Archive for the ‘Communism’ Category

Argentinas Ambassador to China Rails Against Demonizing Communism in …

Argentine Ambassador to China Sabino Vaca Narvaja scolded those who demonize communism and praised the Chinese Communist Party in an interview given to Chinas state-run Global Times on Tuesday.

Opposition to communism is reviving the misconceptions of the Cold War, Vaca Narvaja lamented.

The interview is part of what has become a growing emphasis in Argentine foreign policy of obsequious statements about China under socialist President Alberto Fernndez, who himself venerated mass murderer Mao Zedongs corpse during a Beijing visit this year.

Without the Communist Party, there would be no new China. These lyrics succinctly capture the fundamental reason why China has achieved unprecedented progress in human history, said Vaca Narvaja to Global Times, referencing the lyrics of one of the most long-standing pieces of musical propaganda used by the Chinese Communist Party.

Vaca Narvaja stated that he heard the song during the centennial anniversary of the Chinese communist party at Tiananmen Square in 2021 the site where the historical massacre of thousands of students and demonstrators took place.

In this June 5, 1989, file photo, a Chinese man stands alone to block a line of tanks heading east on Beijings Changan Blvd. in Tiananmen Square. (AP Photo/Jeff Widener)

The ambassador, who adopted the Chinese name Niu Wangdao as his own, was appointed as the head of the Argentine diplomatic mission in China in 2020. The pro-China ambassador has been instrumental in strengthening Chinas influence over the South American nation since 2021, starting with the arrangement that allowed China to send 15 million doses of a Chinese coronavirus vaccine product by the firm Sinopharm to Argentina.

Sabino Vaca Narvaja, who has never been shy with his affinity towards communist China, is the son of Fernando Vaca Narvaja, a former member of the left-wing guerrilla Montoneros who shares a granddaughter with Argentinas far-left Vice President Cristina Fernndez de Kirchner (no relation to Alberto Fernndez).

The Argentine ambassador has been heavily criticized in the past for his excessively pro-China stances. Vaca Narvaja has stood in defense of Chinas genocide of the Uyghur people by claiming that there is harmony in Xinjiang.

In reality, China has illegally detained between 1 million and 3 million Uyghurs and other minority groups in occupied East Turkistan since 2017 in concentration camps, forcing the detainees into inhumane conditions that include physical and sexual abuse, torture, slave labor, and force sterilization. China has also engaged in mass sterilization campaigns to limit the number of non-Han ethnic people born in the region.

A protester from the Uyghur community living in Turkey, holds an anti-China placard during a protest in Istanbul. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

Vaca Narvaja was also quick to condemn Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for visiting Taiwan this month.

We are sure that this visit has been a provocation for China, and a problem for the entire international community, the ambassador claimed.

In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, center left, and Taiwanese President President Tsai Ing-wen arrive for a meeting in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday, Aug. 3, 2022. (Taiwan Presidential Office via AP)

The government of Argentina backed Vaca Narvajas condemnation of Speaker Pelosis visit shortly afterwards.

President Fernndez traveled to Beijing in February to meet with dictator Xi Jinping and officially joined Chinas predatory Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) during that meeting. President Fernandez availed himself of his official visit to Beijing to lay a wreath in honor of Mao, believed responsible for the killing of tens of millions of people, at his mausoleum.

Cases of Argentine ambassadors siding with the countries theyve been sent to over their own are not limited to just China alone. On Tuesday, the Argentine ambassador to Venezuela, Oscar Laborde, tacitly sided with the socialist regime of Nicols Maduro by stating that the Venezuelan-Iranian cargo airplane suspected of having ties with Iranian terrorism which the Argentine goverment seized on August 11 was instead kidnapped, echoing the narrative espoused by Venezuelas socialist regime over his countrys own.

During her presidency, Fernndez de Kirchner also faced accusations of cutting deals with the government of Iran to help it cover up its role in the deadliest terrorist attack in the nations history, the 1994 bombing for the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA). The prosecutor who built the case against Kirchner, Alberto Nisman, was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head the day before he was scheduled to present his findings against Kirchner to the Argentine Congress in 2015.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitterhere.

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Argentinas Ambassador to China Rails Against Demonizing Communism in ...

Thatcher failed to protect Hong Kong – The Spectator Australia

Many conservatives, and all conservative politicians, worship the hallowed ground on which the late Margaret Thatcher walked.

A visit to Old Blighty is not complete until they have been to Westminster Abbey to kneel at her tomb, only to discover that the Iron Lady was cremated and her ashes buried at the Royal Hospital Chelsea next to those of her husband.

While staunch Labor supporters might chant the rhyme, Thatcher Thatcher, the milk snatcher among her adoring crowd she is fondly remembered for two other endearing exploits: her harsh response to exercises of trade union power, and her military response to Argentinian claims regarding the Falkland Islands.

Margaret Hilda Thatcher was Britains longest-serving Prime Minister of the 20th century, serving from 1979 until her resignation in 1990. If her memory is both loved and hated in almost equal proportions, it cannot be denied that she was able to reach out at election time in a way that appealed to that trait in the British character that usually signals their great moderation; they generally put up with inconvenience until a tipping-point is reached.

There was, however, one particular act for which Mrs Thatcher was responsible that can only now be seen to have been most ill-advised. Its worldwide implications surfaced in 2019 when the people of Hong Kong became the front line of the global battle against Beijings communism when tyranny was imposed on the island under the national security law. Within two years, the people of Hong Kong lost their liberties and became the subjects of the brutal communist state.

As the island slipped below the communist horizon, it has been forgotten that the communist takeover would not have been possible without extreme violence enabled by Margaret Thatchers error. It was the Iron Lady who permitted Hong Kong to be handed back to the communists after being outmaneuvered during the negotiations. In particular, it was falsely reckoned that the British leases from pre-communist governments would expire giving government to Beijing.

The cunning since adopted by the communists has been to rewrite the history of Hong Kong in a way that emphasises Chinas sovereignty over the island since time immemorial. It is reported that Beijing will introduce a new history book to Hong Kong schools that denies Hong Kong was ever a British colony.

The disaster of the islands takeover is detailed most clearly in Louisa Lims book, Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong. The advantages of British rule over the island are detailed in the book, as are the three fatal mistakes that sealed Hong Kongs fate.

Negotiations between the British government and the Chinese communists were commenced by Mrs Thatcher in 1982 as the 1997 end of leases from the Qing empire in 1842 loomed on the horizon.

The first mistake was the result of British bias that denied to Hong Kong democratic rule and when the last governor tried to do so, it was too late. The second mistake was British naivety about the intentions of Beijing which allowed them to be out-negotiated. The third mistake, however, was a failure to allow Hong Kongers to be involved in the negotiations. Although Margaret Thatcher told the British Parliament that the final agreement was acceptable to the Hong Kong people, those people never had any say in it.

Despite the communist claims to sovereignty, the successor to the Qing empire, the Republic of China, had given up claims to Hong Kong and Kowloon. The communist Chinese claims were based on their 1949 victory by force over the Chinese nationalists, a victory facilitated by Soviet-gifted of weapons. Maos CCP was able to exercise brute power over the Chinese people, but they had no claim to Hong Kong under the lease without the British governments agreement. The original owner of Hong Kong was dead and buried and the people of Hong Kong were entitled to the land on which they dwelt.

As Louisa Lim explains, the chief British negotiator at the time, Percy Cradock, bought completely the threat by Beijing to use force to take over Hong Kong if the negotiations failed. Instead of fighting for the peoples interests, Cradock sought to secure a form of wording that allowed Thatcher to give ground to the Chinese demands without losing face.

As a result, while the British thought that the agreement allowed the people of Hong Kong to choose their own leader, Beijing simply denied it had ever agreed and the clauses in Mandarin were ambiguous, something that the involvement of Hong Kong people could have avoided. This led to the massive protests of the Umbrella Movement in 2014.

It is worth remembering that despite the brutal suppression of the people of Hong Kong, there were no Hong Kong Lives Matter protesters on the streets, even when Daniel Andrews government sought to take a share of Beijings Belt and Road honey trap.

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Thatcher failed to protect Hong Kong - The Spectator Australia

The Courage to Counter Castro – Washington Free Beacon

Culture

REVIEW: Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Pay and His Daring Quest for a Free Cuba

What would I be willing to risk or endure in order to live a life where free political discussion and action is possible? This is a question that readers of David Hoffmans Give Me Liberty might put to themselves after thinking through the life of Oswaldo Pay and his battle with communist tyranny in Cuba.

Pay was 13 years old when the Castro regime seized his fathers newspaper distribution business in 1965. Oswaldos father Alejandro was arrested. This was the beginning of a campaign against private businesses that lasted three yearsthe implementation of a socialist morality that denounced and punished vendors and businessmen as parasites. Young Oswaldo had been the only boy in his class to refuse entry into the Jose Mart Pioneersthe communist youth organization in Cuba. The familys observant Catholicism only added to the stigma the Pays experienced. Alejandro was released after one week and told his family not to express any complaint. He recommended a strategy of public compliance. He urged his children to do well in school, work hard, and prepare for the future. "You have to yieldin order to triumph," he said. This was not a strategy Oswaldo would adopt.

Hoffman interweaves two other stories around the central tale of Pays confrontation with the communist regime. First, he encapsulates Cubas post-colonial history, focusing in particular on the story of the Cuban constitution of 1940. We meet Gustavo Gutirrez, an advocate for constitutional democracy who wrote a draft constitution for Cuba in the mid-1930s. Important for Pays story, a key provision of Gutierrezs draft found its way into the Cuban constitution of 1940: new laws could be proposed by congressmen and Senators, but also by citizensin this latter case, the initiative would require the endorsement of "at least ten thousand citizens having the status of voters."

Second, Hoffman explores Fidel Castros rise to power and his construction of Cuban communism. Castro initially presented himself as an agent of Cuban democracy, promising elections in the aftermath of a successful revolutionary seizure of power. He even pledged to make the 1940 constitution the "supreme law of the land." By May 1961 he declared that constitution dead and promised a new "socialist constitution" that would introduce "a new social system without the exploitation of many by man." This purported end of exploitation would of course require extraordinary levels of surveillance and coercion. Already in 1960 Castro put in place Committees for the Defense of the Revolutionwhat he called a "system of collective vigilance." These organizations could be found in neighborhoods, workplaces, and schools. Hoffman calls them the "foundation stones of the police state" as they created a vast network of monitors and informants. By the mid-1960s the regime had built the UMAP (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Produccin) labor camp system to house anyone hostile or even potentially hostile to socialist revolution.

Oswaldo Pay ended up cutting sugar cane in one of the camps in the summer of 1969. After a year he was flown to the Isle of Pines, which housed a prison complex built in the 1920s where he would work breaking rocks in a quarry 10 hours a day. The restrictions here were less onerous than in the UMAP system, so Pay and some of his fellow prisoners were able to explore the small town of Nueva Gerona on the weekends. They stumbled on a library across the street from a church and read Orwells Animal Farm, Pasternaks Doctor Zhivago, and the works of the Spanish philosopher Jos Ortega y Gasset. These men who had been declared enemies or deviants found a refuge and "reveled in the freedom to think and talk." As Hoffman puts it, "The forced labor camps attempted to reeducate and retrain the outsiders, to coerce them to believe in the revolution. But for Oswaldo Pay, the experience was the opposite. They had not conquered his soul. They had nourished it."

Its not clear whether Pay would share the sentiments of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (one of his heroes), "Bless you, prison, for having been in my life," but he did find the atmosphere in Havana suffocating by contrast. He hoped to study physics at university but campus life was so conformist and ideologically charged he couldnt stand it. "They didnt kick me out but they asphyxiated me," he noted. He eventually got a degree in electrical engineering via night school in 1983. Shortly thereafter he found his vocation through the Catholic Church.

Castros revolution had brought the Church to the brink of destruction. Prior to the revolution there had been about 1 priest for every 9,000 people in Cuba. By 1980 that figure was about 1 priest for every 45,000. Fewer than 1 percent of Catholics were practicing. In 1985 the archbishop of Havana, Jaime Ortega, invited Pay to be one of 173 delegates to a conference on the future of the Cuban church. With his then-fianc Ofelia, he prepared a document called "Faith and Justice." In it he argued that Catholics must be free to speak the truth about injustice and oppression and to resist being pushed to the margins of society. He presented his ideas at a meeting of the delegates before the conference and was immediately denounced.

Just over a decade later Pay launched the Varela Project, a citizen petition demanding freedom of assembly, amnesty for political prisoners, the right to engage in private enterprise, and the establishment of a new electoral code allowing for free elections. The movement culminated in Pay submitting a formal citizens petition to the National Assembly on May 10, 2002with over 11,000 signatures.

Pays stature grew internationally as he was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Human Rights and Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament. He met with Vclav Havel and Pope John Paul II, and the Varela Project continued adding signatures to its petition. Cuban state security was not unprepared for this challenge. In the 1980s a Cuban named Jacinto Valds-Dapena had gone to Potsdam to study with the StasiEast German state security. There he learned a strategy for dealing with dissidents known as Zersetzung or decomposition. He brought back to Cuba techniques of covert psychological warfare to infiltrate dissident movements, sow distrust among members, and exploit envy and jealousy. Hoffman relates the grinding battles between Pay and his allies and Cuban state security in riveting detail.

Oswaldo Pay died in a car crash on July 22, 2012a crash many suspect was orchestrated by Cuban state security. Like many prominent dissidents of the 20th century, Pay embodied an extraordinary combination of courage and humility. Hoffmans book is a powerful antidote to delusions about the reality of Cuban communism. Perhaps more importantly, its a study of character in actiona test of virtue in a soil of unfreedom. One hopes that the seeds of virtue left by Pay will bear fruit soon.

Give Me Liberty: The True Story of Oswaldo Pay and His Daring Quest for a Free Cubaby David E. HoffmanSimon & Schuster, 544 pp., $32.50

Flagg Taylor, a professor in the department of political science at Skidmore College, was editor, most recently, ofThe Long Night of the Watchman: Essays by Vclav Benda, 1977-1989, and hosts the Enduring Interest Podcast.You can find him on Twitter: @FlaggTaylor4

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The Courage to Counter Castro - Washington Free Beacon

A, B, Cs of Communist China – AMAC

Call them the A, B Cs eight realities of Communist China. This is not your fathers sleepy, benign, creeping by the night, weak by day Communist China. Things are changing fast. In sum, we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

First, or A for those who like mnemonics, ways to remember:We are facing an A-frame in public understanding of the threat, half who gets that China aims to beat us, is an existential threat to our democracy, is waging unrestricted warfare the other half dopey, sleepy, disengaged, hopeful.

The unengaged half needs to get engaged, understand the stakes, pace of Chinas accelerating attack, multiple fronts on which China aims to best us, is making inroads, military, economic, ideological.

Second, B for recall, China is on a Beeline for supremacy, dominance in virtually every theater of political and military conflict. They are not there, but they are developing, modernizing, laying in ICBMS by the thousands, accelerating maritime abilities, practicing missile and fighter assaults on Taiwan.

That is not all, they are rapidly moving for dominance in quantum computing, cyberwarfare, pushing private and public installation in American engineering, social media, computing, education, and technology infrastructure, enabling everything from MASINT (measurement and signature intelligence) to surveillance, theft to blackmail, changing college curricula to pro-China foreign policy.

Third, or C, we need a political sea-change in this country. Beyond educating, we must understand right now what Reagan educated America about in the 1980s.Some governments are not legitimate. Communism is quintessentially illegitimate.Soviets Communism was; Chinese Communism is.

Any nation that kills its people for mild political objections, which traps, beats, tortures, and brain washes citizens for not accepting the oppression of religious, personal, and political views, which makes no apologies for inflicting Marxist carnage, suppression, coercion, intimidation, and a global virus, is illegitimate. Sovereignty resides in the people; that is the lesson of God-given rights.

Fourth, or D, deterrence is vital. It is possible still with China if we sit up, see the threat, and act. As Reagan demonstrated, peace through strength is the only way to turn back, roll back, stop aggression. We must do that again. Time is short, but concrete ways exist to show China we win if challenged.

Fifth, or E, enforcement of laws in the United States and on foreign soil, helping others call out Chinas corruption, political, governmental, and personal is vital. American companies are private in nature and bound by the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act; Chinas are governmentally tied and cheat all the time. We must use US laws, international tribunals, and allied action to prosecute their cheating.

Sixth, or F, finance is an Achilles heal for China. They such money out of free, free-market, enterprising and wealthy countries, especially the US, via publicly traded companies, US government investments, intellectual property theft, corporate coercion even corrupting politicians. That MUST stop. We would not have invested or indulged building the Soviet war machine; we must not build Chinas. They are corrupt, in debt, and endemically unapologetic about cheating we must stop it.

Seventh, or G, is game theory. China thinks ahead, around corners, aims for dominance, in 500 years, sure but also in five to fifteen years. We must understand the moves before they make them, prevent their information and influence warfare, be smarter by half, and understand the game.

Game is theory is not a game, it is a way of thinking strategically proactively, smartly, and winning. It is what China is doing, although the West typically does it better, is more nimble, has free thought, experience ideals, and individual enterprise to rely on.But we have to do this, think forward, engage, look around corners, plan our chess moves, by being ahead of where they are planning to be.

Finally, eighth or H, is for hidden battles for high ground, which China is totally committed to finding, and we will lose if we let them take those areas of high ground. Arguably, from the Revolutionary War through the Battle of Little Round Top at Gettysburg during the Civil War, to many of the big battles WWI and WWI, from Anzio to Iwo Jima, casualties, opportunities, and even outcomes are determined by high ground.

Where is the high ground in our epic contest with China? Brace yourself, because it is everywhere in near earth orbit and lunar orbit, in cyberspace, quantum computing, public awareness, information warfare, education, multilateral organization domination, the South China Sea, but also in commercial conquest of Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and the Western Hemisphere. It is in leasing ports, and militarizing them, recapturing the Solomon Islands which we died to free, and a thousand fronts.

So, how do we win since we must win, or over time perish to the power of illegitimate, but powerful communist coercion? We wake up, as one nation under God, remember who we are, remember what communist oppression looks like, and understand that we live in times not benign but malign.

If we do that, remember the A, B, Cs of beating Chinese communism stopping it before it wins we will prevail and, to borrow from Churchill, men and women for a thousand years will call this our finest hour. If we minimize, ignore, forget, or divide on the importance of unity to freedom, we lose. Either way, we are not in Kansas anymore, Toto time to say so.

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A, B, Cs of Communist China - AMAC

Communist China survivor issues warning to Americans: Socialism is only the first stage – Fox News

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Xi Van Fleet, a survivor of Mao Zedong's communist revolution in China, joined "Fox & Friends Weekend" Saturday to share her experience living under and fleeing from communism. Van Fleet cautioned socialist supporters in the U.S. from embracing a dangerous ideology and "abandoning freedom."

AOC-BACKED NEW YORK DEMOCRAT CELEBRATES PRIMARY VICTORY BY DECLARING SOCIALISM WINS

XI VAN FLEET: I just want to say it's so ironic. 36 years ago, I run away from socialism when I left China to come to this great country for freedom. Today, so many Americans [are] abandoning freedom and arriving into socialism. They have no idea what socialism is about. I lived under Mao's socialism. When the government controls everything and makes all the decisions big and small and decide how much grain, meat [and] cooking oil I could have. What I should learn in school, where I should live, and what job I should have and how I should think. In the socialist society I lived under, there was no choices. There is no freedom. And that's what people do not know. Socialism becomes such a diluted word and it's intentional. I can tell you, China is a socialist country. Cuba is a socialist country and so is North Korea. They are a socialist country run by communist parties. And what's the difference? What's the difference between socialism and communism? Not much. Socialism is the initial stage of communism, according to Karl Marx.

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Communist China survivor issues warning to Americans: Socialism is only the first stage - Fox News