Castro regime in Cuba demonstrates the relationship between human rights and property rights

"Human rights are property rights." - Foundation for Economic Education

The decision by the Trump Administration to enforce Title III of the LIBERTAD Act, that became effective on May 2, 2019, is good news. This has meant a chance for justice in the courts for property owners who had everything stolen from them by the Castro dictatorship. This is a triumph for human rights, a challenge to the erosion of private property rights, and a right ordering of human rights standards.

Human rights have a conservative pedigree that stretches back to the Middle Ages and to the Catholic Church. The first time in human history that a universal concept of human rights were applied to all living beings on the planet emerged out of a debate concerning the Spanish conquest of the Americas that took place in 1550-51 and is known as the Valladolid debate.

It is important to remember that property rights are human rights. Article 17 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: "(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property."

Universal human rights, and the rule of law, exist in order to protect those without power from the abuse of those who have it and exercise it with impunity. The importance of the protection of private property rights can be seen in the December 29, 2019 OpED by Mary O'Grady in The Wall Street Journal that provides a historical context that also looks at the present day in Cuba.

Thanks to the Trump administration, Americans whose property in Cuba was expropriated by the military dictatorship of Fidel Castro may finally have their day in court. New Year’s Day marks the 61st anniversary of the fall of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. A week later, on Jan. 8, 1959, Castro triumphantly entered Havana. Many Cubans had risked all to unseat Batista with the goal of restoring constitutional government. But Castro sought absolute power. He refused to hold elections and instead launched a purge. There were firing squads, dungeons and exile. Whole communities of peasants in central Cuba—where resistance to the tyranny was strongest—were displaced and sent to concentration camps on the western end of the island. To lock down power, Castro stripped citizens and foreigners alike of their property. State terrorism explains how the regime has survived.

What began to take place in Cuba in 1959 and over the next six decades, was also predicted on a theoretical basis that same year. The end of private property rights coincided with the systematic violation of all human rights, ending in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights being considered a subversive document by the Castro regime. Murray Rothbard in his 1959 essay "Human Rights are Property Rights" explained how rights would disappear in a society that did not respect private property rights.

"The human right of every man to his own life implies the right to find and transform resources: to produce that which sustains and advances life. That product is a man’s property. That is why prop­erty rights are foremost among human rights and why any loss of one endangers the others.
For ex­ample, how can the human right of freedom of the press be pre­served if the government owns all the newsprint and has the power to decide who may use it and how much? The human right of a free press depends on the human right of private property in newsprint and in the other es­sentials for newspaper production. In short, there is no conflict of rights here because property rights are themselves human rights. What is more, human rights are also property rights!"

Time, and the courts, will tell but the enforcement of Title III of the LIBERTAD Act will empower and provide those who were expropriated with a chance at justice and the restoration of their private property rights. However, if it does work it will be a game changer in Cuba.

This may turn out to be the most important story about Cuba in 2019.

Great news for US interests and taxpayers: United States pulling out of UNESCO

Kudos to the Trump Administration for pulling out of UNESCO 

The United States leaves UNESCO

The United State is pulling out of the United Nation's cultural organization UNESCO for it's anti-Israel bias, the need to fundamentally reform the organization, and to save taxpayers over $500 million dollars in payments. However that is just the tip of the iceberg and the Trump Administration should be celebrated for taking this bold move both for American taxpayers and U.S. national interests.  Back in February 2017 I made the case in this blog for the United States leaving UNESCO and staying in the UN Human Rights Council.

Ronald Reagan defunded and left UNESCO in mid 1984 because the hard left was using it to spread its anti-American and radical left ideologies but George W. Bush brought the United States back into UNESCO after a twenty year boycott believing it had reformed. Returning to UNESCO was a mistake, the organization has been back to its old tricks that are hostile both to U.S. values and national security interests.

Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO, on the occasion of the withdrawal by the United States of America from UNESCO made a video statement in which she stated that "together, we have worked to protect humanity’s shared cultural heritage in the face of terrorist attacks and to prevent violent extremism through education and media literacy." She claims later on in the same statement that "[at] the time when the fight against violent extremism calls for renewed investment in education, in dialogue among cultures to prevent hatred, it is deeply regrettable that the United States should withdraw from the United Nations agency leading these issues. At the time when conflicts continue to tear apart societies across the world, it is deeply regrettable for the United States to withdraw from the United Nations agency promoting education for peace and protecting culture under attack." 

This statement flies in the face of what UNESCO has done with the United States as a member. On June 18, 2013 the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) added “The Life and Works of Che Guevara” to the World Registrar. UNESCO providing funds to preserve Che Guevara’s papers. Guevara in addition to promoting communist ideology, is best known as an advocate for guerrilla warfare who viewed terrorism as a legitimate method of struggle against an enemy.

How does adding all the works of Ernesto "Che" Guevara including the "originals manuscripts of his adolescence and youth to the campaign Diary in Bolivia”  serve to promote "education for peace"? How do the multimedia archives where recordings are contained of when he first lied about exporting revolution in 1961 and in later speeches declares the sacred duty to die for revolution in 1964 advance peace? Or gems such as this: "The situation was uncomfortable for the people and for [Eutimio], so I ended the problem giving him a shot with a .32 pistol in the right side of the brain, with exit orifice in the right temporal [lobe]. He gasped for a little while and was dead. Upon proceeding to remove his belongings I couldn't get off the watch tied by a chain to his belt, and then he told me in a steady voice farther away than fear: 'Yank it off, boy, what does it matter.' I did so and his possessions were now mine. Diary entry from the Sierra Maestra on the execution of Eutimio Guerra as an anti-revolutionary spy (January 1957)"

How does making his 1961 book, Guerrilla Warfare, easily available to youth around the world promote a culture of peace?  It is a manual for organizing and carrying out an armed insurgency that draws on Guevara's experience in the Cuban revolution. It pushes the idea of the guerilla as a vanguard that creates the conditions for revolution using violence. The cover of the English edition with a hand grenade says it all. Or his 1962 work Tactics and Strategy of the Latin American Revolution in which the Argentine guerilla explains "The seizure of power is a worldwide objective of the revolutionary forces," and later goes on to explain  "that we must follow the road of liberation even though it may cost millions of nuclear war victims." But there are many other works and documents. These are just a small selection.

March 28, 1961: Mobilizing the Masses for the Invasion
April 9, 1961: Cuba: Exceptional Case or Vanguard in the Struggle Against Colonialism?
August 8, 1961: On Growth and Imperialism
September, 1962: The Cadres: Backbone of the Revolution
1963: Guerrilla war, a method [note: not to be confused with his famous 1961 book on the subject already mentioned above.]
April 16, 1967: Message to the Tricontinental

Che Guevara's last work the "Message to the Tricontinental" written in 1967 contains some gems worth sharing, or so UNESCO believes to educate new generations for "peace" such as an appeal to embracing hatred in order to do the hard things without mercy:

"Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy."

Later on in the same essay Guevara makes the case for terrorism.

"We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it: to his home, to his centers of entertainment; a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be; make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move. Then his moral fiber shall begin to decline. He will even become more beastly, but we shall notice how the signs of decadence begin to appear."

This is a passage that could, and perhaps has, inspired ISIS or Al Qaeda and we know that Che Guevara inspired the Norwegian terrorist mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik in 2011. Breivik cited both Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in his manifesto for the amount of carnage a small number can achieve.

U.S. tax dollars would have been paying for this, but the Obama Administration froze payments in 2011 after UNESCO recognized Palestine as a full member and began an onslaught of anti-Israel resolutions.

Who will UNESCO honor next to promote a culture of "peace": Osama Bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, or Josef Stalin?

As the world threatens to spiral down into more extreme violence, perhaps other countries should consider some of the messages UNESCO and their tax dollars are paying for in promoting the writings of Mr. Guevara. Other countries should follow the lead of the United States and Israel in leaving this institution that fails not only to protect heritage sites but hastens their destruction, and remained silent when Hamas bulldozed a world heritage site to set up a terrorist training camp in 2013 and claims to promote peace while making readily available manuals on guerilla warfare and writings that advocate war crimes and terrorism.

UNESCO maintains archives of all of Ernesto Guevara's writings