Balaguer explica la Internacional Castrista post Union Sovietica

Cuba Hoy

Balaguer explica la Internacional Castrista post Union Sovietica

Missing Soviet war veteran found living in Afghanistan 33 years after combat

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Soviet war veteran Bakhretdin Khakimov went missing in action 33
years ago, but has now been found living under the name Sheikh Abdullah
and working as a healer. Alexander Lawrentjew / dpa via AP

By Reuters

MOSCOW — A Soviet war veteran reported missing in action during fighting in Afghanistan 33 years ago has been found living as a local healer in the province of Herat, news agency Ria reported.

The soldier, who was rescued by Afghans after being wounded in the first months after the Soviet Union's invasion in 1979, was tracked down by a Moscow-based group of war veterans.

A native of the former Soviet Central Asian state of Uzbekistan, he now goes by the name of Sheikh Abdullah and has adopted the local dress and profession of the healer who nursed him back to health.

The deputy head of the Afghan war veterans' committee said Abdullah, whose given name is Bakhretdin Khakimov, mostly had forgotten the Russian language and never tried to contact his relatives after suffering severe head trauma in the fighting.

Alexander Lavrentyev, who met with Abdullah in Herat last month, said the veteran, who was 20 when he went missing, still bore the scars of his injury. His face is creased by a nervous tic and his hand and shoulder shake.

"He was just happy he survived,'' Lavrentyev was quoted by Ria as saying at a presser in Moscow on Monday.

The committee says it has found 29 of 264 soldiers still listed as missing from the bloody decade-long conflict. It said seven of those it contacted chose to stay in Afghanistan.

Some 15,000 Soviet troops were killed in the fighting that followed the Soviet Union's incursion to support a communist vassal government in Kabul against Islamist mujahideen fighters armed by the United States.

Missing Soviet war veteran found living in Afghanistan 33 years after combat

El ballet y la propaganda

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Isis Wirth

Stalin adoraba un ballet llamado “Las llamas de París”; probablemente era el ballet preferido de quien asistía con regularidad a las funciones del Bolshoi. Lo hacía representar en cada aniversario de la Revolución de octubre, pues era considerado un ballet de actualidad, aunque su asunto fuese el de la Revolución francesa. Es decir, la Revolución francesa era entendida como “actual” por los soviéticos. La obra, con coreografía de Vasili Vainonen y música de Boris Asafiev, se había estrenado en el entonces Leningrado en 1932. En un principio, se pensó en titularlo “Fiesta de la Revolución francesa” o “Triunfo de la República”. Finalmente, “Las llamas de París” narra en concreto el episodio del 10 de agosto de 1792, cuando el “pueblo” asaltó las Tullerías, lo que inauguró el inicio del Terror. Es un ballet de notable carga ideológica, que no le pudo sustraer la versión re-creada por Alexei Ratmansky, en julio de 2008 en el Teatro Bolshoi de Moscú. La guillotina aparece en la escena, imponente y tronante (no dejan de caer cabezas), enfatizada por el color rojo, también predominante en la producción. Por primera vez en el decurso del arte de la danza, el principal personaje había sido el “pueblo”, el colectivo, lo que en términos coreográficos significa el cuerpo de baile.

“Las llamas de París” pertenece al género del “dramballet”, el equivalente en danza del realismo socialista, el cual se instaló a partir de la década del 30 del pasado siglo en la Unión Soviética. Un decreto del 23 de abril de 1932 clamó por la “restructuración de las organizaciones literarias y artísticas”; se crean, por ejemplo, la unión de escritores y la unión de compositores.

Dmitri Shostakovich compuso tres ballets de propaganda. En 1930 se estrenó en el Kírov “La edad de oro”, con coreografía de Vainonen. Un equipo de futbolistas soviéticos visitaba una exposición industrial en Europa del oeste. Era el contraste acentuado entre el Occidente decadente y enfermo, y la Unión Soviética robusta y sana. En abril de 1931, también en el Kírov, se creó “La tuerca” (o “el tornillo): un obrero es licenciado tras la denuncia de que intentaba sabotear una máquina. Era muy maniqueo. El otro ballet de propaganda de Shostakovich es “El arroyo claro”, con coreografía de Fedor Lopukhov, producido en el Teatro Maly de Leningrado en abril de 1935. Un grupo de bailarines clásicos visitaba un koljós. Desde luego, son los toscos campesinos quienes tienen que enseñarle mucho más a los sofisticados bailarines que éstos a los koljosianos.

¿Conocía Stalin, ya que tanto le gustaba “Las llamas de París”, que al asignarle una función propagandística al ballet había sido precedido en ello por la Revolución francesa?

Sin embargo, en el principio no había sido así. Dos días antes de la toma de la Bastilla, “le peuple” se dirigió a la Ópera de París, exigiendo su cierre “en nombre la nación”. La Ópera era uno de los grandes símbolos del Ancien Régime. Un año más tarde, en 1790, Marie-Joseph Chénier presenta un informe en el club de los Cordeliers (cuyo presidente era Danton), en el que estima que “de acuerdo con las nuevas ideas”, el pueblo no tenía por qué continuar pagando “los placeres de la aristocracia” como la ópera y el ballet. Con arias y con pas de deux no se iban a formar a los nuevos ciudadanos. Propuso que el Estado no debía participar en ningún “gasto cultural”. Liberalismo avant la lettre…

Pero la Ópera de París no fue cerrada, ni por el “pueblo” que intentó asaltarla, ni por los revolucionarios franceses. Por el contrario, el poder soviético fue más lejos: consideraron que la compañía de ballet y la escuela de San Petersburgo eran los símbolos “odiados” del régimen zarista (recuérdese que Lenin escogió para su primer discurso al arribar a la ciudad del Neva, al balcón de la casa de la prima ballerina assoluta Tchessinskaya, amante de varios integrantes de la familia imperial), y cerraron sus locales, para restablecerlos después, al encontrar que el ballet podía ser una forma de consagración de su propia gloria.

El 8 de marzo de 1792, acusan a la Ópera de París de no poner en escena suficientes “obras patrióticas”. Los concesionarios de la Ópera se defendieron, presentando una lista de siete títulos (entre óperas y ballets), todos “hirvientes de patriotismo”. Pero no habían sido encargados, si no que habían sido “espontáneos”, como lo fue la supresión del repertorio del Ancien Régime. De hecho, existía una censura en la programación; se desterraban las producciones sospechosas de mostrar simpatía con los aristócratas.

Probablemente, la primera producción propagandística por encargo preciso tuvo lugar el 2 de octubre de 1792. Con la música de La Marsellesa, arreglada por Gossec, se presentó “La ofrenda a la libertad”, según coreografía de Pierre Gardel, más caballos y otras parafernalias militares sobre las tablas.

Durante el Terror jacobino, se intensificaron los ballets de propaganda. El 27 de enero de 1793, Gardel coreografía “El triunfo de la libertad”, con textos de Marie-Joseph Chénier. Al mes siguiente, Gardel (el hombre que, por otra parte, salvó al ballet pero es otra historia) presenta “La patria agradecida”. Un año más tarde, se produjo la ópera “El sitio de Tolón” (que había ganado para la República un oficial de artillería llamado Buonaparte), cuyo ballet estaba firmado por Vestris y Beaupré. Poco tiempo después, hizo su aparición un nuevo género, la “sans-culottide dramática”, en cinco actos, una suerte de “teatro total”, con versos, cantos, danzas, evoluciones y fanfarrias militares, llamada “La reunión del 10 de agosto o el nacimiento de la República francesa”.

Le siguieron otros títulos: “Al pueblo soberano” (sobre la historia de la Revolución), programada 24 veces; o “La fiesta de la razón”, sin contar que los bailarines (y las bailarinas en ocasiones semidesnudas) estaban compelidos a participar en las fiestas revolucionarias, so pena de ir a la guillotina si se negaban.

Este régimen de propaganda incesante no finalizó con el Terror, tras el 9 de Thermidor. El Directorio continuó usando al ballet para sus fines. Exigieron, por medio del ministro del Interior, la puesta en escena de un nuevo himno de Rouget de Lisle (el autor de La Marsellesa), titulado “El canto de las venganzas”, así como la de “Le chant du retour”, otro canto de guerra.

En lo que respecta a Cuba, la producción de ballets de propaganda ha sido bien nutrida. Comenzó tempranamente el 24 de febrero de 1960, con “Despertar”, coreografía de Enrique Martínez, música de Carlos Fariñas, y la interpretación protagónica de Alicia Alonso. Se celebraba la epopeya castrista y la victoria del pueblo.

En 1965, Alicia Alonso coreografió y asumió sobre la escena “La carta”, con música de Enrique González Mantici, a la gloria de la campaña de alfabetización. En 1970, Alberto Alonso coreografía “Conjugación”, dedicado al Che Guevara. Tres años más tarde, el propio Alberto Alonso estrenó “Viet-Nam: la lección”, con música de Leo Brouwer. El Hijo recibe lo que le da El Imperialismo (sic, es un rol asumido por un bailarín), consistente en: El Incesto, El Homicidio y La Antropofagia, roles del mismo modo interpretados por bailarines. La Madre rechaza al Hijo y le reclama al personaje de Otro Hijo la defensa de la patria, puesto que Hijo ha cometido traición y se ha convertido en un títere del Imperialismo.

En ese mismo año de 1973, se estrenó también por el Ballet Nacional de Cuba la creación colectiva de “Nuestra América”, sobre textos de José Martí.

Tuvo lugar en La Habana en 1975 una conferencia internacional de “solidaridad” con Puerto Rico, ocasión para la que el “pueblo puertorriqueño” tuvo derecho a dos ballets: “Por Puerto Rico”, de Gladys González, y “Los enseño a ser fuertes”, de Alberto Méndez, interpretado por cierto por Rosario Suárez.

Al desembarco del Granma, se le dedicaron dos ballets en 1976: “Desembarco glorioso”, de Alberto Méndez, y “Un día… el dos de diciembre” (estrenado el 27 de noviembre), de Alberto Alonso. Naturalmente, el sesenta aniversario de la Revolución rusa de 1917 fue festejado con “El futuro nació en octubre” (1977), coreografía de Alberto Méndez, con textos de Lenin y Brezhnev, entre otros.

Pero 1977 era también el año del aniversario 55 de la Federación de Estudiantes Universitarios (FEU). Así, tal “aniversaritis” conmemorativa dio lugar a “Los pinos nuevos” (según el texto de José Martí, cuyo origen a su vez remite a un aniversario del fusilamiento de los estudiantes de Medicina en 1871), según coreografía de Gustavo Herrera.

La Revolución de octubre tuvo derecho a otro ballet en 1977 (¿no había ya la propaganda artística soviética insistido en la loa del stajanovismo?), con “Leningrado”, de Gladys González sobre música de Juan Almeida. El ballet de Gladys González se estrenó el 4 de noviembre, y al día siguiente se presentó el ya mencionado de Alberto Méndez, “El futuro nació en octubre”: una de sus escenas se titulaba “Las 15 Repúblicas”, es decir, las que conformaban la extinta URSS.

Fue muy pródigo ese año de 1977 en fechas conmemorativas. No pudo faltar un “Ñancahuazú”, de Iván Tenorio, estrenado el 22 de octubre, en el marco del décimo aniversario de la muerte de Che Guevara en Bolivia.

Tampoco se careció de saludar, en 1977, al aniversario 17 de la creación de los CDR (Comités de Defensa de la Revolución), con “Nace un comité”, de Gladys González, más canciones interpretadas por Silvio Rodríguez. La coreógrafa firmaba el libreto junto a Alicia Alonso, supongo debido a que, según la directora del Ballet Nacional de Cuba, el primer comité de defensa se creó en la sede de la compañía el 14 de mayo de 1960, unos cuatro meses antes de que Fidel Castro llamara a su implementación general en el país, en un discurso del 28 de septiembre. Alicia Alonso ha alegado que lo que condujo a la decisión de constituir un comité de vigilancia en el Ballet fue una bomba que le habían puesto debajo de la silla de su buró, que felizmente no explotó.

Y, con anterioridad, en ese fructífero año de 1977, la incansable Galdys González había estrenado, el 28 de enero en el canal 6 de la televisión nacional, un “Martí, autor intelectual”, donde se ofrecía una “visión del pensamiento político de Martí”.

Hagamos un salto en el tiempo, hasta el más cercano 2004, en que Alicia Alonso estrenó su coreografía “Elegía por un joven”, dedicada in memoriam al italiano Fabio di Celmo, quien murió en un hotel de La Habana, en 1997, tras la explosión de una bomba.

Ya durante la época de la Revolución francesa, los ballets de propaganda fueron calificados por los más atrevidos, sotto voce, como “bodrios difíciles de tragar”, y por los más circunspectos como “piezas de circunstancia”. Incluso bajo el Directorio, como el público no concurría a esas obras, la Ópera de París le pidió al gobierno que lo indemnizara por las pérdidas ocasionadas, debidas a gastos extraordinarios en: pelucas, uniformes, comparsas militares, etcétera.

Les dejo a otros que juzguen lo referente a la posteridad de esas obras de propaganda producidas en el Ballet Nacional de Cuba.

El ballet y la propaganda

Russia remembers Stalingrad

Euronews

Russia remembers Stalingrad

A Life of Integrity: Vladimir Bukovsky at 70

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Vladimir Bukovsky, 1977
Photo Paul Babeliowsky iisg.nl

Vladimir Kara-Murza

Yesterday, on Sunday, December 30, Vladimir Bukovsky – writer, scientist, human rights campaigner, and one of the founders of the dissident movement in the USSR – celebrated his 70th birthday. IMR Senior Policy Advisor Vladimir Kara-Murza recalls the milestones in Bukovsky’s life – and urges the present-day Russian opposition to heed his advice.

Vladimir Bukovsky does not like to be called a politician, preferring to be known as a neurophysiologist, writer or, at the very least, civic activist. In truth, he never engaged in politics: he merely realized, at an early age, that he could not reconcile himself to live quietly with a criminal and mendacious regime that sought to make millions of people its silent accomplices. Bukovsky’s protest was a moral one. “We did not play politics, we did not draft programs for the ‘people’s liberation,’” he recalls in his memoirs, To Build a Castle (a must-read for anyone interested in Russian history). “Our only weapon was glasnost (openness). Not propaganda, but glasnost, so that no one could say ‘I did not know.’ The rest is a matter for each person’s conscience.”

“I did not know” was a popular answer among members of the older generation when asked by the youngsters of the 1950s about Stalin’s times. The public condemnation of Stalinist crimes at the 1956 Communist Party congress and (almost immediately) the brutal suppression of the Hungarian revolution, which showed that the nature of the regime has not changed, were formative events for Bukovsky. His protest activity began literally during his school days: he joined a clandestine anti-Soviet group and published an underground satirical journal. In response, he was expelled from school, summoned to a dressing-down by the Moscow City Communist Party Committee, and barred from studying at university (he nevertheless won admission to Moscow State University, only to be discovered and expelled a year later.)

Vladimir Bukovsky is one of the founders of the Soviet dissident movement, which was born in the fall of 1960 on Moscow’s Mayakovsky Square. There, a group of yet-unknown young activists, poets, and actors (including Yuri Galanskov, Eduard Kuznetsov, Vladimir Osipov, Ilya Bokshtein, and Vsevolod Abdulov) held public readings of banned poetry – Akhmatova, Pasternak, Mandelshtam, Tsvetaeva. They also read from their own works and the works of their contemporaries, which would soon be disseminated as samizdat (literally “self-publications,” the clandestine reproduction and distribution of banned literature). Samizdat, too, was born on Mayakovsky Square. The authorities responded in their usual manner: with dispersals of the meetings by bulldozers and snow ploughs; provocations by Komsomol (Young Communist League) operatives; beatings and arrests. Yet the “seditious” meetings continued in the heart of the Soviet capital for almost two years:

“That amazing community, which would later be called a ‘movement’, was being born. It had no leaders or followers…. Each of us, like a nerve cell, participated in this amazing orchestra without a conductor, compelled only by his or her sense of self-respect and personal responsibility for what was happening.” (Vladimir Bukovsky, To Build a Castle)

Vladimir Bukovsky was one of the organizers of the unofficial poetry readings on Moscow’s Mayakovsky Square, the birthplace of the Soviet dissident movement.

The Mayakovsky readings were only the beginning: one can study the history of dissent in the Soviet Union by reading Bukovsky’s biography. He was involved in organizing the December 1965 “Glasnost Rally” on Pushkin Square (Moscow’s first opposition demonstration in four decades); the January 1967 rally against political arrests (also on Pushkin Square;) and, probably his most important endeavor, the public campaign against “punitive psychiatry” used by the KGB against dissenters. After his first arrest in 1963 for “possession of anti-Soviet literature,” Bukovsky (then 20 years old) was brought to the office of Lieutenant-General Mikhail Svetlichny, the head of the Moscow KGB. “Svetlichny said a very simple thing,” Bukovsky recalls in the documentary They Chose Freedom. “‘Here is the arrest warrant. If you honestly tell us everything – where you got this book, who gave it to you, to whom you gave it [to read], I will not sign it, and you will go home. If you refuse, I will sign it, and you will go to jail.’ …  I found such a formulation insulting, and cursed at him. He did not say anything, just shook his head, signed the warrant, and said ‘Take him away.’”

Vladimir Bukovsky paid for his refusal to go along with the regime’s lies with 12 years in prisons, labor camps, and “special psychiatric hospitals.” Not once did he admit his guilt, ask for clemency, disown his words, or betray his friends. “We fought desperately against this regime of scoundrels. We were a handful of unarmed people in the face of a mighty state with the world’s most monstrous machine of repression. And we won. The regime had to retreat. And even in prisons we proved too dangerous for them.” (Vladimir Bukovsky, To Build a Castle) On December 18, 1976, a handcuffed Bukovsky was driven to Chkalovsky military airfield and, accompanied by a convoy from the KGB’s elite Alpha unit (that was its first operation), was flown to Zurich’s international airport. Communist Party Central Committee documents referred to this as “measures relating to the liberation of Comrade L. Corvalan¹.” In the end, the regime was unable to defeat its enemy inside the country.

In the early 1990s, Vladimir Bukovsky and Member of Parliament Galina Starovoitova tried to convince the Russian leadership to conduct a trial of the Communist regime and the KGB in order to help the country comprehend its past and avoid repeating it.

The next time Vladimir Bukovsky came to Russia was at the invitation of Boris Yeltsin in 1991, before the attempted August coup d’état – and again just after the coup, when barricades were still being dismantled near the Moscow White House, and when the empty pedestal from the toppled statue of KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky was still hand-painted with a swastika and hammer-and-sickle – with an equal sign between them. “Let us not flatter ourselves – the dragon is not yet dead. He is mortally wounded, his spine is broken, but he still holds human souls in his clinging paws,” Bukovsky said at a rally on Mayakovsky Square in September 1991. “The Lubyanka [KGB] archives, seized by the Russian government, contain secrets of dreadful crimes. Only by making them public, by handing them over to an objective international commission, will we be able to cleanse ourselves from this filth.” Unfortunately, Bukovsky’s call was not heeded. The new Russian authorities, unwilling to “rock the boat,” refrained from fully opening the archives, from officially condemning the Communist Party and the KGB for their crimes, and from introducing lustrations for those who had participated in the crimes. A genuine moral renewal of society never took place. Russia’s young democracy was not protected from a comeback by the ideological successors of Yuri Andropov and Vladimir Kryuchkov. This comeback came just eight years after the democratic victory of August 1991. As Bukovsky had warned, “it is like dealing with a wounded beast – if you do not finish it off, it will attack you.”

Today, Bukovsky is not retiring or leaving public life – and his upcoming 70th birthday will do nothing to change that. His experience in fighting the KGB system is too relevant; his advice too valuable; his standing among the leaders and supporters of the present-day Russian opposition too high. During the frozen (in all senses of the word) winter of 2007, at the height of Putin’s power, Bukovsky was nominated for president by the democratic opposition as a symbol of moral protest. The line of people wishing to sign his nomination papers extended for seven hours; the Sakharov Center could not accommodate everyone, and people had to wait outside in Moscow’s freezing temperatures.

In December 2007, Vladimir Bukovsky (center) was officially nominated for president of Russia by an assembly of voters in Moscow. The Central Electoral Commission headed by Vladimir Churov denied him access to the ballot.

“The opposition needs a candidate for president – strong, uncompromising, decisive, with irreproachable political and, more importantly, moral authority,” read the statement of the Initiative Group that nominated Bukovsky, “Russia needs its own Vaclav Havel, not a new successor from [the KGB].”

¹ Vladimir Bukovsky was exchanged for Chilean Communist Party leader Luis Corvalan, who had been jailed by General Augusto Pinochet.

There are few people like Vladimir Bukovsky in any society – let alone Russian society, which has been wrecked by decades of Soviet dictatorship, and by 13 years of Putin’s cynical authoritarianism. It is likely that the coming years will bring significant changes to Russia. During this critical period, Bukovsky’s words will be very important. This time, they must be heard.

A Life of Integrity: Vladimir Bukovsky at 70

Espia George Blake celebra su 90 aniversario en Moscu

CHAINESNEWS 

ElPais.com/  Mauricio Vicent

En el manual del buen espía hay reglas no escritas que son de obligado cumplimiento, incluso para los jubilados. Entre ellas, por supuesto, está la discreción, tener un ego medido y nada de juegos con la prensa, por si acaso. Sin embargo, a determinadas edades y con algunos personajes se permiten excepciones, como en el caso de George Blake, el famoso agente del MI6 británico que se pasó al KGB en los años cincuenta y entregó a Moscú importantes secretos de inteligencia. Su “traición” más memorable fue el informe que dio sobre el túnel que construían los americanos en Berlín para espiar las comunicaciones de rusos y alemanes del Este, lo que permitió su desmantelamiento. Blake también entregó listas de nombres de agentes dobles soviéticos que trabajaban para Occidente y una nómina de 400 espías británicos, algunos de los cuales fueron detenidos y ejecutados.

El pasado 11 de noviembre, este espía de leyenda cumplió 90 años y lo celebró tranquilamente en la dacha en que vive a las afueras de Moscú. Para ser un ex agente secreto, lo hizo de un modo singular: se sentó en un sofá, encendió la televisión y vio el documental sobre su vida que ese día transmitió Zvezda, el canal de las Fuerzas Armadas rusas. El mismo domingo, en otro hecho nada usual, recibió la felicitación pública del presidente Vladímir Putin, exmiembro del KGB y director de su institución sucesora, que dio a Blake tratamiento de héroe por los servicios prestados al Kremlin.

Georgi Ivánovich —ese fue el nombre que adoptó Blake al refugiarse en la URSS, luego de su fuga de una cárcel británica en 1966— aparece en el documental dando un paseo por su casa de campo con su esposa, Ida, y un perrito. Con aparente buena salud pese a su edad, el doble agente recordó ante las cámaras la operación del túnel de Berlín y otras aventuras de aquellos años de dentelladas encubiertas entre las potencias. “Soy un hombre feliz; tuve mucha suerte, una suerte excepcional”, declaró hace días Blake al diario oficial Rossiskaia Gazeta, en otra entrevista en la que reiteró no tener cargo de conciencia alguno.

Y con un lenguaje digno de la era soviética, Putin expresó así su reconocimiento al espía: “Usted pertenece con todo derecho a la pléyade de profesionales brillantes, hombres fuertes y valientes”, que realizaron con su “trabajo invisible” una “importante contribución a la paz al asegurar el equilibrio estratégico” en la época de la guerra fría. El mandatario no los mencionó, pero en esa “pléyade de hombres valerosos” también estaban otros famosos agentes dobles, como Kim Philby o Donald MacLean, integrantes del quinteto de Cambridge, quienes escaparon a la URSS tras ser descubiertos.

KGB spy George Blake by ulaghchi

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Espia George Blake celebra su 90 aniversario en Moscu

Cuando EEUU freno el expansionismo sovietico-chino

Juan Abreu

fullbook.com.ar

Llego a la Guerra de Corea. Mao quiere la guerra porque así se asegurará la ayuda de Stalin para crear una infraestructura bélica que convierta a China en una gran potencia militar. Para Stalin “el principal aliciente de esta guerra era que los chinos, con sus inmensos efectivos militares, que Mao se mostraba impaciente por utilizar, podían ser capaces de eliminar, o en cualquier caso mantener ocupados, a un número tal de soldados estadounidenses que el equilibrio de poder podía inclinarse a favor de Stalin y permitirle hacer realidad sus planes, que incluían apoderarse de varios países europeos, entre ellos Alemania, España e Italia.”

Hubo un momento, en que Stalin consideró la posibilidad de atacar desde el aire a la flota estadounidense que se encontraba en alta mar, en septiembre de 1950. En octubre, Stalin le comenta a Mao que “la coyuntura constituía una oportunidad única (y fugaz), dado que dos de los países capitalistas más importantes, Alemania y Japón, estaban militarmente fuera de circulación.”
Mientras debatían sobre la posibilidad de desatar la Tercera Guerra Mundial, Stalin reflexionó: “¿Deberíamos temerla? En mi opinión, no… Si es inevitable que haya una guerra, librémosla ahora y no dentro de unos cuantos años”.

Voy leyendo como estos dos asesinos comunistas ( Kim Il Sung no es más que un títere) arman la trama cuyo objetivo es convertir la mayor parte del planeta en un enorme campo de concentración.
Y entonces, se produce un momento de gran belleza y magnífico esplendor humano e histórico. El momento en que lo único que se interpone en el camino del esclavismo comunista mundial son los soldados de Estados Unidos de América que desembarcan en Inchon, justo por debajo del paralelo 38, cortando el paso al ejército norcoreano y al ejército chino.

Detengo la lectura y dedico un emocionado momento a recordar y agradecer a esos muchachos que combatieron y murieron en defensa de nuestra libertad.

Y después de esto naturalmente me produce un desprecio aún mayor el antiamericanismo español.

Cuando EEUU freno el expansionismo sovietico-chino

Inside the Oval Office: Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Wall Street Journal/

Popperfoto/Getty Images

President Kennedy with aides during the Cuban missile crisis.

Añadir leyenda

The 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis couldn't have landed at a more appropriate moment—the final days of a race for the presidency of the United States. That crisis now seems part of the distant past, but it takes only a recapitulation of the facts—the photographs, the tape recordings, also the books and documentaries—to drive home, again, how close we came, at the time, to destruction in a nuclear war.

"We were very lucky," a commentator in "Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis" says. And that luck, the film makes clear, had to do with the character of the man Americans had chosen for their president—a view not unique to the filmmakers. It's one shared by most historians of the crisis.

A chapter in the Military Channel's miniseries "Commander in Chief: Inside the Oval Office," the documentary makes potent use of the declassified audiotapes Kennedy had secretly made. Only the president's secretary, Evelyn Lincoln, knew about the device set up to record the meetings with his inner circle and the military brass as they, and he, contemplated the grim choices before them. (For a priceless compendium of the transcripts, along with commentary, see "The Kennedy Tapes," edited by Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow.)

The drama had begun well before the famous 13 days in October 1962. In the summer of that year, the CIA had taken note of a suspicious number of Soviet merchant ships headed to Cuba, where, intelligence flights revealed, missile sites had been set up—all only for defensive purposes, the Kremlin claimed. By the fall of 1962, Kennedy and his national-security advisers knew that the Soviets had, in Cuba, an arsenal of missiles capable of reaching and destroying every sector of the nation except possibly the far Northwest.

How had it all begun? The film provides an intriguing fragment of a home movie and related commentary by Nikita Khrushchev's son, Sergei, who offers an answer. He had, at age 27, filmed his father, who had brought his top advisers to a vacation hideaway near the Black Sea to plan the missile system to be set up in Cuba. It was his father's belief, Sergei Khrushchev says, that Cuba was to the Soviets exactly what West Berlin was to the Americans—"a small useless piece of land, but if you do not defend it you will lose face." The missiles had been designed as a message to the U.S.—do not invade Cuba.

The message the Americans took from those missiles, of course, was that they should prepare themselves for the possibility of nuclear war with the Soviets. There is nothing in the audiotapes quite so chilling as the comments from the president's advisers, military and civilian, as they contemplate—with as much professional poise as they can muster—the outcome of a nuclear exchange with the Soviets. There is certain to be chaos on the East Coast, says one. Another, in whom the possibilities have begun to work their effect, is devoid of hope. Estimating what would would happen to New York, he tells the assemblage, "You'd never be able to put it back together again."  More >>

Inside the Oval Office: Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Auge y decadencia de la actividad exterior del castrismo (I)

Cubanálisis El Think-Tank

Juan Benemelis y Eugenio Yáñez/
La baja prioridad estratégico-militar que África y América Latina tenían tradicionalmente para los Estados Unidos influyó en que este país no respondiera en toda su dimensión a los problemas que le planteaba Cuba. La incapacidad de Occidente para una respuesta de acción rápida en el área convencional pesó tanto como la pérdida de terreno ante Pekín, la guerra del petróleo, el ascenso político internacional de los estados africanos y la escasa importancia que Washington prestó a tal fenómeno. Todos estos factores se dejaron sentir cuando la URSS y Cuba llevaron a cabo la campaña angolano-etíope, la afgana, la salvadoreña, la de Namibia y la de Yemen del Sur.

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Auge y decadencia de la actividad exterior del castrismo (I)

Cuban Missile Crisis: The ‘megadeaths’ that weren’t

Raymond Heard, Special to National Post | Oct 2, 2012

Underwood Archives/Getty ImagesA kindergarten teacher coaches a group of children to duck and cover during a national air raid drill in Chicago in 1954.

A nuclear Armageddon was very much on our minds at Harvard in the early 1960s. At the time, I was attending the university as a Frank Knox Fellow. It was a time to think the unthinkable, in lecture halls and even at the movies. The young Henry Kissinger, one of my professors, taught us a popular course in nuclear realpolitik. Based on his book, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, his lectures assessed the feasibility of a “limited” nuclear war. Future conflicts would have a nuclear dimension, he concluded, so why not wage them on our own terms? (His thesis may soon apply to Iran and North Korea.)

For Kissinger’s course, we read On Thermonuclear War by Herman Kahn (who was soon to open the Hudson Institute), arguing that a nation could “win” such a conflict — if it was prepared to sustain “megadeaths.” In Kahn’s view, Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) was not inevitable; there could be a winner, of sorts. Compared with the hawkish Kahn, Kissinger was a dove in the world of nuclear politics.

Our favourite movie was On The Beach, based on the Nevil Shute best-seller, starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Fred Astaire in his only non song-and-dance role. It depicted the last days of our species in a nuclear doomsday. In the fadeout, surely one of the greatest film endings, a sign above a lifeless street in Melbourne proclaims that “There is still time … brother,” to the haunting theme of Waltzing Matilda.

Fifty years ago this month, reality caught up with academic theory and fiction. The 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis confronted us with the very real possibility of a nuclear war. It was only the wisdom and patience of U.S. President John F. Kennedy that served to avoid the “megadeaths.” He rejected the hawkish counsel of his advisors, including brother Bobby Kennedy, to escalate the confrontation beyond his arms blockade — as we now know from White House tape recordings. The crisis ended when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev made a secret deal with JFK to remove his missiles from Cuba if Kennedy removed America’s missiles from Turkey at a later date. In Churchill’s words, jaw, jaw proved to be a better solution than war, war.

“We went eyeball to eyeball with Russia — and they blinked,” was the false boast of an unidentified Kennedy aide. The confrontation, which began Oct. 14 when a U.S. spy plane photographed Soviet missile sites in Cuba, some 80 miles from Florida, ended on Oct. 28. Surely this is a date that deserves to be remembered through the ages. These were JFK’s finest hours.

If Kennedy’s hawkish successor, Lyndon Johnson, who took office just over a year later, had been President in 1962, a more dangerous form of nuclear brinkmanship likely would have taken place. LBJ was soon led into the Vietnam quagmire by the same advisers — Robert McNamara and Dean Rusk, among them — who had insisted on the hard-line military response to the Soviet threat in Cuba.

I remember that period in late October well. Many people did not go to work. In their living rooms, families clustered around black-and-white TV sets for news about whether they might live or perish. One of my best friends simply repaired to bed for the duration of the crisis with the new-found love of his life. I was reminded of T.S. Eliot’s lines: This is the way the world ends/Not with a bang but a whimper. My future father-in-law quickly converted his basement into a bomb shelter. People with deep basements or jerry-built nuclear shelters like him were suddenly popular. Some wondered whether it would be morally defensible to shoot a neighbour if he tried to break into their basement shelter. But I felt no huge sense of panic. After all, we were all in this together. And this was a great story, perhaps the last great story.

Adult fear can be infectious to children. My wife remembers being terrified when told by her teacher that nuclear fallout was invisible and odourless. As a 25-year-old Montreal Star reporter, I had watched a class of 10-year-olds in the Town of Mount Royal being taught how to seek cover under their desks. Some kids told me they were watching the sky for Russian bombers or missiles. In a Catholic school, children were told to recite the rosary under their desks. To children, the necessary tests of air raid sirens seemed to be the real thing. I heard of a five-year-old who built a trap of sticks and stones in the garden to catch Castro and Khrushchev.

Some families were advised to pack the car and get out of town — but to where? I figured the safest place would be Washington, because, if the nukes were fired, the capital cities would be spared so there was someone left to negotiate with.

Looking back 50 years later, my most vivid memory is of “the circles” — circles drawn on maps to depict how far north missiles of different sizes could travel from communist Cuba. Montreal seemed to be out of “the circles” — for missiles, that is, but not for radiation, as we all knew from On the Beach.

In 1962, the prescient novel Seven Days in May, co-written by Charles Bailey, one of my mentors when I covered the LBJ White House, told the story of how rogue generals had plotted a coup to seize the presidency during a Cold War crisis. As a movie, it did not do to well at the box office in 1964, possibly because people wanted to forget the missile crisis. But we should always remember what happened 50 years ago — as a sobering reminder of how easily humankind can stumble into apocalypse, if there are not wise leaders to stop at the brink.

National Post

Raymond Heard covered the White House for the Montreal Star and London Observer, 1964-74.

Cuban Missile Crisis: The ‘megadeaths’ that weren’t

The Soviet ticking time bomb legacy

terrible. esta el asunto de las minas antipersonales que ha provocado cientos miles de mutilaciones y decenas de miles muertos. uno de los legados de los camaradas sovietivos que tambien transmitieron a los kaxtroz. hay un convenio internacional para evitar su empleo, pero los hp de siempre no lo han firmado entre ellos cuba. cientos [o miles que nunca se sabra] cubanos las han sufrido en los campos de mimas que rodean la base naval de guantanamo de lo cual nadie habla. hay cientos de miles sino millones de minas sembradas por militares cubanos en muchos lugares del mundo particularmente en africa y centroamerica. tampoco se habla de ello ni se piden responsabilidades  igualmente espantoso el asunto de las armas exportadas o regaladas a cualquiera que decia ser anti-yanqui. hoy cualquier idiota puede adquirir un akm-47 original en internet y causar una masacre. los otros - los yanquis digo-, tampoco se quedan atras.

-------------------------------------

By Vasily Fedosenko

The Soviet Union collapsed overnight more than two decades ago. In Belarus, which suffered most in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, the sudden demise of the nuclear superpower five years later left enough lethal legacy of other types to endanger the lives of several future generations.

In a forest near the village of Savichi, some 160 km (100 miles) southwest of Minsk, one of these Soviet-era time bombs is still ticking. Here, under a thin layer of ground, hundreds of tons of highly toxic Soviet-made pesticides are stored in leaky dumps.

Located just 3 km (2 miles) from a busy motorway, the dump spreads the pungent smell of chemicals far beyond its perimeter marked by rows of barbed wire. The poisonous substances hastily buried here back in the 1960-70s include the dreaded dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, more widely known as DDT, banned worldwide for several decades because it can cause cancer in humans.

Belarus’s independence has given a new lease on life to places like Savichi, a forlorn area marked with signs reading: “Danger. Toxic chemicals.” A $5.5 million U.S. grant helps finance work aimed to clean up the pesticide disposal site. People clad in white chemical protection overalls and wearing gas masks load a greyish mixture of soil and chemicals leaked from rusty barrels into new blue-colored 70-kg (154 pound) plastic containers.

Last year, workers loaded and sent a total of around 950 tons of the toxic substance to Germany for environmentally safe processing. This year they are completing work at this old dump, having packed more than 600 tons of pesticides in more than 9,000 containers.

This project is coming to an end but officials say Belarus’s land holds several more huge Soviet-era dumps of toxic pesticides. And the time bombs continue ticking.

The Soviet ticking time bomb legacy

1963 Communist Goals [US Congressional Record]

From The Blaze
Congressional Record--Appendix, pp. A34-A35 January 10, 1963
Current Communist Goals
EXTENSION OF REMARKS OF HON. A. S. HERLONG, JR. OF FLORIDA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Thursday, January 10, 1963

facta-non-verba.blogspot.com

Mr. HERLONG. Mr. Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Nordman of De Land, Fla., is an ardent and articulate opponent of communism, and until recently published the De Land Courier, which she dedicated to the purpose of alerting the public to the dangers of communism in America.

At Mrs. Nordman's request, I include in the RECORD, under unanimous consent, the following "Current Communist Goals," which she identifies as an excerpt from "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen:

[From "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen]

CURRENT COMMUNIST GOALS

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament [by] the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. "Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art."

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them "censorship" and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as "normal, natural, healthy."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use ["]united force["] to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike.

More:  http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/comgoals.htm

1963 Communist Goals [US Congressional Record]

Eisenhower and Khrushchev Clash Over Cuba, July 9, 1960

Politico.com/

AP Photo

By ANDREW GLASS

On this day in 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that the United States would not countenance the “establishment of a regime dominated by international communism in the Western Hemisphere.”
Eisenhower’s statement came in response to a threat issued by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. In a Moscow speech, Khrushchev said the Soviet Union was prepared to use its missiles to protect Cuba from U.S. military intervention. “One should not forget,” Khrushchev declared, “that now the United States is no longer at an unreachable distance from the Soviet Union as it was before.” He charged that the United States was “plotting insidious and criminal steps” against Cuba.

The verbal volley between Moscow and Washington came amid a rapidly deteriorating climate in Cuban-American relations — some 18 months after Fidel Castro had overthrown Fulgencio Batista, that nation’s longtime dictator. Although the United States had recognized the new revolutionary government, many top U.S. officials believed that Castro was moving to establish a communist regime in Cuba.

Accordingly, on July 3, Washington suspended sugar purchases from Cuba, which accounted, at the time, for 80 percent of Cuban exports to the United States. Two days later, Castro nationalized all U.S. businesses and commercial property on the island. Eisenhower retaliated by canceling Cuba’s remaining 1960 sugar quota. On July 8, the Soviet Union announced it would buy all of the sugar that had been cut off by Washington.
As charges and countercharges flew between the Cold War rivals, Castro said in a July 9 Havana radio interview: “They have done all they can to remove the revolutionary government … [But] we are acting with reason and right on our side. They are acting against reason, right and history. We are certain we will emerge victorious in this struggle. We are absolutely certain we will win the economic battle.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0712/78209.html#ixzz208xEIoCJ

Eisenhower and Khrushchev Clash Over Cuba, July 9, 1960

6,000 former KGB officers were holding positions in Russia’s central and regional governments

Indeed, as of June 2003, some 6,000 former KGB officers were holding positions in Russia’s central and regional governments. Among them:

Vladimir Putin, elected president of Russia; Vladimir Osipov, head of the Presidential Personnel Directorate; Sergey Ivanov, defense minister; Igor Sergeyevich Ivanov, minister of foreign affairs; Viktor Ivanov and Igor Sechin, deputy directors in the Presidential Administration; Vyacheslav Soltaganov, deputy secretary of the Security Council; Viktor Vasilyevich Cherkesov, chairman of the State Committee on Drug Trafficking; Vyacheslav Trubinkov, deputy foreign minister; Vladimir Kozlov, deputy media minister; Gennady Moshkov, first deputy transport minister; Nikolay Negodov, deputy transport minister; Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, deputy minister for economic development; Vladimir Makarov, Leonid Lobzenko and Igor Mezhakov, deputy chairmen of the State Customs Committee; Sergey Verevkin-Rokhalsky and Anatoly Sedov, deputy taxes and duties ministers; Anatoly Tsybulevsky and Vladimir Lazovsky, deputy directors of the of the Federal Tax Police Service; Alexander Grigoriev, general director of the Russian Agency for State Reserves; Alexander Spiridonov, deputy chairman of Russia’s Financial Monitoring Committee; Vladimir Kulakov, Voronezh governor; Viktor Maslov, Smolensk governor.

Can you imagine a democratic Germany run by Gestapo officers?

Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa - WorldNetDaily

6,000 former KGB officers were holding positions in Russia’s central and regional governments

Top Soviet-bloc defector: Marxism infecting U.S.

WorldNetDaily/

By Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa

Editor’s note: Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking Soviet-bloc official ever to defect to the West. In December 1989, Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu was executed at the end of a trial whose accusations came almost word-for-word out of Pacepa’s book, “Red Horizons,” subsequently republished in 27 countries.

After President Carter approved his request for political asylum, Pacepa became an American citizen and worked with U.S. intelligence agencies against the former Eastern Bloc. The CIA has praised Pacepa’s cooperation for providing “an important and unique contribution to the United States.”

A few weeks ago I read “America’s Marxist Picnic,” a touching story by WND’s David Kupelian, which illustrates how much the U.S. government hated Marxism a generation ago.

David’s father was one of America’s top rocket scientists, and he became deputy undersecretary of defense for strategic and theater nuclear forces under Ronald Reagan. During the 1970s, however, the U.S. government considered withdrawing his top secret security clearance because some informer had reported that, during his teen years, his mother had attended an Armenian church picnic where a pro-Soviet speaker gave a talk.

That story moved me. My father also worked for America – not as a top rocket scientist, but as service manager of the General Motors affiliate in Romania. Working for America became a crime when the communists took over Romania at the end of WWII and my father was soon killed by the Red Army.

Today the Communist Party is abolished in Romania, which re-became a trustworthy ally of the U.S.. Meanwhile, the formerly cursed Communist Party USA is throwing its full support to the current president of the United States.

I wrote to David. That’s how this interview was born.

Editor’s note: Ion Mihai Pacepa was interviewed by WND Managing Editor David Kupelian.

WND: Gen. Pacepa, it’s an honor to talk with you. Please tell me, did America win the Cold War? If so, why are we fighting Marxism in our own country today? And if not, what really happened?

Pacepa: Yes, we won the Cold War, but unlike other wars the Cold War did not end with an act of surrender and with the defeated enemy throwing down his weapons. But no, we are not fighting Marxism in our country, because the American people have not yet been warned that their country is being contaminated by Marxism. A few conservative luminaries like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly have warned that Marxism is infecting the United States, but neither the Republicans’ “Pledge to America” nor the Tea Party’s “Contract from America” has mentioned the word Marxism.

So far, to the best of my knowledge, only your “Marxism, American-Style” (June 2012 Whistleblower magazine) and PJ Media’s “Say No To Socialism” have called attention to the looming dangers of Marxism, a heresy that killed some 94 million people and transformed a third of the world into feudal societies in the middle of the 20th century.

There is still a widely popular belief in the U.S. and Western Europe that the nefarious Marxist legacy was uprooted in 1991 when the Soviet Union was abolished, just as the Nazi legacy was extirpated in 1945 when World War II ended. That is simply wishful thinking. There is a considerable difference between these two historical events.

In the 1950s, when I headed Romania’s foreign intelligence station in West Germany, I witnessed how Hitler’s Third Reich had been demolished, its war criminals put on trial, its military and police forces disbanded and the Nazis removed from public office. I also saw how West Germany’s economy was being rebuilt with the help of Marshall Plan money and how the country had become a multi-party democracy and a close friend of the United States. In 1959, when I returned to Romania, West Germany’s Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) made it the leading industrial power in Europe.

None of those things have happened in the former Soviet Union. No individual has been put on trial, although its Marxist regime killed many more millions than the Nazis did. Most Soviet institutions, under new names, have been left in place and are now run by many of the same people who guided the Marxist state. The KGB and the Red Army, which instrumented the Cold War, have also remained in place with new nameplates at their doors.

“Communism is dead,” people shouted in 1989, when the Berlin Wall began to come down. Soviet Communism is indeed dead as a form of government. But Marxism is on the rise again, and people are not paying attention. Why not? Because most people do not seem to be familiar with the undercover forms of Marxism we are facing today.

Hiding the ugly face of Marxism behind a smiling mask has become a Marxist science, which I described in a large piece recently published in PJ Media. Here let me just say that until 1963, Marxism was mostly camouflaged as “socialism.” The 1963 missile crisis generated by the socialist República de Cuba gave the socialist mask of Marxism a dirty name in the West and few Marxists wanted to be openly associated with it anymore. They therefore began hiding their Marxism under a new cover called “economic determinism,” which became all the rage among leftists who no longer wanted to be labeled socialists.

Economic determinism is a theory of survival rooted in Marx’s “Manifesto” (another theory of survival), but it pretends that the economic organization of a society, not the class war, determines the nature of all other aspects of life. Over the years, economic determinism has assumed different names. Khrushchev’s dogonyat i peregonyat (catching up with and overtaking the West in 10 years) and Gorbachev’s perestroika are the best known.

I wrote the script of Nicolae Ceausescu’s determinism, which was hidden behind the nickname “New Economic Order.” Most Americans, who are not used to dealing with undercover Marxists, have problems recognizing one. In April 1978, President Carter publicly hailed Ceausescu as a “great national and international leader who [had] taken on a role of leadership in the entire international community.” At the time, I was standing next to Ceausescu at the White House – and I just smiled.

Three months later, I was granted political asylum in the United States, and I informed President Carter how Ceausescu had been feeding him a pack of lies. The admiration for Ceausescu’s undercover Marxism had, however, taken on such a life of its own that the U.S. Congress, dominated by President Carter’s Democratic Party, brought the United States a sui-generis version of Ceausescu’s economic determinism. That move generated double-digit inflation. The U.S. prime rate hit 21.5 percent, the highest in U.S. history, and people had to spend long hours in line waiting to buy gas for their cars.

Laura D’Andrea Tyson, former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Clinton and later an economic adviser to President Obama, has kept that undercover Marxism alive in the U.S. She even wrote her Ph.D. dissertation on the merits of the allegedly “mixed” socialist-capitalist economies in Ceausescu’s Romania and Tito’s Yugoslavia. Two American presidents went to Bucharest to pay tribute to Ceausescu’s Marxism disguised as economic determinism. None had ever gone there before.

A few months ago, when the devastating economic crisis in Greece exploded, economic determinism lost credibility and our Democratic Party replaced it with “progressivism,” which is the current cover name for American Marxism. The real Progressive Movement was born after the U.S. financial crisis of 1893, which the country tried to solve by redistributing America’s wealth. The progressives pushed through the first federal income tax and they created a string of labor standards that opened up the floodgates of corruption and financial excess that generated the Great Depression. A new Progressive Movement, dubbed the New Deal, led to steep top tax rates, strict financial regulations, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, eventually generating the current economic crisis.

Today’s Progressive Movement was born in New York’s Zuccotti Park. It was first known as the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and advocated the abolition of “capitalist America.” The Democratic Party strongly embraced it and made “Progressive” its new byword. “God bless them,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi told the U.S. Congress. “It’s young, it’s spontaneous, it’s focused and it’s going to be effective.” 

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Top Soviet-bloc defector: Marxism infecting U.S.

Ex general del Pino sobre la traicion de Fidel Castro

Cubanálisis El Think-Tank

Rafael del Pino/

Daniel Ortega, Maurice Bishop y Fidel

No, no pienso referirme en este artículo al día de los padres en este mes de junio. La efeméride me hizo recordar un acontecimiento histórico que tuvo lugar hace ya 23 años.

El viejo refrán de “agua pasada no mueve molinos” a veces conspira en nuestros cerebros y nos hace omitir importantísimas experiencias cuando concentramos demasiado la atención en hechos y fenómenos actuales.

Creo que errores pasados no solo son capaces de mover molinos sino también cerebros. Uno de los ejes fundamentales en la importancia de la historia es poder analizar el pasado para comprender el presente. Solo mirando el pasado, podemos comprender el por qué de nuestra actualidad. Por eso haremos un sintetizado recorrido por algunas de esas huellas dejadas en medio siglo de avatares.

Hoy existen en mi profesión generales que nacieron después del triunfo revolucionario. Oficiales provenientes de las escuelas Camilo Cienfuegos educados bajo la maquinaria propagandística de un régimen totalitario, engrasada en medio siglo de control y tergiversaciones. Maquinaria implacable que se encarga afanosamente de borrar las huellas del desastre porque saben, cómo sentenció Lenin, que para hacer una evaluación objetiva de cualquier fenómeno social hay que analizar cómo surge, como se desarrolla y en que se convierte.

Escojo esta fecha también porque probablemente muchos de los cadetes que hoy se gradúan como oficiales en las escuelas militares estaban siendo traídos al mundo por sus respectivas madres en los momentos cuando se consumía una de las más grandes infamias y traiciones cometidas por Fidel Castro, su hermano y el resto de los incondicionales que se prestaron a la farsa para asesinar al General de División, Héroe de la Republica de Cuba Arnaldo Ochoa Sánchez.

Pero como este crimen fue una de tantas traiciones cometidas por quienes han destruido la nación es preciso hacer un sintetizado recuento.

Desde el inicio mismo del derrocamiento de la dictadura de Batista, Fidel Castro ha traicionado a cuanto seguidor de buena fe se incorporó al proceso revolucionario para restablecer el cauce democrático. No le bastó con la traición a todo aquel que se pronunció alarmantemente contra el cambio de rumbo que tomaba una Revolución tan popular sino que los trituró sin compasión. Desde combatientes del Moncada como Gustavo Arcos que le condujo el automóvil que nunca llegó a entrar en el famoso cuartel pero que le costó un balazo en la cadera hasta otros combatientes de la misma gesta que lo siguieron mas tarde en el Granma como Mario Chanes de Armas que cumplió hasta el último día de sus 30 años de presidio.

Comandantes del calibre de Huber Matos que simplemente renunció a sus cargos por no acompañarlo en el camino del totalitarismo y que igualmente cumplió hasta el último día su condena a 20 años de prisión.

Pero la traición fundamental, no solo a los que sufrieron la represión e ignominia al oponerse al camino de una tiranía más sangrienta que la de Batista fue a aquellos que dieron sus vidas siguiendo el programa revolucionario totalmente democrático del Moncada. La traición total al  programa insurreccional del 26 de Julio que prometió un retorno de Cuba a la democracia representativa, a la Constitución de 1940 y a la celebración de elecciones libres en un año y medio después del triunfo de la insurrección.

Incontables son los ejemplos que necesitarían toda una biblioteca para registrar las traiciones de Fidel Castro. Y en todos, absolutamente en todos, estuvo presente el gastado argumento de la patria en peligro, de salvaguardar la soberanía de Cuba, de la falta de lealtad de los que disienten y la traición al máximo líder. Que como dijo Raúl en su discurso del 14 de junio de 1989 donde anunciaba el arresto del General Ochos – “Fidel es el papá  de todos los cubanos” y sus órdenes, “encarnan el mandato y la voluntad de la Patria”.

Estoy seguro que estos nuevos Generales/Camilitos y Cadetes/Oficiales desconocen la realidad histórica que le ha tocado vivir al pueblo cubano. Han sido muchos años de hermetismo, de tergiversación de la verdad, del empleo irrestricto de toda una maquinaria diseñada para convertir la verdad en mentira y viceversa. Pero siempre hay quien no se conforma con los credos ni el oscurantismo y encuentran la forma de informarse con fidelidad.

El pretexto más utilizado para justificar la conculcación de las libertades y de los derechos de los cubanos ha sido el de “la soberanía en peligro” Comenzaremos por ese aspecto. No es necesario dar explicaciones detalladas de qué sucedió, prefiero limitarme a sus sanos juicios y que sean ustedes mismos los que investiguen y evalúen acontecimientos trascendentales ocurridos después de 1959 que por lo menos a mi me demostraron que el régimen implantado en Cuba por Fidel Castro ha sido el más entreguista de nuestra soberanía nacional en toda su historia.

- ¿Solicitó o no Fidel Castro que una Brigada Motomecanizada Soviética permaneciera en Cuba por más de 20 años en las proximidades de Santiago de las Vegas con toda su técnica militar y armamentos? ¿Teníamos nosotros más que suficientes Brigadas con el mismo potencial combativo para cumplir esas funciones?

- ¿Tuvimos o no una Brigada similar durante largos años en Etiopia para proteger al asesino de Mengistu?

- ¿Con que derecho FC cedió esa región de Santiago de las Vegas a una potencia extranjera para que la convirtiera en una base militar en el corazón de nuestra patria?

- ¿Entregó o no FC a las tropas soviéticas toda la región donde radicaba el antiguo reformatorio de menores de Torrens conocido en la guerra fría como Complejo de Lourdes para que montara una base militar de exploración y espionaje electrónico contra Estados Unidos?

- ¿Solicitó o no Fidel Castro al gobierno soviético que enviara pilotos de combate rusos para defender a Cuba y así poder enviar a los mejores pilotos cubanos para la guerra de Angola?

- ¿Con que derecho FC accedió a que pilotos rusos que ni hablaban español se ocuparan de la defensa de los cielos de Cuba? ¿Fue discutido en la Asamblea Nacional? ¿Fue aprobado por decisión de la Asamblea o por algún referéndum que le diera legitimidad?

- ¿Teníamos o no los suficientes pilotos para cumplir ese deber sagrado de defender la patria que solo corresponde a los cubanos?

- ¿Le cedió o no Fidel Castro un tercio de la base aérea de San Antonio de los Baños a la aviación estratégica de la Unión Soviética para que basificara sus mastodontes TU-95? ¿Es o no verdad que a los militares cubanos se les prohibió la entrada en esa área de nuestra propia base?

- ¿Qué relación puede tener digamos con la soberanía de Angola (la cual supuestamente “defendíamos” ) el aplastar al mejor estilo soviético, empleando nuestros tanques, el golpe de Estado que una propia fracción del MPLA dirigida por Nito Alves intentó darle a Agostino Neto? - intentona  apoyada además por la propia URSS - ¿No era ese un conflicto interno de la organización gobernante MPLA a más de un año de haberse retirado a Namibia las tropas sudafricanas que apoyaron a la UNITA en 1975?

¿Tienen todavía estos señores la desfachatez de hablar de soberanía?

Pasemos ahora a “La traición a la Patria”

¿Cuál sería una verdadera traición a la patria; la que le endilgaron al general Arnaldo Ochoa para asesinarlo con visos legales por poner en peligro la subsistencia de un grupo ilegitimo de poder o la de un gobernante protegido dentro de un Puesto de Mando, en un bunker a prueba de golpes nucleares como estábamos nosotros en la Crisis de los misiles nucleares pidiéndole a la metrópoli protectora que iniciara los golpes nucleares contra Estados Unidos que indudablemente acabarían con la existencia de todos los cubanos que no tuvieran dicha protección?

No especulo, he aquí el párrafo de la carta donde Nikita Krushov se opone a tamaña irresponsabilidad: “En su cable del 27 de octubre Vd. nos propuso que fuéramos primeros en asestar el golpe nuclear contra el territorio del enemigo. Vd., desde luego, comprende a qué llevaría esto. Esto no sería un simple golpe, sino que el inicio de la guerra mundial termonuclear”.

¿Nos dijo o no Raúl Castro en una reunión que fue grabada y después distribuida por todas las unidades que el coronel Pedro Tortoló Comas debió haberse pegado un tiro por no haber combatido hasta la muerte sacrificándose junto a los 784 cubanos que allí había?

Si es que encuentran el famoso video vale preguntarse ¿que hizo Fidel y Raúl Castro después del asalto al Moncada sin estar rodeado por ninguna fuerza incomparablemente superior sino rendirse a un sacerdote católico para que los protegiera? O ¿Qué hicieron otra vez en Alegría de Pio sino fue correr despavoridos quedando dispersos?

Destruir a Tortoló como lo hicieron por haberse negado a sacrificar centenares de vidas inútilmente para complacer el ego insaciable de un caudillo, es para mí una traición sin precedentes no solo al coronel sino a todos los oficiales que allí había, a los centenares de hombres que iban a morir y más aun a las esposas, hijos y familiares que perderían a sus seres más queridos. Saquen ustedes sus propias conclusiones si alcanzan a ver el video.

Por último definamos la lealtad.

Todos los que le digan que si han llegado a ser lo que son, se lo deben al Comandante en Jefe, a la Revolución, al Partido o a cuanto otro fetiche se les ocurra están tendiéndole la trampa para que crucen la fina línea que separa la lealtad de la sumisión.

Cuba es una isla sin fronteras ni conflictos fronterizos de ningún tipo, sus fuerzas armadas están concebidas para defender el país de una agresión militar extranjera y no tienen contemplado en su doctrina militar ser empleadas contra la propia población civil. El mantenimiento del orden es la responsabilidad que se le ha dado al Ministerio del Interior.

Existe una gran diferencia entre la lealtad y la sumisión. La lealtad es el cumplimiento de lo que exigen las leyes de la fidelidad y las del honor y hombría de bien. La sumisión es el sometimiento de alguien a otra u otras personas.

Cuando se actúa en interés de un grupo de gobernantes en contra de los intereses de la mayoría del pueblo cubano se ha traspasando el campo de la lealtad para caer en el de la sumisión.

Nunca será lo mismo someter una multitud que regir una sociedad.

Raúl tenía razón en la desarticulada diatriba improvisada en su nefasto discurso del 14 de junio de 1989. Solo que el efecto del vodka le hizo decir que “Fidel es el Papá de todos los cubanos” en lugar de “Fidel es el padre de todos los traidores”

Ex general del Pino sobre la traicion de Fidel Castro