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.

Odyssey of Cuban matriarch Maydolis Leyva Portelles and her family: Jailed because they refused to mourn Fidel Castro's death

A cautionary tale started in 2016 that continues through today

Maydolis Leyva Portelles and her family targeted by secret police in Cuba

Communist hardliners do not forgive or forget. The death of Fidel Castro on November 25, 2016 plunged hard line Marxist Leninists into mourning for the Cuban tyrant, and was the case with Stalin and Mao, not mourning the passing of the dictator was a punishable offense.

 Maydolis Leyva Portelles and her three children were punished for not sufficiently lamenting the passing of the individual most responsible for turning Cuba into a communist dictatorship for the past 61 years.

Twin sisters Anairis and Adairis Miranda Leyva, their mom and their brother Fidel Manuel Batista Leyva jailed for leaving their home during the period of mourning for Fidel Castro were recognized as prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International in March 2017.

They had been jailed since November 27, 2016 for not having mourned the death of Fidel Castro. The three siblings were hospitalized following a hunger strike that began on March 7, 2017 and were conditionally released on April 3, 2017.   

However the harassment did not end, but has continued to the present day. 

Adairis Miranda Leyva has two children: Tahimí Rodríguez Miranda (age 14 ) and Alain Michel Rodríguez Miranda (age 12), that over the past three years have not been able to go to school out of fear for their physical security. Due to the beatings, Acts of Repudiation, offenses and threats carried out against them by angry mobs of communist teachers, parents and students.

On February 24, 2020, after they held a public protest on Holguín Boulevard, repression increased: they suffered severe beatings, arbitrary arrests, murder attempts, attempted police rape (against Ana Iris and Ada Iris), serious moral and political offenses. To make matters worse, the communist dictatorship seeks to jail them again on spurious charges.

On September 26, 2020, at 7:41 PM, mobs organized by the dictatorship, members of the violent rapid response groups led by secret police, began an Act of Repudiation against them. In this attack, they threw bricks at them, smashed their door and the window. The mob invaded their home, burned down their kitchen, and destroyed what little they owned. 

During the attack, in which more than a hundred people participated, the secret police led by Lt. Colonel Alejandro, head of the confrontation brigade in Holguín), as well as police officers were present to encourage the mob action sanctioned by the Castro regime.

Hoy, 3 de Octubre de 2020, mis dos hermanas Ana Iris y Ada Iris cumplen 31 años de edad. Mañana, 4 de Octubre de 2020, Tahimí cumplirá 14 años de edad.
¡Que Dios las Bendiga, Libere, Proteja y Prospere siempre junto a Alain Michel, Maydolis, Fidel Batista y Luna! pic.twitter.com/vZXpjHpnWs

— Ana Iris Miranda Leyva y Familia (@AnaIris72442501) October 3, 2020

They were only able to save themselves because they climbed onto a neighbor's roof; and at dawn escaped by going out through someone else's house. This happened to them, their dog and María Casado Ureña, a 72-year-old woman, was also physically assaulted and threatened by the mob for visiting them.

Now they are homeless and observing birthdays seeking refuge with good Samaritans who are in turn targeted by the dictatorship for granting them shelter.

Nearly four  years after they failed to mourn Fidel Castro's death this family is seeking asylum, and fear for their lives. This is how communism in practice deals with dissidents, and those who do not actively support the dictatorship in Havana.

International Day of Non-Violence 2020: Raising awareness with Satyagraha

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it. - Mohandas Gandhi

Mohandas Gandhi

 

October 2nd has been recognized by the United Nations as the International Day of Non-Violence. This date was selected to reflect on this powerful idea, because on October 2, 1869 Mohandas Gandhi was born in India.  The United Nations describes Gandhi as the "leader of the Indian independence movement and pioneer of the philosophy and strategy of non-violence." 

On September 11, 1906 in South Africa, unhappy with the term passive resistance to describe nonviolence he convened a contest that led to a new word "Satyagraha" taken from Sanskrit words that Gandhi described as follows: "Truth (Satya) [that] implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves as a synonym for force."

Today is a day to share the message of nonviolence through education and awareness. It is a powerful idea that recognizes the dignity and power inherent in each individual, while at the same time recognizing that harnessing force through disciplined, strategic and non-violent action magnifies the power of the individual and when working in concert with others can become an unstoppable force for positive change. The life and example of Congressman John Lewis, who recently passed away, is an example of this.

Critics often cite that both Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated, and that this demonstrates the failure of their nonviolent philosophy, but they fail to look at what they accomplished in the wider societies they inhabited, and their respective legacies decades later. Both changed their respective countries. Gandhi achieved Indian independence, and King ended official segregation, empowered African Americans with their full voting rights, and achieved much more.

Gene Sharp who also taught generations of activists that there was an alternative to bloody conflict and that it was non-violent armed conflict. He demonstrated, as both Gandhi and King understood and practiced, that there was nothing passive about nonviolent resistance and that it also required strategy to increase the odds of success in a struggle. In 1990 at the National Conference on Nonviolent Sanctions and Defense in Boston, Gene Sharp succinctly outlined his argument.

"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."

This idea has extended to many places, and cultures around the world, but it is co-existing in conflict with ideologies like Marxism-Leninism that are based in class struggle, revenge redefined as justice, and violence elevated as a superior tool of struggle. Both Gandhi and King understood this latter approach to be profoundly counterproductive. 

Michael Nagler, a long time peace scholar, presents this idea as follows: Nonviolence sometimes “works” and always works, while by contrast, Violence sometimes “works” and never works.  Nagler offers a more detailed explanation.

The exercise of violence always has a destructive effect on human relationships even when, as sometimes happens, it accomplishes some short-term goal. The exercise of nonviolence, or Satyagraha, always brings people closer. This explains why Gandhi, after fifty years of experimentation in every walk of life, could declare that he “knew of no single case in which it had failed.” Where it seemed to fail he concluded that he or the other satyagrahis had in some way failed to live up to its steep challenge.  Taking the long view, he was able to declare that “There is no such thing as defeat in non-violence. The end of violence is surest defeat.”

 Below are several videos that introduce nonviolence and how it works.

Nonviolence: understanding the basics by Michael Nagler 

The secret to effective nonviolent resistance | Jamila Raqib 

Nonviolence or Nonexistence: Choice of the 21st Century | Arun Gandhi | TEDxAthens

MLK: Nonviolence is the Most Powerful Weapon

RESIST CCP: Solidarity with the peoples of Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, China, Southern Mongolia and Taiwan

 "The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men." - Henry David Thoreau

 

This blog has stood in solidarity with and continues to be in solidarity with the aspirations of the peoples of Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, China, Southern Mongolia and Taiwan to live in freedom.

The forces of oppression have  joined together  to maintain their people subjugated and to spread their communist system of totalitarian oppression to the four corners of the world.

It was the Castro regime that led the charge in July 2020 at the UN Human Rights Council in favor of the security law that ends Hong Kong's space of freedom in the Peoples Republic of China.

I #StandWithHongKong and @CardJosephZen. #NeverGiveUp #DemocracyforHongKong pic.twitter.com/yXUE4YdLRi

— John Suarez ن (@johnjsuarez) May 22, 2020

Sadly, Chinese and Cuban people now share a common date to mourn victims of repression in their respective countries: July 13th.

On July 13, 1994 six miles off the coast from Havana, 37 men, women and children were massacred by Cuban government agents who sank the tugboat they were on and used high pressure hoses to drown them. On July 13, 2017 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo died of "multiple organ failure" while still under the custody of the Chinese communists. 

The Chinese Communist Party still refuses to apologize for the June 3rd-4th, 1989 massacre in Beijing when thousands were killed on the orders of the dictatorship.

Honored to meet Hong Kong Umbrella Movement leader Nathan Law at Tenth Interethnic Interfaith Leadership Conference pic.twitter.com/CwHkAHAkag

— John Suarez ن (@johnjsuarez) May 1, 2015

The consequences of continued one party communist rule in China are being felt around the world today due to the COVID-19 pandemic that they initially covered up, and allowed to spread.

Celebrating a Free China https://t.co/yc9nzdcLIF #Taiwan #FreeChina pic.twitter.com/qMtnkAKdEe

— John Suarez ن (@johnjsuarez) October 10, 2016

This is why now more  than ever it is important to #ResistCCP and stand with democrats and human rights defenders in Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, China, Southern Mongolia and Taiwan.