The US vs Cuba – Setting the record straight

by veritas juxitas 23.APR.10

In view of the longstanding propaganda campaign on the part of the US to discredit Cuba, a few facts should be made plain. Everyone is entitled to his own opinions and values, but everyone is not entitled to his own facts.{{more}}

There is no other revolution in history which has been accomplished with so little bloodshed. More Cubans have been killed by US instigated attacks than by the Cuban regime.

The Cuban revolution succeeded in toppling the right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista on 1 January, 1959. Fidel Castro did not become president until 1976. Batista had usurped power in a military coup in 1952.

The US has waged war (in all but name) against Cuba for the past 50 years. They have failed spectacularly to derail the revolution or to remove Fidel Castro.

The CIA, with the full knowledge of successive US presidents, has made countless attempts (over 200 by some accounts) to assassinate Fidel Castro, in collusion with the American mafia and Cuban exiles. This is clearly criminal activity. Some of the relevant CIA documents have long been made public.

The CIA has financed anti-Cuban terrorists in Florida for 50 years and continues to do so.

The US has also waged a relentless propaganda campaign against Cuba and Castro for over 30 years. Unfortunately, many people have come to believe the lies constantly put out by the US media.

Several of the laws passed by the US congress aimed at destabilising Cuba such as the Helms-Burton act are in breach of international law.

The US has also violated international law in the use of biological and chemical warfare against Cuban people and crops.

The vast majority of the people of Cuba actually do love Fidel Castro and are committed to the changes brought about by the revolution.

Although all the goals of the revolution have not been achieved, Cuba surpasses the US on many health and social indicators and has the best health statistics and least inequality and least crime of any Latin American country.

One might well ask why the US has been so intransigent, and for so long. It is primarily because the US mafia (criminal enterprises), US businesses and American landowners lost their assets in Cuba as a result of the revolution. And then there is the great spectre of communism and the self-designated role of the US as “defender of the free world”. But then the US has long since developed the practice of creating an Alice-in-Wonderland world for public consumption (we would now call it a virtual world) which is almost wholly illusory. Like Humpty-Dumpty they use words to mean whatever they decide they should mean. Hence “communism” and now “terrorism” are used to manipulate world opinion and to bludgeon other sovereign states into doing the bidding of the US. There can be no other justification for labeling Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism.

In the same vein, the US calls its embassy in Havana an “Interests Section” so it can pretend it does not have an embassy there. But there is a Cuban embassy in Washington, so the US cannot plausibly claim that it does not have diplomatic relations with Cuba. The fact is that Fidel Castro has earned the respect of leaders around the world, including Russia, Europe, Africa, Canada, Mexico, Asia and the Middle East and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. There are well over 90 embassies in Havana. Clearly, it is the US which is isolated in its opposition… not Cuba. Cuba has forged its own path – one rooted in practical necessity and high principle and not in any dogma. For long stretches of time, Cuba was also at odds with Russia, but the Russians did not react in the same puerile manner as the US.

There are some here, as there are in Cuba, who would be happy to be a satellite or client-state of the US. Those who find themselves siding with the mighty American giant in its monstrous and illegal activity against a small Caribbean territory determined to be truly independent should re-examine themselves.