LET'S FIGHT BACK
GOD BLESS AMERICA
Monday, July 31, 2023
“Grub First, Then Ethics”
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Sunday, July 30, 2023
Saturday, July 29, 2023
Un día como hoy, julio 29, en nuestra lucha contra el castrismo.
Un día como hoy, julio 29, en nuestra lucha contra el castrismo.
Dedicado a aquellos que dicen que en Cuba no se combatió el comunismo.
Comparta estas efemérides. Gracias.
1960:
Roberto Mejías es fusilado en La Cabaña.
1962:
José González Sánchez vecino de Trinidad, LV. muere en combate contra las milicias comunistas en la Sierra del Escambray.
1964
El guerrillero anticastrista Víctor Manuel Manso Brizuela muere en combate en las montañas del Escambray, provincia de Las Villas.
1969:
Carmelo Cuadra Hernández condenado por un tribunal castrista de la Cabaña en la causa 391 del año 1963 muere en huelga de hambre en el Castillo del Príncipe, La Habana.
1975:
Francisco Marrero Pulido es fusilado en La Cabaña, LH. Fue juzgado bajo la acusación de sabotaje.
*****
La OEA deroga el bloqueo impuesto contra Cuba en 1964 por su papel en la desestabilización de la región.
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Free Cuba Now!
To promote a nonviolent transition to a Cuba that respects human rights, political and economic freedoms, and the rule of law.
Cuban dictatorship celebrates terrorist act that led to Cuba's communist captivity. United States observes Captive Nations Week.
While Havana collaborates with the Russian empire, others seek to be free of it.
This past week in Cuba was set aside by the Cuban dictatorship to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Assault on the Moncada Barracks that began a process that ended in the imposition of communist rule in Cuba. Two Op-Eds published in the Miami Herald addressed this tragic legacy.
John Suarez, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, in his July 27, 2023 Op-Ed "In the 1950s, Cubans soon learned the Moncada attack was nothing to celebrate," provided a historical overview and context of the July 26, 1953 assault on the Moncada barracks.
The men and women who battled Batista’s dictatorship, many of them in Castro’s July 26th Movement, hoped for the restoration of Cuba’s 1940 Constitution and its republic. This is what Fidel promised in his “History will Absolve Me” speech at his trial for the Moncada assault. They got a totalitarian dictatorship, instead. They then fought Castro for six years in a civil war with substantially higher casualties on both sides than during the struggle against Batista. About 400 Soviet advisers assisted Castro in crushing the resistance. The opposition ended up in exile, imprisoned or executed.
Orlando Gutiérrez Boronat, coordinator of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance, and author of “Cuba: the Doctrine of the Lie”, in his July 27th Op-Ed "Communist regime in Cuba is not ‘accidentally’ authoritarian; it is ‘intentionally totalitarian’" and provides an excellent analysis on the regime's nature on the international scene.
The Communist regime in Cuba is not accidentally authoritarian. In fact, it is intentionally totalitarian. It did not wander into the desert of dictatorship, seeking the oasis of social justice. From its very inception, it has relentlessly sought to overthrow the rules-based international order led by the United States and Europe. In pursuit of this, it has repeatedly rebuffed successive attempts at engagement by U.S. administrations. What’s more, these attempts have only emboldened the regime to seek more aggressively to counter American interests and values, including direct challenges to U.S. national security.
In the week prior to the Moncada celebrations by the communist regime in Havana, and their international networks a very different observance was held. President Biden on July 14th signed a proclamation declaring July 16 through July 22, 2023, Captive Nations Week, in which " support for brave people around the world who are standing up to oppressive rule and striving for greater freedom, greater dignity, and greater democracy" was reaffirmed. He also provided some background on its history, and provided context for the present day.
"When President Dwight D. Eisenhower proclaimed the first Captive Nations Week in 1959, he appealed directly to the hundreds of millions living behind the Iron Curtain — firm in the knowledge that authoritarianism could never erase a people’s love of liberty. Over the coming decades, courageous women and men joined together to demand their fundamental freedoms and human rights. But the battle against oppression did not end with the Cold War. The forces of autocracy continue to reassert themselves. In Iran, Belarus, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the People’s Republic of China, and elsewhere, we are seeing an all too familiar contempt for the rule of law, for democracy, for human rights, and even for the truth itself."
On July 19th the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation held a Captive Nations Summit. CFC's executive director moderated the third panel " Global Voices of Freedom - Key to enduring resilience" with Grace Jo. Grace from North Korea, Prof. Valdas Rakutis, from Lithuania, and Sophie Luo Shengchun, from China. Introducing the panel and providing context to the subject cited a Cuban man of letters who had recently passed.
Cuban exile, writer and journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner passed away on June 30, 2023 at age 80. He was also a victim of Communism, forced to flee his country to avoid a long and unjust prison sentence by the Castro regime. His life is an example of enduring resilience. In 2011, he said the following to the George W. Bush Presidential Center: “There is a secret family of victims of totalitarianism, which can be the families in Burma or the victims in North Korea or in Iran or in Cuba. We feel a special bond with them because we belong to the same family.” This is also true for our brothers and sisters in Lithuania, China and others who are suffering, or suffered under communism.
The last day of Captive Nations Week this year, July 22nd, coincided with the day in 2012 when Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero were killed by agents of the Cuban government.
The full event is available below on Youtube.
The Moncada celebrations in Cuba extol an act of terrorism that resulted in the imposition of communist despotism that continues today while Captive Nations Week celebrates the liberation of countries from communist rule, and calls for solidarity with those peoples still captive under totalitarian rule. In stark contrast the Cuban dictatorship is sending “volunteers” to join the Russian army and the Wagner mercenaries in waging a war of aggression against Ukraine.
Friday, July 28, 2023
Thursday, July 27, 2023
Free Cuba Now!
To promote a nonviolent transition to a Cuba that respects human rights, political and economic freedoms, and the rule of law.
Seven things to read and watch on the 70th anniversary of the Moncada Attack to get the facts of what actually happened, and avoid propaganda
Seven things to read and watch on the 70th anniversary of the military assault that sparked six years of domestic terrorism in Cuba and 64 years and counting of dictatorship.
A group of Cubans led by Fidel Castro assaulted the barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Approximately, 18 government officials were killed and 28 wounded in the attack. 27 rebels were killed and 11 wounded. 51 of the surviving 99 rebels were placed on trial.
Fidel Castro turned himself in after seeking guarantees for his safety and was also put on trial. At his trial Castro praised the old republic, and the democracy that had existed prior to March 10, 1952. The future Cuban despot expressed outrage at the Batista regime’s repression against his fellow assailants. “The unprecedented moral degradation our nation is suffering is expressed beyond the power of words in that mother's sobs of grief before the cowardly insolence of the very man who murdered her son.”
The official version put out by the Cuban government about the July 26, 1953 attack on the Moncada Barracks is not what happened. No mention is made about how Fidel Castro lied about his true intentions, because he knew that if he had told Cubans that he was a communist he would never have been accepted by either the Cuban people or Washington. On December 2, 1961 he explained his reasoning,"If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that we would never have been able to descend to the plains."
On March 26, 1964, before the trial of the alleged informant of the Humbolt Seven Martyrs, Fidel Castro explained that truth had to be useful: ”I conceive the truth based on a just and noble end, and that is when the truth is really true. If it does not serve a fair, noble and positive end, the truth, as an abstract entity, a philosophical category, in my opinion, does not exist." The accused in the trial Marcos Armando Rodríguez Alfonso was unable to present witnesses in his defense, and Cuban revolutionary Jorge Valls Arango spent 20 years in prison for wanting to testify on Rodríguez Alfonso's behalf. Marcos Armando Rodríguez Alfonso was found guilty and executed by firing squad.
This concept of "truth" is not original to Fidel Castro, but taken from Lenin. On October 2, 1920, the first leader of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, stated in a speech to Russian communist youth: "The class struggle is continuing and it is our task to subordinate all interests to that struggle. Our communist morality is also subordinated to that task. We say: morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and to unite all the working people around the proletariat, which is building up a new, communist society." This is at the heart of communist morality, the ends justify the means, a profound immorality and a pillar of international communism. It also leads to the doctrine of the "big lie." According to Lenin, "To speak the truth is a petit-bourgeois habit. To lie, on the contrary, is often justified by the lie's aim." This entry will seek to remain true to the facts.
1. The Moncada Attack
Antonio Rafael De la Cova talked about his book The Moncada Attack: Birth of the Cuban Revolution, published by the University of South Carolina Press. He described Fidel Castro’s failed attack on the Cuban Army on July 26, 1953, saying that Raul and Fidel Castro led a party of 160 people in assaults on two Cuban army posts. They were turned back by the army and defeated, and the author contended that Fidel Castro used the skirmish for his own propaganda purposes and that the events of July 26 put in motion Castro’s ascension to power. After his presentation the author responded to a few audience members' questions. Above is the C-Span video, and below is local coverage on the book presentation.
2. What Fidel Castro said about Cuba’s democratic republic (1902 - 1952) that the regime now down plays.
Fidel Castro mugshot after July 26, 1953 Moncada Barracks attack
Castro said at his trial on October 16, 1953 that later became known as the "“History Will Absolve Me” speech.
“Let me tell you a story: Once upon a time there was a Republic. It had its Constitution, its laws, its freedoms, a President, a Congress and Courts of Law. Everyone could assemble, associate, speak and write with complete freedom." …"Public opinion was respected and heeded and all problems of common interest were freely discussed. There were political parties, radio and television debates and forums of public meetings. The whole nation pulsated with enthusiasm.”
The promise made by the July 26 Movement was to restore the pre-existing democratic order along with reforms. The Castro revolution ended a seven year authoritarian dictatorship, and replaced it with a communist dictatorship that has ruled over Cuba for 64 years and counting. The Castro dictatorship was not a break from Batista but a continuity into more profound tyranny that continues to kill Cubans and has already, at a conservative estimate, killed tens of thousands.
3. Castro’s movement in the 1950s engaged in terrorism against Cubans
Throughout the 1950s., Castro's July 26th Movement carried out multiple bombings that terrorized and killed Cuban civilians. Several of them were planned by Raul Castro, who is considered by some as ‘the father’ of contemporary skyjacking. On November 1, 1958, he orchestrated a skyjacking that killed 17 civilians. Terrorism is an essential component of Castroism. The Castro regime took power believing that they had achieved their victory through guerrilla warfare and terrorism, not their successfully lobbying of the U.S. government to place an arms embargo on Batista in March 1958. Terrorism is a core part of Castroism that views it as a valid tactic by the Castro dictatorship to further its goals. The Tricontinental Conference was held in Havana in 1966, and the Organization for the Solidarity of the Peoples of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (OSPAAL) was created to sponsor and support guerilla and terrorist groups around the world.