Question for Democracies in the international community of nations: Will you speak out tomorrow?

“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.” - Haile Selassie I, Address in Addis Ababa (1963)

Dictatorships in China, Russia, Cuba and Saudi Arabia, that systematically violate human rights, and undermine international human rights standards will be elected to the UN Human Rights Council tomorrow. Will democracies speak out at the United Nations General Assembly during the vote on October 13th against their election? 

 

24th Forum 2000: “A New World Emerging? Restoring Responsibility and Solidarity”

 "Of course, after this crisis, there will be thousands of theorists who will try to describe precisely how and why it happened and how to prevent it next time. But this will not be a sign that they have understood the message that this crisis has provided." - Vaclav Havel, Forum 2000, 2010

Over the past 24 years, Forum 2000 has organized an annual gathering to focus on pressing international issues. This year's Forum 2000 Conference theme “A New World Emerging? Restoring Responsibility and Solidarity” will be a virtual conference held from October 12 - 14, 2020.

It coincides with the United Nations General Assembly voting several dictatorships with terrible human rights records onto the UN Human Rights Council, and takes place in the midst of a pandemic that was made worse by one of these candidates, the People's Republic of China that has been aided and abetted by the dictatorship in Havana.

Therefore it is no small coincidence that Tsai Ing-wen, President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), will be opening the Forum 2000 Conference. The Conference kicks off on Monday, October 12, at 2 PM (CET). This is a courageous stand rooted in truth challenging a powerful dictatorship at a time of crisis. Communist China has threatened retaliation against the Czech Republic for their solidarity with Taiwan.

We are honoured that the President of the Republic of China (Taiwan) Tsai Ing-wen @iingwen will open the #Forum2000 Conference on Monday, Oct 12. Join us for the live stream at 2 PM (CET)! #NewWorldEmerging
👉https://t.co/XpHXRTyUbf pic.twitter.com/tHgc63Da9p

— Forum 2000 (@Forum_2000) October 9, 2020

This act of defiance is very much in the spirit of the founders of Forum 2000.  Forum 2000 is a joint initiative of the late Czech President Václav Havel, Japanese philanthropist Yohei Sasakawa, and the late Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel. In 1990 in his book, Disturbing the Peace, President Havel presented a definition of hope that is relevant to the moment the world is traversing today.

“Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. The more unpromising the situation in which we demonstrate hope, the deeper that hope is. Hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

This is why Forum 2000 will be taking place later today and pushing for the restoration of solidarity and responsibility in the world that is emerging out of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Ten years ago at Forum 2000 Vaclav Havel spoke of the financial crisis that had shaken the international community, but his words were not heeded and unfortunately are even more relevant for today. 

 The former Czech president observed that "the crisis is a call to humility. We should not take things for granted." This was true when he said it in 2010, and even more so today in 2020.

Spain is in crisis: Second in command of a NATO member is telling a fellow Spanish politician that Cuban communists were right to seize her property.

Che Guevara's totalitarian legacy is in power in Spain

Spain is in crisis. The 2nd Deputy Prime Minister of Spain Pablo Iglesias not only celebrates Che Guevara, who not only helped found a 61 year old dictatorship in Cuba, but whose threats of bloody murder gave rise to a generation of right wing military juntas across Latin America in reaction to communist efforts to violently destabilize the region.

When opposition Spanish politician Rocio Monasterio called out Spain's  2nd Deputy Prime Minister of Spain he failed to respond to her charge that Che Guevara had executed Cubans by firing squad in 1959,  and deflected by saying that the Cuban communists were right to seize her family's property. 

 

It is an appeal to the fundamental communist value that often goes unmentioned: envy. Translated to English  Mr. Iglesias said: "Your family became rich in Cuba with sugar industries that savagely exploited their workers, repressing them when they went on strike, thanks to the murderous dictatorships of Machado and Batista. The revolution did justice. It is logical that you hate Che. Greetings." Left out by Mr. Iglesias was the fact that labor unions in Cuba  had been one of the forces that removed Machado from power in 1933. 

The mass execution of Cubans in the early 1960s involved a fair amount of poor farmers, and workers who did not appreciate a communist dictatorship being imposed on them. Many took to the hills and resisted the imposition of a new dictatorship. Iglesias's so-called progressive sympathies apparently find nothing wrong with his hero rounding up the politically suspect and putting them to death.

The man Mr. Iglesias honors on his social media said in 1959: “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary … These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution!”

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

Corporal of Dictator Batista's army, executed by a Castro firing squad, Andrew Lopez of UPI

Consistency is not Mr. Iglesias's strong suit. He claimed that Che "was murdered," but ignores that  Guevara was captured and killed on October 8, 1967 after attempting to violently over throw the government of Bolivia with an armed insurrection.  Would Mr. Iglesias consider that the men put to death by Ernesto "Che" Guevara were murdered? How about those who were executed for their belonging to a social class or holding opinions different than the Argentine Maoist who had not taken up arms, like he did? 

Rocio Monasterio raised the question of firing squads in 1959 and Pablo Iglesias dodged the question while regurgitating Pro-Castro talking points that are also false.

But what about his "hero", and the charge made by Ms. Monasterio?

Ernesto "Che" Guevara, in a letter to his father after executing an unarmed man made the following revelation: "I'd like to confess, at that moment I discovered that I really like killing." Mr. Iglesias is declaring as an exemplar a murderer who enjoyed killing. 

Despite facts presented Iglesias doubled down with slanders against a fellow member of parliament that do not reflect the reality, that prior to 1959 independent labor unions were powerful in Cuba, and the vast majority of Cuban workers had decent healthcare.

The success of labor unions in obtaining better conditions for their workers could be seen in their health indicators that saw greater improvement under the Republic (1902- 1959) than under the Castro regime (1959 - present). 

Pablo Iglesias seems to forget that Fulgencio Batista was a left wing dictator, and a person of color, with communists in his cabinet. One of them, Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, ended up in Fidel Castro's regime.

Nor does Mr. Iglesias have a problem with both Fidel Castro's and Che Guevara's good relations with Francisco Franco. Or that Guevara attended a bull fight in Madrid with Franco's secret police.

Lastly, the Castro regime today is a white minority government that repressed a democratic dissident movement that more closely reflects the racial make up of Cuba today. Furthermore it is important to point out that the last three men executed by firing squad, were black men trying to flee Cuba to freedom, and in June 2020 a young black man was shot in the back and killed by revolutionary national police and in August 2020 a black opposition activist died on hunger strike protesting his unjust imprisonment.

This is the legacy that the 2nd Deputy Prime Minister of Spain Pablo Iglesias is wanting to make a reality in Spain and in other countries across Latin America.

Spaniards and friends of freedom around the world need to be vigilant with the government now in power in Spain, and in particular with Mr. Pablo Iglesias who is not shy about expressing his totalitarian sympathies.  

Absolutely true. The second in command of a NATO member is telling a fellow Spanish politician that the Cuban communists were right to take away her property. I wouldn’t buy a bicycle in Spain while this communist is Vice President. https://t.co/RRhWn3Fv88

— Mike Gonzalez (@Gundisalvus) October 10, 2020

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was captured and killed On October 8, 1967 but his bloody legacy is being visited on American streets today

 "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." - Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Message to the Tricontinental (1967)

53 years ago today in Bolivia

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was captured and killed On October 8, 1967 after attempting to violently over throw the government of Bolivia with an armed insurrection.

The Argentine guerilla was a failure who advocated guerilla warfare and violent insurrection to overthrow existing governments around the world and replace them with communist dictatorships. It led to a generation of right wing military juntas in South America.  And the one place where it succeeded, Nicaragua, has a left wing authoritarian dictator Daniel Ortega, who also has a lot of blood on his hands.

Guevara's siren call to violence also impacted on the streets of American cities generating an escalation in violence and costs in lives lost, injuries, and hundreds of millions in material losses. The CIA report "DISSIDENT ACTIVITY: January 1966 through January 1973" approved for release on June 19, 2003 described a dire situation in 1967 that "[a]lthough severe racial rioting had occurred in U.S. cities in previous summers, it never had been as widespread or as intense as it became in 1967. In the two cities hardest hit, Newark (26 dead) and Detroit (43 dead), conditions of near-insurrection developed in ghetto areas, and police and National Guardsmen responded with volleys of automatic weapons fire."

Lamentably, Guevara's image and his writings have been shared around the world, including by UNESCO, and today cities are again burning, and foreign influence is again suspected. We should not be surprised that the cost in 2020 is over a billion dollars, a new and historic record..

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was also an advocate of nuclear war if it meant destroying the imperialists declaring in November 1962: "What we affirm is that we must proceed along the path of liberation even if this costs millions of atomic victims.”

Many were not taken in by this call to mass murder. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. told his staff in 1968 to combat the “romantic illusion” of Che Guevara style guerilla warfare among young radicals concluding: “We must not be intimidated by those who are laughing at nonviolence now.”

Critics of nonviolence like to point out that Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in 1968, but fail to mention that he succeeded in transforming the United States into a better country by successfully and nonviolently addressing historic injustices.

What did Reverend King accomplish? He led the successful Montgomery bus boycott that ended segregation on buses in Montgomery, Alabama in 1956. He led the Birmingham campaign in 1963 that faced off with the Birmingham Police Department, led by Eugene “Bull” Connor, who used high-pressure water jets and police attack dogs on children. The campaign ended with Connor losing his job and the city’s discriminatory laws were changed.

Reverend King played an instrumental role in the August 28, 1963 march on Washington, D.C. with over 250,000 participants. It was done to pressure for the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 in Alabama demonstrated African Americans desire to vote. The violence by local authorities, racists, and the Klu Klux Klan and the nonviolent resistance of the civil rights activists were key to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. These laws gave African Americans political power that had been denied them.

 

 

Ernesto "Che" Guevara was executed in Bolivia in 1967. What did he accomplish? Installing a communist dictatorship that killed thousands, and left millions in misery. Inspired guerrilla wars and international terrorism across the world that in Latin America helped give rise to a new generation of military dictators to combat the guerrilla threat. Che Guevara and Fidel Castro created the conditions for Augusto Pinochet to become the dictator of Chile. This is but one example.

Reverend King spent the last few hours of his life making the prophetic Mountaintop speech courageously predicting that he would not lead a long life and campaigning for the rights of poor people. What about Che? He was hunted down, while trying to overthrow the Bolivian government to impose a communist dictatorship and executed while trying to beg for his life.

 

After the death of Martin Luther King Jr., groups inspired by Guevara's writings wreaked havoc and led to the victories of Richard Nixon in 1968 and 1972 with his promise of restoring law and order.  

Both the civil rights leader and the communist revolutionary died at the age of 39. However their legacies could not be more different.

Communist Party USA is spreading disinformation spread by the Castro Regime about COVID-19

Communists lie and people die.

Communist Party USA on October 7th was repeating and sharing disinformation spread by the Castro regime about COVID-19 over social media. Journalists in Cuba who attempt to counter the regime narrative with facts are being gagged. Early on in the pandemic in Pinar del Rio on April 13, 2020 video of a body with regime agents expressing concern that the corpse was contaminated with the coronavirus was uploaded to Facebook and was reported on in El Nuevo Herald. Since then the regime has cracked down on citizen journalists, and those uploading images and video that portray the Castro regime in a poor light. 

The statement repeated by CPUSA is false on multiple fronts. First, Castro regime numbers are false but even their number of current active cases, according to Havana, are 482 not 38. The number 38 is for number of new cases claimed by Havana on October 6, 2020. 

Second, there were 105 daily cases in Washington, DC on October 6th compared to 28 cases on the previous day. Overall active cases in DC are 2,671. Metro area population of Washington DC in 2020 is 5,322,000. These numbers are more reliable than what Havana is providing the international community. 

In February 2020 the Castro regime announced that there was a shortage of soap and detergent in Cuba that would not be alleviated until April 2020 or later, due to decisions made by the central planning authorities. This meant that Cubans did not have access to soap to wash their hands for months at the start of the pandemic.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of travelers from Europe, China, and other areas heavily impacted by the coronavirus had been entering Cuba throughout the early months of the outbreak. For an idea of the magnitude consider that at least 147,900 Italian tourists and 49,781 Chinese tourists traveled to Cuba in 2018 and Cuba's military run tourism industry sought to double the number of Chinese tourists.

SARS-CoV-2 the virus that causes COVID-19

Castro regime officials falsely claimed throughout February and March 2020 that Cuba was a safe harbour with effective treatments for (SARS-CoV-2) virus for visiting tourists.

Officials refused to close schools, or take other precautions, Cubans desperately began to take steps on their own against the pandemic, having learned about it on the internet. Teachers, ignoring the regime's orders, closed schools and sent children home. The Catholic church, aware of the danger presented by public gatherings, suspended religious services. 

Cuba’s independent journalists raised the alarm while the official media insisted that the country was prepared for the epidemic, that tourists were welcomed while the pandemic ran its course elsewhere. Officials said that Cuba’s sun was “a good antidote” and continued to advertise their false claims on social media targeting European and North American audiences.

The claim that Cuba did not have coronavirus in larger numbers under these circumstances was highly unlikely, but then North Korea continued to claim that they has no cases of coronavirus through July 2020, despite having a border with Communist China, where the virus outbreak occurred in Wuhan, and South Korea having 24,422 cases. 

Consider, recent history in Cuba on reporting outbreaks, and the consequences for healthcare professionals and journalists.

Dengue 1997

Dengue virus

In 1997 the Cuban government covered up a dengue outbreak, jailing a Cuban doctor who had gone public for “enemy propaganda.” Amnesty International provided additional detail on what had happened.

Dr  Desi  Mendoza  Rivero,  president of the Santiago  de  Cuba  Independent  Medical  Association, ... had been detained on 25 June 1997 in Santiago de Cuba, after making statements, which were disseminated by foreign media, about an epidemic of dengue fever in Santiago de Cuba  which,  according  to  him,  had  caused  several  deaths.  He  reportedly  accused  the authorities  of  covering  up  the  true  extent  of  the  epidemic  and  of  not  taking  sufficient measures to control it. He was brought to trial on 18 November 1997 and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment, charged with "enemy propaganda."

First official report to the World Health Organization of the dengue outbreak was six months after initial identification made by the jailed and later forcibly exiled physician. Mendoza Rivero's reports were eventually confirmed. This episode would have a chilling effect on other doctors coming forward.

Cholera 2012

Cholera

Fifteen years later, news of a cholera outbreak in Manzanillo, in the east of the island, broke in El Nuevo Herald on June 29, 2012 thanks to the reporting of an independent reporter in the island. Calixto Martinez, the independent Cuban journalist who broke the story was jailed. The state controlled media did not confirm the outbreak until days later on July 3, 2012. The BBC reported on July 7, 2012 that a patient had been diagnosed with cholera in Havana. The Cuban government stated that it had it under control and on August 28, 2012 said the outbreak was over.

In July 2013 an Italian tourist returned from Cuba with severe renal failure due to cholera. New York high school teacher Alfredo Gómez contracted cholera during a family visit to Havana during the summer of 2013 and was billed $4,700 from the government hospital. A total of 12 tourists were identified who had contracted cholera in Cuba. On August 22, 2013 Reuters reported that Cuba was still struggling with cholera outbreaks in various provinces.

Zika 2017

Zika virus

In the August 22, 2019 The New York Times article by Carl Zimmer, "Zika Was Soaring Across Cuba. Few Outside the Country Knew", the newspaper tries to shift the blame for an unreported outbreak of zika in Cuba in 2017 on a reporting glitch. This ignored a decades long government pattern of covering up epidemics.

"Until now, the Pan American Health Organization had no record of any Zika infection in Cuba in 2017, much less an outbreak. Following inquiries by The New York Times about the new study, published in the journal Cell, officials acknowledged that they had failed to tally 1,384 cases reported by Cuban officials that year. [...] Officials at P.A.H.O., an arm of the World Health Organization, blamed the failure to publish timely data on the Cuba outbreak on a “technical glitch.” The information was held in a database, they said, but not visible on the website. By Thursday afternoon, the website had been updated."

On August 2, 2017, the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene published the paper “Why Did Zika Not Explode in Cuba?” citing “Cuba’s early and successful response to Zika, grounded in the country’s long-standing dengue prevention and control program, serves as a model of rapid mobilization of intersectoral efforts.” It also ignored reports that Cuba had jailed doctors and covered up prior epidemics.

News stories of Zika transmissions with a Cuba link should have raised questions. The first case of sexually transmitted Zika reported to the Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County on August 1, 2017 was by a person whose partner had returned from Cuba with Zika symptoms.

In January 2019, The New Scientist broke the news that "thousands of Zika virus cases went unreported in Cuba in 2017, according to an analysis of data on travelers to the Caribbean island. Veiling them may have led to many other cases that year." 

Relying on Castro regime data on coronavirus cases in the current pandemic is a dangerous proposition both for one’s credibility and for the lives of Cubans and those visiting the island.

Conclusions and recommendations

When travel opens up again will these kind of screening measures be in place to limit the spread of COVID-19 from international travelers especially from governments such as China, North Korea, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba that can not be trusted to give accurate information on outbreaks? 

We are in a new world with the current pandemic and recent history has shown that it is better to be prepared than caught by surprise because other countries and international health agencies have not done their due diligence endangering millions.

Policymakers should look to what Taiwan, South Korea, and Australia have done to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and keep a wide berth from what the Castro regime is doing.  

If  you are interested in the truth then read Katherine Hirschfeld's Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898, to obtain a fresh perspective from an honest academic on the realities of healthcare in Communist Cuba.  

Steer away from communist propaganda. Remember when communists lie, people die. Thanks to the lies of communist China over 1,060,562 people have died of this disease around the world.