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Lavrov: US Sanction Against Russian Company Violates Int’l Law

teleSUR | March 12, 2019

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is criminalizing Russian companies for doing business with the Venezuelan state, saying they are violating U.S. imposed sanctions by making transactions with Venezuela’s sanctioned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).

In a Monday press conference Pompeo said that the assets of Evrofinance Mosnarbank, a Russia-Venezuela states-owned financial organization would be frozen and U.S. citizens would be prohibited from doing business with the joint venture, according to Reuters.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement that Evrofinance was violating a Trump decree because it is a “foreign financial institution that materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services to or in support of (PDVSA).”

Pompeo also accused the major Russian oil company, Rosneft, of defying U.S. sanctions by buying oil from PDVSA.

According to Sputnik News, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Pompeo’s “accusations … contradict international law.” ​​​​​​​

Lavrov said Pompeo’s “accusations that Russian oil company Rosneft bought Venezuelan oil in violation of Washington sanctions contradicts international law.” ​​​​​​​

Talking to reporters the secretary of state included not only accused Russia but Cuba of trying to undermine democracy in Venezuela.

“This story is not complete without acknowledging the central role Cuba and Russia have played and continue to play in undermining the democratic dreams of the Venezuelan people and their welfare,” Pompeo said.

“Moscow, like Havana, continues to provide political cover to the Maduro regime,” added the U.S. official.

Meanwhile, Trump’s right hand in Venezuela, Elliot Abrams, says he is persuading and urging India to stop buying oil from Venezuela, from who it purchases approximately 366,000 oil barrels per day.

The current U.S. government began a soft coup against Maduro shortly after entering office by placing a slew of sanctions against the Venezuelan government and individuals.

As the list grew and intensified, the U.S. administration sent in Guaido in late January to take over the democratically elected Venezuelan government under Maduro. Most recently, last weekend the White House supported, if not masterminded, the cyber attack on the South American country that caused a nationwide blackout in an effort to create chaos and influence the overthrow of Maduro.

According to the Venezuelan government as of February of this year the country has lost US$38 billion in direct losses from U.S. financial sanctions alone.

For his part, U.S. national security adviser John Bolton announced over Twitter that Venezuela’s National Assembly, still in operation despite being in contempt of the country’s Supreme Court, “decreed the suspension of oil exports to Cuba.” Bolton added, “insurance companies and flag bearers who facilitate these deliveries to Cuba are now on notice,” signaling potential sanctions for those doing business with either country.

The Cuban government quickly responded to Bolton’s proclamation saying he has “long-time credentials … (as) a liar.”

Cuba’s foreign ministry office said in a statement: “The honest and informed people know the bilateral relationship between Cuba and Venezuela is based on mutual respect, true solidarity, fidelism and chavism—independent and sovereign.”​​​​​​​

March 12, 2019 Posted by | Economics | , , , , , | 1 Comment

The United States Is at It Again: Compiling an Enemies List

By Philip M. GIRALDI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 24.01.2019

Many American still long for the good old days when men were still manly and President George W. Bush was able to announce that there was a “new sheriff in town” pledged to wipe terrorism from the face of the earth. “You’re either with us or against us,” he growled and he backed up his warning of lethal retribution with an enemies list that he called the “axis of evil.”

The axis of evil identified in those days in the 2002 State of the Union Address consisted of Iraq, Iran and North Korea. Iraq, which had not yet been invaded and conquered by the American war machine, was number one on the list, with Saddam allegedly brandishing weapons of mass destruction deliverable by the feared transatlantic gliders that could easily strike the United States. Bush explained that “Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop anthrax and nerve gas and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens, leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections, then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world.”

North Korea meanwhile was described as “A regime arming with missiles and weapons of mass destruction, while starving its citizens” while Iran “aggressively pursues these weapons and exports terror, while an unelected few repress the Iranian people’s hope for freedom.”

The phrase “axis of evil” proved so enticing that Undersecretary of State John Bolton used it two months later in a speech entitled “Beyond the Axis of Evil.” He included three more countries – Cuba, Libya and Syria because they were “state sponsors of terrorism that are pursuing or who have the potential to pursue weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or have the capability to do so in violation of their treaty obligations.” The nice thing about an Axis of Evil List is that you can make up the criteria as you go along so you can always add more evildoers.

Iraq was removed from the playing field in March 2003 while Libya had to wait for President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be dealt with, but North Korea, Cuba, Syria and Iran are still around. Nevertheless, the idea of an enemies list continues to intrigue policy makers since it would be impossible to maintain the crippling burden of the military industrial complex without a simple expression that would convey to the public that there were bad actors out there waiting to pounce but for the magnificent efforts being made by Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Raytheon to defend freedom.

The Administration of President Donald Trump, not to be outdone by its predecessors, has recently come up with two enemies lists. The first one was coined by the irrepressible John Bolton, who is now National Security Adviser. He has come up with the “troika of tyranny” to describe Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, where he sees “… the dangers of poisonous ideologies without control, and the dangers of domination and suppression… I am here to convey a clear message from the President of the United States about our policy towards these three regimes. Under this administration, we will no longer appease the dictators and despots near our coasts in this hemisphere. The troika of tyranny in this hemisphere — Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua — has finally found its rival.”

Bolton also demonstrated that he has a light touch, adding “These tyrants fancy themselves strongmen and revolutionaries, icons and luminaries. In reality, they are clownish, pitiful figures more akin to Larry, Curly, and Moe. The three stooges of socialism are true believers, but they worship a false God.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has apparently also been looking at Venezuela and not liking what he is seeing. On his recent road trip to the Middle East he told reporters that “It is time to begin the orderly transition to a new government [in Caracas].” He declared that “The Maduro regime is illegitimate and the United States will work diligently to restore a real democracy to that country. We are very hopeful we can be a force for good to allow the region to come together to deliver that.” “Force for good” is another key soundbite used by Pompeo. In his Cairo speech on January 10th, he described the United States as a “force for good” in the entire Middle East.

Bolton might have thought “troika of tyranny” was a hands down winner, but he was actually upstaged by the dour Vice President Mike Pence who declared to a gathering of US Ambassadors that “Beyond our global competitors, the United States faces a ‘wolf pack of rogue states.’ No shared ideology or objective unites our competitors and adversaries except this one: They seek to overturn the international order that the United States has upheld for more than half a century.” The states Pence identified were North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Of the five, only North Korea can even plausibly be considered as a possible threat to the United States.

As wolves are actually very social animals the metaphor provided by Pence does not hold together very well. But Pence, Bolton and Pompeo are all talking about the same thing, which is the continued existence of some governments that are reluctant to fall in line with Washington’s demands. They have to be banished from polite discourse by declaring them “rogue” or “tyrannical” or “evil.” Other nations with far worse human rights records – to include Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Israel and Egypt – are given a pass as long as they stay aligned with the US on policy.

So useful “lists” are all about what Washington wants the world to believe about itself and its adversaries. Put competitors on a list and condemn them to eternal denigration whenever their names come up. And, as Pence observes, it is all done to prevent the overturning of the “international order.” However, his is a curious conceit as it is the United States and some of its allies, through their repeated and illegal interventions in foreign countries, that have established something like international disorder. Who is really doing what to whom is pretty much dependent on which side of the fence one is standing on.

January 24, 2019 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Cuba Denounces Attempt to Reactivate US Brain-Drain Program

teleSUR | January 12, 2019

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has condemned the call by two U.S. lawmakers of Cuban origin to reactivate the ‘brain-drain’ program established by George W. Bush and revoked during the administration of Barack Obama.

“They’re trying to impose a perverse strategy to stimulate brain drain. Another anti-Cuban campaign that shows the imperial impotence against the revolutionary conquests,” Diaz-Canel wrote on Twitter.

Senators Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez, respectively from the Republican and Democratic parties, filed a resolution at Congress on Thursday calling for the reactivation of the Cuban Medical Professional Parole (CMPP), known as “brain drain” by Cubans.

“Cuba has been sending medical brigades around the world, including Central and South America as well as Africa, for over forty years – in return for payments directly to the government estimated to be as much as $8 billion per year,” it reads.

“This blatant exploitation by the Castro regime of their healthcare professionals is not at all surprising, as they have long used the suffering of the Cuban people for their own personal gain.”

The resolution can define the Senate’s position on the issue, but the ultimate decision to re-establish the CMPP rests with the State Department.

Installed in 2006, the program aimed to lure Cuban doctors and health professionals working on special missions abroad to abandon their duties and emigrate to the United States with special incentives.

The Cuban president accused the senators of being “unable to promote a civilized relationship” and being “blinded by arrogance.”

Obama repealed the program in 2017 after the improvement of diplomatic relations between the two countries, and recognized the work of health professionals.

According to government data, Cuba has sent more than 600,000 doctors to over 160 countries since the foundation of the ‘More Doctors’ initiative in 1973. Their labour has been recognized by the UN and the World Health Organization as good practice and an important step toward the 2030 sustainable development objectives.

Also, Cuban medicine schools have trained over 35,613 foreigners from 138 countries, completely free of charge.

However, the senators described the missions as “human trafficking.”

Cuban Foreign Ministry director for the United States Office, Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, also rejected the initiative by Rubio and Menendez.

“Impotent resentment against Cuba has no limits. Unable to stop recognized human professional development, baseball quality and potential investment. Bob Menendez and Marco Rubio want to restore brain drain program against Cuban doctors,” said Fernandez de Cossio.

Both senators argued that Cuba was profiting from the work of its health professionals in Brazil, where Cuba ended its ‘More Doctors Program’ in November after comments by then President-Elect Jair Bolsonaro questioning the quality of Cuban doctors’ training.

The news was met with sadness by the Brazilian ‘Doctors for the People National Network‘ (RNMMP), who regretted the loss of about 8,500 health professionals working in historically marginalized areas.

“It was an example that favelas, backlands and the Amazon can have doctors. An example that the poor or black people can be a doctor. An example that the state must guarantee the right to health. An example of Latin American love,” the RNMMP press release declared.

The ‘More Doctors Program’ was approved by former President Dilma Rousseff in 2013 in order to increase access to public health for the Brazilian population.

One of those policies consisted of assuring budgetary resources for implementing family-based health strategies, increasing medical vacancies in universities and offering more courses in the field of medicine.

During the five years it lasted, about 20,000 Cuban physicians assisted thousands of Brazilians in primary health care.

Besides the CMPP resolution, Rubio is also attempting to veto an Obama-era ruling allowing Cuban athletes to join Major League Baseball without first having to defect to the United States.

January 13, 2019 Posted by | Economics | , , | Leave a comment

Why Isn’t Radio Marti Shut Down During the Shutdown?

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | January 7, 2019

I don’t get it. If President Trump’s “shutdown” of the federal government is supposed to shut down the “nonessential” functions of the federal government, then why is Radio Marti, the federal government’s Cold War-era propaganda radio station, still broadcasting? When it comes to nonessential federal programs, Radio Marti has to rank near the top of the list.

How do I know that Radio Marti continues to operate during the shutdown? Because I subscribe to Sirius-XM. As I pointed out in my September 2018 Future of Freedom article “U.S. Anti-Communist Propaganda at Sirius-XM,” Radio Marti uses Channel 153 on Sirius XM to broadcast its official anti-communist propaganda. During the past three weeks of Trump’s shutdown, Radio Marti has continued propagandizing listeners of Channel 153 on SiriusXM.

The larger question, of course, is why Radio Marti wasn’t shut down permanently a long time ago. Established during the conservative reign of President Ronald Reagan in 1983, the mission of Radio Marti has always been to meddle in the internal affairs of Cuba by targeting the Cuban people with pro-U.S., anti-communist propaganda. Even though the U.S. Constitution does not authorize the federal government to own and operate a propaganda radio station, U.S. officials felt that the Cold War they were waging against the communist world justified violating the Constitution.

Needless to say, Radio Marti’s propaganda has had the same effect on the Cuban communist regime as the decades-old U.S. economic embargo has had, which is none. One reason for that is that the communist government has always done its best to block Radio Marti’s broadcasts and also made it a criminal offense for Cubans to listen to it.

But one thing is certain: the Cold War ostensibly ended in 1989. Therefore, why wasn’t Radio Marti shut down 30 years ago?

Equally important, if not more so, why is Radio Marti broadcasting its propaganda on Sirius XM, a privately owned U.S. company whose customer base consists primarily of American citizens? I thought that the position of the United States has always been that it’s wrong for governments to propagandize their own citizens? Didn’t U.S. officials rail against the Nazi regime’s use of propaganda to mold the minds of the German people? Don’t they also rail against the Cuban communist regime’s use of propaganda to mold the minds of the Cuban people?

Then why in the world is the U.S. government using Radio Marti to propagandize the American listeners of SiriusXM? And why is SiriusXM permitting Radio Marti to use SiriusXM to broadcast its propaganda?

Here’s another problem, at least from the standpoint of the First Amendment. Every Sunday morning at 7 a.m., Radio Marti broadcasts a Catholic mass on SiriusXM. What business does the federal government have targeting people with religious propaganda, whether its target is Cuban citizens or American citizens? Why should American taxpayers, many whom aren’t even Catholic, be forced to underwrite that sort of religious propaganda? What business does a private company like SiriusXM have in participating in such a scheme?

Let’s also keep in mind that Radio Marti is a government-run and government-operated radio station. Why should the U.S. government be owning and operating a socialist radio station, especially given that its purpose is to oppose the socialist system in Cuba? Wouldn’t it be better to oppose socialism with freedom and private property rather than with socialism?

Finally, let’s keep in mind that the federal government continues to spend far more than it receives in taxes and that it has now accumulated more than $22 trillion in debt, which the American people, as taxpayers, are responsible for paying. If Trump and the members of Congress are unwilling to shut down an anachronistic socialist program like Radio Marti, then what hope is there for reining in the federal government’s out-of-control spending and debt before it sends the nation into bankruptcy.

The time has come to shut down Radio Marti, not just during Trump’s shutdown but forever.

January 7, 2019 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

‘Imperial arrogance’: Fake FB accounts spewing US propaganda at Cubans fit the pattern

RT | August 30, 2018

While the US accuses Russia of using internet trolls to sow discord, Washington is funding its own propaganda body’s program of ‘non-branded Facebook accounts’ operating in Cuba.

Here is a fun fact: The US Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), an arm of America’s official foreign propaganda agency the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), is setting up “non-branded local Facebook accounts to disseminate information” in Cuba. The OCB believes that such pages are more likely to be appearing on newsfeeds of actual Cubans with access to the social network – apparently because Facebook changed its algorithms to give priority to living people over organizations in its crusade on the phantom menace of ‘Russian fake news’.

The quote does not come from some leaked report on American information warfare against the Cuban government. It comes from page 31 of the BBG’s request for fiscal year 2019 funding. Spending taxpayer money on fake online personas used to disseminate propaganda and meddle in another nation’s affairs is perfectly fine – so long as it’s America doing it.

Of course, the US public will probably not know this, because the national networks are more interested in explaining how bad Russians are plotting to kill Americans by convincing them not to vaccinate. A barrage of no less than 253 tweets was launched with that purpose, according to a recent study (over a period of three years, almost half pro-vaccination, cannot be actually confirmed to have come from Russia). But readers of The Miami New Times may learn about the Cuban story too, along with how the US wasted money for decades in “Wile E. Coyote-esque stunts” to reach the Cuban public.

US attempts to destabilize the Cuban government have been ongoing since 1959, although after the Cold War the focus shifted more to less-direct methods like funding anti-government groups in Cuba and trying to stir dissent through radio and TV broadcasts, points out William Robinson, author and professor of sociology at the University of California. The “non-branded accounts” are just another part of this effort.

“That’s the same thing that the United States is doing all around the world: in Russia, in Eastern Europe, in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia,” he told RT. Robinson added that many of Americans are simply not aware of such facts because major US media outlets would not report them.

“The corporate media and the political leaders in the United States present US interventions around the world… as the promotion of democracy and human rights,” he said. “And this propaganda in the United States has normalized this double standard, whereby the US can intervene all around the world – politically, at the level of propaganda, at the level of social media – but will not tolerate anyone else doing anything of the sort inside the United States.”

The attitude is far from being limited to information warfare, he said.

“The US has sent hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq; it’s intervening in Syria, intervening in Afghanistan, intervening in Yemen. And it’s perfectly acceptable and normalized in the US media and the political establishment. But when then it accuses Iran of intervening in Syria or in Yemen, this is supposed to be a grave violation of international law and justice and Iran is sanctioned tight now,” Robinson said. “This is a very consistent double standard and imperial arrogance that we have seen for much of the 20th and into the 21st century.”

The US-based social media giants like Facebook, Twitter or Google have been lately demonstrating their resolve in fighting “malign Russian influence” on their platforms by deleting “suspicious inauthentic accounts.” Robinson is sure nothing of the sort will happen with OCB’s fake accounts in Cuba.

The tech companies “are all linked to high-level national security establishment… Absolutely we will not see Facebook banning this type of US state intervention in the social media in Cuba, or anywhere else in the world.”

Read more:

Facebook restores Telesur page with vague explanation of controversial block

August 30, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

US Uses Facebook to Spread Fake News About Cuba

By Rosa Miriam Elizalde | Cuba News | August 22, 2018

While the United States is making a scandal about the supposed Russian intervention in social networks to influence the 2016 elections won by Donald Trump, today evidence has been uncovered that the U.S. government is using Facebook to spread fake news about Cuba and clandestinely foment dissidence on the island.

The Florida weekly Miami New Times revealed Wednesday that it has had access to documents from the government’s Office of Broadcasting to Cuba (OCB), run by Radio and TV Martí. It reveals that the Trump administration has been using Facebook accounts for two years that appear “native” (from real people on the island) to spread propaganda without informing Cuban Facebook users that it is government advertising.

According to the report obtained by the weekly, due to the failure of Radio and TV Martí,

the OCB’s strategy has focused on an offensive through social networks, based on metrics that place YouTube, Google and Facebook among the most visited sites in Cuba. With the use of AVRA (Audio and Video for Radio) technology, Radio Martí’s programs began to be broadcast through Facebook Live along with TV Marti’s programming. This provides OCB with additional efficient and cost-effective distribution output for both its radio (now visual radio) and TV content.

In fiscal year 2018, OCB has been establishing itself with digital island equipment (read “dissidents” paid for by the US) that creates native and “unbranded” Facebook accounts to disseminate information. Native” pages increase the chances of appearing in the news for Cuban Facebook users. The same strategy will be replicated in other preferred social networks.

Miami New Times says that the documents do not explain what federal agents mean by “unbranded” or “native” Facebook pages, but it is clear that they must resemble the pages of regular social network users to persuade Cubans to read propaganda from Radio and TV Martí.

According to the weekly, both government broadcasters have spent more than $800 million from the U.S. taxpayer over the years in their unsuccessful effort to influence Cuban public opinion.

This plan fits into a long history of attempting to use technology to fit propaganda against Cuba, says University of Pennsylvania professor John S. Nichols.

“There are certainly warning signs here,” says Nichols, co-author of Clandestine Radio Broadcasting: A Study of Revolutionary and Counterrevolutionary Electronic Communication (1987), about OCB’s efforts. “It is the latest plan in a long list of efforts by Radio and TV Martí and their predecessors to try to overcome the laws of physics…. Every time they fail to get their message to Cuba, they say there has to be some technological solution.

Instead, he adds, Congress “seems to fail to recognize that both stations are a colossal failure. It’s sad because they’re spending taxpayers’ money. But what’s really being wasted is our credibility as a great nation doing this kind of thing, dumb and stupid.

Prominent figures from both sides of the U.S. political spectrum, including Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, have described these OCB programs as counter-productive and a waste of money. Democratic representative Betty McCollum liquidated the AeroMartí platform in 2015 (to transmit to from an airplane to Cuba the broadcasts of Radio and TV Martí) and said that the OCB was an “unnecessary” office.

“Radio and television Martí are old-fashioned Cold War artifacts,” McCollum said in a statement in 2015. “Our taxpayers shouldn’t be funding propaganda broadcasts.”

But the programs continue to exist thanks to a handful of anti-Cuban lawmakers, including Miami representative Mario Diaz-Balart, a longtime promoter of Radio and TV Martí, says the Miami New Times.

Earlier this year, Senator Marco Rubio helped install Tomás Regalado, an old friend, as head of the Radio and TV Martí programs. Since then, Regalado has made great promises about how both stations have new plans to reach “5 million” Cuban citizens in the coming years. Regalado appeared last week on the Spanish-speaking MegaTV network to brag about the use of mysterious new technologies that the Cuban government supposedly cannot block. He said that 200 Cubans had received receivers that would help in this new attempt.

“It’s a technology that didn’t exist, and since the government doesn’t know about it, it will be almost impossible to block it,” Regalado told the cameras.

Nichols argued to the Florida weekly that this type of social media propaganda is damaging the U.S. position in the world.

“Third countries see what we are doing and say,’Here comes America again doing this nonsense,” and he adds,’It’s low, petty and not worthy of great power. Other countries will say,’If the U.S. is willing to violate international law, why should we obey our contractual obligations? And given what Radio Martí and TV Martí might be doing right now, we have a hard time complaining about what other countries might be doing against us.

The report that Miami New Times had access to is OCB’s budget request for fiscal years 2018 and 2019. It does not reveal the identities of fake “native” and “unbranded” accounts created on the social network, but Facebook administrators do know what they are. By these extravagant quirks in life, this information coincides with the decision of the social network founded by Marc Zuckerberg to eliminate hundreds of alleged false accounts of Russians and Iranians allegedly involved in several disinformation campaigns.

Will Facebook also eliminate the false accounts created by the U.S. government for regime change in Cuba and will the U.S. Attorney’s Office appoint Robert Mueller or another of his ilk to investigate these abuses, as it has done to determine alleged Russian interference through Facebook in the 2016 elections?

Failed saga of Radio and TV Martí

1985: Radio Martí began broadcasting, and five years later, the television aggression began when a television transmitter was put into service on board a captive aerostat at an altitude of 3,000 meters in one of the keys in the south of the state of Florida.

2005: Hurricane Dennis disappeared the captive balloon located at 10,000 feet above sea level in Cudjoe Key, from where Television Martí was broadcast. The OCB replaced it with the AeroMartí platform.

2014: OCB created the unwanted text messaging service Pyramid, which failed. Then it tried to smuggle small satellite devices into the island, but the project was aborted because in addition to being expensive, the “dissidents” used the terminals to view pornography.

2015: Deactivation of “AeroMartí”.

2018: President Trump created the Internet Task Force for Cuba, which according to the State Department “will examine the technological challenges and opportunities for expanding access to the Internet and independent media in Cuba. Clearly, this Task Force has encouraged OCB’s digital fantasy.

Several investigations by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have acknowledged that there is strong evidence that Radio and Television Martí is not heard or seen in Cuba. According to the Miami New Times, this saga has cost the American taxpayer more than $800 million.

Rosa Miriam Elizalde, Cuban journalist, First Vice-President of UPEC and Vice-President of FELAP. She is a Doctor in Communication Sciences and author or co-author of the books “Antes de que se me olvide”, “Jineteros en La Habana”, “Clic Internet” and “Chávez Nuestro”, among others. She has been awarded the “Juan Gualberto Gómez” National Journalism Prize on several occasions. Founder of Cubadebate and its Editor-in-Chief until January 2017.

On twitter: @elizalderosa

Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.

August 24, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , | 1 Comment

Cuba Denuclearized in 1962. Why Continue the Embargo?

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | June 20, 2018

In a time in which President Trump is saying that the U.S. government will lift economic sanctions against North Korea if it “denuclearizes,” why not lift the decades-old U.S. economic embargo against Cuba? After all, Cuba “denuclearized” back in 1962. Why is the U.S. government still punishing the people of Cuba with its brutal economic embargo?

In fact, the continued existence of the Cuban embargo might well cause North Korea to ask: If we really do denuclearize, how can we be assured that U.S. officials will really lift their sanctions on North Korea given the continuation of their brutal embargo against Cuba after it denuclearized more than 50 years ago?

What is the point of continuing the embargo against Cuba? What is the point of continuing to target the Cuban people with economic misery and impoverishment, on top of the misery and impoverishment they already suffer from living in a socialist economic system?

The goal of the Cuba embargo has always been regime change. Ever since Cuban revolutionaries ousted the brutal and corrupt pro-U.S dictator Fulgencio Batista from power in 1959, the CIA and the Pentagon have been hell-bent on doing whatever was necessary to oust the communist regime in Cuba from power and replace it with another pro-U.S. dictatorship.

That was the purpose of the CIA’s paramilitary invasion at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. That was why the Pentagon was constantly exhorting President Kennedy to attack and invade Cuba. That was the goal of the terrorism and sabotage that the CIA inflicted inside Cuba. That was the aim of Operation Northwoods, the Pentagon’s false-flag operation that the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously recommended to Kennedy. And that has been the purpose of the brutal economic embargo on Cuba.

That was why Cuba invited the Soviet Union to install nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962 — to deter the Pentagon and the CIA from invading the island or, if an invasion did take place, to be able to defend themselves with nuclear missiles. That is the same reason that North Korea has acquired nuclear weapons — to deter the Pentagon and the CIA from attacking and invading North Korea for the purpose of regime change.

Why not just leave Cuba alone? So what if it has a communist regime, just like North Korea does and just like China does? Why does that justify the continued infliction of economic harm on the Cuban people? What business does the U.S. government have in continuing to try to achieve regime change in Cuba? After all, U.S. officials don’t have an embargo against Vietnam, whose communist regime killed some 58,000 American men in the Vietnam War. Why is there an embargo against Cuba, whose regime has never attacked and invaded the United States or even threatened to do so?

Through the more than 50 years of the U.S. embargo against Cuba, many Americans have missed a critically important point: The embargo has been not only an attack on the economic well-being of the Cuban people but also on the freedom of the American people. Keep in mind, after all, that when Americans travel to Cuba and spend money there, they are prosecuted, fined, and incarcerated by their own government, not by thy Cuban government.

Thus, the perverse irony is that in the name of fighting communism with their economic embargo against Cuba, U.S. officials have been prosecuting, fining, and incarcerating Americans for exercising such fundamental, God-given rights as freedom of travel, economic liberty, private property, and freedom of trade. Why should Americans (and anyone else) be punished tor traveling to wherever they want and spending their own money anywhere and any way they want?

June 21, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , , | 4 Comments

Luis Posada Carriles, Hemisphere’s Most Wanted Terrorist, Dies Free in Miami at Age 90

By Brett Wilkins | CounterPunch | May 28, 2018

Luis Posada Carriles, the most notorious and wanted terrorist in the Western Hemisphere — but one few Americans have ever heard of — has died a free man in Miami at age 90.

The Miami Herald reports Posada Carriles died peacefully in his sleep in a Hollywood, Florida hospital early on May 23 following a lengthy battle with throat cancer.

At the time of his death, Posada Carriles, a staunchly militant anti-Castro Cuban exile and former longtime CIA agent, was wanted by authorities in Cuba and Venezuela for his leading role in masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban commercial airliner over the Caribbean, an attack that killed 73 innocent people. He is also wanted for orchestrating a string of terror attacks on Cuban hotels and for repeatedly plotting to assassinate the late Cuban president Fidel Castro.

Posada Carriles and Castro were actually acquaintances during their pre-revolution college years at the University of Havana. Both equally despised the brutal US-backed Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. However, after Castro’s revolution overthrew the Batista regime Posada Carriles was briefly jailed before fleeing his homeland for Argentina, then the United States.

When the John F. Kennedy administration decided to wage covert warfare against Castro’s Cuba, Posada Carriles was one of the young CIA-trained exiles who planned the ill-fated 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion. Following that colossal embarrassment, he received explosives and sabotage training at Ft. Benning, Georgia during a period of rising US support for anti-Castro terrorism, crimes which included a rocket attack on the United Nations in a failed bid to assassinate Che Guevara.

The CIA set up a station at University of Miami, where agents plotted to kill or overthrow Castro and where operatives planned and launched countless terror and sabotage missions. Militantly anti-communist exile groups trained and operated throughout South Florida, with secret camps popping up in the Everglades. In the 1970s, a wave of bombings, assassinations and other attacks on pro-Castro exiles in South Florida and far beyond earned Miami the FBI nickname of America’s “terrorist capital.”

Posada Carriles would later boast that “the CIA taught us everything… they taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb, trained us in sabotage.”

He would put all of those deadly skills to use while planning, along with fellow anti-Castro exile Orlando Bosch, the brazen broad daylight car bombing assassination of former Chilean minister Orlando Letelier in Washington, DC on September 21, 1976. Letelier’s newlywed American aide, Ronni Moffit, was also killed in the attack.

The following month, Posada Carriles and Bosch planned the bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455, which killed 73 civilians including Cuba’s junior Olympic fencing team. It was the worst act of airborne terrorism in the Western Hemisphere until the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The CIA, under its new director George H. W. Bush, knew as early as June 1976 that Cuban exiles were plotting to blow up a Cubana airliner, but did nothing.

Police in Barbados arrested two Venezuelan operatives in connection with the bombing of Flight 455. They confessed and implicated Posada Carriles and Bosch as planners of the attack. The Cubans were arrested, tried and acquitted in a military court but civil authorities planned to retry them and they remained behind bars. Although they were acquitted in 1987, secret US government documents have since proven the US knew Posada Carriles and Bosch were behind the bombing.

Posada Carriles didn’t wait around to learn his fate. He escaped from prison in 1985 and made his way to El Salvador where, under the alias Ramon Medina, he worked for Col. Oliver North on the Reagan administration’s illegal arming of the terrorist Contra army in Nicaragua.

In the late 1990s, Posada Carriles was behind a string of hotel bombings in Cuba, including one in 1997 that killed an Italian tourist. He later explained that his goal was to cripple the socialist economy’s burgeoning tourism industry to deprive the Castro regime of desperately needed hard currency. Posada Carriles boasted that he “slept like a baby” after the bombings and brushed off their grisly results. “That Italian was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he said.

Over 40 bombings in Honduras were also attributed to Posada Carriles during the 1990s. In 2000, Cuban intelligence agents foiled a plot by him and others to bomb a Panamanian university during a visit by Fidel Castro. Posada Carriles was convicted and jailed. However, then-Panamanian president Mireya Moscoso, a close ally of the George W. Bush administration, pardoned the terrorist before leaving office. Panama’s Supreme Court later overturned what it ruled an unconstitutional pardon.

Posada Carriles illegally entered the United States in 2005, returning to a hero’s welcome in Miami, a city that once celebrated Orlando Bosch Day to honor his co-conspirator. He sought asylum but was instead arrested for entering the country illegally. Although the Justice Department called him “an unrepentant criminal and admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks,” a federal judge recommended that he be released.

Incredibly, he was freed. Posada Carriles settled in Miami, where he found work as an artist. He also made frequent radio and television appearances, and once sat in the front row with Orlando Bosch at a speech by President George W. Bush, whose family is closely connected with some of the most notorious anti-Castro terrorists.

In April 2011, Posada Carriles was acquitted of immigration-related charges in a Texas court. Although he was accused of lying about his role in the deadly 1997 Cuba hotel bombing, he was never indicted for that or any other attack, even after his confessions. Critics blasted the United States for fighting a global war on terrorism, replete with threats and worse to attack countries that aid and abet terrorists, while harboring the hemisphere’s most wanted terrorists — and many others like them.

While many of Miami’s Cuban exiles, especially the older ones, are mourning Posada Carriles’ passing, his death was greeted with cheers throughout Cuba and much of Latin America. The Miami-based exile radio station La Poderosa hailed him as “a leader of liberty and justice… a man of real dignity,” while Cuban state media lamented that the “bin Laden of the West” died “without paying his debts to justice.”

One man’s terrorist may very well be another’s freedom fighter, but Luis Posada Carriles’ fight for “freedom” — which often included doing dirty, deadly work for some of the world’s worst human rights violators —  claimed the lives of too many innocent men, women and children to be called anything but terrorism.

Brett Wilkins is editor-at-large for US news at Digital Journal.

May 30, 2018 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump approves 20 million dollars for subversion against Cuba

Radio Rebelde | 2018-03-26

US President Donald Trump approved over the weekend a 20-million-dollar fund to support subversive actions against Cuba.

The move, which is commonplace as part of the permanent US’s anti-Cuba policy, came in after Trump himself had proposed to eliminate such funds in May 2017. The money dedicated to subvert internal order in Cuba is part of the US budget for fiscal 2018.

Despite large cuts by the White House to funds destined to the State Department, the USAID and foreign assistance programs for this year, Washington did not hesitate in allocating the large sum of money also destined by previous US administrations to undertake subversive programs in Cuba under the so-called promotion of democracy projects.

Since 1996, when the Helms-Burton Law was adopted, Washington has used public funds for anti-Cuba programs. The Obama administration proposed 20 million dollars annually for those aims from fiscal 2009 to 2016. Add to these the funds destined to maintain subversive radio and TV transmissions plus the money to fund penetration and intelligence actions.

March 28, 2018 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | 1 Comment

FBI found ‘no evidence’ US diplomats in Cuba attacked with ‘sonic weapon’ – US senator

RT | January 7, 2018

The FBI has found no evidence that American diplomats in Havana were the victims of attacks with unknown weapons, according to Republican Sen. Jeff Flake.

During a meeting with top Cuban officials, including Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, Flake was informed that after four trips to Cuba, the FBI had found no evidence that the mysterious sickness experienced by several US diplomats was the result of foul play.

“Nobody is saying that these people didn’t experience some event, but there’s no evidence that that was a deliberate attack by somebody, either the Cubans or anybody else,” Flake told the Associated Press.

Twenty-four US government officials and spouses fell ill in Havana starting in 2016. The illnesses spurred the US to withdraw most of its diplomats from Havana, and also led to the expulsion of many Cuban diplomats from Washington.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has said he is “convinced these were targeted attacks.” Cuba says the mysterious string of illnesses has been unjustly used to damage relations between the two countries – which were partially restored under President Barack Obama.

January 7, 2018 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | , | Leave a comment

Lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis

By Neil Clark | RT | October 28, 2017

Fifty-five years ago this weekend the world appeared to be on the brink of nuclear war as the Cuban missile crisis unfolded. What are the lessons that can be learned today about the events of October 1962?

It was the great filmmaker Charles Chaplin who commented that life is a tragedy when seen in close-up but a comedy in long-shot. Perspective is everything. If we take a ‘close-up’ view of the Cuban missile crisis, we fail to see the wider issues involved. We’re also likely to fall for the dominant narrative, which has the Soviet Union as the aggressor and the US as the side acting in self-defense. In fact, it was the other way round.

We call it the ‘Cuban missile crisis, ’ but in truth, it was only partly about Cuba. It was just as much about Turkey, and in particular, the fifteen offensive nuclear-tipped intermediate-range Jupiter missiles that had been provocatively deployed there by the US in 1961.

The Soviet Union felt threatened by them and rightly so. They could if launched in a pre-emptive ‘first-strike,’ obliterate entire cities in the western USSR, such as Minsk, Kiev, and Moscow, within minutes.

Moreover, the so-called ‘missile gap’ which Kennedy had campaigned on in 1960 against Richard Nixon, actually existed in the US’ favor. The US had around nine times as many nuclear warheads as the Soviet Union. “By 1962, a million US soldiers were stationed in two hundred foreign bases, all threatening the Soviet Union, from Greenland to Turkey, from Portugal to the Philippines,” write Jeremy Isaacs and Taylor Downing, in their book ‘Cold War.’ “Three and a half million troops belonging to America’s allies were garrisoned around the Soviet Union’s borders. There were American nuclear warheads in Italy, the United Kingdom, and Turkey.”

Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader in 1962, had to do something to quickly change the situation, or else his country was in danger of nuclear annihilation. Remember President Kennedy had already seriously considered the ‘first-strike’ option. Fred Kaplan, the author of The Wizards of Armageddon, records how on July 13, 1961, Kennedy held a National Security Council meeting. Among the items on the agenda: “steps to prepare war plans which would permit the discriminating use of nuclear weapons in Central Europe and… against the USSR.”

America’s aggressive policies toward Cuba gave Khrushchev an opportunity to improve his country‘s security. When the cigar-smoking Fidel Castro first come to power in 1959, sweeping away the US-backed leader Batista in a popular uprising, he had not declared his revolution to be a Marxist one. But his program which involved nationalization and clamping down on the business activities of mobsters like Meyer Lansky, inevitably put him on a collision course with Washington.

In December 1960, the Eisenhower administration had already endorsed a scheme to invade Cuba to topple Fidel. John Kennedy, who became President in January 1961, inherited this ’cunning plan’ and went along with it. The result was the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Blackadder’s Baldrick really couldn’t have come up with anything more disastrous.

Understandably, Castro now declared a socialist revolution and turned to Moscow for assistance. Khrushchev saw a golden opportunity to “throw a hedgehog at Uncle Sam’s pants.”

An agreement was made with the Castro brothers, whereby Cuba would be a site for Soviet missiles. They would not only defend the island from a US-led invasion- but also in Khrushchev’s own words help to “equalize” the balance of power with the US.

Of course, when the US learned what was going on, there was indignant outrage of the sort US leaders do best. The second best quote from the whole of the Cuban missile crisis (after Khrushchev’s hedgehog one), came from Kennedy when he was told about the missile sites under construction. “It’s just as if we suddenly began to put a major number of MRBMs (missiles) in Turkey! Now that’d be goddamned dangerous, I would think.”’

To which his National Security Adviser, George Bundy replied: “Well, we did, Mr. President.”

Kennedy mulled over his options and decided that a blockade, to stop Soviet ships delivering their missiles, was the best call. Never mind that the Soviet action to ship missiles to an ally was legal and that a blockade most certainly wasn’t. But what to do about the missiles that had already arrived?

The President was presented with plans from his generals for air strikes and a full-scale invasion of Cuba. “But it was estimated that the ten days of fighting tied to an invasion, the US would suffer 18,500 casualties. Kennedy would have to do a deal,” note Isaacs and Downing.

A deal was done, but it was not one which the US administration could publicly acknowledge. In return for Soviet missiles being withdrawn from Cuba, the US agreed not to invade the island and to remove its Jupiters from Turkey which it did about six months later.

The US media hailed a great victory, but in fact, Washington had been forced to make concessions. It’s likely that if Khrushchev hadn’t played such a high line in 1961, the Soviet Union would have faced a pre-emptive strike sometime in the 1960s, very probably from the missiles situated in Turkey. The citizens of Moscow, Minsk, and Kiev have much to thank him for.

After 1962, the US knew that they had to tread warily. For the next seventeen years, détente was pursued by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Yes, the CIA continued to plot to overthrow the Cuban government, and of course subvert democratic processes around the world if the wrong candidates got elected, or look like they were going to get elected, but after the events of October 1962, the US was more frightened of directly provoking the Kremlin.

It was only in the late 1970s that the position began to change once again. A pivotal battle as I noted in an earlier OpEdge was between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, a man of peace who genuinely wanted to maintain good relations with Moscow, and the uber-hawkish Russophobe Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had been appointed President Carter’s National Security Adviser. ‘Zbig’ won, and the results for mankind were catastrophic.

Neocons who had loathed détente began to crawl out of the woodwork. Again there were calls for a ‘pre-emptive’ strike on the Soviet Union.

Mikhail Gorbachev, a genuinely nice man who sadly had learned nothing from history, became Soviet leader in 1985 and surrendered his country’s bargaining chips in return for promises which weren’t worth the paper they weren’t written on.

The subsequent fall of the USSR was toasted by ‘muscular’ liberals and Trotskyites alike, but older and wiser heads knew that with no real counterbalance to US power we were heading for perilous waters. I always remember reading an article by the conservative commentator and staunch anti-communist Peregrine Worsthorne, in the Sunday Telegraph from around this time in which he said that in time people might well look back at the Cold War with some nostalgia as a period of relative peace and stability. He was absolutely right.

With no Soviet Union around to keep them in check The Project for a New American Century crowd got going. The result was two decades of wars and ‘liberal interventions’ which killed millions, hugely boosting the cause of terrorism and leading to a refugee crisis of Biblical proportions. It’s obvious none of this would have occurred if the USSR had still existed, but of course, in the name of ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy,’ we weren’t supposed to say it.

Things have only changed in recent years, as Russia, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, has re-emerged as a global player and a counterweight to US imperialism. Syria is the first place since the end of the old Cold War where the ambitions of US neocons have been thwarted. Aleppo will hopefully prove to be their Stalingrad.

When we look back at the events of October 1962, is that it’s clear the US only cedes ground when it fears what the other side can threaten it with. To get Uncle Sam to stop being such an obnoxious bully, you have to throw or threaten to throw a hedgehog at his pants, to use Khrushchev’s memorable phrase. Being nice, like Gorbachev was, only gets you trampled on.

Gaddafi, like Saddam, surrendered his weapons program and was rewarded with a bayonet up his anus and the cackling laughter of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Milosevic generously hosted ’The Balkans Bull’ Dick Holbrooke offering him his best slivovitz, and ended up being denied the proper medical treatment during his US-instigated show trial at The Hague.

Kim Jong-un, by contrast, tests missiles for fun and shows Washington the finger and his country hasn’t been bombarded. He’s clearly studied closely what happened fifty-five years ago and also since 1990.

Khrushchev’s decision to send missiles to Cuba, a country under genuine threat of invasion, was not only legal but also wise. Far from endangering the peace, it actually made war less likely. The nuclear Armageddon that was feared in Cold War 1.0 didn’t occur because the US feared the Soviet response. In fact looking back at 1962 the only regret was that more missiles hadn’t arrived. Then Moscow would have been able to gain even more concessions.

Which brings us back to today. Could a new Russian deployment of missiles to Cuba as the Communist Party of Russia called for last year in response to the Pentagon’s plan to deploy HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) in Turkey be a means of obtaining the removal of NATO from Russia’s borders, and getting US hawks to pipe down?

Put another way, if there were already Russian missiles situated just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, do we think the US would be quite so belligerent in its foreign policy? Merely to ask the question is to answer it.

Follow Neil Clark @NeilClark66

October 28, 2017 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

JFK docs show US had plans to murder Cuban refugees — then blame Castro to start a war

By Brad Reed | Raw Story | October 27, 2017

Some of the newly released documents related to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination reveal shocking details about plans developed by the United States government to depose the late Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

As Miami New Times reports, a set of documents related to Operation Mongoose — which was the Central Intelligence Agency’s plot to remove Castro from power — show that the U.S. at one point considered staging terrorist attacks against Cuban refugees that were either headed to or were already residing within the country.

A paper approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 outlined a plan to create a pretext for invading Cuba and overthrowing the Castro regime that involved killing refugees and then pinning the blame on Castro’s government.

“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area,” the report read. “The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven within the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated).”

The report also suggested committing attacks on refugees already within the country, as well as “exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots” to make it look as though the Cuban government was attacking people trying to flee to Florida.

The report also said the staged attacks could coincide with “the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement” to help turn the tide of global opinion against the tiny communist nation.

Miami New Times notes that these plans were never carried out, although that doesn’t make their inclusion in a report signed off by the Joint Chiefs of Staff any less of a shock.

October 27, 2017 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | 1 Comment

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