The Left Chapter

@MiamiHerald Bullshit artist lying criminal. What else would you expect from the Miami mafia. No one in the world believes your rubbish.

Rubio warns Cuban leaders they won’t be able to ‘buy time,’ calls Cuba a ‘threat’ miamiherald.com/news/nation-wo…

Raúl isn’t an accused man, he’s a soldier of dignity: From the mass rally in Havana theleftchapter.com/post/ra%C3%BAl… #Cuba #CubaEstáFirme #RaulEsRaúl

“This is no time for self-pity. We lost a battle in the class war and we are paying the price. The important thing is to understand that the state is always the instrument of the ruling class and that every state creates the machinery to defend its class character. A working class state that does not defend itself is not worthy of the title.” ~ GDR State Security officer Lessons from the fall of the GDR: A brief but interesting discussion arose a while back in this paper’s correspondence columns about the role of the Ministry of State Security (MfS) in the German Democratic Republic. One view was that while life in GDR could not be conflated with the Stasi one could not exist without the other and that the socialist state could never have survived without the efforts of the comrades working with the MfS. Another view was presented which hinted to the possibility that these efforts may have contributed to the failure of the socialist state to survive. A partial analysis of the complex development and tragic demise of the first anti-fascist state on German soil must necessarily be incomplete. But nevertheless we can make a start in looking at who these terrible people were. In the reconstituted capitalist German state the official and quasi-official framing of the question is best summed up (by the Deutschland Museum) that: “Aware that East Germany’s repressive political system lacked popular support, the Politburo of the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) established a new secret police force on 24 January 1950 to combat dissent. Modelled on Stalin’s secret service, the Ministry for State Security (Stasi) was tasked with protecting socialism from its domestic and foreign enemies and preventing East Germans from voting with their feet and leaving for the West. The Stasi combined the role of a secret police and intelligence service in a single organisation and soon expanded to become a comprehensive instrument of surveillance and repression. By 1989, some 90,000 people worked for the Stasi full-time, assisted by 189,000 informants. This account by the victors in the clash between working class and bourgeois power can be challenged. It took more than a decade before the inner German border was closed and it is certainly true that many Germans, especially those most closely associated with the Nazi regime, went west, along with people reuniting families, economic migrants and almost anyone uncomfortable with the new dispensation. Rarely reported is the fact that over 300,000 people went east, including Angela Merkel’s Lutheran pastor father. To transpose this unusual situation to post-war Britain, we can easily imagine–from among our family and workmates–those who mind find life more congenial across an internal border where capitalist relations of production remained. Among the earliest Germans to go west was Wehrmacht Major General Reinhard Gehlen, head of the Nazi intelligence organisation in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union who, even before the surrender, had placed his outfit at the service of the U.S. He was given sanctuary by what became the CIA and resumed his work in Pullach in Bavaria before becoming head of the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the West German federal intelligence organisation. As the U.S. National Security Archives record, Gehlen “…employed numerous former Nazis and known war criminals.” Among them was Adolf Eichmann’s deputy Alois Brunner, who sent more than 100,000 Jews to ghettos or internment camps. The first director of the GDR’s MfS was Spanish civil war veteran and former commander of the International Brigades, Wilhelm Zaisser. Earlier, in Weimar Germany, he had been dismissed from his teaching job after a spell as a military leader of the Ruhr workers’ militia in the German Revolution of 1921. The first cohort of state security functionaries were almost exclusively Spanish civil war veterans, returning exiles and former political prisoners released from Nazi prisons and camps. In the years immediately after the defeat of Nazi Germany, and conscious of the population’s exposure to Nazi indoctrination and even complicity in war crimes, the Stasi recruited almost exclusively from young people without a compromised past. The MfS–“the sword and shield of the working-class party” took an uncompromising approach to domestic intelligence and recruited more than 100,000 so called Inoffizielle Mitarbeiter, in what might be described as a scaled-up working-class “neighbourhood watch,” but with added class politics. This naturally included people who were politically loyal to the socialist state, socialists, communists, trade unionists and anti-fascists. But conscious of the constant efforts by Western intelligence agencies, the MfS also recruited people from former Nazi structures and family networks to monitor opposition groups or people collaborating with Western intelligence organisations, particularly in Berlin where spooks were thick on the ground. The security apparatus included an MfS military formation, the Felix Dzerzhinsky Regiment named after the Polish aristocrat who Lenin had appointed to head the Soviet Cheka or All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage. A 210,000 strong Kampfgruppe der Arbeiterklasse was made up of armed factory groups of politically engaged workers. These were among the 8,000 people who, in 1960, built the Berlin Wall. Just eight defected to the West during its construction. To transpose this unusual situation to post-war Britain, we can easily imagine from among our family and workmates who might sign up in a people’s police, a factory militia or an army pledged to defend working-class power. For people in the West, a counterintuitive feature of this episode is that the construction of the wall appeared as a surprise to Western intelligence organisations and such was their lack of human intelligence in the socialist bloc that they had even less advance warning of its dismantling. The joke has it that the CIA watched the dissolution of actually existing socialism on CNN. One of the most successful agencies of the MfS was the Hauptverwaltung Aufklarung, its foreign intelligence division headed by the MfS deputy director Markus Wolf. This specialised in the penetration of Nato and Western intelligence organisation directed at the socialist states and in providing support for anti-imperialist forces in Latin America, Africa and the Arab world. My experience of comrades who I assumed or knew to be working under the direction of the MfS and of those I met after the end of the GDR is that they were both highly motivated and politically astute. This may be why the dissolution of the German socialist state was largely violence-free. The comrades of the MfS knew better than most that without the security guarantee that Mikhail Gorbachov threw away the balance of forces had changed and that an autarchic socialist German island was impossible in a capitalist Europe. After the fall hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of GDR functionaries–teachers, civil servants, local government officers, police, diplomats, enterprise managers, military and MfS staff–were sacked and West Germany’s infamous anti-communist Berufsverbot or employment ban was extended to the territory of the former GDR. Following the last congress of the SED successor party, the Partei der Demokratische Socialismus, now divided into Der Linke and Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht, I spent several days in old Berlin haunts with a former MfS officer–now driving a cab for a living. He gave me a valuable lesson in revolutionary realism. I can still hear his voice in my head when he said: 'This is no time for self-pity. We lost a battle in the class war and we are paying the price. The important thing is to understand that the state is always the instrument of the ruling class and that every state creates the machinery to defend its class character. A working class state that es not defend itself is not worthy of the title.' morningstaronline.co.uk/article/lesson… #morningstaronline @GabrielRockhill @theleftchapter

Socialist Workers' Party of Croatia condemns heinous indictment of Castro theleftchapter.com/post/socialist… #Cuba #RaulEsRaúl #CubaNoEstáSola

The Calamities of Liberia’s West Point: Structural Poverty and Educational Crunch theleftchapter.com/post/the-calam… #Liberia

@EricLDaugh LOL! Just like there was going to be a quick victory in Iran!!! Do you even believe your own bullshit?

🚨 NOW: The Communist Cuban regime is "PREPARING FOR WAR" after the Trump DOJ indicted Raul Castro for killing Americans Cuba warns President Trump is preparing to "annihilate the dream of Fidel Castro" LOL! Prepare for a defeat that takes about 1 hour 🤣 This is our hemisphere. Communists are cooked. 🇺🇸🇨🇺 "Cuba's Deputy Foreign Minister is calling it a quote, political action designed to lay the groundwork for an American invasion. And the Cuban government is reportedly handing out pamphlets to citizens, titled Family Guide for Protection Against Military Aggression."

Cuba Is Not Alone – US Should Back Off From Cuba: CPI(M) theleftchapter.com/post/cuba-is-n… #Cuba #CubaNoEstáSola #RaulEsRaúl

@NYPostOpinion Jokers. Start with your own criminal president you scumbags. No one in the world believes your shit anymore.

Bring on the Havana tribunals — it’s time for Raul Castro to get what he deserves trib.al/Bhmgkav

¿Por qué los Estados Unidos quiere juzgar al expresidente cubano Raúl Castro? theleftchapter.com/post/por-qu%C3… #Cuba #RaulEsRaúl

On the United States' indictment of Comrade Raúl Castro: Communist Party of Sri Lanka #Cuba #RaulEsRaúl theleftchapter.com/post/on-the-un…

🇨🇺 Tens of thousands of Cubans took to the streets of Havana to show support for the Cuban leader Raúl Castro. Cubans are rejecting the US accusations against former president, and US threats and hostilities against the Caribbean nation.

@RepCarlos Psychopath. Imagine celebrating this. Sick fuck.

🚨#SOSCuba 🇨🇺 “And now, the end is near. And so I face the final curtain My friend, I'll say it clear: I'll state my case, of which I'm certain. I did it my way” miamiherald.com/news/nation-wo…

We stand in solidarity with Raul Castro: Communist Party of Australia theleftchapter.com/post/we-stand-… #Cuba #RaulEsRaúl

Nuestro pueblo ha levantado su voz, ha levantado las banderas de la dignidad y de la unidad, es la fidelidad a nuestros líderes y a nuestra historia lo que respiramos hoy en la Tribuna Antimperialista. Desde allí hemos lanzado un potente mensaje a quienes pretenden profanar con infamias nuestros valores más preciados. Hoy ratificamos que ni con acusaciones falsas, ni con bloqueo genocida, ni con cerco energético, ni con amenazas nos arrodillarán y como expresó Gerardo en sus palabras, que son reflejo del sentir colectivo: ¨Raúl no es un acusado: es nuestro líder, un soldado de la dignidad, un heredero de Martí y de Fidel. Y mientras haya un solo cubano o cubana con el puño en alto, esa infamia será repelida¨. #LAPAtriaSeDefiende #RaúlEsRaúl

By Sevim Dağdelen, The Left Chapter, Toronto, May 22, 2026. Translated by Helmut-Harry Loewen. Born in Duisburg to Kurdish migrants, Sevim Dağdelen was a Member of the Bundestag (MdB) from 2005 to 2025. Her book, "NATO: A Reckoning with the Atlantic Alliance,” is a bestseller in Germany. She is an executive member of the BSW Party. @SevimDagdelen @theleftchapter theleftchapter.com/post/ukrainian…

Ukrainians deserve peace, not the ashes of Nazi criminals #Ukraine #Germany theleftchapter.com/post/ukrainian…

#RaúlEsRaúl, es #Cuba y es el heroísmo, la dignidad y el amor profundo al pueblo que se reconoce en él. El Norte revuelto y brutal que nos desprecia no acaba de conocernos: queriendo dividirnos, nos ha unido más. A pocos días de los #95DeRaúl, el intento de atacar al General de Ejército se ha convertido en una motivación extraordinaria para adelantar la celebración de su vida. Siga Usted con el pie en el estribo. ¡Ordene!

Raúl Castro: The loyal Cuban who has lived for the Revolution: theleftchapter.com/post/ra%C3%BAl… #Cuba #CubaEstáFirme #RaulEsRaúl

Hands off Castro! No War on Cuba!: Communist Party USA theleftchapter.com/post/hands-off… #Cuba #RaulEsRaúl

Por #Cuba y por #Raúl, estamos en la Tribuna Antiimperialista. #RaúlEsRaúl 🇨🇺