Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalThe Bizarre Phenomenon of Cuba Policy to Suit Cuban-American Exiles Rather than Cubans in Cuba
JULY 22, 2021
BY PETER BOLTON
In the week following the outbreak of protests in Cuba on 11 July, a rapid flow of commentary flooded from the pages of corporate-owned media outlets and the screens of the major US “news” television stations. Predictably, this coverage has both promoted a potential US-led regime change effort and applied gross double standards to Cuba when compared to the US’s treatment of other countries in the region. The two things, of course, are intrinsically linked. If these reports applied their standards evenhandedly then they would inevitably end up presenting regime change as a perfectly reasonable response to mass protests in other Latin American countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Honduras, and Chile. And this, of course, wouldn’t do given that all these countries have right-wing US-aligned governments that loyally serve Washington’s geostrategic interests and obediently follow its preferred neoliberal economic model.
Almost instinctively, many of these reports have paid particular attention to the taking to the streets of right-wing Cuban-American exiles in various US cities, and especially the Mecca of the exile diaspora, Miami. Apparently, these people’s views on Cuba count for a great deal. So much so, that some publications have reported on how the Democrats are seizing on the protests as an opportunity to win back Cuban-American voters in Florida. These reports remind us that this formerly neck-and-neck swing state went for Trump in both the 2016 and 2020, in no small part due to his administration’s toughened stance on Cuba and close relationship with Cuban-American hardliners like Marco Rubio. Politico, for example, tells its readers that Biden’s Cuba policy going forward “could have a big political impact in a state where Democrats are reeling” and that “Florida Democrats see what many are calling a “golden opportunity.””
As with US intervention, this is presented in corporate media accounts as a perfectly natural and reasonable thing to do. But upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that something is very seriously amiss. Because, in reality, predicating policy toward a foreign country based on the interests and political orientation of that country’s immigrant community within the US, rather than those who actually live in that country, is a totally bizarre, not to mention destructive, modus operandi.
To illustrate this absurdity, consider how the two major US political parties interact with other Latin American immigrant groups. After all, who could image the Democratic Party, for instance, suggesting a policy of regime change in Colombia to remove the right-wing government of Iván Duque following the protests in that country earlier this year because many Colombians in the US took to the streets in shows of solidarity? Of course, this very notion is laughable. Yet the fact that the exact same suggestion, but with “Colombians in the US” replaced with “Cubans in the US,” is somehow considered a perfectly legitimate electoral calculation. Clearly, basing policy on how to best court the votes of an immigrant community only happens when that community’s priorities happen to align with US foreign policy goals.
To further illustrate the absurdity, image this dynamic happening in any other country in any other point in history. Imagine, for instance, if Argentinian political parties in the 1950s and ‘60s had suggested imposing sanctions on either of the states in Germany that emerged in the post-war era in order to court the substantial German-Argentine exile community of Nazi fugitives. This might on the surface seem like an extreme, unfair, and perhaps even ridiculous comparison. But consider that some of the major leaders of the Cuban-American exile community are in some cases from the very families that were politically close to the Batista government, which, in fact, had many characteristics of fascism. For one thing, it was a dictatorship that came to power via a military coup. It also operated secretive death squads that murdered and tortured political opponents and took bribes from the mafia in exchange for allowing it to monopolize large parts of Cuba’s economy. So, the analogy is actually a perfectly fair one.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/07/22/the-bizarre-phenomenon-of-cuba-policy-to-suit-cuban-american-exiles-rather-than-cubans-in-cuba/
The drug trafficking problem of Colombia's Congress
The president of the House of Representatives, Jennifer Arias (Image: Twitter)
by Adriaan Alsema July 23, 2021
Two drug trafficking associates will preside over Colombia’s Senate and House of Representatives as President Ivan Duque finishes his term after his 2018 election with mafia support.
The election of Senate President Juan Diego Gomez and House president Jennifer Arias highlights how the historical mafia influence in Colombia’s legislature is becoming increasingly visible.
Furthermore, the most recent elections highlight how Congress doesn’t seem to object to being presided by lawmakers with alleged links to organized crime.
The legislative branch of the government is widely considered the most corrupt of all Colombia’s government institutions.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/the-drug-trafficking-problem-of-colombias-congress/
Former Colombia ambassador admits to turning government into mafia racket
Former ambassador Salvador Arana and former President Alvaro Uribe (Screenshot: YouTube)
by Adriaan Alsema July 19, 2021
Colombia’s former ambassador to Chile admitted before the war crimes tribunal he ransacked his native province and terrorized locals to advance his political career.
Former Ambassador Salvador Arana sent a shockwave through Sucre after exposing the alleged terrorist activity of more than two dozen businessmen, politicians and police officials from the Caribbean province.
According to Arana, his private death squad threatened to kill locals in 1999 if they didn’t cooperate in one of his rackets to ransack the regional healthcare system.
The locals initially were forced to sign up for healthcare insurance with a befriended company and subsequently claim they had undergone treatment at the hospital run by another friend.
The racket allowed Arana to finance his death squad, which forced locals to vote for the warlord in the 2000 elections that made him governor in 2001.
More:
https://colombiareports.com/north-colombia-governor-admits-turning-government-into-a-terrorist-organization/
(It's good to remember, looking at the photo of Arana and former President Uribe, that Arana is not the only murderous monster in the picture.)
The US Blockade on Cuba Must End
BY
BRANKO MARCETIC
For sixty years, the United States has aimed to strangle Cuba’s economy and inflict misery on the Cuban people. Blockades are methods of war — and it’s time for the war on Cuba to end.
Richard Nixon, then Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice president, met with Cuba’s Fidel Castro on April 19, 1959, in Washington, DC.
"They always blame the United States,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said on the Senate floor this week. “The embargo, the first thing they blame, it’s the embargo. ‘The embargo is causing all this.’”
Not long after the UN General Assembly voted for the twenty-ninth straight year to condemn the six-decade-long US embargo on Cuba — a 184-2 vote that pitted only the US and Israeli governments against the rest of the entire world — the country has erupted in massive protests over widespread food and medicine shortages. A chorus of voices, ranging from Bernie Sanders and other congressional progressives to former Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, have blamed the conditions on the long-standing US policy, and called for it to be finally lifted.
. . .
The Undeclared War
The US blockade on Cuba has been a key part of Washington’s long-standing war on the country, launched shortly after Fidel Castro led a revolution overthrowing the country’s US-backed military dictatorship in 1959.
Things didn’t start out entirely hostile. The Eisenhower administration publicly took a cagey wait-and-see attitude toward the new government. Meeting with Castro for three and a half hours, then–vice president Richard Nixon advised him, according to a post-meeting memo, “that it was the responsibility of a leader not always to follow public opinion but to help to direct it in proper channels, not to give the people what they think they want at a time of emotional stress but to make them want what they ought to have.” With a tinge of regret, Nixon recounted that Castro’s “primary concern was with developing programs for economic progress.”
By September that year, as Castro restricted private ownership of agricultural land and prepared to nationalize foreign-owned industry, the US ambassador to the country expressed “our serious concern at the treatment being given American private interests in Cuba.” The next month, president Dwight Eisenhower approved a program backing anti-Castro elements — including Cuban exiles launching raids on the country and, later, US-supplied sabotage and bombing campaigns — in the hopes that it would topple Castro and make him appear to have caused his own undoing.
. . .
This was no small thing. A blockade — distinct from an embargo, by including imports and trying to coerce third-party countries — is a method of war that, under international law, is meant to only take place during armed conflict. It’s not for nothing that legal scholars have argued that the blockade of Cuba is a serious violation of international law, not least for the fact that it’s aimed explicitly at forcing a change in government. Even the US government’s own legal advisors determined in 1962 that it “could be regarded by Cuba and other Soviet bloc nations as an act of war.”
Just as Nixon would respond to the 1973 election of a socialist government in Chile by ordering the CIA to “make the economy scream,” US policymakers openly hoped impoverishing and starving the Cuban people would lead them to overthrow Castro. “Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba,” one State Department official wrote in 1960, in order “to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.” Eisenhower said it more plainly: “If they (the Cuban people) are hungry, they will throw Castro out.”
More:
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/07/us-policy-cuba-blockade-embargo-protests-rubio-history-war-covid-food-medicine-shortages
The War on Cuba -- Episode 1
281,718 views Oct 9, 2020
Belly of The Beast is a media outlet that counters parachute journalism by providing stories directly from the island.
The documentary series, The War on Cuba, gives an inside look on the effects of U.S. sanctions on Cuban people.
The War on Cuba — Episode 2
169,064 views Premiered Oct 16, 2020
Belly of The Beast is a media outlet that counters parachute journalism by providing stories directly from the island.
The documentary series, The War on Cuba, gives an inside look on the effects of U.S. sanctions on Cuban people. Episode 2 explores the impact of the US-imposed “oil blockade” on Cuba and the ways in which Cubans are finding alternatives to scarcities caused by US sanctions.
CORRECTION: John Bolton was named National Security Advisor in 2018.
The War on Cuba — Episode 3
102,409 viewsOct 24, 2020
Belly of The Beast is a media outlet that counters parachute journalism by providing stories directly from the island.
The documentary series, The War on Cuba, gives an inside look on the effects of U.S. sanctions on Cuban people. Episode 3 explores Cuba's healthcare program and medical brigades. We talk to doctors who served in Brazil, Bolivia and Italy, and of course the ones who held it down in Cuba during COVID-19.
Lula Has 46% of Intended Vote, and Bolsonaro, 25%
Petista opens 21 points ahead of the president and extends advantage in the 2nd round
Jul.12.2021 1:01PM
Igor Gielow
(FILES) Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. (Photo by Fabrice COFFRINI / AFP) - AFP
SÃO PAULO
Jair Bolsonaro (no party), whose presidency is wearing thin, currently has a quarter of the intended votes for 2022. Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) is ahead, with 46%, in the first round scenario. The data comes from the latest Datafolha survey.
When the question is spontaneous, without mentioning the names of candidates, Lula appears with 26% (in May, he had 21%) and Bolsonaro takes 19% (he had 17%). The institute surveyed 2,074 voters, in person, on Wednesday (7) and Thursday (8).
Lula also leads in all the simulations of the second round dispute — in the one in which he would face Bolsonaro, he appears with 58% of the preferences against 31% of the incumbent. The margin of error is plus or minus two percentage points.
The survey also shows that the president's role in combating the pandemic is seen as bad/very bad by the majority (56%).
https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/brazil/2021/07/lula-has-46-of-intended-vote-and-bolsonaro-25-say-datafolha-of-2022-presidential-elections.shtml?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsen
(Short article, no more at link.)
Absolutely vile! While reading that Ecuador's Lenn Moreno followed Macri's move 3 days later,
it struck me that it sounded coordinated from Trump's administration. The last paragraph, which states Ivanka Trump met the coup leader, fascist creepoid Luis "Macho" Camacho, (sounds like a wrestling cretin) two months earlier absolutely nailed it, of course.
Loathsome.
Here's a thread posted in 2007 about George W Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and their slick move to go behind the back of Bolivia's sitting President to his Air Force Generals and spirit away Bolivia's missiles once it was determined Evo Morales was going to win the election by a landslide after polls indicated he was far ahead of the right-wing candidate. Even before the beginning of Morales' presidency they were screwing him over:
How many DU'ers recall that Bush's Defense Department got to Bolivia's military
before Evo Morales could be sworn in, and refuse their sneaky removal of Bolivia's own missiles? Here's a report some of us discussed in 2006:
The Miami Herald
Jan. 19, 2006
Probe of destroyed missiles vowed
President-elect Evo Morales vowed to open a probe into the destruction of 28 of Bolivia's missiles by the United States and Bolivian Army officials.
BY CARLOS VALDES
Associated Press
LA PAZ, Bolivia - President-elect Evo Morales vowed on Wednesday to launch a thorough investigation into allegations that top military officials worked in tandem with the United States to destroy 28 Chinese shoulder-launched missiles owned by the Bolivian Army.
The decision to send the missiles to the United States for destruction last year prompted caretaker President Eduardo Rodríguez to fire Army chief Gen. Marcelo Antezana on Tuesday, and led to the resignation of Defense Minister Gonzalo Méndez.
It also came at a sensitive time for the United States, which is trying to improve strained relations with the leftist Morales, an open critic of American policies.
Morales said the investigation would be ''profound'' and that any evidence of wrongdoing would be met with ``drastic punishment.''
A State Department spokesman has said Bolivia requested U.S. help in removing the deteriorating Chinese-made surface-to-air missiles.
Antezana appeared on Bolivian television, saying Rodríguez made a ''bad interpretation'' of his role in the October destruction of the missiles, which led to accusations of treason by Morales, who was then campaigning for the presidency.
At the time, Morales revealed the destruction of the weapons and said the move left Bolivia with virtually no air defenses.
(snip/...)
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/bolivia/missiles.htm
One more article at:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2716174&mesg_id=2717002
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Thank you, so much, peppertree, for finding this information. Very few US Americans will know about it, and right-wingers would approve of it, even though it's filthy meddling in the affairs of a sovereign nation.
So, so glad to find out this happened.
UN Report Calls for Reparations for Victims of Systemic Racist Police Violence
July 6, 2021
The UN high commissioner for human rights grounded her analysis in the long-overdue need to confront the legacies of enslavement, Marjorie Cohn reports.
By Marjorie Cohn
Truthout
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on June 28 released a stunning 23-page report accompanied by a 95-page conference room paper for the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) documenting systemic racism and human rights violations by police forces against Africans and people of African descent throughout the world. The report considered more than 340 interviews and more than 100 written submissions from civil society organizations.
Bachelet grounded her analysis in “the long-overdue need to confront the legacies of enslavement, the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and colonialism and to seek reparatory justice.” She took aim at “misconceptions that the abolition of slavery, the end of the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and colonialism” and subsequent reforms have eliminated “the racially discriminatory structures built by those practices and created equal societies.”
The report finds:
“The dehumanization of people of African descent — a practice rooted in false social constructions of race created to justify enslavement, pervasive racial stereotypes and widely accepted harmful practices and traditions — has sustained and cultivated a tolerance for racial discrimination, inequality and violence, which continues to have a disproportionate impact on the enjoyment of their human rights.”
“Systemic racism needs a systemic response,” Bachelet wrote. “States should adopt a systemic approach to combating racial discrimination through the adoption and monitoring of whole-of-government and whole-of-society responses.” They should be designed “to dismantle systemic racism.”
More:
https://consortiumnews.com/2021/07/06/un-report-calls-for-reparations-for-victims-of-systemic-racist-police-violence/
Bolivia Arrests Two Ex-Army Generals Linked to the 2019 Coup
Published 4 July 2021
. . .
Bolivia's Interior Minister Eduardo del Castillo Saturday confirmed the arrest of former Air Force Commander General Jorge G. Terceros and former Navy Commander Gonzalo Jarjuri for their alleged involvement in the 2019 coup.
The Prosecutor's Office issued search and arrest warrants against both officers, who were arrested at their houses in the Santa Cruz department.
Local media reported that they did not show resistance to comply with the Attorney General's Office's orders.
The ex-top officers were taken to the Special Forces to Fight against Crime (FELCC) headquarters, where they will stay until a hearing decides precautionary measures.
https://twitter.com/kennardmatt/status/1410975354773200900
More:
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Bolivia-Arrests-Two-Ex-Army-Generals-Linked-to-the-2019-Coup-20210704-0006.html
~ ~ ~
Bolivia: two former commanders arrested for their role in the coup against Evo Morales
The News 24
Post published:July 5, 2021
The former commanders of the Bolivian Air Force and Navy were arrested for their alleged involvement in the government coup that forced former President Evo Morales to leave his post in November 2019. He is General Jorge Gonzalo Terceros Lara and the admiral Gonzalo Jarjuri Rada, who arrived in the early hours of Sunday at the airport in the city of El Alto to be transferred to the Special Force to Fight Crime (Felcc). The order was issued by the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE) and executed by Bolivian police officers. With these two arrests there are already five high-ranking soldiers apprehended in the framework of the investigation into the “coup d’etat case”. The former Bolivian president had already sown doubts about the “dubious” behavior of the armed forces in 2019.
According to the Fides News agency, the former commander Terceros decided to testify this Sunday before the commission of prosecutors that is handling the case, while Jarjuri took advantage of the right to remain silent. After the declarations stage, both soldiers were transferred to the cells of the Felcc, where they will remain until the hearing of precautionary measures.
Bolivian Government Minister Eduardo del Castillo confirmed the arrests and promised to give more details in the coming days. For his part, César Terceros, brother of the former commander of the Air Force apprehended, said that judicial authorities appeared at his home in the city of Santa Cruz with an arrest warrant. “Four prosecutors arrived and told him that he was apprehended and prepare himself because they were going to transfer him to La Paz immediately.”, reported.
Third parties and seven other former military and police chiefs are implicated in the coup case initiated by the complaint of the former deputy of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), Lidia Patty, who also denounced the civic leader of the rich region of Santa Cruz, the right-wing Luis Fernando Camacho, who was the protagonist of the coup when he entered the Palacio del Quemado with a Bible in his hands in November 2019.
More:
https://then24.com/2021/07/05/bolivia-two-former-commanders-arrested-for-their-role-in-the-coup-against-evo-morales/
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Camacho's violent fascist racist anti-indigenous storm troopers
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'Satan, be gone!': Bolivian Christians claim credit for ousting Evo Morales
Tom Phillips in El Alto
Mon 27 Jan 2020 05.00 EST
The fast-growing religious right – both Catholic and Protestant – see the president’s exit as a first step in transforming the country, leaving many indigenous Bolivians horrified
Tom Phillips
Tom Phillips in El Alto
Mon 27 Jan 2020 05.00 EST
Some blame the defenestration of Evo Morales on a racist, rightwing coup. Others credit a popular revolt against a leader who had overstayed his welcome.
Luis Aruquipa Carlo, a hardline pastor from the de facto capital, La Paz, has other ideas.
“The glory is God’s,” proclaimed the evangelical leader who heads a conservative coalition of Bolivian churches called the National Christian Council.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/27/bolivian-christians-evo-morales-indigenous-catholic-protestant
Thank goodness you've shared this information, or we probably wouldn't have heard for years!
The article posted in the tweet you posted contains the missing facts we've needed all this time we've been getting either nothing at all, or the astonishingly disrespectful disinformation they've been putting out so many years to keep the citizenry completely unaware of what the tax dollars are really financing without our knowlege against ALL leftist leaders.
The article is one to keep for future reference. Near the beginning this part was included which I read well over a decade ago, and it's so good it has been written to keep it in public as often as humanly possible, concerning what has been considered a very benign and helpful US organization:
“A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” said Allen Weinstein, cofounder of the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization that funds pro-American groups worldwide.
So glad to see this pathetic episode was also mentioned:
Earlier in the year, the U.S. was similarly caught with its hand in the cookie jar, after two former Green Berets led an amphibious invasion on Venezuela with the goal of shooting their way to the presidential palace and installing Guaidó as dictator. The attempt failed spectacularly, and few of the heavily armed fighters managed to even make it to land, the event quickly being dubbed Donald Trump’s “Bay of Piglets.” Trying to defend themselves, the American mercenaries implicated a number of key figures, including Trump himself, as well as former Blackwater CEO Erik Prince. The coup plotters even claim they met at the Trump Doral resort in Miami. Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo put out a half-hearted denial, claiming only that “there was no U.S. government direct involvement” in the botched coup attempt.
It's tremendous seeing someone courageous has published this illumination of some of Trump's attempted South American foreign policy, done in the sneakiest, most underhanded way.
Thank you, so much for your post. ⭐️
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