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The Heirs of Meyer Lansky Want Compensation from Cuba. They Shouldn’t Get a Dime.

By Jack Colhoun | History News Network | June 19, 2016

Meyer Lansky

The heirs of Meyer Lansky, the impresario of the North American Mafia gambling colony in Cuba (1933-1958) are betting on a big payback from the negotiations between the United States and Cuba to normalize relations between the two countries. Compensation claims by U.S. citizens or businesses for properties nationalized by the Cuban revolution are among the issues under discussion.

Lansky’s daughter Sandi, her son Gary Rapoport, and her brother Paul have filed a compensation claim against Cuba for the Riviera Hotel and Casino with the U.S. Foreign Claims Settlement Commission. The Cuban revolution confiscated the Riviera and other Mafia-owned properties after it toppled the gangster-linked regime of General Fulgencio Batista in 1959.

“It was through my grandfather’s hard work that the hotel was built,” Rapoport told the U. K. Daily Mail Online on December 23, 2015. “We are his natural relations . . . . By right, it should be our property.” He says the Riviera is valued at $70 million. The Tampa Bay Tribune, Reuters, and Haaretz have also covered the story.

The Riviera, which overlooks the Straits of Florida, was the crown jewel of Lansky’s casinos, hotels, and nightclubs in Havana. When the Riviera opened in December 1957, it was the largest Mafia-owned hotel-casino outside Las Vegas. The hotel’s 440 double rooms were booked solid for the winter season of 1957-1958.

However, the narrative that the success of the Riviera was the product of Meyer Lansky’s “hard work” is undercut by Lansky’s own assessment of his arrangement with Batista. Lansky talked candidly about his years in Cuba with Israeli national security writers Dennis Eisenberg, Uri Dan, and Eli Landau for their admiring biography Meyer Lansky: Mogul of the Mob (Paddington Press, 1979). (Lansky lived in Israel in 1970-1971 to avoid tax evasion charges in the United States.)

Lansky pitched his plan to Batista to open Mafia owned casinos and nightclubs in Cuba in 1933. Lansky promised to make Batista, who had just come to power in a coup d’etat, a partner. Batista and his inner circle would get regular payments from the Mafia gamblers. In return, the gangsters would be allowed to operate without interference from Cuban authorities. With a handshake and an abrazo, Lansky and Batista laid the foundations of the Cuban gangster state.

“Working on the well-known principle that it’s better to use other people’s money than your own, Lansky persuaded Batista to have the Cuban government help finance the venture,” Eisenberg, Dan, and Landau wrote. “The [Cuban] government agreed to back every dollar invested on the island by foreigners with a dollar of its own and to give every hotel that cost more than one million dollars the precious prize of a gambling license . . . and the casino hotels would not have to pay Cuban taxes.”

The Riviera was one of four new hotels with casinos, which opened in Havana between 1955 and 1958. Cuban development banks subsidized 50 percent of Lansky’s $14 million Riviera project; Lansky-linked investors provided the rest. Senator Eduardo Suarez Rivas, brother of Batista’s Minister of Labor Jose Suarez Rivas, was secretary of the Compania de Hotels La Riviera de Cuba, which operated the Riviera.

The Mafia gambling colony was the cornerstone of the Cuban gangster state. The gangsters’ graft bound Batista, his inner circle, senior security officers, and the Mafia together in the defense of one of the most repressive regimes in Latin America. As a CIA report put it, “In return for the loyalty they gave him, Batista always backed his security services. In times of crisis, he often suspended civil guarantees . . . and gave the services a free hand.”

The days of the North American gangsters in Cuba were numbered when Batista fled into exile on January 1, 1959. In 1958, Fidel Castro’s July 26th Movement had denounced the Mafia radio broadcasts from its guerrilla redoubt in the Sierra Maestra for turning Havana into a center of commercialized vice – gambling, prostitution, and drugs. When Castro arrived in Havana on January 8, he vowed to “clean out all the gamblers.” The Riviera and other gangster-owned properties were nationalized, and the Mafia gamblers returned to the United States.

To regain control of its casinos, hotels, and nightclubs in post-Castro Cuba, the Mafia waged a covert war on the Cuban revolution. The gangsters regrouped with their Cuban political allies, now in exile in the United States. The Mafia subsidized Cuban exile leaders and supplied arms to Cuban exile commando groups for attacks on Cuban targets from speedy boats and small aircraft. The gangsters also plotted with the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro.

In 1959, Lansky volunteered to arrange the assassination of Castro in a meeting with the CIA, according to Doc Stacher, a life-long Lansky associate. “He [Lansky] indicated to the CIA that some of his people who were still on the island, or those who were just going back, might assassinate Castro,” Stacher told his Israeli biographers. “Meyer Lansky thought that if Castro would be eliminated there was a good chance for Batista to make a comeback . . . He told them [CIA officers] he was quite prepared to finance the operation himself.” From 1960 to 1963, the CIA and the Mafia plotted covertly to assassinate Castro.

To portray Lansky as an aggrieved victim of Cuba is to stand history on its head. There should be no compensation for the heirs of the former Mafia gamblers in Cuba.

Jack Colhoun is an historian of the Cold War (University of Wisconsin, Madison, BA, 1968; York University, Toronto, PhD, 1976), an investigative reporter, and professional archival researcher. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Toronto Star, Salon, History News Network, The Nation, The Progressive, In These Times, the former (New York) Guardian newsweekly, and formerCovert Action Quarterly. He is the author of Gangsterismo: The United States, Cuba, and the Mafia, 1933-1966 (New York: OR Books, 2013).

June 25, 2016 Posted by | Book Review, Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 4 Comments

Obama: US Military Engaged in Anti-Terror Operations Across 15 Countries

Sputnik — 13.06.2016

obama-bomb-mid-east48US military personnel are engaged in counterterrorism operations across 15 different countries, President Barack Obama said in a biannual statement to Congress released on Monday.

The letter outlined US military counterrorism operations across the globe in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Somalia, Yemen, Djibouti, Libya, Cuba, Niger, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Egypt, Jordan, and Kosovo. All nations have US combat-equipped personnel deployed for a specific counterterrorism mission.

Obama indicated that that there is no timeline for the war on terrorism, and he will direct “additional measures to protect US citizens and interests” if necessary.

“It is not possible to know at this time the precise scope or the duration of the deployments of US Armed Forces necessary to counter terrorist threats to the United States,” Obama said.

Under the 2001 authorization for use of military force, the US president must update Congress every six months on the military operations against al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces.

June 13, 2016 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Next US Coup in Latin America: Obama Takes Aim at Venezuela’s Maduro

Sputnik – 06.05.2016

Unsatisfied with only ousting Brazil’s President by leaking NSA surveillance to the country’s judiciary, Washington now seeks to break the back of Venezuela by fracturing the powerful Petrocaribe energy alliance.

On Monday, the US began a two-day energy summit in Washington, attended by several Caribbean countries, in an attempt to undermine the Petrocaribe oil alliance between Venezuela and Caribbean nations, in what some see as a bid to break the back of the Venezuelan government of Nicolas Maduro.

The energy summit comes on the heels of a proposed recall referendum against the Venezuelan leader, who was elected following the death of Hugo Chavez. The Maduro government faces flagging public opinion due to economic disruption brought about by dwindling oil prices, now at $35 per barrel.

The Venezuelan economy relies on oil revenues for some 95% of its income. Regional agreements set forth under the Chavez regime allow for Latin American and Caribbean countries to pool resources in markets where they possess a competitive advantage.

With oil prices nearing decade lows, the Venezuelan economy and its populace continue to be ravaged by deep poverty and over 1000% inflation. Dire conditions in the country are a consequence of policies that long pre-date the Maduro government, and have been exacerbated by Western market manipulation and Saudi Arabia’s push to bankrupt competitor countries by artificially deflating oil prices below profitable levels.

In a Wednesday interview with Loud & Clear’s Brian Becker, Francisco Dominguez of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign explained that this is not the first time that the White House has attempted to fracture the Petrocaribe oil alliance. In 2015, Vice President Joe Biden created a fracas by attempting to meet secretly with Caribbean leaders to woo them away from the alliance. The Vice President and the State Department initially denied the meeting before retracting that position.

Dominguez speculated that this week’s energy in summit in Washington revolved around US imperialistic hopes to replace Maduro with an opposition leader more favorable to American oil companies. “I think this whole thing has more to do with the overall policy of the United States seeking to oust the government of Venezuela once and for all,” said Dominguez.

US relations with the Latin American country have long been strained, both under Maduro and under his predecessor, Hugo Chavez. Many remember the late-President Chavez stating before the United Nations that he smelt sulfur, a reference to the Christian devil, after walking past then-President George W. Bush. The Chavez regime opposed the Bush administration’s penchant for regime change and US intervention in oil rich countries.

Yet, Dominguez believes that the Venezuelan people have more to fear from Washington Democrats than from a Republican Party led by presumptive nominee Donald Trump. He suggested that this week’s round of meetings was sparked by a positive general election outlook on the side of Democrats, who expect a Clinton presidency that will mirror the policies of Obama.

“It looks good for the Democrats against the Republicans so now they want to take a tougher policy against Venezuela,” said Dominguez.

Dominguez asserts that it remains unlikely that Caribbean states will abandon the Petrocaribe alliance, providing as it does for impoverished countries with stable oil supplies preferential conditions and favorable prices for 25 years. He suggests that at least 13 Caribbean nations have benefited from an arrangement that also contributes to regional unity.

But the Washington-supported opposition in Venezuela includes among their grievances the Petrocaribe energy alliance, which has become increasingly expensive for the country to maintain as oil prices have dropped. The White House is seen to be aiming to fabricate the fear among Caribbean states that Venezuela will not maintain their commitment to Petrocaribe, in a bid to force the smaller nations to accept an arrangement with the United States.

Some see the effort to fracture the Petrocaribe alliance as an attempt by Washington to strike a fatal blow at Chavez’s legacy. The controversial former leader established a number of regional political bodies in an effort to strengthen Latin America against Western corporate interests.

Dominguez recalls that the string of coalitions established by Chavez saw to it that each regional country contributed what they had into a broader pool, expanding the fortunes of all Latin American and Caribbean countries.

“In the case of Venezuela it was oil, in the case of Brazil it was industrial goods, Argentina provided agricultural goods, and Cuba supplied the doctors,” said Dominguez. “Chavez was very successful, if you look at the regional political map.”

That legacy now rests in the hands of the embattled Maduro government, likely facing a recall election following a review of referendum signatures. The opposition will need some 7.5 million votes to oust Maduro, equal to the amount of votes he won when elected. The outcome of the referendum remains unpredictable, and to date the opposition remains divided.

May 6, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Analyst: Cuba’s Opposition Groups Are Often US-Backed

teleSUR – March 19, 2016

Opposition organizations from Cuba are anxiously expecting President Barack Obama’s visit to the island as they prepare allegations against the Cuban government and demands to the U.S. government in an effort to take advantage of the recent international attention on what has been deemed a historic visit.

“(Much of the) Cuban opposition is not legitimate because it does not seek the well being of Cubans as they claim and is led by powerful U.S.-backed groups that have always sought to overthrow the socialist government,” said to teleSUR international analyst Ramiro Galarza.

Representatives from groups of the Cuba’s most prominent opposition movements, like “the Ladies in White,” will have a meeting with Obama on Tuesday. They are expected to give him a letter in which they will demand the U.S. intervene in various issues, including the release of prisoners and unmediated access to internet.

However, some opposition leaders have started to show disappointment about Obama’s visit, underlining the same points of disagreement of the most conservative U.S. opponents to the restoration of relations between Washington and Havana.

Cuba’s opposition has never been jointly organized, says Galarza, because different factions and leaders rarely have reached agreement.

“They are only interested in their own cause,” the analyst said. “(Most) people in Cuba are not familiar with opposition leaders and their demands, not even those [who] claim refugee status with the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program,” he added.

During what was known as “Cuba’s Special Period,” which lasted from the late 1980’s till the early 2000’s, the isolated country passed through one of its worst economic crisis, mainly provoked by the collapse of the Soviet Union, ally and sponsor of Cuba, but also largely caused by the U.S. blockade on the island.

Analyst Galarza said during that time, several U.S.-backed organizations, headed by groups of wealthy Cubans abroad, tried to destabilize the government of then President Fidel Castro, using the adverse situation experienced by people to sow dissent.

On August 5, 1994, there was a huge demonstration in Havana, with thousands of people in the streets demanding that the government improve their situation, clashes between protesters and police erupted, the riot became violent and then President Fidel Castro went out and gave a passionate speech to Cubans in an attempt to calm the situation.

He accused the United States of trying to provoke a “bloodbath” in Cuba.

The incident led to the reforms that softened the restrictions on dissident movements while advocating for non-violence. Those reforms have increasingly improved in recent years.

However, recently, attempts by the U.S. government to embolden Cuba’s opposition have not be unheard of.

In 2014, “the Cuba Twitter” controversy caused a stir after the Associated Press reported that the social media platform ZunZuneo, named after Cuban slang for a hummingbird, was allegedly intended to destabilize the Cuban government by advocating for Cuban users to create “smart mobs” and “renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society.”

March 21, 2016 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , , | 1 Comment

US Immigration Policy for Cuba: A Cold War Relic

teleSUR | March 19, 2016

The Cuban Adjustment Act, passed in 1966 by the U.S. Congress, allows any Cuban who enters the United States to gain permanent residency after being present in the U.S. for one year. This law, passed at the height of the Cold War, is unique to Cuban emigrants, with no other migrant group given this special consideration.
Cubans sit aboard a homemade raft, known in Cuba as a balsa.

This Act was passed in order to encourage emigration from Cuba to the United States. After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, there was an exodus of Cubans opposed to the revolution who fled to the United States. In his autobiography, Fidel Castro stated that in the first three years after the revolution, more than 270,000 Cubans migrated to the United States.

Many of those who left Cuba were professionals and their exit put a strain on the Cuban economy – a favorable situation for policy makers in the U.S.

Wanting to continue to promote a “brain drain” in Cuba, the Cuban Adjustment Act was passed, which further encouraged Cubans to leave the island and arrive in the U.S. Those opposed to the revolution also facilitated their arrival by providing material support for these so-called refugees.

Cuba and the U.S. did eventually negotiate a deal where the U.S. promised to issue up to 20,000 visas a year so people could migrate legally, but ultimately only some 1,000 were issued yearly.

With the allure of having the right to live and work in the United States legally upon arrival but unable to secure a visa, many Cubans continued to make the journey to the U.S. state of Florida by whatever means they could.

This led to people undertaking various means in an attempt to navigate the strait separating the island from Florida’s southern tip, including hijacking vehicles not apt for long-distance sea travel, such as tug boats. Despite this, the Cuban coast guard had strict orders not to intercept vessels in the water if they had people aboard. This also led to the phenomenon known as the balseros, people who attempt to arrive in the U.S. in homemade rafts, especially during the difficult Special Period.

The influx of Cubans led to more negotiations between the U.S. and Cuba, and in 1995 the U.S. government finally agreed not to admit Cubans found at sea headed for the U.S. Those who did reach the shores of the U.S. would be admitted and be granted residency under the Cuban Adjustment Act, hence the reference to the “wet-foot, dry-foot” rule.

The Cuban government considers this rule a provocation, while critics say the policy not only promotes dangerous forms of travel, but is also an incentive for human trafficking by criminal groups.

March 20, 2016 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

Cuban Doctors Have Saved 87,000 Lives in Bolivia Since 2006

teleSUR | March 5, 2016

Cuba is known for sending medical personnel overseas as part of its medical brigade program which was launched during the 1959 Revolution.

The Bolivian Health Ministry thanked Cuban doctors and the Cuban government Friday for the solidarity offered to their country as part of Cuba’s medical internationalism over the past 10 years.

Ariana Campero, the head of agency of the decade-long program, congratulated the local partners and conveyed greetings from President Evo Morales. “Thank you very much to Fidel Castro, Commander Raul Castro and the Cuban people. We are sending you all an embrace of solidarity from Bolivia.”

According to Dr. Pavel Noa, the national coordinator of the mission, the most important results that protrude from the mission encompass more than 63 million consultations offered to the Bolivian people, 179,282 surgical interventions performed and a total of 86,983 lives saved.

Medical workers are often believed to be Cuba’s most important export, having served in countries all over the world and in particular in Latin America, Africa and, more recently in Oceania.

Dr. Alina Ochoa, head of Medical Assistance Brigade, stressed the importance of cooperation in the healthcare sector and said the aim was to ensure the health of the Bolivian people. “Cuba has a long and successful history in providing medical staff worldwide, which was ratified in Bolivia with the presence of more than 700 collaborators.”

The representative of the Pan American Health Organization, Luis Fernando Leanes, acknowledged the work of the Cuban mission, which he described as wonderful and very important. “How nice to be in this country and see Cubans and Bolivians working together for peace and welfare”, he said.

Cuba´s efforts in providing medical services to the poor have been acknowledged internationally as it was among the first countries to respond when the World Health Organization called for medical staff to help with the Ebola crisis. Fidel Castro proudly described the 12,000 medical volunteers who signed up as “an army of white coats”.

March 5, 2016 Posted by | Economics, Solidarity and Activism | , , , | 2 Comments

The US war against Cuba

https://youtu.be/PO3C0LkOxJA

February 27, 2016 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

The Truth About the Spanish-American War with James Perloff

Corbett | February 10, 2016

SHOW NOTES AND MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=17810

Although it gets short shrift in the history textbooks, in many ways the modern American empire can find its origins in the Spanish-American War. Today we talk to James Perloff of JamesPerloff.com about his article on the war, “Trial Run for Interventionism,” and how the bankers used their media and political connections to launch the war and introduce foreign interventionism to the American psyche.

February 10, 2016 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , , | Leave a comment

US May Drop Program Helping Cuban Doctors Defect

teleSUR | January 9, 2016

The White House may end a program encouraging Cuban doctors sent abroad to defect and move to the United States.

The program, created under George W. Bush in 2006, is under review as a part of ongoing negotiations to normalize relations with Cuba, reported Reuters on Friday. Cuba considers it a “reprehensible practice” that is designed to “deprive Cuba and many other countries of vital human resources.”

The island sends medical personnel to countries suffering from health crises, including to South Africa in the post-apartheid brain drain and to West Africa to treat patients infected with Ebola.

The dispatches are a significant export and source of income for the country. In exchange for staff Cuba receives 100,000 barrels of oil a year from Venezuela.

Under the Cuban Medical Professional Parole Program, U.S. embassies in over 60 countries have discretionary authority to grant Cuban doctors abroad U.S. visas.

Despite being compared to slaves or prisoners on parole, out of over 40,000 medical workers in third world countries, the program accepted a total of 7,117 applicants. In 2015, 1,663 applicants were approved, a record in its nine-year history.

“It’s not only an issue of quantity, but of the quality of the specialists, the brains that the North American government has been selectively robbing… which is also a source of income for the problems that our people are confronting daily,” Marcos Agustín del Risco, director of Human Capital in the Ministry of Public Health, told Radio Rebelde.

The defectors “seriously affected” Cuba’s own free health care system, causing President Raul Castro to recently announce that the government will re-impose limits on the number of medics leaving the country. Last summer, controversy over Cuban doctors who had fled to Colombia to process U.S. visas became a major question in U.S.-Cuba relations.

“It’s an unusual policy, and I think as we look at the whole totality of the relationship, this is something that we felt was worth being in the list of things that we consider,” Ben Rhodes, a national security adviser that participated in Cuba talks last year, told Reuters.

January 9, 2016 Posted by | Corruption, Economics | , , , | 1 Comment

US Could Spend US$30M in 2016 to ‘Promote Democracy’ in Cuba

teleSUR – January 2, 2016

The United States government could potentially spend up to US$30 million on “democracy development” programs in Cuba in 2016, according to bills waiting for approval at U.S. Congress.

Two draft bills related to U.S. State Department’s budget for foreign spending were approved by the Appropriation Committees of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The draft bill approved by the House Committee on Appropriations states that the National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, the State Department and the Agency for International Development would share US$30 million in Cuba democracy funds.

Of the funds appropriated by this Act under the heading ‘Economic Support Fund, “$30,000,000 shall be made available to promote democracy and strengthen civil society in Cuba,” the draft bill said. It was approved by the House’s committee in June 2015.

It added that such funds could not be used “for business promotion, economic reform, entrepreneurship, or any other assistance that is not democracy-building.”

Meanwhile, the draft bill approved by the Senate Committee on Appropriations said that US$20 million should be used for Cuba democracy programs, including up to $5 million for “private Cuban entrepreneurs.” This draft was approved by the committee in July last year.

The Senate version of the bill also authorizes US$50.5 million “for programs to promote Internet freedom globally,” and says a portion of the funds would likely be used “to support Internet freedom in Cuba.”

Neither bill has been approved by any of the corresponding government bodies yet.

Over the years, programs such as the NED or the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have received mounting criticism over meddling in other nations political spheres in order to promote U.S. interests, unlike their claim of promoting democracy and aid.

Both programs are funded by the U.S. congress.

Republican Congressman Ron Paul, who ran for the U.S. presidency twice, has argued against such programs. In 2005, he stated that NED has “very little to do with democracy. It is an organization that uses U.S. tax money to actually subvert democracy, by showering funding on favored political parties or movements overseas.”

The NED has been banned in various countries over meddling claims.

January 2, 2016 Posted by | Corruption | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Cuba Blames US for Cuban Migrant Crisis in Central America

teleSUR | November 18, 2015

Cuba blamed the U.S. on Tuesday for the situation of more than 1,000 Cuban migrants in Central America, pegging the crisis on U.S. Cold War-era immigration policy put in place during the early years of the U.S. blockade on Cuba.

“The Foreign Ministry wishes to emphasize that these citizens are victims of the U.S. government’s politicization of immigration issues,” said a government statement on a Cuban news broadcast.

The Cuban government statements come amid a recent spike in number of Cuban migrants crossing Central America en route to the U.S. Many Cubans, some wishing to reunite with their families, fear that the renewal of U.S.-Cuban relations could bring an end to a decades-old policy allowing landed Cuban migrants to stay in the U.S.

But more than 1,000 Cuban migrants have become stuck in Central America, facing challenges of tightened borders first at the Panama-Costa Rica crossing, then at the Costa Rica-Nicaragua border. Nicaragua tightened its borders Sunday and accused Costa Rica of fomenting a “humanitarian crisis” in the region.

Under the U.S.’s 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act, any Cuban who enters the U.S. is able to gain permanent residency after being present in the U.S. for one year. The act, amended in 1995 to not admit to the U.S. any Cubans found at sea, became known as the “wet-foot, dry-foot” rule.

The Cuban government considers this rule a provocation, while critics say the policy not only promotes dangerous forms of travel, but is also an incentive for human trafficking by criminal groups.

“This policy stimulates irregular emigration from Cuba toward the United States and constitutes a violation of the letter and the spirit of migration accords that are in force and through which both countries assume an obligation to guarantee legal, safe and orderly emigration,” said the Cuban government statement.

Cuba said it has been in contact with Central American countries on the Cuban migration route to discuss how to best remedy the migrant situation.

November 18, 2015 Posted by | Corruption | , , | Leave a comment

The Imaginary Cuban Troops in Syria

By Matt Peppe | Just the Facts Blog | October 17, 2015

Fair-and-balanced Fox News reported on Wednesday that “Cuban military operatives reportedly have been spotted in Syria, where sources believe they are advising President Bashar al-Assad’s soldiers and may be preparing to man Russian-made tanks to aid Damascus in fighting rebel forces backed by the U.S.” Fox’s claim of an imaginary enemy alliance relies on two sources: the University of Miami’s Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies and an anonymous U.S. official.

The source at the Miami Institute indicated that “An Arab military officer at the Damascus airport reportedly witnessed two Russian planes arrive there with Cuban military personnel on board. When the officer questioned the Cubans, they told him they were there to assist Assad because they are experts at operating Russian tanks.”

It is unclear what nationality the “Arab” officer was. Perhaps, said Arab determined the people aboard the Russian plane were Cubans because he saw them smoking cigars and drinking mojitos. The Cuban soldiers then volunteered – supposedly – they were “there to assist Assad” because of their expertise manning Russian tanks. However improbable this may seem to an unbiased observer, the source from the Miami Institute said that “it doesn’t surprise me.”

The supposed U.S. official – who Fox grants anonymity to without giving a reason why – related “evidence” from “intelligence reports” that Cuban troops “may” have trained in Russia and “may have” come to Syria in Russian planes. Sounds legit.

Despite the thinness of the report’s sourcing and the improbability of its content, other news organizations were quick to parrot its claims. Spanish newspaper ABC noted the next day that media from Germany to Argentina to the Middle East had echoed the Fox News report, while ABC did the same themselves.

By Friday, the story had gained enough traction that it was raised at a White House briefing. In a response that should have been enough to put the story to rest, the White House Press Secretary said “we’ve seen no evidence to indicate that those reports are true.”

But a few hours later, the Daily Beast had definitively declared in a headline that: “Cuba Is Intervening in Syria to Help Russia. It’s Not the First Time Havana’s Assisted Moscow.”

Progressive concern troll James Bloodworth turned Fox’s rumors into fact and wrote that “Not for the first time Cuban forces are doing Russia’s dirty work, this time in Syria… Obama has been holding his hand out in a gesture of goodwill to America’s adversaries only for them to blow him a raspberry back in his face – while standing atop a pile of Syrian corpses.”

In reality, Obama’s “gesture of goodwill” is little more than behaving less overtly hostile after decades of American aggression against Cuba and Iran. If you are choking someone unprovoked and you loosen your grip, it is far from a gesture of goodwill.

Bloodworth also tries to make an historical argument that Cuba’s (imaginary) military actions in Syria are consistent with their “bloody” interventions elsewhere. He decries “Cuban terror in Ethiopia” that resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being killed. “The tragedy was largely a consequence of the policies pursued by the Communist dictatorship that ruled Ethiopia at the time – a regime propped up by Cuba and the Soviet Union.”

In 1977, Somalia had invaded Ethiopia in an attack that “had been encouraged by ambivalent signals from Washington,” according to historian Piero Gleijeses in his book Visions of Freedom. [1] Initially reluctant to become involved, Fidel Castro finally agreed to Ethiopian requests to send troops to repel the Somali invasion.

Gleijeses found in his extensive review of formerly classified military documents that Cuba’s motives in aiding Ethiopia were sincere:

With hindsight, we know that Mengistu’s policies resulted in disaster, but this was not clear in 1977: though the process was undeniably bloody, the Ethiopian junta had decreed a radical agrarian reform and taken unprecedented steps to foster the cultural rights of the non-Amhara population… The evidence indicates that the Cubans intervened because they believed, as Cuban intelligence stated in March 1977, that ‘the social and economic measures adopted by Ethiopia’s leadership are the most progressive we have seen in any underdeveloped country since the triumph of the Cuban revolution.’ [2] In addition to correcting the record on Ethiopia, Gleijeses’ study also serves to set the record straight on Cuba’s historical modus operandi in its military interventions abroad. Cuba did maintain a large military presence in Angola for nearly 15 years, starting in 1975.

Castro first sent troops in November 1975 after Angolan President Agostinho Neto warned of a South African invasion of the country already underway which would inevitably topple the nascent government without outside support. Cuba agreed to send soldiers to Angola right away. Several months later, they would repel the apartheid army back to Pretoria. They remained in Angola at Neto’s bequest to prevent further incursions from the racist South African army into the country’s sovereign territory.

At the same time, there was an ongoing civil war between Neto’s MPLA, the largest and most popular of the guerilla groups, and the South African and American-backed UNITA guerillas led by former Portuguese collaborator Jonas Savimbi.

Castro was adamant that Cuban troops would be responsible for preventing a South African invasion, while Angolan troops should deal with their own internal conflict. In meetings with Neto, Castro “kept hammering away on the need to fight the bandits … He explained to us that the fight against the bandits was necessarily and without question the responsibility of the Angolans, that we could not wage this war, that it was their war.” [3]

Cuba’s position during the Angolan conflict is consistent with the diplomatic approach they have repeatedly espoused in Syria, that the Syrian conflict is a domestic problem for the Syrian people and government to resolve themselves, while the international community works to achieve a peaceful solution.

“Cuba reiterates that international cooperation, based on the principles of objectivity, impartiality and non-selectivity, is the only way to effectively promote and protect all human rights,” Cuban representative to the UN Human Rights Council Rodolfo Reyes said at a meeting in Switzerland. He added that “Cuba is confident of the capacity of the Syrian people and government to solve their domestic problems without foreign interference.”

Unreliable Sources

That the Fox News could cause such a stir is a testament to the refusal of mainstream news organizations to verify sources. In all of the iterations of the “Cuban troops in Syria” fantasy, there are no new sources cited. The original Fox News report cites one anonymous U.S. official who may, or may not, even exist. The only source on record with their incredulous claims is someone from the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami.

ICCAS is notorious for its reactionary, anti-Communist politics revered among the fanatically right-wing Cuban and Cuban-American population in Miami. Their academic research includes a conspiracy theory that appears to implicate Fidel Castro in the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Another ICCAS report claims “the often-repeated view in many countries that the United States is an evil power, guilty for much of the problems and sufferings of the developing world, is owed in great part to the propaganda efforts of Fidel Castro” – not, rather, to decades of direct U.S. military intervention; profligate support to fascist military dictatorships; and predatory, neo-colonial lending policies that demand neoliberal structural adjustment programs which funnel public assets and resources to creditor interests, at the expense of the employment, health and well-being of the vast majority of local populations.

ICCAS is also home to the Cuba Transition Project whose mission is “to study and make recommendations for the reconstruction of Cuba once the post-Castro transition begins in earnest.” CTP acknowledges on its Web site that “the project was established in 2002 and supported by grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) until 2010.” It’s funding indicates it is at least indirectly an arm of the U.S. government’s destabilization and subversion efforts dedicated to regime change of the politically and economically independent Cuban government.

Cuban Prensa Latina reporter in Syria Miguel Fernández noted that ICCAS has reported six or seven times since 2006 that Fidel Castro has died. He suggested reports such as those originating with ICCAS about Cuban troops in Syria were part of the campaigns of reactionary groups opposed to normalization to tarnish the new relations between Cuba and the United States.

The Cuban Embassy in Damascus reportedly “laughed” at the report of Cuban troops in Syria, and told Sputnik News : “It’s pure lunacy. It is as if they were claiming that Russia had sent its troops to Madagascar to protect lemurs.”

Despite claims of Cuban troops in Syria contradicting Cuba’s stated policy and historical modus operandi, and the fact that now four days have passed without a single piece of corroborating evidence to the laughable Fox News report, the imaginary Cuban troops in Syria are likely to morph into more outrageous fantasies of media who have shown themselves primarily interested in fabricating tales of intrigue about America’s evil enemies rather than reporting actual verifiable facts.

References

[1] Gleijeses, Piero. Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991. The University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Kindle edition.

[2] Ibid.

[3] as quoted in Gleijeses, 2013

October 18, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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