Remembering Paul Hollander, a great scholar who saw through the propaganda techniques of totalitarians

You need ideology to commit large scale evil. - Paul Hollander

Paul Hollander, October 3, 1932 - April 9, 2019

The scholar Paul Hollander passed away on April 9, 2019 at his home in Northampton, Massachusetts. I had the honor of meeting him on November 8, 2017 after he gave a presentation on a panel titled, "The Bolshevik Revolution and the Establishment of the Soviet Union" which was part of a series of panels under the title: "Reflections on a Ravaged Century" an event organized by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. He was a good and kind man who took the time to answer some of my questions.


Totalitarians whether Nazi or Communist have a track record of effectively using tourism, athletic events, and academic exchanges to present their regimes in a way that historically legitimized them and covered up their hostile objectives often with disastrous results not only for their own countries but the international community as a whole. 

 An excellent accounting of these practices and their impacts on national and international politics is found in Paul Hollander's book Political Pilgrims that should be required reading for anyone traveling to Cuba, China, North Korea, Venezuela, or Vietnam. His book has had a great influence on me, and I look forward to reading his other works.

Requiescat in pace

Dangerous Spin: AP reporting Cuba official propaganda on Zika as news

Reason for concern: Cuba has a poor record on timely reporting of epidemics due to politicized healthcare claims

Soldier carries fumigating machine into a Havana home (AP/Desmond Boylan)

The Associated Press not only engages in self-censorship to maintain their Havana bureau but also continues to report Castro regime propaganda as news. This is nothing new but the latest episode on September 2, 2016 "Cuba reports remarkable success in containing Zika virus" should raise concerns for perspective travelers to Cuba because it contains numerous claims about the Zika virus by Cuban officials.

"Six months after President Raul Castro declared war on the Zika virus in Cuba, a militarized nationwide campaign of intensive mosquito spraying, monitoring and quarantine appears to be working.
Cuba is among the few countries in the Western Hemisphere that have so far prevented significant spread of the disease blamed for birth defects in thousands of children. Only three people have caught Zika in Cuba. Thirty have been diagnosed with cases of the virus they got outside the island, according to Cuban officials.
Many are now watching to see whether Cuba is able to maintain control of Zika or will drop its guard and see widening infection like so many of its neighbors.

On August 25, 2016 this blog outlined a number of concerns arising from the reporting on Zika and Cuba and the possible danger it poses to travelers:

• Past aggressive responses hyped by the regime such as dengue by 1997 involved the arrest of at least one doctor for enemy propaganda who correctly warned of a Dengue outbreak sentenced him to eight years in prison then forced him into exile after an international outcry.  Eventually when the bodies started to pile up and it was no longer possible to cover up the epidemic the regime admitted they had a problem. 
• In 2012 a cholera outbreak went unreported at first and later was under reported. A Cuban independent journalist who broke the story on cholera spent months arbitrarily detained and was recognized as an Amnesty International prisoners of conscience.
•  With Zika the Castro regime can fall back on a tried and true method that it has also used to reduce infant mortality rates and that is the aggressive use of abortion, even without the mother's consent. The dictatorship will be able to cover up cases of microcephaly with abortions.

Consider that 3.5 million people visited Cuba in 2015 and tourism to the island in 2016 so far is 15 percent higher than last year. The crisis in Venezuela is impacting Cuba economically making tourism a priority source of hard income. In the past the regime has demonstrated a resistance to reporting or it has under-reported on the outbreaks of diseases in the island.

Shouldn't the Associated Press mention any of this in its unquestioning reporting of what Cuban officials are saying today about Zika? This may mean little for Cubans on the island, but the spread of the virus will pose a danger to tourists visiting the island who not being advised of the danger may return home as asymptomatic carriers of the virus spreading it in their country unknowingly.

However there is also a failure on reporting on how Cubans are being treated versus foreign visitors at healthcare facilities in Cuba.  Translating Cuba has a report from Juan Juan Almeida "Zika Reveals the True Character of the Cuban Health Service" on the differing treatment facilities and standards of care that should be newsworthy but goes unmentioned in AP's reporting. Cubans receive far inferior healthcare in their own country compared to treatment meted out to foreigners..

However, even foreigners have had nightmare experiences with Cuban healthcare. Not that the Associated Press will report on it.

Zika, Cuba travel and Miami: a reflection

 Cuban officials have a poor record on timely reporting of epidemics

According to the August 17, 2016 Department of Defense Global Zika Surveillance Summary in the Western Hemisphere (spanning January 1, 2015 through August 13, 2016) there have been 106,246 confirmed cases of Zika with 457,894 suspected cases and 1,817 microcephaly cases. 44 countries have been impacted by Zika virus.

Brazil has borne the brunt of the outbreak reporting 78,421 cases of confirmed Zika infection and 1,749 microcephaly cases. This was followed by 8,682 cases in Colombia with 22 cases of microcephaly and Puerto Rico with 8,766 cases and one microcephaly case. The Dominican Republic has 252 cases confirmed.

Meanwhile Cuba is now reporting three confirmed cases and 30 cases brought in from abroad while having mounted a propaganda campaign in February 2016 claiming to have deployed 9,000 troops in a preventive battle against Zika reported The Guardian.

Daniel Chang of The Miami Herald reported on August 17, 2016 in the article "How Cuba is fighting Zika" in the first paragraph a claim that should raise concerns:

"After Cuba was ravaged in 1981 by an epidemic of hemorrhagic dengue fever — a mosquito-borne illness — the island nation’s communist government launched an aggressive response that created the framework for its reportedly successful fight against Zika, according to an article published Wednesday in the scientific journal Nature."

Tragically, the so-called aggressive response to dengue by 1997 involved arresting at least one doctor for enemy propaganda who correctly warned of a Dengue outbreak sentenced him to eight years in prison then forced him into exile after an international outcry.  Eventually when the bodies started to pile up and it was no longer possible to cover up the epidemic the regime admitted they had a problem.

This pattern of denial and lack of transparency was repeated with a cholera outbreak in 2012. With Zika the Castro regime can fall back on a tried and true method that it has also used to reduce infant mortality rates and that is the aggressive use of abortion, even without the mother's consent. The dictatorship will be able to cover up cases of microcephaly with abortions.

 Consider that 3.5 million people visited Cuba in 2015 and tourism to the island in 2016 so far is 15 percent higher than last year. The crisis in Venezuela is impacting Cuba economically making tourism a priority source of hard income. In the past the regime has demonstrated a resistance to reporting or it has under-reported on the outbreaks of diseases in the island. The trouble is that the lack of transparency and the spread of the virus will pose a danger to tourists visiting the island who not being advised of the danger may return home as asymptomatic carriers of the virus spreading it in their country unknowingly.

According to the New York Times there are 491 cases in New York City alone, four believed to have been contracted through sex, accounting for about a quarter of all Zika cases in the United States, and the blame is being placed on the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, but what if Cuba is under reporting the number of infections while the number of tourists from the United States increases?

Consider for a moment that according to The Miami Herald on August 24, 2016 Florida has reported 43 local Zika infections, with almost all in Miami-Dade except for one case each in Broward and Pinellas counties and the two in Palm Beach. The entire state of Florida has reported 523 travel-related Zika cases and 70 infections involving pregnant women.

Considering all this can U.S. health officials rely on their counterparts in Havana to accurately diagnose cases of Zika and report on the Zika situation on the ground if they are caught up in a political narrative that possibly presents them with the choice of under reporting or risking prison?

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article97582607.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article96170442.html#storylink=cpy

How Fidel Castro white washed Communist crimes and plotted its expansion

How Communism came back after its reverses in 1989 - 1991 

Castro tyrants at the Cuban Communist Party Congress in 2016

Fidel Castro on April 19, 2016 at the Cuban Communist Party Congress lamented the passing of the Soviet Union and advocated another revolution just like it.

"Lenin's work violated after 70 years of Revolution. What a history lesson! It can be affirmed that it should not take another 70 years before another event like the Russian Revolution occurs, in order that humanity have another example of a magnificent social revolution that marked a huge step in the struggle against colonialism and its inseparable companion, imperialism."

However, Fidel Castro has done much more than merely wish for the return of Soviet-style communism. The great 20th century poet T.S. Eliot understood that "there is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause." This was also understood by the remaining communist powers and parties in the world after the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe in 1989. 

Fidel Castro and Lula Da Silva

 In 1990 following a request made by Fidel Castro to Lula Da Silva the Sao Paulo Forum was established with the goal to rebuild the Communist movement or as they put it: “To reconquer in Latin America all that we lost in East Europe.” This set the course for the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela that has been a game changer both regionally and internationally. Food riots are now breaking out in what was once the richest government in South America.

The hunger, the suffering, and deaths of thousands of Venezuelans should be laid at the feet of Fidel Castro who prepared and backed Hugo Chavez with the assistance of the Cuban military and intelligence services that are keeping Nicolas Maduro in power today. However the communists with their agents of influence in the media will blame capitalism, the United States, imperialism, global warming, and anything else that distracts from pointing the finger at them.

Killing fields in Cambodia

Meanwhile the United States Secretary of State John Kerry said in  August of 2015 that "the United States and Cuba are talking about ways to solve the Venezuelan crisis" and is not alone in this belief within the American foreign policy establishment.

Not recognizing this historic context is a a foreign policy recipe for disaster. 

2017 will mark 100 years since the first communist regime took power in Russia ushering in a century of bloodshed that included a brief alliance with Nazi Germany that plunged the planet into World War Two. The overall death count of victims of communism is 100 million dead and counting.

Reynaldo Benito Antonio Bignone Ramayón with Fidel Castro Ruz

Like the Soviet Union, the Castro regime in Cuba crossed ideological lines to advance strategic interests. In the 1960s Fidel Castro invited in former Nazis to train the regime's intelligence services and purchased weapons from German right wing extremists. In the 1970s and early 1980s the Cuban dictatorship had a solid working alliance with the Argentine military dictatorship at a time when the military junta was disappearing 30,000 leftists in Argentina. This is in the news again now because of newly declassified documents that have emerged confirming the sordid relationship.

Meanwhile tourists continue to visit totalitarian regimes as they have over the past century and returning with happy talk completely divorced from the reality on the ground.

This is why it is so important to remember the crimes of communism and reject attempts to rewrite the historical record by white washing these atrocities.

Extra-judicially executed by the Castro regime on July 13, 1994

In the case of Cuba one must not forget the mass executions at the start of the regime. However the brutal massacres of Cubans continued such as the July 13, 1994 "13 de Marzo" tugboat sinking and the February 24, 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shoot down. The tugboat sinking involved the killing of 37 Cuban refugees, among the dead were 23 youths. The shoot down involved two planes blown to bits over international airspace by Cuban MiGs killing three American citizens and a Cuban resident who were engaged in the search and rescue of Cuban rafters.

Between June of 2009 and December 17, 2014 high profile Cuban dissidents were killed under suspicious circumstances in Cuba, but the drive to normalize relations meant that there were no consequences for the dictatorship and the killings continued generating a body count. Beginning with Orlando Zapata Tamayo on February 23, 2010 and peaking with the suspicious deaths of Ladies in White founder,  Laura Inés Pollán Toledo on October 14, 2011 and Christian Liberation Movement leaders, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas and Harold Cepero Escalante on July 22, 2012.

Anti-communists of the world need to unite and figure out how to save humanity from another century of communist barbarism. 

AP in Cuba: When misreporting news becomes the news

Caution foreign news agencies! Your representatives in these lands are always in danger of becoming hostages, first, and then collaborators of the rulers. - Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, August 12, 2014

Associated Press in Cuba crossed the line on journalistic standards

 Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas,on September 20, 2011 videotaped his interview with Andrea Rodriguez of the Associated Press and released it because he believed that what he had told her was not fairly reflected in the article she had written.  In the interview he described how victims in Cuba are criticized because no one dare criticize the executioner and offered a critique that Ms. Rodriguez did not publish:

"There is a real “moral inversion,” in what the foreign media, intellectual circles, ecclesiastical circles, diplomats and politicians are doing against the people of Cuba and against the dissident right now. They judge the persecuted, the poor, those who are silenced, but they do not dare to judge the government."

Both in Cuba and North Korea the Associated Press has jumped the shark in its coverage becoming a pale imitation of its more formidable former self. It appears that the news agency has gone beyond self censorship of the news, to avoid being kicked out of these countries, into what amounts to biased reporting that is a violation of the code of ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists which in broad strokes are: 1) Seek Truth and Report It. 2) Minimize Harm 3) Act Independently 4) Be Accountable.

The Inter American Press Association Report on Cuba in 2011 described the process whereby press agencies can cross the line into biased reporting through something akin to Stockholm syndrome:

The Cuban government wages a policy of the carrot and the stick against foreign correspondents accredited in Havana. If the correspondent becomes too raucous in his criticism, all sorts of problems are created for him until his presence in Havana turns into a torment, or else they denounce him in the official press to the point that he leaves the country. If, on the other hand, if he behaves nicely, they let him work and even facilitate contacts and interviews for him. This brings about permanent self-censorship and even reports with a touch of sympathy for the regime.

The Committee to Protect Journalists in a report that identified Cuba as the ninth most censored country in the world described how "Government supporters sometimes gather outside the homes of critical journalists to intimidate them. Officials grant visas to foreign journalists selectively."

Mike Gonzalez in an oped essay titled "Cubans still suffer, but media looks away" speculates on why the media remains silent as the Castro regime beats up on women and children attending mass and peacefully demanding that their loved ones be freed. They'd just been brutalized the day before on July 17, 2011 . He offers two possibilities: "they’re either so afraid of being expelled, or have so bought into the regime’s propaganda." Journalists in Cuba have ample reason to fear being expelled having seen colleagues such as Chicago Tribune's Gary Marx, the BBC's Stephen Gibbs and Cesar Gonzalez-Calero of Mexico's El Universal all expelled in 2007 from Cuba for offering reporting, that although bending over backwards not to offend, still ran afoul of the regime.  

Unfortunately, it appears Oswaldo Payá was extrajudicially executed by state security agents along with Harold Cepero on July 22, 2012. Since his death the moral inversion that he described in 2011 has expanded beyond Cubans and dissidents to endangering visitors by not reporting epidemics in a timely manner and now targeting and misrepresenting international human rights and pro-democracy activists visiting the island. The Associated Press, for example, has described common sense precautions as a "clandestine operation"  while also engaging in the same practices themselves.

In January of 2013 one had to learn about a Cholera epidemic by following the twitter feeds of independent activists and journalists in Cuba because the international press with news bureaus there preferred to remain silent in order to avoid being expelled from the island. The Cholera outbreak had reached Havana and the reason we knew it was thanks to independent journalists. Journalism in Cuba that seeks to report the truth independently and minimize harm become prisoners of conscience. Amnesty International described the circumstances under which one reporter was arrested:

Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias works for the unofficial news agency, Let’s Talk Press (Hablemos Press). He was arrested in Havana on 16 September 2012 by the Cuban Revolutionary Police (Policía Revolucionaria de Cuba) at José Martí International Airport in Havana. He had been investigating allegations that medicine provided by the World Health Organization to fight the cholera outbreak (which began in mid-2012) was being kept at the airport instead of being distributed.

The non-governmental organizations (ngos) targeted by the Associated Press in a "gotcha article" have pushed back and are criticizing the reporting. The Costa Rican NGO, FundaOGI, released a statement that criticized the twisted nature of the article calling it completely false:

"Information published by AP is distorted. Information was manipulated to try to make it look like FundaOGI had instructions of generating cultural and artistic activities to covertly achieve destabilizing ends, which is completely false. FundaOGI developed, artistic, educational, cultural, health and human rights activities for young people because it is part of its model of organizational performance.  Activities such as these FundaOGI has carried out not only in Cuba but in several countries, including Costa Rica. And the organization has done it simply because it is an efficient mechanism for working with youth, raising awareness on the issues of Human Rights, Environment, Collaborative Leadership and Social Entrepreneurship and helping them solve problems of their immediate context through social action and volunteerism."

The Washington Free Beacon quoted a second NGO targeted by the Associated Press in a August 8, 2014 article titled "Human Rights NGOs dispute AP report on Cuba Democracy Program":

The group’s members said they were not “spies” that sought to “destabilize” the Cuban government, and they accused the AP of publishing “false testimonies,” violating the anonymity of sources, and subjecting one of its members to “harassment.”

The Associated Press story went public on August 4, 2014 and four days later Felipe Cuevas, a Chilean student opposition leader, was detained in Venezuela accused of "trying to overthrow the government of Maduro." The reality of the situation was that he was visiting Venezuela to meet counterparts in political parties and attempted to attend the trials of imprisoned non-violent democratic opposition leaders. Thanks to a rapid mobilization in the social networks and the Chilean government's ambassador intervention the young man was released after being held more than 24 hours and was able to return to Chile.

Felipe Cuevas: First victim of AP's latest propaganda piece?

 This is not the first time that the Associated Press has engaged in reporting that misrepresents the facts on the ground and the objectives of the USAID program. Back in April 2014 the AP created another tempest in a teapot about Cuban twitter. More ominous was the distorted story they produced on Alan Gross, a U.S. citizen held hostage in Cuba since 2009 as a bargaining chip by the Cuban government to pressure the U.S. government to release a Cuban spy who had planned terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and was found guilty of a capital offense who is currently serving a life sentence.

Meanwhile, businessmen from Canada and Europe are rotting in Cuban prisons under questionable charges, but it also goes unreported by the foreign news bureaus in Cuba. Stephen Purvis spent 15 months in a Cuban prison and in a letter to the Economist in 2013 raised some interesting points:

 I spent time with a number of foreign businessmen arrested during 2011 and 2012 from a variety of countries, although representatives from Brazil, Venezuela and China were conspicuous in the absence. Very few of my fellow sufferers have been reported in the press and there are many more in the system than is widely known. As they are all still either waiting for charges, trial or sentencing they will certainly not be talking to the press. Whilst a few of them are being charged with corruption many are not and the accusations range from sabotage, damage to the economy, tax avoidance and illegal economic activity. It is absolutely clear that the war against corruption may be a convenient political banner to hide behind and one that foreign governments and press will support. But the reasons for actively and aggressively pursuing foreign business are far more complicated.  Why for example is the representative of Ericsson in jail for exactly the same activities as their Chinese competitor who is not? Why for example was one senior European engineer invited back to discuss a potential new project only to be arrested for paying technical workers five years ago when he was a temporary resident in Cuba?

This is not a story that the Associated Press and other news agencies in Havana are following because they dare not judge the Cuban government but prefer to be its lapdog targeting dissidents and human rights defenders while remaining silent before the systematic repression and violence of the dictatorship.

Eight decades ago Walter Duranty, an employee of the New York Times assisted in covering up the crimes of Josef Stalin. He was The New York Times's man in Moscow. To avoid being expelled from the Soviet Union, he regurgitated Stalinist propaganda and downplayed the atrocities taking place there. Duranty received the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and only decades later would the world finally learn the truth that more than 10 million people had died in a genocide in the Ukraine despite the efforts of the New York Times reporter in covering it up. Although Stalin's surviving victims sought to have the prize revoked, the Pulitzer Prize board refused to do it.
  
Today, with twitter, e-mail and the social networks it is more difficult for someone to get away with such an outrageous propaganda operation.

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism has made public a report that found that audiences are abandoning news outlets because of the decline in quality of coverage. Looking at the reporting done by the Associated Press in Cuba one begins to wonder why there is not an even larger decline.

Tempest in a Teapot: "Cuban Twitter"

When news reporting becomes the news

Unfortunately the Associated Press seems to have crossed a line from non-reporting of what the Castro regime does to human rights defenders and editing conversations with dissidents that seek to downplay their role in the struggle for Cubn freedom to producing an article with inaccuracies and an editorial slant in line with that of Castro's official news agency Granma.

In an interview with Hank Tester, John Suarez told the NBC6 journalist that the Associated Press report "read like communist Cuban propaganda" and that:

"It seems to be a tempest in a teapot. You had a project that was around for less than three years, maybe 2 and a few days which the purpose was to provide uncensored content to Cubans, providing avenues to express themselves is a positive thing that requires no apology."

While disagreeing with David Shipley at Bloomberg View on his views towards sanctions in Cuba, he does offer an excellent analysis of the "Cuban twitter" non-controversy: 

First, this was not some kind of super-spooky deal. Not many “covert operations” get reviewed by the Government Accountability Office: As it noted last year, the U.S.'s efforts to promote democracy in Cuba “have included a greater focus on information technology, particularly on supporting independent bloggers and developing social networking platforms.” The GAO found nothing unlawful about the program.
Promoting democracy and human rights is squarely in USAID’s bailiwick -- it's right there on its website, on a page titled "Democracy, Human Rights and Governance Strategy." The idea that USAID is some kind of vestal virgin dispensing surplus wheat and well pumps ignores the “U.S.” before the AID.
None of this is to say that humanitarian aid programs should be used as a cover for intelligence programs. What the Central Intelligence Agency did in Pakistan -- use a vaccination program to try to locate Osama bin Laden -- was outrageous and wrong. But USAID’s democracy assistance programs are designed to strengthen the ability of citizens to peacefully resist and undermine authoritarian and abusive governments. In Cuba -- which has an aggressive intelligence service that actually had an agent within USAID -- a certain amount of subterfuge is necessary for those programs to be effective and to protect their intended beneficiaries.
The biggest weakness of USAID's Cuba program was that the agency wasn't prepared for its success. When the messaging platform began growing beyond easy control, the agency's concerns about disclosure and cost led to its shutdown. Maybe the agency should have put some of those government lawyers to work creating a less ad hoc structure that would have provided stable financial support while maintaining a more formal arms-length separation from the U.S. government.

 Sad to see how far the Associated Press, in this article departed from its fundamental values and its "abhorrence of inaccuracies, carelessness, bias or distortions."