in Cuba as the regime prepares its state funeral the Castro dictatorship's secret police begin to make threats, round up and take dissidents to undisclosed locations and commit acts of violence."
Six years later the fans of the late Cuban dictator are out trying to
defend his legacy and repeating the lies to put him in a positive light.
These apologists of the dictator are silent on the role played by the United States government and The New York Times in undermining Fulgencio Batista's rule and bringing Fidel Castro to power.
On this sixth anniversary of the dictator's death it is a good time to remember some of his more memorable statements.
Relationship with the truth
Fidel Castro in the 1950s repeatedly claimed that
he was not a communist because he knew that advocating a communist revolution would
lead Cubans to abandon him. On December 2, 1961 he explained his reasoning.
"If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists
while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that
we would never have been able to descend to the plains."
On March 26, 1964, after announcing that he had always been a Marxist Leninist, Castro explained:
"I conceive the
truth in terms of a just and noble end, and that is when the truth is
truly true. If it does not serve a just, noble and positive end, truth,
as an abstract entity, philosophical category, in my opinion, does not
exist."
Jose Ignacio Rasco,
who knew Fidel Castro from school and afterwards concluded that the
Cuban revolutionary had been a committed communist by 1950.
Denied universality of human rights , and erased Cuba's role in 1948 codifying them
Fidel Castro in the above interview in Havana in 1986 divided freedoms
i.e. rights as one set being revolutionary liberties and another being
bourgeois liberties and claiming that there are two different concepts
of liberty he is rejecting the Latin American tradition which was best
expounded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that there are
basic human rights that are universal and not separated by
political/ideological or as in the Islamic claim by religious
differences but are the same for everyone. Omitted the role played by Cuban diplomats in drafting and lobbying for the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948.
In 1961 in a speech that became known as "Words to intellectuals" Fidel Castro labeled dissenters "counterrevolutionaries" and explicitly stripped them of their rights.
What are the rights of writers and artists, revolutionary or non-revolutionary?Within the Revolution, everything;against the Revolution, no right (applause).And this is not some special law or guideline for artists and writers.It is a general principle for all citizens. It is a fundamental principle of the Revolution.
Counterrevolutionaries, that is, the
enemies of the revolution, have no rights against the revolution,
because the revolution has one right: the right to exist, the right to
develop, and the right to be victorious." ... "In other words: Within
the revolution, everything; against the revolution, nothing."
This is not an original statement, but an echo of speeches and writings made by other tyrants. A close parallel is found in Benito Mussolini's 1935 speech: "Everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value, outside the State."
Consequences of this policy in Cuba were seen internationally in the Padilla Affair in 1971.
HomophobicWe would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the
conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider
him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of
that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant
communist should be.” - Fidel Castro, 1965
On March 13, 1963 Fidel Castro gave a speech were he openly attacked “long-haired
layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets
wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like
Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of organizing “effeminate shows” in public places. The Cuban dictator warned: “They should not
confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with weaknesses in
the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these degenerates.”
Both Gays, and rock n rollers were sent to forced labor camps.
Ended Black Cuban agency
"In
Cuba, the exploitation of man by man has disappeared, and racial
discrimination has disappeared, too." - Fidel Castro, quoted in Castro's Cuba, Cuba's Fidel By Lee Lockwood, 1967
“Of the 256 Negro societies in Cuba, many have had to close their
doors and others are in death agony. One can truthfully say, and this is
without the slightest exaggeration, that the Negro movement in Cuba
died at the hands of Sr. Fidel Castro.” … “Yet this is the man who had
the cynical impudence to visit the United States in 1960 for the purpose
of censuring American racial discrimination. Although this evil
obviously exists in the United States, Castro is not precisely the man
to offer America solutions, nor even to pass judgement.”
Between 1898 and 1959 the relationship between Black-Americans and
Black-Cubans was based on their being part of an international black
diaspora. This relationship ended when the Castro regime ended
autonomous black civil society in 1962, and consolidated totalitarian
rule. It was replaced by Castro and his white revolutionary elite allying with
Black elites in the United States, and Africa while criticizing racism
in the United States.
For decades, the Castro regime expected Black Cubans to be obedient, submissive, and grateful to
the white revolutionary elite, and this was reflected in official
propaganda with racist tropes. Black Cubans who think for themselves are punished.
On Walls and border controls
Fidel Castro visited Berlin in 1972 and encouraged the border guards to
continue shooting Germans trying to flee to freedom by crossing the
Berlin Wall. At Brandenburg gate on June 14, 1972 in the afternoon (pictured above) he addressed the men charged with shooting East Germans fleeing to West Germany as "the courageous and self-denying border guards of the GDR People's Army who stand guard in the front line of the entire-socialist community." Castro addressed the Nikolay Bezarin Barracks in East Berlin:
"It is very important to know that the people of the GDR have great
confidence in you, that they are truly proud of you. The comrades of the
party and the citizens of socialist Berlin have told us with great
satisfaction about the activity of the border troops, speaking with
great admiration for you and for your services."
On November 5, 1975, 30,000 Cuban troops were dispatched to Angola in
what was called Operation Carlota, and today pro-Castro sympathizers
over social media are celebrating this anniversary with excerpts of a speech the Cuban dictator gave announcing the move at the time. Cuban troops, beginning on May 27, 1977, took part in a massacre in Angola following a split in the governing Communist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) party. Amnesty International cites reports that 30,000 Angolans "had disappeared" in the purge; other sources place the number at 80,000 killed.
There was a racial component, with those massacred being young, black revolutionaries, and those in power who Castro allied with: mixed race and white Angolans and Eurocentric, although they were Marxist-Leninists so it was not a problem for Leftists, including those in power in Portugal. The definitive account of this massacre in English is found in Lara Pawson's 2014 book, "In the Name of the People: Angola's Forgotten Massacre." A 2017 review of the book by Fernando Arenas published in Luso-Brazilian Review provides the following summary.
In the Name of the People offers major insights regarding the history of May 1977, including the key role played by Cuban military forces, who defended Agostinho Neto and the ruling MPLA against the attempted coup, in defiance of the Soviet Union, while committing atrocities against Nito Alves's supporters. It also highlights the centrality of racial politics in Nito's movement against the perceived political dominance of mixed race and white Angolans in the MPLA to the exclusion of the majority poor black population, emphasizing the movement's rejection of endemic corruption within the MPLA and its betrayal of the socialist revolution.
"Mengistu strikes me as a quiet, serious, and sincere
leader who is aware of the power of the masses. He is an intellectual
personality who showed his wisdom on February 3. […]
The prelude to this was an exuberant speech by the Ethiopian president
in favor of nationalism. Mengistu preempted this coup. He called the
meeting of the Revolutionary Council one hour early and had the rightist
leaders arrested and shot. A very consequential decision was taken on
February 3 in Ethiopia. […]Before it was only possible to support the leftist forces indirectly, now we can do so without any constraints."
Ramiro Valdez, Raul Castro and Fidel Castro with Mengistu Haile Mariam
Amnesty International concluded that
"this campaign resulted in several thousand to perhaps tens of
thousands of men, women, and children killed, tortured, and imprisoned."
Sweden's Save the Children Fund lodged a formal protest in early 1978 denouncing the execution of 1,000 children, many below the age of thirteen, whom the communist government had labeled "liaison agents of the counter revolutionaries."
Advocating for and actively trying to start a nuclear holocaust
Castro freaked out Khrushchev with call for a first strike
If an aggression of the second variant
occurs, and the imperialists attack Cuba with the aim of occupying it,
then the danger posed by such an aggressive measure will be so immense
for all humanity that the Soviet Union will in circumstances be able to
allow it, or to permit the creation of conditions in which the
imperialists might initiate a nuclear strike against the USSR as well.
Thankfully,
Kennedy and Khrushchev reached a peaceful outcome, but the Castro
regime continued to protest and was unhappy with their Soviet allies for
not launching the intercontinental ballistic missiles that would have started a
thermonuclear war.
Comandante Castro ordered students to the streets to chant "Nikita, mariquita, lo que se da no se quita" ("Nikita, little queer, what you give you don't take away").
The Brothers to the Rescue shoot down.
Dan Rather:-The incident of the Brothers to the Rescue
aircraft…But you gave the order.It was
not your brother Rául or a general.
Fidel Castro:-I gave the order to communicate to the Air
Force that what happened on the ninth and thirteenth could not be permitted
again.But these operations are very
quick.They enter in a matter of
minutes and leave.It is very difficult
to establish a mechanism of communication and consultation.They had the general order of not permitting
them…They acted with full awareness that they were following the order.At that moment there was not…The air force
had the responsibility.As a rule they
can communicate with each other, but everyone is not always there.In fact, they had the authority to do it,
and I assume the responsibility.I am
not trying to elude the responsibility in the least, because they were
instructions given in a moment of really great irritation.They were given to the pilots, I believe, if
I remember correctly, on the 14th of January.
Detailed investigation into the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown available here.
Alliances with Fascists and Nazis
Fidel Castro in 1962 when Otto-Ernst Remer was selling him weapons
In the early 1960s the Nazi who saved Adolf Hitler's Third Reich in 1944, Otto-Ernst Remer, had contacts with and assisted Fidel Castro in Cuba with the purchase of weapons. Ernst-Remer along with Ernst Wilhelm Springer sold the Cuban dictator 4,000 pistols. The German
foreign intelligence agency, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), reported
that "evidently, the Cuban revolutionary army did not fear contagion from
personal links to Nazism, so long as it served its objectives."
The Cuban autocrat was friendly with his Spanish counterpart
Francisco Franco, and declared days of mourning when the Generalissimo,
Prime Minister, Head of State, and Caudillo died on November 20, 1975.
In the picture below is Fidel Castro with Argentine foreign minister Nicanor Costa Mendez, one of the planners of the Falkland's invasion, of the Argentine military junta that extra-judicially executed and disappeared as many as 30,000 Argentinians between 1976 and 1983 in the Dirty War meeting in Havana at the Non-Aligned Movement gathering. He died of lung cancer on August 3, 1992.
Whereas Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International sought to expose and end the Dirty War, as well as later document the crimes committed and demand justice on behalf of the victims, the Cuban government did everything possible at the time to obstruct efforts to investigate the disappearances from their perch at the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
What have joint anti-drug operations with Cuba, and sharing intelligence done in concrete terms for US citizens? In 1999, the year when Washington intensified these efforts 3,186 U.S. citizens died of cocaine overdoses. In 2021, after 22 years of this "cooperation" 23,513 Americans died in 2021.
Anti-Semite
Cuban Jewish family targeted by the Castro regime for being Jewish.
From 1959 through 1973, Havana maintained diplomatic relations with Israel while supporting terrorism against Israelis. Castro hailed the establishment of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1965 and established ties with the Palestinian Fatah in Algiers and Damascus. Castro introduced PLO members at the Tri-Continental Conference in Havana in January 1966.
This conference backed revolutionary and terrorist organizations across
Europe, the Americas, and Asia with the objective of changing the world
order in an authoritarian direction.
Fidel Castro compared Israel to Nazi Germany on October 15, 1979.
“From the bottom of our heart, we repudiated the merciless persecution
and genocide that the Nazis once visited on the Jews,” he said. “But
there is nothing in recent history that parallels it more than the
dispossession, persecution and genocide that imperialism and Zionism are
currently practicing against the Palestinian people.”
The Cuban dictatorship’s hostility to Israel was not limited to
rhetoric and its assistance to terrorists. Cuba also involved itself in
direct military action.
Castro severed diplomatic ties with Israel on September 10, 1973, just
days before the Yom Kippur War began. During that war, 3,000 Cuban soldiers participated in the attack on Israel, alongside forces from
Egypt and Syria, and expeditionary forces from Saudi Arabia, Algeria,
Jordan, Iraq, Libya, Kuwait, Tunisia, Morocco, and North Korea.
Until his death in 2016, Fidel Castro was a consistent enemy of democracy and human rights. He had many titles, including First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba, President of the Council of State of Cuba, President of the Council of Ministers of Cuba, Prime Minister and Secretary-General of the Non-Aligned Movement, and Comandante, but tyrant is the most appropriate. Fidel Castro, Cuba's despot, is still dead, and good riddance.
May the death cult that has formed around this tyrant soon join him.
“We are prepared to fight them and answer in kind. U.S. leaders
should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban
leaders, they themselves will not be safe.” - Fidel Castro, September 6, 1963
John F. Kennedy was assassinated 60 years ago. Cui bono?
60 years ago on November 22, 1963 John F. Kennedy was assassinated. At 12:30pm Central Standard Time the Kennedys in their convertible limousine turned off Main Street at Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.
As they were passing the Texas School Book Depository, President John
F. Kennedy was shot twice and slumped over toward First Lady Jackie Kennedy. The
governor of Texas was also hit. At 1:00pm President Kennedy was pronounced dead.
On the 60th anniversary of this political assassination the spin doctors and agents of influence continue to cloud the circumstances leading up to the murder
of America's 35th president. However, the question that needs to be asked
looking back to that fateful day: who benefited most from his death? Cui bono?
President
John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy addressed Brigade 2506 at the Orange Bowl in Miami on December 29, 1962 where he was given
a flag of the Brigade and President Kennedy pledged that their flag would be returned to them in a free Havana.
The Kennedy Administration was committed to regime change in Cuba by whatever means necessary.
(f) Support of Autonomous Anti-Castro Groups. The question was asked from where would the autonomous groups operate. Mr.Fitzgeraldreplied
that they would operate from outside U.S. territory. He mentioned two
bases of the Artime group, one in Costa Rica and the other in Nicaragua.
Also it was hoped that the autonomous group under Manolo Ray would soon
get itself established in a working base, possibly Costa Rica. Mr.Fitzgeraldsaid that much could be accomplished by these autonomous groups once they become operational.A question was asked as to what decisions remain to be made. Mr.Fitzgeraldreplied
that we were looking for a reaffirmation of the program as presented,
including sabotage and harassment. When asked what was planned in
sabotage for the immediate future, he said that destruction operations
should be carried out against a large oil refinery and storage
facilities, a large electric plant, sugar refineries, railroad bridges,
harbor facilities, and underwater demolition of docks and ships. The
question was also raised as to whether an air strike would be effective
on some of these principal targets. The consensus was thatCIAshould proceed with its planning for this type of activity looking toward January.
Following the President's assassination within a year these operations were mothballed
and Fidel Castro would remain in power until 2006, then replaced by his
brother Raul in a dynastic succession following a health crisis.
General Raul Castro remains the maximum authority in Cuba today with a puppet president.
DW-WORLD:We know thatLee Harvey Oswaldkilled John F. Kennedy. But who ordered his assassination and why?
Wilfried Huismann:
We settled the question of why in three years of research on this
documentary in Mexico, USA and Cuba. Oswald had been an agent for the
Cuban intelligence services since November 1962. He was a political
fanatic and allowed himself to be used by the Cuban intelligence
services to kill John F. Kennedy. It was a Cuban reaction to the
repeated attempts of the Kennedy brothers, above all the younger
Kennedy, Robert, to get rid of Fidel Castro through political
assassination -- a duel between the Kennedys and the Castros, which,
like in a Greek tragedy, left one of the duelists dead.
Declassified records in recent years corroborate Huismann's argument.
CIA documents, released in October of 2017, speculate that Oswald's
motive for killing Kennedy was that he was "enraged after reading a
detailed article in his hometown newspaper in New Orleans in September
suggesting that his hero Castro had been targeted for assassination by
the Kennedy administration." Oswald sought vengeance on Castro's
behalf. This was an embarrassment for the CIA and the White House that
had repeatedly tried to assassinate Castro, and that President Kennedy's
murder was blow back. Another declassified CIA document,
released in October 17, 2017 cites Assistant Secretary of State for
Inter-American Affairs and later U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, Thomas C.
Mann who said "he had a 'feeling in his guts' that Castro paid Lee
Harvey Oswald to assassinate the 35th president on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas." Pedro Roig, of the Cuban Studies Institute has outlined the information available on Lee Harvey Oswald and his links to the Castro regime from documented sources.
Cui bono? Operation Mongoose operations were phased out after the assassination of President Kennedy and the departure of Robert Kennedy from his position as Attorney General in September of 1964. Regime change operations in Cuba came to an end and the Castro regime would remain in power to the present day.
Brian Latell, PhD, author of Castro's Secrets: The CIA and Cuba's Intelligence Machine, gave a presentation to the Association of Former Intelligence Officers at their June 1, 2012 luncheon in McLean, Virginiain which he addressed the information known then on the Castro regime and the Kennedy Assassination.
On September 15, 2015 the international media reported on a newly
declassified memo from the CIA concerning presidential assassin Lee
Harvey Oswald that reported the following:
Three
days after the shooting in Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963, Lyndon B
Johnson was informed that Oswald had visited the Cuban and former
Soviet Union embassies in Mexico City on 28 September 1963 to arrange
visas.
The Daily Mail reported that the memo had "remained a secret until January 21, 2016, when the
CIA released 19,000 confidential documents from the 1960s."
Gus Russo, author and JFK assassination expert, interviewed the case officer, Ray Wannall, of two brothers who by 1964 had secretly been working for the FBI informing on the Communist Party for 10 years. Morris and Jack Childs in June 1964 met with Fidel Castro in Cuba “seven months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963.” This is the breakdown of that conversation by Russo, together with other details by Cuban sources.
The brothers listened to Castro tell them about a trip by Kennedy’s accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, to the Cuban embassy in Mexico City in September 1963. During the visit, Oswald sought a visa to immigrate to Cuba, but grew desperate when he could not get one right away. … “What they reported was that Castro told them that Oswald had come into the embassy in Mexico City – and Castro said, ‘I knew about it when it happened,’ it was reported to him – and he [Oswald] offered to kill President Kennedy,” Russo said. “He said, ‘I’ll kill that bastard Kennedy,’ ostensibly for the [Cuban] revolution.”
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