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Alan W. Dowd is a Senior Fellow with the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes on the full range of topics relating to national defense, foreign policy and international security. Dowd’s commentaries and essays have appeared in Policy Review, Parameters, Military Officer, The American Legion Magazine, The Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations, The Claremont Review of Books, World Politics Review, The Wall Street Journal Europe, The Jerusalem Post, The Financial Times Deutschland, The Washington Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News, The Sacramento Bee, The Vancouver Sun, The National Post, The Landing Zone, Current, The World & I, The American Enterprise, Fraser Forum, American Outlook, The American and the online editions of Weekly Standard, National Review and American Interest. Beyond his work in opinion journalism, Dowd has served as an adjunct professor and university lecturer; congressional aide; and administrator, researcher and writer at leading think tanks, including the Hudson Institute, Sagamore Institute and Fraser Institute. An award-winning writer, Dowd has been interviewed by Fox News Channel, Cox News Service, The Washington Times, The National Post, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and numerous radio programs across North America. In addition, his work has been quoted by and/or reprinted in The Guardian, CBS News, BBC News and the Council on Foreign Relations. Dowd holds degrees from Butler University and Indiana University. Follow him at twitter.com/alanwdowd.

ASCF News

Scott Tilley is a Senior Fellow at the American Security Council Foundation, where he writes the “Technical Power” column, focusing on the societal and national security implications of advanced technology in cybersecurity, space, and foreign relations.

He is an emeritus professor at the Florida Institute of Technology. Previously, he was with the University of California, Riverside, Carnegie Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute, and IBM. His research and teaching were in the areas of computer science, software & systems engineering, educational technology, the design of communication, and business information systems.

He is president and founder of the Center for Technology & Society, president and co-founder of Big Data Florida, past president of INCOSE Space Coast, and a Space Coast Writers’ Guild Fellow.

He has authored over 150 academic papers and has published 28 books (technical and non-technical), most recently Systems Analysis & Design (Cengage, 2020), SPACE (Anthology Alliance, 2019), and Technical Justice (CTS Press, 2019). He wrote the “Technology Today” column for FLORIDA TODAY from 2010 to 2018.

He is a popular public speaker, having delivered numerous keynote presentations and “Tech Talks” for a general audience. Recent examples include the role of big data in the space program, a four-part series on machine learning, and a four-part series on fake news.

He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Victoria (1995).

Contact him at stilley@cts.today.

Enes Kanter Freedom Joins Cubans Against Communism: ‘Every Dictatorship Is Going to Fall’

Friday, July 29, 2022

Categories: ASCF News National Preparedness

Comments: 0

Source: https://www.breitbart.com/latin-america/2022/07/28/enes-kanter-freedom-joins-cubans-against-communism-every-dictatorship-going-fall/

FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images

Former NBA star Enes Kanter Freedom, unceremoniously removed from the Boston Celtics roster after publicly condemning the Chinese Communist Party, spent much of this week in Florida meeting with members of the Cuban exile community and lending messages of hope and solidarity against communism.

Kanter Freedom filmed a video in support of the pro-democracy movement in Cuba on Monday alongside anti-communist rapper El Funky and fellow athlete Yordenis Ugás, a boxing champion who successfully defected from the island on his seventh try and was imprisoned six times prior for attempting to leave. Ugás has used his freedom in America to encourage Cubans on the island to continue protesting and force the 63-year-old communist regime out of power.

The video, and Kanter Freedom’s visit to Florida, follows an initial message on the anniversary of the July 11, 2021, protests honoring those arrested and silenced after calling for an end to the regime, as well as years of Kanter Freedom’s activism against allies of the Castro regime such as China, Turkey, and Venezuela.

“Do not ever lose hope,” Kanter Freedom says in the video. “To all my Cuban brothers and sisters, believe me, one day we are going to go to a free Cuba and have some delicious Cuban coffee.”

“My message to the Cuban regime is: every dictatorship is going to fall and you are going to fall and, trust me, the Cuban people will have their freedom again,” Kanter concluded.

El Funky, one of Cuba’s most high-profile anti-communist rappers, asked in the video for the Cuban people not to “lose faith or hope … we are here in the exile community supporting you.” The rapper is one of the artists responsible for the 2021 song “Patria y Vida,” (“Fatherland and Life”), which has become a protest anthem and its title a rallying cry against the communist slogan patria o muerte (“fatherland or death”).

Ugás – who was punished with banishment from his island for nine years following his defection, preventing him from seeing his family – similarly urged in the messages with Kanter Freedom, “the struggle has to continue.”

“We have to keep the faith; after 63 years, they don’t have much left,” Ugás said.

Kanter Freedom spent the rest of his time in Miami meeting other victims of the communist regime in Cuba and leaders in Miami’s political community, who praised him for giving up prominence in the NBA to stand up for his principles.

“This is a man who sacrificed, not just his life, but his dream that he worked his whole life for,” Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL) told the Miami-based Spanish network América Teve in an interview this week. “He was working as a professional basketball player here in the NBA and for the simple reason that he expressed himself in defense of human rights, but particularly for human rights in communist China, he has been censored, he has lost his career, they don’t allow him to speak, he lost all the contracts he had.”

Kanter Freedom, who became an advocate for pro-democracy causes around the world after suffering years of persecution by his native Turkey, spent much of his NBA career condemning Islamist Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan’s regime responded by issuing over nine arrest warrants for the athlete on spurious charges of terrorism and unsuccessfully pressuring Interpol to help Turkey arrest him.

Kanter Freedom is a member of an Islamic movement called Hizmet that Erdogan’s Turkey has falsely branded a terrorist organization and actively persecutes. Erdogan blames the movement’s leader, Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gülen, for the failed alleged coup in Turkey in 2016; American officials have stated that Turkey has presented no meaningful evidence linking the elderly cleric to the event.

Kanter Freedom’s advocacy for a free Turkey did not in any way impact his NBA career – though Erdogan arrested his father and forced his family to publicly condemn him. However, when he began wearing sneakers on NBA courts with messages in support of the various groups the Chinese Communist Party violently represses – Tibetans, Uyghurs, and Falun Gong practitioners in particular – the Chinese government began censoring NBA games, affecting the league’s finances. The Boston Celtics shadow-benched Kanter Freedom in November and ultimately dropped him before the end of last season, leaving him without a team and out of the NBA.

The Chinese Communist Party enjoys friendly relations with Islamist Turkey despite currently engaging in a genocide of Muslim Turkic peoples in East Turkistan, making it a natural foe for Kanter Freedom. The Chinese and Turkish regimes also maintain economic and political ties with Cuba and Venezuela, whose dictators Kanter Freedom has condemned. Erdogan and Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro, in particular, have publicly supported each other against human rights activists and U.S. sanctions.

“Maduro brother, stand tall, Turkey stands with you,” Erdogan told Maduro during a 2019 phone call, according to his presidential spokesman.

Erdogan’s Turkey debuted a park honoring murderous Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro in 2017 following the Communist Party’s announcement of his death in late 2016.

Kanter Freedom explained his stance against all dictatorships during an interview with Fox News in December as a divine calling.

“My goal was to not just talk about Turkey or China but all the dictatorships around the world. And I’m going to get them one by one,” Kanter Freedom said at the time. “Because I believe that this platform is given to me by God. And the one thing about me, I’m not scared of anything.”

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