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The electoral campaign for the April 25 elections in Albania brought to light one of the biggest political scandals the country has experienced in recent years.

Investigative reporting by online media outlet Lapsi.al revealed that the ruling Socialist Party, led by Prime Minister Edi Rama, has created a database containing all the personal data of the citizens of the Republic of Albania, using data from state institutions, mainly from e-Albania, a website and smartphone application used to facilitate document requests, and more recently used by almost everyone to obtain permission to go out for various reasons (either work or personal) during the pandemic lockdown.

This database includes information about voters' employment history, their religious beliefs, tax returns, telephone numbers, email addresses, social security numbers, sexual orientation and medical records, as well as comments such as: this voter recently asked if his sister or wife can be employed in a state institution; is a friend of; doesnt have a good relationship with It even tracks their comments and likes on Facebook.

More importantly, it was made clear to the public that every single Albanian citizen was under the patronage of a trusted Socialist Party member, who apparently were called patronagists, and whose primary duty was to scrutinise and keep an eye on the people they had under their patronage.

Rama initially ignored the news, then admitted that this patronage system was designed by the Socialist Party to collect information on its supporters. After the election, when it became clear that the party he leads had won, Rama said the Patronagists have done a very good job and invited them to come to Skenderbej Square to celebrate the partys victory, ending all doubts as to whether the government was monitoring the social and political life of the citizens.

The theft of personal data for political reasons has sparked outrage from citizens who feel violated by the state. In a democratic system, citizens receive security and support from state institutions.

"I am scared it is terrible that someone owns all my information, I had never imagined that I was under observation and monitoring, Erinda, a 30-year-old resident of Tirana, told bne IntelliNews.

When the government steals my data, to whom should I turn as a citizen? Where should I file a complaint? In court or in the prosecutor's office? These are also state institutions. We have returned to communism, said Eva, a 21-year-old student at the Faculty of Economics in Elbasan.

The existence of this database containing so much data is a political crime. In Albania, memories of the communist regime are still fresh. State security monitored all citizens, seeking information about their relationships with family, cousins, colleagues and residents of the area where they lived. State security did such a good job that citizens were afraid to express their opinions. It seems like we are in the same situation today, when you are not free to express your opinion because the person who patronises you keeps you under surveillance and is informed about everything that happens to you. All this information will one day enable the government to decide whether to help you or not help here meaning anything from being employed in an institution to getting a license for something. Now Albanians fear all these decisions will depend on their behaviour or whether they have expressed any dissatisfaction with the state.

The owner of a travel agency, Erion Mane, went public on the issue, saying he has been repeatedly and unjustly fined. He asked for help with his problem from one of the relevant directorates at the Ministry of Transport and staff initially promised to help him. Then one of the directors of the ministry sent the businessman a screenshot of a post he had made on Facebook several months earlier, where he had shared a photo of the chairwoman of an opposition party. A press release issued jointly by Mane and President Ilir Meta a strong critic and political opponent of the Socialist Party argued that Mane did not receive any help from the state because he was patronised to monitor his political orientation and keep him under control. This is one of many cases of a business that does not support the government being financially penalised and pushed towards bankruptcy.

For Albanians, it is scary to think that someone out there has been asking, investigating, following, eavesdropping, both in real life and on social media, for years, about you. The patronagist, in addition to knowing where you live, with whom you live, what you do in your free time, who your friends are, who your partner is etc, also checks your social networks like Facebook and Instagram, where he or she screenshots your posts or messages to keep a record of your thoughts and actions.

This scandal reminds me of my grandfather's story about the centralisation of socio-political life under the party-state, where everyone knew everything about everyone, and you could be fired or imprisoned for political reasons. Nowadays the state fines you, tries to make you close your business and in general makes life very very hard for you for political reasons.

Having no institutions to complain to, many citizens have denounced the phenomenon of patronage on their social networks and some of them have even invited their patronagists (who often are acquaintances or neighbours) to meet in order to get to know the person who has been stalking them for years. The theft of personal data from the state cannot be left only to denunciations on social networks when the government accepts and publicly thanks the patronagists for a job well done.

The existence of this database will negatively affect the Albanian accession process to the European Union. Lacking trust in local institutions, citizens and various organisations have sought help from various institutions located in Tirana, such as the offices of the European Union, OSCE-OHDIR and the US embassy, hoping that these will hold the Albanian government to account and ask the government to delete this database.

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OPINION: Patronagists scandal brings back memories of the communist era in Albania - bne IntelliNews

A refugee who escaped communist Cuba issued a dire warning to Americans about the path the country is headed down. Maximo Alvarez declared that critical American institutions have already been infected with communism, including schools and the media.

Podcast host Lisa Boothe asked Alvarez on Wednesday if Americans have swallowed the communist poison pill. Alvarez responded, "Not only have they swallowed it, they digested it."

"Listen to the media. They're no longer objective. You can tell how much they hate this country," Alvarez said during an interview on "The Truth with Lisa Boothe" podcast.

"Look at our, our academia," Alvarez added. "Our kids are not being they're indoctrinated. They are taught that America is a bad country. That we're a bunch of racists. That we're bad people, and we have to pay back.

"If this country was racist, I wouldn't be here," the Cuban immigrant said. "If this country was a racist country, most of us wouldn't be here because even some people in your family came from another country. This country was made of immigrants."

Alvarez admitted that some Americans are flawed, but the United States as a country shouldn't be blamed for certain "bad people."

"Do we have racist people in this country? Of course we do. Do we have bad people? Yes, we do. Do we have bad teachers? Yes, we do. Do we have bad police people? Yes, we do," he stated. "But don't blame the country for that because we have a justice system that will penalize you and punish you if you are a bad person, if you are a racist.

"Look at how much money they're sending to Black Lives Matter," Alvarez said. "And people don't want to understand that these three ladies who control this company are bragging about Marxist Leninism. They're communists they tell you that. And nobody understands what that means."

Alvarez was referring to a 2015 video where Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors bragged that she and fellow BLM co-founder Alicia Garza are "trained Marxists."

"Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists," Cullors said in the 2015 interview. "We are super-versed on, sort of, ideological theories."

Alvarez said that communism has been seeping into the American way of life for years. He pointed out how American Catholics haven't been vocal in denouncing abortion, prayer being banned in school, and Democrats passing gun control measures.

"Gun control? Every time there's a shooting, you want to have gun control," Alvarez proclaimed. "You know why? Because they're afraid the only way out of this is a civil war."

"Make sure that kids are no longer educated, they're indoctrinated. Make sure that people hate each other. Envy, hatred. Make sure that the blacks hate the whites. Make sure that the rich hate the poor. Make sure that the people who live in the city hate the people who live on the farm," he explained. "It's all part of the Communist Manifesto, and Saul Alinsky points that out very, very well."

Alvarez, who is the founder and president of Sunshine Gasoline Distributors, fled Cuba for the United States in 1961. Alvarez took part in Operation Peter Pan, a covert program that transported about 14,000 Cuban children to the United States from 1960 to 1962 at the height of the Cold War.

Alvarez made headlines last summer when he delivered a gripping speech at the Republican National Convention about the dangers of far-left ideologies that many progressive Democrats have advocated.

"I've seen movements like this before. I've seen ideas like this before and I'm here to tell you, we cannot let them take over our country," the Florida businessman said at the RNC. "I heard the promises of Fidel Castro. And I can never forget all those who grew up around me, who looked like me, who suffered and starved and died because they believed those empty promises. They swallowed the communist poison pill.

"Those false promises spread the wealth, free education, free health care, defund the police, trust a socialist state more than your family and your community they don't sound radical to my ears," he said. "They sound familiar. When Fidel Castro was asked if he was a communist, he said he was a Roman Catholic he knew he had to hide the truth."

During a business roundtable last year which featured former President Donald Trump, Alvarez warned Americans about the promises of "free stuff."

"I remember all the promises that we hear today about free education and free health care and free land," Alvarez said. "My God, no freedom. But he never said that until after he was in power, got rid of all the police, got rid of all the military been there for the last 60 years and counting. And he destroyed each and every one who helped him."

In July, Alvarez joined Glenn Beck to warn Americans about the dangers of communism.

"This is the same old story. It doesn't change. We need to explain to people that the communist philosophy is based on the fact that the ends justify the means. The ends justify the means," Alvarez said on "The Glenn Beck Program." "They will do whatever is necessary to accomplish their objective. If they have to tell you they're Catholics, or they have to tell you they belong to certain religions, they will. If they have to kill you, they will they have. Just look at exactly what happened in Cuba."

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Cuban refugee warns Americans have swallowed the 'poison pill' of communism, says media hate this country - TheBlaze

-Analysis-

Power and authority are not necessarily synonymous. Force is not authority, and can even indicate weakness. The philosopher Max Weber observed that dominance is only legitimate when people recognize and accept authority. In some democracies, rulers have compensated the fading of legitimacy with higher doses of authoritarianism. The pandemic has exacerbated this distortion.

This is the conjuncture facing several experiments in governance that are imperfect, populist or downright dictatorial. Cuba, Venezuela, China, Russia, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey all fit these labels to a greater or lesser extent.

In some of those cases, what's helped that big-stick-style authoritarianism survive is a setting where income distribution is at least consistent. China, fore example, breathed new life into its authoritarian system with the capitalist experiment begun by the late leader Deng Xiaoping. Its brand of modernization may have left the Chinese indifferent to the concept of communism, but not to the social mobility the system assures them.

Today, the People's Republic has the world's biggest middle class, with a per capita income that keeps growing. Vietnam has a broadly similar situation, while Saudi Arabia has spent big chunks of its oil fortune to bolster wages, pay subsidies and keep the peace.

Regimes without economic success can only rely on coercion.

Regimes without economic success can only rely on coercion, which has shown stark limitations. In Paraguay, the regime of General Alfredo Stroessner (1954-1989) fell with the end of the generous funds spent on the Itaip dam. With no more "sweeteners" for his cronies, Stroessner was sent packing when another soldier, Colonel Lino Oviedo, marched into the presidential office holding a hand grenade.

With North Africa during the Arab Spring, rising food prices pushed people onto the streets to challenge the authority of their rulers. Anyone who claims ideology can make up for such pedestrian needs as food and personal fulfillment should listen to speeches made by Cuba's Ral Castro when he took over the presidency from his late brother, Fidel. The revolutionary veteran who announced his retirement days ago, aged almost 90 years, admitted in the middle of the last decade that the communist island's "insignificant wages" had cut through its youth's "revolutionary conscience."

The Cuban case confirms you can do a lot with history, except negate its dynamics. A section of Cuba's gerontocracy seems to have understood that history is not static, and understands what it means to fall into an abyss. The younger of the Castros warned his peers in the nomenklatura that unless things changed in Cuba, the communist polity would fall.

When Venezuela stopped sending it money, Cuba sought out historic negotiations with the administration of President Barack Obama, to break decades of isolation and attract vital investments. This dtente, later dashed by Donald Trump's erratic geopolitics, is now back on the table.

Castro's retirement and the handover of powers to his political godson Miguel Daz-Canel point in that direction. Castro has also taken with him some old party hands opposed to any glasnost. One is Ramiro Valds, who designed Venezuela's repressive apparatus of recent years.

Ral Castro took over the presidency from his late brother, Fidel Photo: Ernesto Mastrascusa/EFE via ZUMA Press

Castro and Daz-Canel made similar sounds at the recent Eighth Party Congress. Both spoke in favor of normalized ties with the United States, like those it maintains with other states including Vietnam, whose capitalist economy and communist political control is a model that Castro wants Cuba to follow.

Vietnam's economy has grown in leaps since the 1980s, when it dropped its opposition to the free market. It even grew 2.9% in the pandemic year of 2020, when Cuba's economy shrank 11%. Interestingly, Castro has admitted that 50 years of U.S. blockades were not the only reason for Cuba's economic failures.

Today, Cuba's "Fatherland or Death" motto may well morph into "Open Up or Die," as a columnist in the Spanish paper El Pas recently observed. Like Venezuela, the island nation is suffering an aggravation of inflationary trends that is fueling discontent, protests and repression. In 2020, the price of clothes and foodstuffs doubled or even tripled, while services like electricity quadrupled. The decision last January to have a single exchange rate contributed to this inflation.

For now, Cuba must wait before the seeds it has thrown at the U.S. germinate. The administration of President Joe Biden won't do anything with Cuba until after congressional elections of 2022. It must boost its legislative power and cannot afford to lose Florida, as it did in last year's presidential elections.

Florida's Hispanic, anti-communist voters don't want anything to do with Cuba whatever the subtleties. If the Democrats stumble in mid-term polls there, it means Trump could return. That might be good news for China in its race to become the world's paramount power, but would not in any case halt changes on the island.

Cuba's ally and pupil Venezuela might open the oil sector to private investments.

Cuba's ally and pupil Venezuela is also shifting its positions, beginning with its economy. Last year, on the advice of the Russian Economy ministry, a state commission discussed opening the oil sector to private investments.

The government of President Nicols Maduro is preparing legislation to end the state's monopoly on oil through the firm PDVSA. And in January, the state began talking to concessionary firms on how to broaden participation in exploiting the country's pharaonic crude reserves. With output having dropped below 500,000 barrels a day, Venezuela needs investments that can match their scale to revive a crucial source of revenues.

While U.S. sanctions are an immediate obstacle, there are ways private firms could take over Venezuelan assets without falling afoul of laws. The U.S. forbids any business with PDVSA, the Venezuelan regime and its helpers. In theory, independent firms could take over businesses no longer controlled by PDVSA. Bloomberg is already reporting anti-sanctions lobbying by big oil and financial firms in the U.S., concerned about losing Venezuela to competitors.

Washington might initially allow U.S. firms to swap fuel for Venezuelan crude, which Trump blocked. This might be done before the midterm elections, using humanitarian pretexts.

Many in the northern hemisphere think a process of dtente opens a straight path to regime change in Venezuela, while parts of Venezuela's middle class are already banking on a gradual transformation. And if Cuba begins heading in another direction and loosens its grip, Venezuela's regime may also do what it must, to survive.

See more from World Affairs here

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Raul Castro's Exit, Biden's Arrival And The Future Of Venezuela - Worldcrunch

Polish Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, scheduled to be beatified Sept. 12, was ready to seek agreements in a Christian spirit, but also firmly believed certain boundaries could not be crossed, said a leading theologian and political scientist.

Father Piotr Mazurkiewicz, former secretary-general of the Brussels-based Commission of the Bishops Conferences of the European Union, COMECE, told Catholic News Service April 27 the beatification would remind Catholics everywhere of the churchs challenges under communist rule in Eastern Europe.

In an age when its generally assumed any leadership role requires a compromise of conscience, he showed, like the English St. Thomas More, this wasnt so, the theologian said.

Beatification is a step toward sainthood, and Polands Catholic information agency, KAI, said 37 volumes on the cardinals sanctity had been amassed during his 1989-2001 diocesan process for canonization.

In October 2019, the Vatican Congregation for Saints Causes said the inexplicable recovery of a dying 19-year-old cancer patient from the Szczecin-Kamien Archdiocese in 1988 had been confirmed as a miracle attributed to Wyszynskis intercession. His beatification, originally scheduled for 2020, was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mother Elisabeth Rosa Czacka, who founded the Franciscan Sister Servants of the Cross in 1918 and a pioneering center for blind children, will be beatified alongside Wyszynski. She died in Poland in 1961.

The late Catholic historian Andrzej Micewski told Catholic News Service in 2001 that Wyszynskis leadership had resulted in a victory that was not only political, but also had taught important lessons about securing church freedoms under hostile conditions.

Wyszynski criticized the communist state, but also compelled communist rulers to deal with him, in this way ensuring his church became Eastern Europes strongest, Micewski said.

Born in Zuzela, Poland, Aug. 3, 1901, Stefan Wyszynski was ordained at Wloclawek in 1924, later serving as a chaplain to Polands underground home army under wartime German occupation.

Pope Pius XII named him bishop of Lublin in 1946 and archbishop of Warsaw-Gniezno two years later. In 1950, despite Vatican misgivings, Wyszynski signed the first church accord with a communist government, which promised the church institutional protection in return for encouraging respect for state authorities.

The deal was swiftly violated by the communist side, and Wyszynski was arrested with hundreds of priests in September 1953. He was held until October 1956, when a new communist leader, Wladyslaw Gomulka, sought his help in calming industrial unrest.

When he was arrested, he didnt know what awaited him although it turned out to be three years detention, it could just as easily have been a show trial and death sentence, Mazurkiewicz told CNS.

When we read his detailed notes today, its striking how the communist rulers also treated Cardinal Wyszynski as an authority and felt morally inferior beside him, as they tried to present their own perspectives and interests, he said.

Having reached a new deal with Gomulka to allow freer church appointments, some religious teaching and 10 Catholic seats in Polands State Assembly, Cardinal Wyszynski headed the Archdiocese of Warsaw-Gniezno until his death May 28, 1981.

Among his proteges was the future St. John Paul II. When then-Father Karol Wojtyla was appointed auxiliary bishop of Krakow in 1958, the cardinal presented him to a group of priests, saying Habemus papam (We have a pope).

Mazurkiewicz told CNS Wyszynskis beatification would be a form of penance against recent church scandals by recalling good and saintly aspects of Christian life. He also said the cardinals role in rebuilding ties Polish with Germany, through a reconciliatory letter to German bishops during the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, had been important for post-war Europe.

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Theologian: Polish cardinals beatification reminder of tests of communism - Crux Now

Cuban-born businessman Maximo Alvarez, joined "Fox & Friends"on Friday, to discuss the Democrats' socialist policies, and warnedthe U.S. may head towards "communism" under the Biden presidency.

BIDEN'S 100 DAYS IN OFFICE: IS AMERICA BACK OPEN? COVID OUTBREAK CHECK, STATUS OF SCHOOLS, MASK GUIDELINES

MAXIMO ALVAREZ:It's very sad, but ever since the election, right after January the 20th, you've seen what's happened in this country with the signature of our new president, and it seems to me that everything that we're experiencing today,I never thought I would experience again, but it's happening too rapidly.

...

I heard it before, and the false empty promises. I thought I would never hear them again. The social injustice. The propaganda about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and they keep repeating over and over again the same things to the point that just like any pathological liar, will believe their own lies. They always tell you about things that are not true. They repeated enough.

...

I learned as a young kid, my dad said it many times, if you lose this country, you have no place to go.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW

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Cuban refugee worries US headed toward communism: If you lose this country, you have no place to go - Fox News