El 4 de Julio y la ayuda de los cubanos a George Washington

George Washington

 

Por Frank Calzon

Este 4 de julio, pienso sobre los hombres y mujeres en las Fuerzas Armadas norteamericanas que arriesgan sus vidas defendiendo la causa de la libertad alrededor del mundo. Pienso también sobre Cuba, tan cerca de los Estados Unidos, sufriendo un despotismo que la oprime y que encarcela a los campesinos que quieren aliviar el hambre reinante y que se atreven a criar sus animales y cosechar frutas y vegetales y venderlos directamente a los consumidores. Son los campesinos que se atreven a violar el bloqueo interno de la dictadura a la producción independiente de los decretos del estado que gasta millones importando pollos congelados de Nueva Orleans.

 

Y recuerdo a las Damas de La Habana, precursoras de las Damas de Blanco de hoy en su amor por la libertad. Aquellas habaneras jugaron un papel importante ayudando a George Washington en un momento crítico de la guerra de independencia norteamericana.

La batalla de Yorktown se iniciaba y el general británico Cornwallis estaba seguro de que derrotaría a los patriotas norteamericanos.
Según un ayudante de Washington, el francés Conde de Rochambeau,  “las tropas continentales estaban casi sin ropas, sin medias y sin zapatos. Casi no tenían recursos. El General Washington no contaba con la mitad de las tropas necesarias”.

 

El historiador Stephen Bonsal cuenta lo ocurrido en su libro “Cuando los franceses estaban aquí”, publicado en 1945. En 1781, la situación lucía mal, cuando Washington envío al almirante Francois de Grasse al Caribe. Charles Lee Lewis lo describe en su libro “El Almirante DeGrasse y la Independencia Americana", que publicó el Instituto Naval de Estados Unidos.

Lamentablemente, como Jean-Jacques Antier también escribe en “El Almirante DeGrasse: Héroe de la Independencia Americana", cuando el francés llegó a Santo Domingo la flota española había partido para Espana, no había oro y el gobierno colonial no podía ayudar.

 

De Grasse marchó a La Habana. Entonces no existía la Fundación Nacional para la Democracia (National Endowment for Democracy) para promover la libertad y la democracia alrededor del mundo.

 

Los cubanos admiraban a Washington y respondieron inmediatamente. “Las damas de La Habana donaron sus diamantes y 1,200,000 libras fueron recaudados”, escribió Antier. De Grasse partió para Filadelfia sin demora, y desde allí Rochembau se fue a Chester, Pensilvania en Septiembre de 1781.

 

“Vimos en la distancia al General Washington saludando con su sombrero y un pañuelo blanco, demostrando su alegría al ver el bote que llegaba a Chester", dijo Rochembau después según la crónica de J. J. Jusserand, en “Con los Americanos del Pasado y los Dias Presentes”. De Rochembau acababa de pisar tierra cuando Washington, usualmente muy circunspecto lo abrazó, la buena nueva se había hecho realidad. De Grasse había arribado con significantes recursos para continuar la lucha.

 

La campaña en el otoño de 1781, y la guerra, terminó cuando Cornwallis se rindió en Yorktown. Bonsal escribió más tarde: “El millón que donaron las damas de La Habana pueden reconocerse como los dólares indispensables para la construcción del edificio de la independencia americana”.

El Presidente Biden, que ha anunciado que La Habana no coopera con la lucha antiterrorista y que la represión y las violaciones de los derechos humanos en la isla son consideraciones en la reexaminación de su política hacia Cuba, posiblemente desconoce la ayuda de las damas de La Habana a  Washington.

En este 4 de julio, pidámosle a Dios que proteja a los soldados americanos alrededor del mundo y a las Damas de Blanco, a los activistas de UNPACU, del Movimiento San Isidro y los hombres y mujeres en manos de la gestapo cubana.

Frank Calzón es un politólogo cubano.

Independence on July 4, 1776: Triumph of American political genius, and a failure of the British Parliament's political imagination and magnanimity

"Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together." - Edmund Burke, Speech on Conciliation with America, March 22, 1775

Edmund Burke

 

July 4, 1776 is Independence Day, and marks the publication of the Declaration of Independence by thirteen former British colonies against the government in London. It is a day of great celebration in the United States and with good reason. It marks the decision of free peoples to establish a new Republic that has now endured and prospered over 245 years, but for Great Britain it was a magnificent failure that could have been avoided, but Parliament failed to address American concerns and dealt with harshness against their colonists. 

Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and others who would lead the American Revolution drafted and signed the Olive Branch Petition that was adopted on July 8, 1775 and reached London on August 14, 1775 seeking redress on colonial grievances from the British King, and for the colonies to remain within the empire, but it was not to be. 

Months earlier the British statesman Edmund Burke spoke out against arbitrary rule over the 13 colonies in his March 22, 1775 speech on conciliation with America in which he explained to the British government that the way to keep the allegiance of the American colonies was to maintain the identification with civil rights associated with colonial rule warning that if that relation were broken it would lead to dissolution. 

"Let the colonies always keep the idea of their civil rights associated with your government-they will cling and grapple to you, and no force under heaven will be of power to tear them from their allegiance. But let it be once understood that your government may be one thing and their privileges another, that these two things may exist without any mutual relation - the cement is gone, the cohesion is loosened, and everything hastens to decay and dissolution. As long as you have the wisdom to keep the sovereign authority of this country as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred temple consecrated to our common faith, wherever the chosen race and sons of England worship freedom, they will turn their faces towards you."

Burke's concept of human dignity as derived from the creator , combined with a concept of man's moral equality, has deep roots in the Christian tradition which is where the language and concept of human rights first emerged in the 1200s in the Catholic Church and was refined by Thomas Aquinas.  

Edmund Burke's defense of the marginalized, the colonized, and the conquered was rooted not in abstract enlightenment theory but a Christian moral vision of the universe. According to Burke, in his 1796 Letters on a regicide peace ,man has freedom but it is not absolute:

"As to the right of men to act anywhere according to their pleasure, without any moral tie, no such right exists. Men are never in a state of total independence of each other. It is not the condition of our nature: nor is it conceivable how any man can pursue a considerable course of action without its having some effect upon others; or, of course, without producing some degree of responsibility for his conduct."

Enlightenment liberalism constructed abstract models that failed to take into account the full complexity of human nature and its contradictions. The French human rights charter declares men absolutely both free and equal. Edmund Burke and modern conservatives believe that "full equality" outside of the moral and spiritual sphere is unattainable and a dangerous fiction. 

First, to permit absolute freedom is to tolerate profound inequalities because people if left to their own devices develop hierarchies. 

Secondly, to enforce absolute equality requires an all powerful state to repress natural inequalities. The end result is not absolute equality but a small group with great power at its disposal making slaves of the majority.

Edmund Burke's counsel in 1775 remains relevant today, as do his warnings of embracing political abstractions to impose government policies, and calling for magnanimity and wisdom in political deliberations.

 

Human Rights Watch reports Clampdown on Artists, Journalists in Cuba. Artists Demand Release of Detained Dissident Artist Hamlet Lavastida.

How you can take action.

Cuban artist Hamlet Lavastida jailed

Taken from CubaBrief

The Castro regime is engaging in a systematic crackdown on Cuban artists and journalists, but Cuba's nascent civil society is responding in a civic-nonviolent manner and seeking international support.

"Over 140 Cuban intellectuals and cultural figures, including Tania Bruguera and Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, have signed an open letter demanding the release of artist Hamlet Lavastida, detained in Havana this weekend upon his return from a residency at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. The artist is currently held at Villa Marista, the notorious maximum-security prison known for holding political prisoners," reported Valentina Di Liscia in her July 1, 2021 HYPERALLERGIC article "Artists Demand Release of Dissident Artist Detained in Cuba" that was updated on July 2nd with an expanded list of signers to the open letter. The letter reproduced along with Di Liscia's article states, “we condemn the criminalization of Hamlet Lavastida by the Cuban government. He is a Cuban citizen and artist who has done nothing more than exercise his constitutional right to express himself.”

There is an open petition circulating that is available for your signature demanding the release of Hamlet Lavastida. Please sign it and share with others. Indifference has allowed this regime to operate with impunity for too long.

On June 30, 1961 Fidel Castro gave his speech to [Cuba's] intellectuals where he summed up the limits of artistic expression: 'Within the revolution, everything; outside of it, nothing.' Sixty years later and this totalitarian view continues to be imposed on the arts and journalism in Cuba.

El régimen cubano ha detenido a la curadora de arte Carolina Barrero Ferrer.

Hace 3 días que estaba con vigilancia policial y sin acceso a internet.

Exigimos su liberación inmediata. pic.twitter.com/6KoA4zqOXK

— Human Rights Watch (@hrw_espanol) July 2, 2021

Cuban art curator Carolina Barrero Ferrer was under police surveillance for 3 days with internet access cut off, and was arrested on July 1, 2021 and remains in detention.  

"The Cuban government is committing systematic human rights abuses against independent artists and journalists," said Human Rights Watch on June 30, 2021 as the internationally recognized human rights NGO "released a video on the abuses." According to Human Rights Watch, "in recent months, Cuban authorities have jailed and prosecuted several artists and journalists who are critical of the government. Police and intelligence officers have routinely appeared at the homes of other artists and journalists, ordering them to stay there, often for days and even weeks. The authorities have also imposed temporary targeted restrictions on people’s ability to access cell phone data. Singing a song that the government does not like, or reporting the news independently, is enough to get you detained in Cuba,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “These abuses are not isolated incidents, but rather appear to be part of a plan to selectively silence critical voices.”

The video released by Human Rights watch begins with Luis Eligio D Omni of ProActivo Miami, a Cuban artist who took part in a Zoom conference hosted by the Center for a Free Cuba on June 30th that was moderated by Sebastian Arcos Cazabon and included artists Paquito D'Rivera, Kizzy Macias, and the journalist Norges Rordríguez focused on the intersection of the arts and protest in Cuba. The event is in Spanish and available online.

Cuban artists are expressing long held truths to an international audience. They are breaking through decades of carefully crafted regime propaganda, and the dictatorship is panicking. They are also sending a message to tourists that go to Cuba and treat it as an amusement park that they want to see. This phenomenon has angered many Cubans for many years, but artists have found a way to visualize and communicate it to a non-Cuban audience. 

Art work by Ricky Castillo of #SOSCuba

 

Shadows over July in Cuba

Although July is the first full month of summer. For Cubans it is overshadowed by crimes that darken what should be a sunny and joyous time. 

Three awful days will be observed this month: 

First, 27 years ago on July 13, 1994 Cuban government agents killed 37 Cubans trying to flee Cuba. 

Second, Nine years ago on July 22, 2012 Cuban agents rammed car Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero were traveling in Cuba. Both bodies appeared later.  

Third, 68 years ago on July 26, 1953 Cubans killed Cubans in a failed attempt to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista with an attack on the Moncada Barracks. 

These dark shadows hang over Cuban history.

What plans do you have to honor these Cubans killed during July to demand truth, memory and justice be observed?

The Communist Party in China turns 100. A century of a spreading evil that threatens to engulf the world.

100 years of an evil ideology metastasizing in the Middle Kingdom. #CCP100 #100YearsofRepression

Students wave flags of the CCP before celebrations in Beijing to mark 100th anniversary of its founding. Wang Zhao/AFP 

China's Communist Party was actually founded on July 23, 1921 "by a mixture of Chinese and foreign revolutionaries in Shanghai" according to NPR, but twenty years later hiding out in caves from the Japanese they decided to rewrite history and declare that the founding of the Party was on July 1, 1921.

This is why today the communist dictatorship in China is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the founding of the political party that has created a totalitarian one party dictatorship that has caused the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese, and whose founder, Mao Zedong, is considered the greatest killer in human history, outdoing both Josef Stalin, and Adolf Hitler in body counts.

According to historian Frank Dikötter, author of the book Mao’s Great Famine, the Chinese dictator was "responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 1958 and 1962." Mao was responsible for the deaths of as many as 70 million Chinese on his watch alone. Mao died in 1976, but the Chinese Communist Party continues its killing spree to the present day.

Estimates place the number of killed by Chinese Communists at over 70 million

On September 26, 1980 The New York Times ran a UPI story reporting that "Chinese Reds Limited To a Child Per Family"  and euphemistically wrote  "China intensified its population-control drive today by ordering the 38 million Communist Party members to have only one child per family" and how the policy would use "painstaking patience and persuasion."

Time Magazine reported in 2015 that "patience and persuasion" included "forced abortions and sterilization, and a gender imbalance resulting from female infanticide." Tom Hilditch in the South China Morning Post (Hong Kong) in September of 1995 described it as a "A Holocaust of Little Girls." In 2015 reports emerged that the one-child policy was replaced with a two-child policy.

The Dying Rooms and Return to the Dying Rooms broadcast in 1995 and 1996 respectively offered a variety of sources (human rights organizations, doctors who had fled China armed with photographs) which corroborated the claims made in the documentary:

Producers/directors Brian Woods and Kate Blewett uncover the systematic neglect of abandoned babies in Chinese state-run orphanages. They find "dark rooms" where the weakest and least liked children are left to die. These are known as "The Dying Rooms."  China’s one-child policy has created a race where most families desire boys and therefore parents are forced to abandon their babies. Their unfortunate and tragic lives are left at the mercy of these orphanages where their sad fate is ultimately decided by the staff and ignored by the government.

But the most damning evidence came from official records themselves that document how many of the children in their care died, and how long it took them to and they called it a "Summary Resolution."

 

In addition to systematic processes that have impacted millions, the communists would still carry out massacres when Chinese nationals engaged in sustained public dissent. 

Thirty two years ago the Pro-Democracy Movement that had taken to the streets in April of 1989 was violently crushed by the Chinese communist dictatorship beginning on the evening of June 3, 1989. By dawn on June 4, 1989 scores of demonstrators had been shot and killed or run over and crushed by tanks of the so-called People's Liberation Army. A 2017 declassified British diplomatic cable revealed that "at least 10,000 people were killed. The Chinese Communist regime still defends committing this massacre.

Between June 3 and June 5, 1989 tank drivers ran over protesters

Think of it, the biggest mass murderer of the Chinese people is the Chinese Communist Party. 100 years of conspiracies, mass killings and repression while building the perfect totalitarian cage. There is nothing to celebrate but much to mourn, and also to continue to fight for a free China.

Despite this history, Westerners decided to go into business with the Chinese Communist Party, and betrayed a free China, with many withdrawing their diplomatic recognition from Taiwan, a free and democratic republic where human rights are respected, and a free economy lifts all boats.

Flag of Taiwan

The island of Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule from 1895 until 1945, and during the Chinese Civil War, the forces of a free China (the Republic of China) relocated there in 1949. Over the next 72 years the Republic of China (ROC) established itself on the island and transitioned into a democratic multi-party democracy that is an example of what a free China could be on the mainland.

It is shocking that those in power did not think twice about enriching, and providing technical know how to a totalitarian dictatorship that has killed over 70 million of their own citizens, and do not respect human rights, or the rule of law. Now, with  the aid of Western investments and technology they have intercontinental ballistic missiles and where do you think they are pointing?

It is even more shocking that after the Chinese communists demonstrated their continued outlaw status with the COVID-19 pandemic that Westerners consider this regime "a good place to invest." It is disappointing to see business magnates, like Elon Musk, " celebrate the "economic prosperity" in Communist China, without looking at the costs. Meanwhile a jewel of international capitalism, Hong Kong, is being dismantled by the dictatorship he praises.

It's time to confront the crimes of the Chinese Communist Party. #CCP100 #100YearsofRepression pic.twitter.com/ZoOJT2hfjF

— Victims of Communism (@VoCommunism) July 1, 2021

Genocide is taking place in Communist China against the Uighurs and Tibetans. The death count is no longer limited to China.

Let us remember that the lack of transparency by communist officials in China led to a global pandemic that has so far killed over 3,970,601 people around the world and infected nearly 200 million, and caused an economic downturn that has impacted hundreds of millions more. 

Westerners claimed that engaging with communist China would lead to them becoming more like us, but instead the rest of the world has become more like them, and human rights have been in decline for nearly two decades globally as a result. 

Time for people to wake up, before it is too late, that is if it is not already too late. Sorry Elon Musk, while communism reins in Mainland China, the only China that I will be visiting is a free China, and that today is Taiwan.

Quite the turnout for the rally for Uighurs/Tibet/Hong Kong outside the Chinese Embassy in London for the 100th anniversary of the CCP and the 24th anniversary of the HK Handover. It’s a sharp contrast from the somber day that Hong Kong had. pic.twitter.com/KiTsggePTN

— Laurel Chor (@laurelchor) July 1, 2021