OMNI
CUBA NEWSLETTER #3,
April 25, 2017.
Compiled by Dick
Bennett for a CULTURE OF PEACE and Justice.
(#1 Feb. 4, 2011; #2 Oct. 21, 2012).
Contents of #3, SUPPORT TODAY, HISTORY
OF US CRIMES
Support for Cuba Today
Pastors for
Peace 2017
Chronology
2015-16
Disarm/Global
Health Partners
HISTORY OF US CRIMES AGAINST CUBA, (reverse
chron. by pub. date 2016-2013)
William Blum,
US Crimes Against Cuba. 2016
Hayden, Listen, Yankee! 2015
Blum. 2014
A.N.S.W.E.R.
Coalition, US Terrorist Saboteurs Arrested in Cuba. 2014
Leogrande, USAID
to Cuba. 2014
The Nation’s Trip to Cuba, Exchange Programs. 2014
Lamrani, US
Economic War Against Cuba. 2013
Free the Cuban
5. 2013
Chomsky’s
Recommended Books on Cuba
SUPPORT FOR CUBA 2015-, US BULLYING ENDING THANKS TO PRESIDENT OBAMA
AND MANY GROUPS AND INDIVIDUALS
ANNOUNCEMENT APRIL 25, 2017
CHEERS
TO PASTOR FOR PEACE, STEADFAST FRIEND TO CUBA, AND ACPJ
Pastors for Peace
“Friendshipment Caravan” April 29, 2017
|
2015
January: Cuba freed 53 political prisoners as part of
its deal to reopen diplomatic relations with the United States.
July: The two countries officially restored full
diplomatic relations in July 2015 more than 50 years after severing them. Although
the US embargo remains officially in place, Obama loosened regulations to allow
more commercial relations.
Disarm/Global
Health Partners (Ed Asner), like PforP, continues its support of Cuba. www.disarm.org
“Again, U.N. Vote Raps Cuba Embargo.” NADG (Oct. 28, 2015). US of B, United States of Bullies. “The General Assembly voted 191-2 to condemn the commercial,
economic and financial embargo against Cuba.”
Who joined USofB? Israel. This is the 24th year of UN
General Assembly condemnation and USofB’s vote against. However, Pres. Obama said the vote “didn’t
reflect ‘the spirit of engagement’ between Obama and Cuban President Raul
Castro.
But “Trump Shifts on Cuba,
Says He Would Reverse Obama’s Deal.” CNN
Headline News (Nov. 14, 2016). Because
Obama ended the embargo by executive order that did not require congressional
action, Trump has the power to overturn it.
2016
November 26: Castro died.
NWADG page-one screamer headline Nov. 27: “Castro’s Death Met
with Rejoicing.” Where? In Miami. I look forward to a book on the prejudiced,
hugely one-side reporting of Castro by US mainstream media during the embargo,
even though trade with Cuba would benefit the US.
December:
Disarm/Global Health Partners’ Year End Report from Asner. It accelerated its medical aid shipments and
collaborations between doctors and medical facilities in the two countries, in
2016 delivering “five medical shipments worth $1,676,189” (letter from Asner). During its 22 years of sending medicines and
medical supplies to Cuba, according to him Disarm raised $131 million.
US TERRORISTIC LAWLESSNESS AGAINST CUBA
Contents
in reverse chronology by publication date
William Blum,
The Anti-Empire Report
WHAT HAS THE US NOT TRIED TO OVERTHROW THE CUBAN
SOCIALIST GOVERNMENT?
TWO ESAYS BY
WILLIAM BLUM
William Blum. “The Anti-Empire Report #144.” March 11th, 2016.
CIA
motto: “Proudly overthrowing the Cuban government since 1959.”
Now what? Did
you think that the United States had finally grown up and come to the
realization that they could in fact share the same hemisphere as the people of
Cuba, accepting Cuban society as unquestioningly as they do that of Canada? The
Washington Post (February 18) reported: “In recent weeks, administration
officials have made it clear Obama would travel to Cuba only if its government
made additional concessions in the areas of human rights, Internet access and
market liberalization.”
Imagine if Cuba insisted that the United
States make “concessions in the area of human rights”; this could mean the
United States pledging to not repeat anything like the following:
Invading Cuba
in 1961 at the Bay of Pigs.
Invading
Grenada in 1983 and killing 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers.
Blowing up a
passenger plane full of Cubans in 1976. (In 1983, the city of Miami held a day
in honor of Orlando Bosch, one of the two masterminds behind this awful act;
the other perpetrator, Luis Posada, was given lifetime protection in the same
city.)
Giving Cuban
exiles, for their use, the virus which causes African swine fever, forcing the
Cuban government to slaughter 500,000 pigs.
Infecting Cuban
turkeys with a virus which produces the fatal Newcastle disease, resulting in
the deaths of 8,000 turkeys.
In 1981 an
epidemic of dengue hemorrhagic fever swept the island, the first major epidemic
of DHF ever in the Americas. The United States had long been experimenting with
using dengue fever as a weapon. Cuba asked the United States for a pesticide to
eradicate the mosquito involved but were not given it. Over 300,000 cases were
reported in Cuba with 158 fatalities.
These are but
three examples of decades-long CIA chemical and biological warfare (CBW)
against Cuba. We must keep in mind that
food is a human right (although the United States has repeatedly denied this.
Washington
maintained a blockade of goods and money entering Cuba that is still going
strong, a blockade that President Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Sandy
Berger, in 1997 called “the most pervasive sanctions ever imposed on a nation
in the history of mankind”.
Attempted to
assassinate Cuban president Fidel Castro on numerous occasions, not only in
Cuba, but in Panama, Dominican Republic and Venezuela.
In one scheme
after another in recent years, Washington’s Agency for International
Development (AID) endeavored to cause dissension in Cuba and/or stir up
rebellion, the ultimate goal being regime change.
In 1999 a Cuban
lawsuit demanded $181.1 billion in US compensation for death and injury
suffered by Cuban citizens in four decades “war” by Washington against Cuba.
Cuba asked for $30 million in direct compensation for each of the 3,478 people
it said were killed by US actions and $15 million each for the 2,099 injured.
It also asked for $10 million each for the people killed, and $5 million each
for the injured, to repay Cuban society for the costs it has had to assume on
their behalf.
Needless to
say, the United States has not paid a penny of this.
One of the most
common Yankee criticisms of the state of human rights in Cuba has been the
arrest of dissidents (although the great majority are quickly released). But
many thousands of anti-war and other protesters have been arrested in the
United States in recent years, as in every period in American history. During
the Occupy Movement, which began in 2011, more than 7,000 people were arrested
in about the first year, many were beaten by police and mistreated while in
custody, their street displays and libraries smashed to pieces. ; the Occupy movement continued until 2014;
thus, the figure of 7,000 is an understatement.)
Moreover, it
must be kept in mind that whatever restrictions on civil liberties there may be
in Cuba exist within a particular context: The most powerful nation in the history
of the world is just 90 miles away and is sworn – vehemently and repeatedly
sworn – to overthrowing the Cuban government. If the United States was simply
and sincerely concerned with making Cuba a less restrictive society,
Washington’s policy would be clear cut:
Call off the
wolves – the CIA wolves, the AID wolves, the doctor-stealer wolves, the
baseball-player-stealer wolves.
Publicly and
sincerely (if American leaders still remember what this word means) renounce
their use of CBW and assassinations. And apologize.
Cease the
unceasing hypocritical propaganda – about elections, for example. (Yes, it’s
true that Cuban elections never feature a Donald Trump or a Hillary Clinton,
nor ten billion dollars, nor 24 hours of campaign ads, but is that any reason
to write them off?)
Pay
compensation – a lot of it.
Sine qua non –
end the God-awful blockade.
Throughout the
period of the Cuban revolution, 1959 to the present, Latin America has
witnessed a terrible parade of human rights violations – systematic, routine
torture; legions of “disappeared” people; government-supported death squads
picking off selected individuals; massacres en masse of peasants, students and
other groups. The worst perpetrators of these acts during this period have been
the military and associated paramilitary squads of El Salvador, Guatemala,
Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Mexico, Uruguay, Haiti and Honduras.
However, not even Cuba’s worst enemies have made serious charges against the
Havana government for any of such violations; and if one further considers
education and health care, “both of which,” said President Bill Clinton, “work
better [in Cuba] than most other countries”
, and both of which are guaranteed by the United Nations “Universal
Declaration of Human Rights” and the “European Convention for the Protection of
Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms”, then it would appear that during the
more-than-half century of its revolution, Cuba has enjoyed one of the very best
human-rights records in all of Latin America.
But never good
enough for American leaders to ever touch upon in any way; the Bill Clinton
quote being a rare exception indeed. It’s a tough decision to normalize
relations with a country whose police force murders its own innocent civilians
on almost a daily basis. But Cuba needs to do it. Maybe they can civilize the
Americans a bit, or at least remind them that for more than a century they have
been the leading torturers of the world.
156
Notes
“Libya:
Transition and U.S. Policy”, updated March 4, 2016.
New York Times, February 28, 2016
Mark Weisbrot,
“Top Ten Ways You Can Tell Which Side The United States Government is On With
Regard to the Military Coup in Honduras”, Common Dreams, December 16, 2009
Roger Morris,
former member of the National Security Council, Partners in Power (1996), p.415. For a comprehensive look at
Hillary Clinton, see the new book by Diane Johnstone, Queen of Chaos.
National Review online, May 1, 2007
Fortune magazine, July 9, 2007
Patrick J.
Buchanan, “Will the Oligarchs Kill Trump?”, Creators.com, March 08, 2016
William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only
Superpower (2005), chapter 14
Ibid., p.264
White House
press briefing, November 14, 1997, US Newswire transcript
Fabian
Escalante, Executive Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro (2006), Ocean Press
(Australia)
Huffington
Post, May 3, 2012
Miami Herald,
October 17, 1997, p.22A
Any part of
this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to
William Blum as author and a link to williamblum.org is provided.
William Blum is
an author, historian, and U.S. foreign policy critic. He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA
Interventions Since World War II; Rogue
State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower; America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy; Freeing the World to Death
Essays on the American Empire
William
M. LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh. Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden
History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana. U of N. Carolina P, 2014.
Challenging
the conventional wisdom of perpetual hostility between the United States and
Cuba--beyond invasions, covert operations, assassination plots using poison
pens and exploding seashells, and a grinding economic embargo--this fascinating
book chronicles a surprising, untold history of bilateral efforts toward
rapprochement and reconciliation. Since 1959, conflict and
aggression have dominated the story of U.S.-Cuban relations. Now, William M.
LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh present a new and increasingly more relevant
account. From John F. Kennedy's offering of an olive branch to Fidel Castro
after the missile crisis, to Henry Kissinger's top secret quest for
normalization, to Barack Obama's promise of a "new approach," LeoGrande and Kornbluh reveal a fifty-year
record of dialogue and negotiations, both open and furtive, indicating a path
toward better relations in the future.
LeoGrande and Kornbluh have uncovered hundreds of formerly
secret U.S. documents and conducted interviews with dozens of negotiators,
intermediaries, and policy makers, including Fidel Castro and Jimmy arter. The
authors describe how, despite the political clamor surrounding any hint of
better relations with Havana ,
serious negotiations have been conducted by every presidential administration
since Eisenhower's through secret, back-channel diplomacy. Concluding with ten
lessons for U.S.
negotiators, the book offers an important perspective on current political
debates, at a time when leaders of both nations have publicly declared the
urgency of moving beyond the legacy of hostility.
Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at
the National Security Archive in Washington ,
D.C. , is the author of The Pinochet File: A Declassified
Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, among other books.
“Washington ’s
Secret ‘Cuba
Twitter’ Program Is the Same Old Policy of Regime Change”
Such
covert operations are not sanitized by running them through USAID and wrapping
them in the rhetoric of “democracy promotion.”
April
23, 2014 | This article appeared in the May 12, 2014 edition of The
Nation. [The title in my no. of May 12 is “’Cuba Twitter’
Scandal.’” --Dick]
In defiant defense of ZunZuneo,
the Agency for International Development’s secret text messaging program in
Cuba, USAID spokesman Matt Herrick declared the agency “proud” of its Twitter
clone, which, at its height, reached more than 60,000 Cuban cellphone users.
The aim of the program, according to Herrick, “was to create a platform for
Cubans to speak freely among themselves, period.” US officials at first denied
that it had any political intent or sent out any political messages. But AP,
which broke the story, decisively refuted those claims by publishing the
political tweets and interviewing a subcontractor who wrote them.
Administration officials
nevertheless remained unapologetic. In a Senate hearing, USAID administrator
Rajiv Shah insisted the program was not covert, merely “discreet,” and that it
was just trying to “enable open communications” among Cubans. Shah’s defense
was echoed by the usual suspects on Capitol Hill, with Congresswoman Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen arguing that USAID was simply promoting “God-given values like
freedom, justice or liberty.” The Washington Posteditorial page jumped
on the bandwagon, declaring that there was nothing wrong with “undermining a
tyranny.”
But fomenting unrest in a country by trying to secretly manipulate its
domestic politics violates US treaty obligations under international law.
The charter of the Organization of American States declares, “No State or group
of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason
whatever, in the internal or external affairs of any other State,” a
prohibition that is not limited to the use of force. The UN Declaration on the
Inadmissibility of Intervention and Interference in the Internal Affairs of
States repeats the OAS language and recognizes “the sovereign and inalienable
right of a State freely to determine its own political, economic, cultural and
social systems.” And it imposes on all states the duty “to refrain from any
action or attempt in whatever form or under whatever pretext to destabilize or
to undermine the stability of another State.”
International law has never
prevented Washington from covert intervention,
especially in Latin America . But because
destabilizing other governments violates US treaty obligations, these
operations were conducted secretly by the CIA during most of the Cold War.
ZunZuneo and USAID’s other “democracy promotion” schemes in Cuba remind Latin Americans that Washington still does
not fully respect their sovereignty.
When Barack Obama took office,
hopes ran high in the region that he would break the deadlock in US-Cuban
relations. At the Fifth Summit of the Americas
in April 2009, he pledged a “new beginning” with Cuba . But when the Sixth Summit
convened in April 2012, US
policy was essentially unchanged, and Obama faced a solid phalanx of Latin
American leaders tired of Washington ’s
intransigence. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos—a close US ally—and
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff declared that they would skip the next
summit if Cuba
was not invited.
To his credit, Obama has restored
people-to-people connections between the United
States and Cuba . Educational, cultural and
family travel is flourishing. But he has made little headway on state-to-state
relations, nor has he reined in the foreign policy bureaucracy, which tries to
exploit any relaxation of state control in Cuba to undermine its government.
ZunZuneo is a perfect, albeit inept, example. When Raúl Castro legalized the
sale of cellphones, USAID used that opening to build a social media platform it
hoped would mobilize “smart mobs” reminiscent of Egypt’s Tahrir Square uprising
and Iran’s “Green Revolution.”
Covert operations designed to
bring about regime change in Cuba
are the direct descendants of the CIA’s political operations of yesteryear.
They are not sanitized by running them through USAID, calling them “discreet”
and wrapping them in the rhetoric of democracy. Three sitting presidents in
Latin America—Rousseff in Brazil, Michelle Bachelet in Chile and José Mujica in
Uruguay—suffered personally at the hands of military dictatorships that US
covert operations helped install a generation ago. Policy-makers in Washington would rather not dwell on the deadly
consequences those operations had for thousands of Latin Americans, but Latin America has not forgotten.
Washington’s relationship with
the region is deteriorating, corroded by a policy toward Cuba that symbolizes a
bygone era of US hegemony—a policy that no other country in the hemisphere
supports. If Obama wants to build the “equal partnership” he originally
promised, he cannot continue to ignore Cuba .
[What
Pres. Obama should do. –D]
Last November, talking to
supporters in Miami about Cuba , Obama said, “We have to be creative. And we have to be thoughtful.
And we have to continue to update our policies.” He could start by replacing
USAID programs targeting Cuba with aboveboard initiatives to support authentic educational and cultural
exchanges—exchanges without the hidden hand of government manipulation or a
hidden agenda of regime change.
Read Next: Tom
Hayden on normalizing US relations with
Cuba
·
Share
·
The Economic War
Against Cuba:
A Historical and Legal Perspective on the U.S. Blockade by ; prologue by Wayne S. Smith;
foreword by Paul Estrade; translated by Larry Oberg. 2013.
142 pages
March 2013
March 2013
It is impossible to fully understand Cuba
today without also understanding the economic sanctions levied against it by
the United States .
For over fifty years, these sanctions have been upheld by every presidential
administration, and at times intensified by individual presidents and acts of
Congress. They are a key part of the U.S.
government’s ongoing campaign to undermine the Cuban Revolution, and stand in
egregious violation of international law. Most importantly, the sanctions are
cruelly designed for their harmful impact on the Cuban people.
In this concise and sober account, Salim Lamrani explains
everything you need to know about U.S.
economic sanctions against Cuba :
their origins, their provisions, how they contravene international law, and how
they affect the lives of Cubans. He examines the U.S. government’s own official
documents to expose what is hiding in plain sight: an indefensible, vicious,
and wasteful blockade that has been roundly condemned by citizens around the
world.
Salim
Lamrani is a treasury of powerful factual information.
Lamrani
brings forth valuable insight, much needed information, and honest judgment
while exposing the economic aggression perpetrated by U.S. leaders against the people of Cuba .
Professor
Lamrani’s brilliant study provides the most comprehensive and systematic
exposition and critique of Washington ’s
extraterritorial application of sanctions against Cuba —it documents the human cost
and the criminal intent.
An
excellent summary of the American economic sanctions against Cuba, the manner
in which they have been imposed for more than a half century and the harm they
cause the Cuban people.
Tue Aug 6, 2013 6:30 pm
(PDT) . Posted by:
The Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban 5
Email: freethecuban5@gmail.com
Website: www.freethecuban5.org
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/NYC-Free-the-Cuban-5
Twitter: https://twitter.com/freethecuban5
Telephone: 718-601-4751
For more information on the Cuban 5 go to:
http://www.freethecuban5.org
CHOMSKY’S
RECOMMENDED BOOKS ON CUBA
www.chomskylist.com/category_page.php?category_id=130
The following is a book
list on Cuba made from the
references in Noam Chomsky's books.
Newsletter
Index: http://omnicenter.org/dick-bennetts-peace-justice-and-ecology-newsletters/dicks-newsletter-index/
Contents Cuba
Newsletter #1
Introduction by
Dick
Spadoni’s Failed Sanctions
William Blum’s Empire Report on Cuba
Two Books on
Pentagon Plans to Attack Again
Jon Elliston and James Bamford
Contents Cuba Newsletter #2 END THE
BULLYING
US Against Cuba
and the World: UN General Assembly 1959-
Bolender, Cuban
Victims of US Terror 1960s to Present
Cuban Five 1998
to Present
Cuban Five
Month, Stone’s South of the Border
Cindy Sheehan
for Cuban 5
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