#U.S. embargo against Cuba

[minnesotafollower]

Criticisms of the Recent U.N. General Assembly Resolution Against the U.S. Embargo of Cuba 

As discussed in a previous blog post, on October 30, the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly passed Cuba’s resolution condemning the U.S. embargo pf the island (187 to 2 with 4 abstentions).The U.S. and Israel again voted against the resolution while the abstentions came from Moldova, Ukraine, Somalia and Venezuela.[1] Here now is a summary of some of the criticism of that resolution. U.S.-Cuba…

[zvaigzdelasas]

[H]undreds of legal experts and groups on Monday urged the global community—and the United States government in particular—"to comply with international law by ending the use of broad, unilateral coercive measures that extensively harm civilian populations."

In a letter to U.S. President Joe Biden, the jurists and legal groups wrote that "75 years ago, in the aftermath of one of the most destructive conflicts in human history, nations of the world came together in Geneva, Switzerland to establish clear legal limits on the treatment of noncombatants in times of war."

"One key provision... is the prohibition of collective punishment, which is considered a war crime," the letter continues. "We consider the unilateral application of certain economic sanctions to constitute collective punishment."

Suzanne Adely, president of the National Lawyers Guild—one of the letter's signatories—said in a statement that "economic sanctions cause direct material harm not only to the people living on the receiving end of these policies, but to those who rely on trade and economic relations with sanctioned countries."

"The legal community needs to push back against the narrative that sanctions are nonviolent alternatives to warfare and hold the U.S. Government accountable for violating international law every time it wields these coercive measures," she added.[...]

"Hundreds of millions of people currently live under such broad U.S. economic sanctions in some form, including in notable cases such as Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela," the letter notes. "The evidence that these measures can cause severe, widespread civilian harm, including death, is overwhelming. Broad economic sanctions can spark and prolong economic crises, hinder access to essential goods like food, fuel, and medicine, and increase poverty, hunger, disease, and even death rates, especially among children. Such conditions in turn often drive mass migration, as in the recent cases of Cuba and Venezuela."

For more than 64 years, the U.S. has imposed a crippling economic embargo on Cuba that had adversely affected all sectors of the socialist island's economy and severely limited Cubans' access to basic necessities including food, fuel, and medicines. The Cuban government claims the blockade cost the country's economy nearly $5 billion in just one 11-month period in 2022-23 alone. For the past 32 years, United Nations member states have voted overwhelmingly against the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Last year's vote was 187-2, with the U.S. and Israel as the only dissenters.

According to a 2019 report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a progressive think tank based in Washington, D.C., as many as 40,000 Venezuelans died from 2017-18 to U.S. sanctions, which have made it much more difficult for millions of people to obtain food, medicine, and other necessities.

"Civilian suffering is not merely an incidental cost of these policies, but often their very intent," the new letter asserts. "A 1960 State Department memo on the embargo of Cuba suggested 'denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation, and overthrow of government.'"

"Asked whether the Trump administration's sanctions on Iran were working as intended, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded that 'things are much worse for the Iranian people, and we're convinced that will lead the Iranian people to rise up and change the behavior of the regime,'" the signers added.

12 Aug 24

[darkmaga-returns]

By Jessica Corbett / Common Dreams

The United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday once again overwhelmingly urged the U.S. government to end its decadeslong blockade on Cuba, with just the United States and Israel voting against the measure and Moldova abstaining.

The UNGA’s other 187 members present voted to adopt the nonbinding resolution on “the necessity of ending the economic, commercial, and financial embargo imposed by the United States” against the Caribbean island.

This is the 32nd straight year that the U.N. body has approved a resolution against the embargo that began in 1962.

“The U.S. and Israel stand isolated as the only two votes against,” Democratic Socialists of America’s International Committee said after the Wednesday vote. “The world has spoken—it’s time for the U.S. to listen and lift the blockade.”

Though a few other nations have opposed the resolution over the years, Michael Galant of Progressive International and the Center for Economic and Policy Research noted that this vote was “two genocidaires v. the world.”

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

Brazil's president calls U.S. economic embargo on Cuba 'illegal,' condemns terrorist list label

On his first trip to Cuba during his third term in office, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called the embargo imposed by the United States on the island "illegal" and denounced the island's inclusion on the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump included the island nation on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, and though the Biden administration has reversed other Trump-era measures, it has so far not removed Cuba from the list.

"Cuba has been an advocate of fairer global governance. And to this day it is the victim of an illegal economic embargo," Lula said in a speech opening the G77 Summit of developing nations in the capital, Havana. "Brazil is against any unilateral coercive measure. We reject Cuba's inclusion on the list of states sponsoring terrorism."

The comments were made just hours before Lula left for New York, where he will attend the United Nations General Assembly and have bilateral talks with Biden.

Continue reading.

[40ouncesandamule]

From 2002:

The Dictatorship of Capital

The mid-term elections have made it official: the US is a one-party state—a dictatorship of capital. Unlike the Communist party that represents the workers, the Republican Party represents the owners. The class struggle is globalized: the two camps are now confronting each other on a global level: the United States owners and the world workers.

Capitalist states and their apologists have, of course, always distinguished themselves from communist states by emphasizing the single party-ness of the communist states. For the proponents of the free market, the best evidence that communist countries are "totalitarian" and "anti-democratic" has always been that they are governed by single party states. Thus, while all Cubans (under conditions of a devastating decades long U.S. embargo designed to annihilate their economy) have access to healthcare, education, and can boast a 95% literacy rate, Cuba has been regarded as a "brutal dictatorship" for its single-party system by the richest nation in the world—in which citizens are denied healthcare, 15 million children are struggling with hunger, and in which high school students will graduate with less than an 8th grade reading level.

Up until now, the illusion of a "multi-party" system was kept alive by the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party, which previously engaged in vigorous "social policy" disputes with Republicans, has always quietly supported the ruling class along side of them, through capitalist reforms. The extensive social policy of F.D.R.'s "New Deal" was advanced by the Democratic Party to save U.S. capital (which was on the verge of total collapse) from the growing hostility and outrage of American workers against class inequalities, and to ensure, for a fledgling U.S. capital, a much needed compliant and increasingly productive domestic labor force from which capital could extract surplus-labor for profit. The "welfare reforms" supported by the Clinton Administration—which dismantled the last vestiges of welfare—were merely an expression of the fact that U.S. capital had amassed so much wealth from the exploitation of U.S. workers that it suffered a crisis of profitability from overproduction, and was compelled to drive the standard of living (the necessary labor) of workers down to make more room in the working day for surplus-labor. "Social policy" in capitalism has always been a way to transfer the congealed labor of workers into the hands of the ruling class.

But now, with the all but "official" collapse of the Democratic Party, there has been a collapse of the illusion that the U.S. state is anything but a dictatorship of owners. The "explanations" of the collapse of the "multi-party" state offered by politicians and the corporate media in the wake of the elections have been trivializing non-explanations: they have either focused on the "back-boned" political savvy of the Republican Party or a "lack of organization" in the Democratic Party and its inability to offer a "strong program" to citizens. All of this masks the fact that election strategies have never been the basis of change. The silence of the Democratic Party on the issues of corporate scandals, the huge tax cuts for the rich, environmental destruction, health care, the rollback of democratic rights in the national security state and war is not an effect of a poor election strategy, but a silence driven by shared economic interests. When the basic question of the profitability of capital is at stake there is no decisive difference between the two parties.

Now that its "single-party-ness" is officially established, the U.S. state can dispense with all pretense to "democracy" and the social well-being of citizens and get down to the business of concentrating the wealth of the world into the hands of a few. The "policy disputes" that once marked the difference between the two parties have either emptied and decayed into hollow habitual objections or altogether disappeared. The single-party state is united in its abdication of all political power to a capitalist oligarchy, spearheaded by an oil tycoon who is now being hailed in the right-wing National Review as "The Conqueror". The state is now a garrison state to protect the imperialist interests of U.S. capital at the expense of the world's workers. Even members of the capitalist oligarchy can no longer deny that any pretense to democracy and the social well being of citizens has been dropped by the single-party state of owners. In a recent interview (to be published in Esquire), a former top aid to the Bush Administration, John J. DiIulio Jr. (appointed by Bush to head the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives) states that: "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. What you've got is everything, and I mean everything, being run by the political arm. It's the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis" (The Drudge Report 2002, December 1, 2002). DiIulio has since "apologized" for his criticism, under the pressure of White House Spokesperson Ari Fleisher, who knows that democratic debate has no place in a single-party dictatorship of capital. 

What is revealed by the collapse of the multi-party system is that the modern "democratic" state of "multiple parties", "civil rights", and national "self-determination"—at one time seemingly "immortalized" in the "United Nations"—has become outdated and has outlived its historical usefulness to imperialist capital. The "freedoms" of the modern "democratic" state, which were once necessary for the protection of the developing bourgeoisie (and helping it secure a domestic labor force to exploit), are becoming too restrictive for U.S. monopoly capital and, therefore, have to go. This is not a simple matter of a shift in political "policy". Rather, it is a historical matter of economic necessity for the ruling class. U.S. capital is in a deep crisis of profitability (overtly marked by the collapse of the telecom industry and the recent corporate scandals). Along with its (failed) strategy to buffer a decline in the rate of profit by appropriating millions of dollars from the retirement funds of U.S. workers, U.S. capital is in a ruthless pursuit of new profitable investments and new conditions of production by obtaining the rights to appropriate the oil and labor of Central Asia and the Middle East—which bourgeois democracy gets in the way of.

To state this more clearly: The readiness of the ruling class to dispense with the now outdated ("democratic") relations because they threaten profitability is a dramatic index of the deepening contradiction between the relentless global expansion and development of the productive forces that makes possible the meeting of all people's needs, and the efforts to ensure that production remains organized around private accumulation (profit). The old strategies of bourgeois democracy, which U.S. capital used to secure profit in the past, now stand in the way of the drive to concentrate global production in its own hands and gain access to new reserves of labor from which to extract a profit so as to ensure its dominance and competitiveness in the world economy. Today the ruling class has no use for bourgeois democracy, national sovereignty, civil rights—all of which increasingly get in the way of its capacity to accumulate profit. It is the crisis of profitability in capitalism, not "weapons inspection", that is behind the U.S. drive to dispense with the United Nations (that last bastion of bourgeois democracy) and its "countdown" to war with Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein (who represents a "national" capitalist competitor standing in the way of U.S. capital's monopoly over the global oil industry). U.S. capital is in crisis and requires a single-party "security" state of capitalist oligarchs which has dispensed with all questions of the "democratic self-determination" of nations and is single-minded in its focus on a ruthless redivision of the world to amass greater wealth from the world's workers and concentrate production and profit to meet its own economic needs.

It is in this context that the emphasis now paid to the need for "national security" to protect "our (democratic) way of life" should also be understood: as part of the ideological means by which the single-party capitalist oligarchy popularizes the narrow class interests of U.S. monopoly capital as in the general interests of "all Americans". "Our way of life" has been a way to bribe American workers into quiet consent: to produce a labor aristocracy which does not mind the acquisition of cheap Iraqi oil through the slaughter and exploitation of "other" workers in order to compensate for the "decent" living wages (by far the lowest in the advanced capitalist nations) that are denied to them by their "own" ruling class.

But behind the cultural slogans, and behind the economic mechanisms producing the consent of workers to the relations of exploitation, the economic relations of "American" capital tell a different story: not one of "democratic self-determination" of "our way of life" but of the parasitism of U.S. capital's dependence on the exploited labor of the world proletariat. This parasitism of U.S. imperialism—its theft of the surplus-labor of the international proletariat—and the concentration of production into fewer hands that is part and parcel of imperialist conquest not only is not in the historic class interests of the world working class in the struggle for a society free from exploitation of their collective labor, but is not even in the "immediate" interests of any workers. The rule of monopoly capital has led not to an increase but a decline in the standard of living of the majority of workers, including those in the U.S. where the productivity of labor is the highest in the world and where the wage gap has increased so dramatically that CEOs who made 39 times the average worker's wage 30 years ago now make 1000 times the average worker's wage.

"Our way of life", to put this another way, is the way of life of the ruling class—production for profit—which has always been a code for maintaining "them" in "their way of life"—as a cheap pool of readily exploitable surplus labor and a secure market for the products of the West. Far from bringing the promise of prosperity to all, the dictatorship of capital and its aggressive maintenance of private property relations to profit from the surplus-labor of workers ultimately "rewards" the increased productivity of the international proletariat with stagnation and decay of their conditions of life, with economic immiseration for the overwhelming majority and the constant threat to their basic life security. While the concentration of production in capitalism leads to increased productivity of the international proletariat—to the socialization of the productive forces around the world—the maintenance of relations of production based on private property (in which the few own and control the means of production and command over the surplus-labor of millions), requires increasingly drastic measures of economic, political, and military assault on workers.

If there is any question that the U.S. state is a dictatorship of capital against all workers, one only has to look at the readiness of Bush to threaten West Coast dock workers with a military assault if they strike for a safe workplace and other improvements to their living and working conditions. Like the dismantling of civil rights, of the welfare state, of bourgeois democracy…these are the historically necessary attempts, under capitalism, by a now unveiled dictatorship of capital to maintain increasingly outdated private property relations and try to "resolve" the crisis of profitability at the expense of workers. The only way to free all workers from exploitation (the theft of their surplus-labor) and the increasingly aggressive attack on their conditions of life in order to maintain relations of exploitation, is to free workers from this historical necessity for profit under capitalism. What is needed to struggle against the brutal dictatorship of capital—production for profit, which is always production for the few at the expense of the majority—is a dictatorship of the proletariat: production for need and freedom from necessity for all.

[newstfionline]

Friday, November 1, 2024

Canada prepares for U.S. election that ‘keeps people up at night’ (Washington Post) Canada survived Donald Trump’s first term—but it wasn’t easy. He tore up the North American Free Trade Agreement, setting off a bruising renegotiation. He imposed tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, prompting retaliation. He hurled insults at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, calling him “very dishonest and weak.” He injected friction into a relationship known for its closeness. Canadian opinion of the United States, by far Canada’s largest trading partner, plunged. A Harris victory in next week’s razor-tight presidential election would offer a U.S. leader with whom Canada has not struggled to find common ground. She lived in Canada for five years as a teen and graduated from high school in Montreal. But the possible return of the intemperate former president to the White House, coupled with rising protectionism on both sides of the U.S. political aisle—which will remain a key issue whichever side wins—has Ottawa dispatching top officials across the United States in a bid to stave off policies that could jeopardize Canadian interests. The U.S. election “keeps a lot of people up at night,” said Canadian Sen. Peter M. Boehm.

Could ‘adult dorms’ save city downtowns? (The Week) American cities have two big problems these days: Too much empty office space and not enough affordable housing. There may be a solution. Those empty offices could be converted to “micro-apartments”—“ultracompact rentals about the size of a cruise ship cabin,” said The Minnesota Star Tribune. A study from urban planners said a typical micro-apartment in Minneapolis would rent for about $750 a month, “about half the cost of a typical rental” in the city’s downtown. But they would definitely be micro, about 150 square feet. Each apartment would have room for a bed, desk and half-sized refrigerator. Living room, kitchen and laundry areas would be communal shared spaces. These would be “tiny, tiny, apartments,” Andrea Riquier said at USA Today. They could serve young adults, older people and even the homeless. Most importantly, it would let developers add housing to a “market at the most affordable price point.”

UN General Assembly condemns the US economic embargo of Cuba for a 32nd year (AP) The U.N. General Assembly voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to condemn the American economic embargo of Cuba for a 32nd year. The vote in the 193-member world body was 187-2, with only the United States and Israel against the resolution, and one abstention. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez blamed the U.S. government’s “maximum pressure policy” aimed at depriving Cuba of the imported fuel it relies on for a widespread blackout this month, including when Hurricane Oscar lashed the island.

8 of 11 members of Mexico’s Supreme Court to resign in protest of controversial judicial overhaul (AP) Eight justices of Mexico’s Supreme Court have said they will leave the court rather than stand for election as required by a controversial judicial overhaul passed last month. Supreme Court President Norma Piña and seven others submitted letters Tuesday and Wednesday stating they would leave their posts rather than compete in judicial elections scheduled for next June. Last month, Mexico’s Congress passed—and a majority of states ratified—then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s initiative to make all of the country’s judges subject to election. López Obrador and his allies, including his successor Claudia Sheinbaum, have said the radical change will help rid the judicial system of corruption. However, critics say the courts will become less independent and more subject to political forces.

Argentina’s public universities are paralyzed by protests (AP) After 11 months in office, Argentina’s President Javier Milei has fulfilled his flagship pledge to eliminate the country’s monumental deficits by shrinking the public payroll, slashing subsidies and suppressing already low wages of state workers. The austerity has spawned misery. But with the country’s left-wing opposition in disarray after delivering the economic disaster that Milei inherited, Argentina hasn’t seen the kind of widespread social unrest that has characterized past economic crises. That could change. The country’s teachers are fed up. Milei’s recent veto of a bill boosting spending on university budgets struck a collective nerve in a nation that long has considered free education a right, drawing the broadest demonstrations since the libertarian leader took office. Last week’s open-air classes held in Plaza de Mayo, the main square home to government headquarters, marked the latest in a new wave of protests supporting public universities that has gripped Argentina over the past month. Students are taking over college campuses in the coming days ahead of another mass protest.

European countries, trailing U.S. economy, hike taxes and trim spending (Washington Post) Europe is facing tight times, with the governments of the largest economies—Britain, France and Germany—confronting sluggish growth and soaring debt as they struggle to produce their budgets for next year. On a day of more good news about the sturdy growth of the U.S. economy, the outlook across the Atlantic was gloomier. Britain’s Labour Party government unveiled its long-awaited fiscal plan Wednesday, proposing to raise $52 billion in new taxes—the biggest increase in a generation. That comes after the new French government this month revealed austerity plans. The French economy got a bit of an Olympic boost, but the country is grappling with what the government has called a “colossal” debt burden and a spiraling deficit, one of Europe’s worst. And Germany learned Wednesday that it had narrowly avoided a recession, but the country that has been the economic engine of Europe is experiencing anemic growth—and facing budget cuts as a result.

Russia fines Google more than the world's entire GDP (NBC News) Google may need to consider a payment plan for the latest allegations against it. On Wednesday, Russia fined the company $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—a sum worth more than the world’s entire GDP put together. The 37-digit figure, otherwise known as 2 undecillion rubles, aims to punish Google for blocking content from 17 Russian TV stations and media outlets on YouTube, which Google owns. But even the Kremlin on Thursday admitted that the fine is more of a symbolic gesture than one expected to be paid off. Phew.

Russian propaganda is increasingly targeting Switzerland (NZZ/Switzerland) For decades, Russia has used disinformation as a way of skewing debates in the world’s free democracies, creating a constant background noise in the public discourse. Switzerland has been less affected than many other countries, but now the noise is getting louder in this country too. An analysis of the Russian propaganda platform Russia Today shows the scale of the change. In late January 2024, RT’s German-language website introduced a separate section focusing specifically on Switzerland. Since then, RT has increased its reporting on Switzerland by a factor of 10. Roman Horbyk, a media researcher at the University of Zurich, says an information war is currently underway. The content of these RT articles follows classic Russian disinformation strategies. They portray a dismal picture of the country, in which it is apparently quite normal for foreigners to stab children, refugees to defraud the state, and the government to act arbitrarily and corruptly. However, 0ne of the most frequent topics is the war in Ukraine. The reports often center on Ukrainian refugees, typically in a disparaging and distorted way. For example, in mid-October, one article carried the headline: “‘Gorge yourself, you freeloader!’ Dissatisfaction with Ukrainian refugees grows in Switzerland.” In addition, Swiss banks, the army and Switzerland’s neutrality policy often come off badly.

Russian drones hunt civilians in streets of southern Ukrainian city (Washington Post) Russian forces have escalated indiscriminate drone attacks against civilians in the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, killing and maiming scores of people in what locals have described as a “human safari.” Unlike elsewhere on the 600-mile-long front, Russian forces in Kherson are just across the river from the city and are using small drones to harass the population, either by crashing into targets and exploding or by dropping grenades and small camouflaged mines. The situation is fairly unique compared with the rest of Ukraine, where Russian troops must use longer-range weapons to reach civilians. Humanitarian operations and city services such as fire trucks and buses seem to be under particular threat, officials said, though children on bicycles and older people gathering at markets have also been struck.

The 21st century space race (BBC) China’s Shenzou 19 spacecraft has successfully docked at the Tiangong space station, the latest feat in a record year of space exploration for the country. The three-person crew will use their six months in orbit to conduct experiments and carry out spacewalks as part of Beijing’s mission to put someone on the Moon by 2030. Yet some see China’s ambition as a threat. Nasa chief Bill Nelson has said the US and China are “in a race” to return to the Moon, where he fears Beijing wants to stake territorial claims. The Moon’s resources include rare earths, the value of which has been estimated to be anywhere between billions to quadrillions of dollars. In Dongfeng Space City, a town built to support the launch site, China’s space programme is celebrated. Every street light is adorned with the national flag, cartoon-like astronaut figurines and sculptures sit in the centre of children’s parks and plastic rockets are a centrepiece on most traffic roundabouts. This is a moment of national pride. But even though China has invited international press to witness their space progress—there are key restrictions. We were kept in a hotel three hours from the launch site and a simple trip to a friendly local restaurant was carefully guarded by a line of security personnel. We also noticed a large sign in town holding a stern warning: “You’ll be jailed if you leak secrets. You’ll be happy if you keep secrets. You’ll be shot if you sell secrets.” China is taking no chances with its new technology, as its rivalry with the US is no longer just here on Earth.

Typhoon Kong-rey makes landfall in Taiwan (Foreign Policy) Typhoon Kong-rey made landfall in Taiwan on Thursday, bringing fierce winds reaching the equivalent of a Category 4 hurricane. It is the most powerful storm to hit the island in nearly 30 years. Already, at least one person was killed and more than 200 injured. Local authorities urged residents to stay home, and Taipei has put 36,000 troops on standby to assist rescue efforts. More than 11,900 people across 14 cities and counties have been evacuated, according to Taiwan’s Interior Ministry. Taiwan Power has reported power outages in half a million households, authorities closed Taiwan’s financial markets and schools, and hundreds of flights were canceled due to high winds.

Israel Widens Hezbollah Strikes, Hitting Lebanese Cities Beyond Border Area (NYT) The Israeli military widened its campaign against the militant group Hezbollah on Wednesday, launching airstrikes around the eastern Lebanese city of Baalbek and forcing large numbers of people to flee. Israel’s strikes against Hezbollah, initially focused on smaller, border villages in the south, are expanding beyond the country’s periphery to port towns and urban centers where the group has supporters, including Baalbek, Tyre and Sidon. Famed for its towering Roman ruins, Baalbek, which had a population of about 80,000 people, had largely been spared Israeli bombardment until recent days. “People are panicking,” said Ibrahim Bayan, a mayoral deputy in Baalbek, adding that about a dozen strikes had landed in or around the city since Israel issued its evacuation warnings on Wednesday. The Israeli military said it struck fuel depots belonging to Hezbollah, stocked with fuel supplied by Iran.

Uganda struggles to feed more than 1.7 million refugees as international support dwindles (AP) For months, Agnes Bulaba, a Congolese refugee in Uganda, has had to get by without the food rations she once depended on. Her children scavenge among local communities for whatever they can find to eat. “As a woman who’s not married, life is hard,” Bulaba told The Associated Press. Some locals “keep throwing stones at us, but we just want to feed our kids and buy them some clothes,” said the mother of six, who often works as a prostitute to fend for her family. Uganda is home to more than 1.7 million refugees, the largest refugee-hosting country in Africa, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Despite being renowned for welcoming those fleeing neighboring violence, Ugandan officials and humanitarians say dwindling international support coupled with high numbers of refugees have put much pressure on host communities. Approximately 10,000 new arrivals enter Uganda each month, according to U.N. figures.

[godsun57]

Foreign Policy and Demilitarization

The bipartisan endless war machine enriches military contractors, lobbyists, and politicians, while it fuels devastation around the world and impoverishes our own people. The Pentagon budget consumes over half of the discretionary federal budget, and real US military spending is over $1 trillion dollars per year. The military-industrial complex, aided by its accomplices in both war parties, media, intelligence agencies, and beyond, has become a global empire that is profoundly destructive around the world and here at home.

Everyone has a human right to live in peace and dignity, free from violence and oppression. We must end the endless wars and create a new foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, and human rights to lead the way to a new era of peace and cooperation.

A Jill Stein administration will:

Establish a foreign policy based on diplomacy, international law, and human rights

End existing wars, military actions, proxy wars and secret wars

Cut military spending by 50-75% and ensure a just transition that replaces military jobs with Green New Deal jobs

Invest the peace dividend in a Global Green New Deal to prevent climate collapse, and build toward universal access to basic human needs for food, clean water and sanitation, education, and health care for every human being on Earth

Close the vast majority of the 700+ foreign US military bases

Stop U.S. support and arms sales to human rights abusers

Lead on global nuclear disarmament

End unilateral economic sanctions that primarily harm civilian populations

Remove war powers from the president and restore Congress’ sole power to declare war

Disband NATO and replace it with a modern, inclusive security framework that respects the security interests of all nations and people

Demand an immediate ceasefire in Israel and Palestine, an end to the blockade of Gaza, immediate humanitarian and medical relief, and release of hostages and political prisoners

Immediately end all military aid to Israel and adopt sanctions until Israel complies with international law to put an end to decades of violence, illegal occupation, displacement, dispossession, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing

End the longstanding US practice of vetoing UN Security Council resolutions to hold Israel accountable to international law

Move to end the UN Security Council to ensure the UN is a true democratic body

Remove U.S. troops from Iraq and Syria

Stop fueling the war between Russia and Ukraine and lead on negotiating a peaceful end

End the embargo of Cuba and normalize relations

End sanctions on Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela that amount to collective punishment of civilian populations

End US interventionist policies that drive people to become migrant refugees

End the failed drug wars and stop regime change attempts against foreign governments

Ban the use of killer drones, robots, and artificial intelligence

Close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp

Ensure family-supporting wages and benefits for military service members

Fully fund veterans’ programs and benefits, including healthcare, mental health, housing, and job training, for a transition to civilian life

Protect the rights of service members, including conscientious objectors

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

[douxlen]

Why 1984’s Red Dawn Still Matters

New Post has been published on https://douxle.com/2024/08/10/why-1984s-red-dawn-still-matters/

Why 1984’s Red Dawn Still Matters

August 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the classic Hollywood film Red Dawn. As the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to feed fears of a wider global conflict, the movie is worth revisiting for its depiction of the outbreak of World War III.

In portraying the U.S. as an innocent victim of an unprovoked communist invasion and occupation of North America, Red Dawn fundamentally inverted the historical reality of U.S. Cold War foreign policy, especially in Latin America. Even as that history was marked by U.S. efforts to overthrow Latin American governments, the movie told a story of Latin American aggression against the United States. The movie’s popularity, and its enduring appeal to many members of the U.S. armed forces, suggests that Americans are much more comfortable viewing themselves in the role of victims than aggressors.

Dating back to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, U.S. foreign policy sought to prevent the intrusion of European imperialism in the Western hemisphere. During the Cold War, this meant that any Latin American government seeking normal diplomatic and trade relations with the Soviet Union was suspect.

After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro pursued an alliance with the Soviet Union, which many U.S. policymakers viewed as a fundamental betrayal of the Monroe Doctrine. As a result, one presidential administration after another unsuccessfully employed economic, political, and military means in the hopes of overthrowing the regime. The failed U.S.-supported covert Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and repeated assassination attempts on Castro convinced the Cubans and Soviets that Washington was bent on regime change. This led to the Cuban missile crisis, the most dangerous flashpoint of the entire Cold War that ultimately resulted in a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba.

The strategic logic of U.S. Cold War interventionism was premised on the “domino theory,” which held that if one nation fell to communism, those surrounding it would inevitably collapse, one by one, in a chain of dominoes ultimately spilling into the United States. The domino theory was used to justify the U.S. war in Vietnam, where the revelation of U.S. atrocities was so horrific that it created a domestic crisis of confidence—the “Vietnam syndrome”—about the moral righteousness of the U.S. role in the world.

The logic of the domino theory took on particular urgency in the early 1980s, after the collapse of the corrupt and brutal Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua and the coming to power of a Marxist-Leninist government—the Sandinistas, who in turn supported leftist guerrillas in neighboring El Salvador. The Sandinistas were named in honor of Augusto César Sandino, leader of the rebellion against the 1927-1933 U.S. occupation of Nicaragua, and became the focus of President Ronald Reagan’s anticommunist ire.

Read More: The Man Who Made Ronald Reagan ‘See Red’ Is Still in Power

Reagan had never doubted the righteousness of the U.S. cause in Vietnam, and he rejected the notion that the U.S. should learn to live with its communist neighbors in Central America and the Caribbean. As his administration tightened the embargo against Cuba and supported the counterrevolutionary forces known as the “contras” battling the Sandinista government, the film Red Dawn encouraged the American movie-going public to empathize with the protagonists’ plight as insurgents battling a joint Soviet, Cuban, and Nicaraguan occupation.

The premise of the dystopian world of Red Dawn took shape in this historical context. In the story line, the Soviet Union is suffering its worst wheat harvest in 55 years and the Red Army has invaded Poland to crush a nascent uprising. Cuban and Nicaraguan troop strength is up to half a million, and El Salvador and Honduras have fallen to communism, which has subsequently plunged Mexico into revolution. Meanwhile, in Europe, NATO has dissolved and the United States stands alone.

The movie opens in a classroom at Calumet High School, home of the Wolverines, where, against the backdrop of an idyllic Rocky Mountain community, incoming communist paratroopers unpack weapons crates and begin mowing down everyone and everything in sight. The general reaction of teachers and students is panic and bewilderment about who these invaders are and what exactly is happening.

A group of high school students escapes, retreating to the mountains and commencing sabotage operations against the communists.

Ironically, this mirrored the role of Castro and his fellow guerrillas who fought the forces of Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista from their hideaway in the Sierra Maestra mountain range. Led by Jed (played by Patrick Swayze), the Wolverines ultimately create so much havoc for the occupying forces that the Soviet commander explicitly compares the situation to Afghanistan, where at the time in real life the Soviets were fighting a brutal counterinsurgency against the U.S.-supported mujahideen.

Red Dawn can be seen as a pop cultural inoculation against the “Vietnam syndrome,” the legacy of self-doubt about the morality of U.S. foreign policy. The film’s plot effectively transformed the United States from the aggressor in its attempts to thwart the regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua into the victim of an utterly implausible military invasion and occupation by those very same regimes. One of the movie’s taglines—“No foreign army has ever occupied American soil. Until now.”—captured the ultimate endpoint of the domino theory.

Read More: Former U.S. Diplomat Charged with Secretly Spying for Cuban Intelligence for Decades

The original script for Red Dawn was titled “Ten Soldiers” and its message was anti-war. But the studio chose not to bring the writer into the project. The studio instead hired John Milius, a known political conservative, as its director.

The studio was likely hoping to cash in on and amplify the patriotic fervor that swept the nation during Reagan’s first term and especially in the aftermath of the 1983 U.S. overthrow of a Cuban-supported communist government on the small Caribbean island of Grenada. OPERATION URGENT FURY was a quick, decisive victory, and raised Washington’s hopes of further anticommunist victories in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Milius said that his version of the film was basically “a zombie movie with Russians,” and that “the message of Red Dawn is to liberate the oppressed.”

It is indeed a stunning achievement that during one of the most aggressive periods of US Cold War foreign policy, the film successfully portrayed the U.S. and the American people as the oppressed. In doing so, it helped argue to American audiences that U.S. Cold War foreign policy was fundamentally a defensive reaction to the relentless advance of the Soviet Union, which Reagan referred to as an “evil empire.”

Upon its release, the National Coalition on Television Violence condemned Red Dawn as the most violent movie ever made, with an average of 134 acts of violence depicted per hour.

And Red Dawn became an instant classic among the U.S. armed forces. Later, the 2003 mission to capture Saddam Hussein was codenamed OPERATION RED DAWN, with the target labeled WOLVERINE I. Army Captain Geoffrey McMurray, who chose the name, said “I think all of us in the military have seen Red Dawn.” The irony of naming a mission to capture a foreign leader after invading and occupying his country in honor of a movie that portrays the U.S. as a victim of the same scenario is overwhelming.

The stories Americans tell themselves about their country’s role in the world matter. Nowhere is this clearer than the morally fraught battles playing out between Russia and Ukraine and among Israel, Hamas, and the Palestinian people today. The popular U.S. narrative of these conflicts is that Americans are aligned with the “good guys” in an existential struggle against the forces of evil.

The pursuit of “endless war” has characterized U.S. post-Cold War foreign policy; it is made possible only by the failure of the American public to grapple with the morally ambiguous origins and consequences of U.S. military interventions abroad. And cultural representations like Red Dawn have played a key role in obscuring that history.

Michelle D. Paranzino is associate professor of Strategy & Policy and director of the Latin America Studies Group at the U.S. Naval War College. The opinions expressed here are hers alone.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

[sa7abnews]

Why 1984’s Red Dawn Still Matters

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/09/why-1984s-red-dawn-still-matters/

Why 1984’s Red Dawn Still Matters

August 2024 marks the 40th anniversary of the classic Hollywood film Red Dawn. As the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to feed fears of a wider global conflict, the movie is worth revisiting for its depiction of the outbreak of World War III.

In portraying the U.S. as an innocent victim of an unprovoked communist invasion and occupation of North America, Red Dawn fundamentally inverted the historical reality of U.S. Cold War foreign policy, especially in Latin America. Even as that history was marked by U.S. efforts to overthrow Latin American governments, the movie told a story of Latin American aggression against the United States. The movie’s popularity, and its enduring appeal to many members of the U.S. armed forces, suggests that Americans are much more comfortable viewing themselves in the role of victims than aggressors.

Dating back to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, U.S. foreign policy sought to prevent the intrusion of European imperialism in the Western hemisphere. During the Cold War, this meant that any Latin American government seeking normal diplomatic and trade relations with the Soviet Union was suspect.

After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Fidel Castro pursued an alliance with the Soviet Union, which many U.S. policymakers viewed as a fundamental betrayal of the Monroe Doctrine. As a result, one presidential administration after another unsuccessfully employed economic, political, and military means in the hopes of overthrowing the regime. The failed U.S.-supported covert Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and repeated assassination attempts on Castro convinced the Cubans and Soviets that Washington was bent on regime change. This led to the Cuban missile crisis, the most dangerous flashpoint of the entire Cold War that ultimately resulted in a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba.

The strategic logic of U.S. Cold War interventionism was premised on the “domino theory,” which held that if one nation fell to communism, those surrounding it would inevitably collapse, one by one, in a chain of dominoes ultimately spilling into the United States. The domino theory was used to justify the U.S. war in Vietnam, where the revelation of U.S. atrocities was so horrific that it created a domestic crisis of confidence—the “Vietnam syndrome”—about the moral righteousness of the U.S. role in the world.

The logic of the domino theory took on particular urgency in the early 1980s, after the collapse of the corrupt and brutal Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua and the coming to power of a Marxist-Leninist government—the Sandinistas, who in turn supported leftist guerrillas in neighboring El Salvador. The Sandinistas were named in honor of Augusto César Sandino, leader of the rebellion against the 1927-1933 U.S. occupation of Nicaragua, and became the focus of President Ronald Reagan’s anticommunist ire.

Read More: The Man Who Made Ronald Reagan ‘See Red’ Is Still in Power

Reagan had never doubted the righteousness of the U.S. cause in Vietnam, and he rejected the notion that the U.S. should learn to live with its communist neighbors in Central America and the Caribbean. As his administration tightened the embargo against Cuba and supported the counterrevolutionary forces known as the “contras” battling the Sandinista government, the film Red Dawn encouraged the American movie-going public to empathize with the protagonists’ plight as insurgents battling a joint Soviet, Cuban, and Nicaraguan occupation.

The premise of the dystopian world of Red Dawn took shape in this historical context. In the story line, the Soviet Union is suffering its worst wheat harvest in 55 years and the Red Army has invaded Poland to crush a nascent uprising. Cuban and Nicaraguan troop strength is up to half a million, and El Salvador and Honduras have fallen to communism, which has subsequently plunged Mexico into revolution. Meanwhile, in Europe, NATO has dissolved and the United States stands alone.

The movie opens in a classroom at Calumet High School, home of the Wolverines, where, against the backdrop of an idyllic Rocky Mountain community, incoming communist paratroopers unpack weapons crates and begin mowing down everyone and everything in sight. The general reaction of teachers and students is panic and bewilderment about who these invaders are and what exactly is happening.

A group of high school students escapes, retreating to the mountains and commencing sabotage operations against the communists.

Ironically, this mirrored the role of Castro and his fellow guerrillas who fought the forces of Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista from their hideaway in the Sierra Maestra mountain range. Led by Jed (played by Patrick Swayze), the Wolverines ultimately create so much havoc for the occupying forces that the Soviet commander explicitly compares the situation to Afghanistan, where at the time in real life the Soviets were fighting a brutal counterinsurgency against the U.S.-supported mujahideen.

Red Dawn can be seen as a pop cultural inoculation against the “Vietnam syndrome,” the legacy of self-doubt about the morality of U.S. foreign policy. The film’s plot effectively transformed the United States from the aggressor in its attempts to thwart the regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua into the victim of an utterly implausible military invasion and occupation by those very same regimes. One of the movie’s taglines—“No foreign army has ever occupied American soil. Until now.”—captured the ultimate endpoint of the domino theory.

Read More: Former U.S. Diplomat Charged with Secretly Spying for Cuban Intelligence for Decades

The original script for Red Dawn was titled “Ten Soldiers” and its message was anti-war. But the studio chose not to bring the writer into the project. The studio instead hired John Milius, a known political conservative, as its director.

The studio was likely hoping to cash in on and amplify the patriotic fervor that swept the nation during Reagan’s first term and especially in the aftermath of the 1983 U.S. overthrow of a Cuban-supported communist government on the small Caribbean island of Grenada. OPERATION URGENT FURY was a quick, decisive victory, and raised Washington’s hopes of further anticommunist victories in Nicaragua and El Salvador.

Milius said that his version of the film was basically “a zombie movie with Russians,” and that “the message of Red Dawn is to liberate the oppressed.”

It is indeed a stunning achievement that during one of the most aggressive periods of US Cold War foreign policy, the film successfully portrayed the U.S. and the American people as the oppressed. In doing so, it helped argue to American audiences that U.S. Cold War foreign policy was fundamentally a defensive reaction to the relentless advance of the Soviet Union, which Reagan referred to as an “evil empire.”

Upon its release, the National Coalition on Television Violence condemned Red Dawn as the most violent movie ever made, with an average of 134 acts of violence depicted per hour.

And Red Dawn became an instant classic among the U.S. armed forces. Later, the 2003 mission to capture Saddam Hussein was codenamed OPERATION RED DAWN, with the target labeled WOLVERINE I. Army Captain Geoffrey McMurray, who chose the name, said “I think all of us in the military have seen Red Dawn.” The irony of naming a mission to capture a foreign leader after invading and occupying his country in honor of a movie that portrays the U.S. as a victim of the same scenario is overwhelming.

The stories Americans tell themselves about their country’s role in the world matter. Nowhere is this clearer than the morally fraught battles playing out between Russia and Ukraine and among Israel, Hamas, and the Palestinian people today. The popular U.S. narrative of these conflicts is that Americans are aligned with the “good guys” in an existential struggle against the forces of evil.

The pursuit of “endless war” has characterized U.S. post-Cold War foreign policy; it is made possible only by the failure of the American public to grapple with the morally ambiguous origins and consequences of U.S. military interventions abroad. And cultural representations like Red Dawn have played a key role in obscuring that history.

Michelle D. Paranzino is associate professor of Strategy & Policy and director of the Latin America Studies Group at the U.S. Naval War College. The opinions expressed here are hers alone.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

[comradegarf]

This is a declassified memorandum from Lester D. Mallory, to (at the time) U.S Assistant Secretary of State Roy R. Rubottom. Mallory states both that most Cubans support the Communist government, and that military action in Cuba would be a grave misstep (which was taken a year later anyway).

He therefore proposes that the U.S government should adopt a policy of economically starving Cuba, "to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.".

This is what they are doing to this day. The embargo on Cuba has been upheld in it's full extent since 1962. It makes it illegal for American corporations to trade with Cuba and for companies that trade with Cuba to trade with America. This has a severe effect on the Cuban economy, considering the U.S is the largest economy on Earth. This effect means Cuba struggles to import the food and medical supplies it needs to survive, which is killing Cuban citizens.

The Embargo is often defended by people citing the fact that it does not apply to medical or food trade, but this is really just for show. The law makes it incredibly vague what is actually allowed to be traded, and the process for organizations or companies to find out is very drawn out and complicated. This practically guarantees food and medicine imports will be all but completely non-existent as well.

The U.N Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, article 2.c, states that: "Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part" is Genocide.

Joe Biden has yet to reverse any of the further restrictions placed on Cuba during the Trump administration, and has not taken Cuba off the "State Sponsors of Terrorism" list. The U.N votes on a resolution to condemn the embargo every year, demanding it be removed. In 2022, only the United States itself and the U.S puppet state Israel voted against.

[jingerpi]

This is ridiculous because even liberal sourecs recognize the disasterous effects of the USA's blockaid on Cuba.

At the UN general assembly on 23 June, a total of 184 countries supported Cuba’s motion for the end of the US blockade. It was the 29th year that Cuba’s vote had won Cuba’s critics blame the government for the daily hardships Cubans face, dismissing US sanctions as an excuse. This is like blaming a person for not swimming well when they are chained to the ground. The US blockade of Cuba is real. It is the longest and most extensive system of unilateral sanctions applied against any country in modern history. It affects every aspect of Cuban life.

The Guardian

Not only this, the idea that its just the US, and other countries can trade just fine, is entirely wrong.

In 1992, Congress passed the “Cuban Democracy Act,” introduced by Senator Robert Torricelli. Since 1975, foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations had routinely been given licenses to trade with Cuba, as long as the subsidiary functioned independently of the parent corporation and no U.S. goods or U.S. dollar transactions were involved. The Torricelli law prohibited these licenses, with the result that foreign subsidiaries were treated the same as U.S. corporations, with violators subject to the same penalties as U.S. companies. This constituted a clear international law, which holds that “a company is ordinarily considered to be a national of the state under the laws of which it is organized.” In addition, the Torricelli law imposed restrictions on shipping: any vessel that enters Cuba to provide goods or services, regardless of the country of origin, cannot stop at a U.S. port for 180 days; otherwise, both the ship and its cargo are subject to confiscation. This applies even to goods that the United States considers permissible* such as Cuban imports of food from third countries. The Torricelli law also prohibits third countries from selling goods to the United States that contain any amount of Cuban materials or any materials that have passed through Cuba. For example, no metal products can be sold to the United States that contain even trace amounts of Cuban nickel, one of Cuba’s major exports. Likewise, no Belgian chocolate may be sold in the United States unless the Belgian government provides assurances to the U.S. government that the chocolate contains no Cuban sugar, an export that is critical to the Cuban economy. The U.S. embargo measures interfere in Cuba’s access to international banks in several ways, even when they are not U.S. financial institutions. The United States prohibits Cuba from engaging in any transactions in U.S. dollars, and likewise prohibits any bank—including foreign banks— from facilitating commercial transactions by Cuba in U.S. dollars

*this also includes medical supplies.

This all is sumarized quite well with the statement:

In some regards, because of the extraordinary power held by the United States in many domains, the U.S. unilateral embargo functions as a global embargo.

Even fucking Canada called out the US on their BS

The intrusiveness of the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act and the 1996 Libertad Act created a backlash among American allies, and a number of major American trading partners responded with retaliatory legislation. After the passage of the Helms-Burton Act, Canada’s Prime Minister Jean Chretien denounced it as interference in Canada’s affairs: “If you want to have an isolationist policy, that’s your business. But don’t tell us what to do. That’s our business.” Canada additionally denounced the U.S. law as a violation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the grounds that the U.S. Congress was seeking to impose its foreign policy on other nations

The U.S. Embargo against Cuba and the Diplomatic Challenges to Extraterritoriality - Fairfield University. Here is also a similar video overview if you prefer that format.

It’s so funny how liberals will mention Cuba as a country run by a “dictatorship” when the US has kept them on a terrorism watchlist for years, which means they don’t have or have very little access to fuel, food, and other things necessary for its citizens survival. Same thing for North Korea.

These people were forced to become self-reliant and completely upend and redo how they run things because the United States essentially isolated them to punish them, and yet they’re somehow the bad guys in this scenario? The only reason the countries run as they do today is because of the United States and its desire to control any threats to its imperialist state.

[minnesotafollower]

Cuban Journalist Rejects U.S. Embargo as Cause of Cuba’s Turmoil 

A Cuban journalist, Rafaela Cruz, rejects its government’s claim that the U.S. embargo is the cause of the island’s poor exports.[1] She asserts that “the embargo’s limitations are directed primarily against the Cuban government and not against the rest of the nation, as demonstrated by the fact that after only three years of private entrepreneurs in  Cuba, they  are already, with relative ease,…

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

New York City: End the U.S. blockade of Cuba Rally and March

Saturday, October 29 - 12 noon

Gather at Times Square, Manhattan 

Join us in NYC and around the world. The UN General Assembly’s annual vote demanding an end to the “the Economic, Commercial and Financial embargo imposed by the United States against Cuba” – the blockade -- will take place over two days on November 2 and 3, 2022. This will be the 30th consecutive vote in which the world community will once again overwhelmingly condemn the cruel, unjust, and illegal US blockade against Cuba! For more information UNVote4Cuba.org

[sexyleon]

I’m going to be Cuban-American on main because this is important and I am extremely upset.

Sunday, July 11th 2021, protests erupted across Cuba against the government because (but not limited to) the following:

Lack of access to medical care

7000+ daily COVID cases

When I say lack of access I mean there is quite literally no medicine available. No hospital beds. No ventilators. Nada. Nada. Nada.

Food shortages. You can’t feed yourself, let alone a family.

The government controls electricity and the internet so access to either of those things are limited

People are DYING, and have been dying.

Cuban-Americans, Cuban immigrants, and those who live in Cuban communities know this. U.S.-based Cubans have been sending food, clothes, medicine, technology to their families on the island for years. And now Cubans are taking to the streets, thousands strong, protesting for their basic human rights.

I’m upset because in the day that this news broke, it has become a discourse for ‘capitalism vs socialism vs communism’ or the focus has become entirely on U.S. Imperialism (which definitely is a factor in what’s happening but that’s an ENTIRELY different and extremely nuanced conversation). If what little news coming out of Cuba is to be believed, protestors are being murdered now. They’re being beaten, arrested, attacked, and killed. And instead of focusing on the CUBAN PEOPLE, the people who are suffering, and have been suffering for years, I see a whole bunch of people using this time to flex their political opinions on a country they know ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about. This in no way helps spread information on what’s happening on the island or calls to action on what to do about it!! It floods the SOScuba hashtag with political discourse instead of much-needed INFORMATION.

The first thing Americans can help with is protesting the U.S. Embargo against Cuba. THIS IS NOT THE SAME AS ASKING FOR U.S. INTERVENTION. The embargo makes things harder on Cuba, this is NOT the fix-all solution, but removing it will help.

I don't have a comprehensive compilation of links that address the situation, but I am searching for them and will be updating this post with them. If you have any links or info that I can add to this post, please do so or DM me!

This is an article from The Miami Herald breaking down the situation. It is actively being actively updated and I think it provides a good basis of information. It also includes protests and demonstrations happening in Miami, which has a massive Cuban immigrant and Cuban-American population.

#SOScuba

[mariacallous]

I am of two minds about this piece and I'm still trying to figure out where I end up with it, because I do agree with some of the points.

On an election night when Democrats did far better across the country than they had any reason to expect, Florida stood out as the exception. A red tide—not the one fouling Florida’s coasts, the one inundating its politics—swept away Democrats’ illusions that the Sunshine State might still be competitive. Gov. Ron DeSantis won in a landslide against Charlie Crist, a veteran Florida politician and former governor. Sen. Marco Rubio also won by a wide margin, defeating Rep. Val Demings, one of the strongest candidates the Democrats could have fielded. Democrats lost 20 of Florida’s 28 House races, failing to take back a major seat in south Florida (FL-27) that they had hoped to reclaim after losing it in 2020. In 2021, for the first time in Florida’s modern political history, there were more registered Republicans than Democrats. Democrats are still competitive in the urban strongholds of Tampa, Orlando, and Miami, but statewide they are not. There is no plausible scenario in which President Joe Biden or any other Democrat beats former President Donald Trump, let alone DeSantis, in Florida in 2024.

There is a silver lining to this dark electoral cloud for Democrats: A deep-red Florida gives them the freedom to reconstruct their Cuba policy based on U.S. foreign-policy interests rather than prognostications about Cuban American voters in Miami-Dade. But the habit of letting domestic politics drive Cuba policy will be hard to break. It has shaped how Democrats approach the issue for 40 years—ever since the 1980s, when Cuban Americans became a significant voting bloc.

Former President Bill Clinton admitted that “anybody with half a brain” knew the U.S. embargo against Cuba was a “policy of proven failure.” Nevertheless, during his 1992 campaign, he supported legislation tightening the embargo in order to outflank then-President George H.W. Bush on the right, and in 1996 he signed legislation writing the embargo into law. “Clinton really wanted to carry Florida,” explained former National Security Council official Richard Feinberg. “That was numero uno.” (Clinton lost there in 1992 but won in 1996.)

The 2000 election in Florida is burned into the collective memory of Democrats—especially Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, who was chief of staff to then-Vice President Al Gore and general counsel of Gore’s recount committee. In reprisal for Clinton returning 6-year-old Elián González to his father in Cuba, Cuban Americans cast a voto castigo (punishment vote) that cost Gore the presidency. Thus was born the conventional wisdom that to carry the swing state of Florida, Democratic presidential candidates had to be at least as tough on Cuba as their Republican opponents.

Former President Barak Obama challenged that wisdom in a limited way in 2008 and 2012 by appealing to Cuban American moderates with policies that favored family connections, relaxing restrictions on remittances, and travel. That strategy worked; Obama reached a high-water mark for Democrats, winning about half the Cuban American vote in 2012. But even Obama did not undertake his historic normalization policy until after he was safely reelected.

Trump’s success at mobilizing the Cuban American right by reversing Obama’s rapprochement with Havana persuaded some Democrats that the popularity of Obama’s policy was an anomaly. Biden returned to the default posture of trying to be as tough on Cuba as the Republicans, leaving most of Trump’s economic sanctions in place and adding new ones. Biden has even gone a step further, giving the diaspora a privileged role in crafting his Cuba policy, calling Cuban Americans “a vital partner” and “the best experts on the issue.”

The futility of this approach was on display in the election results, and a recent poll of Cuban Americans in south Florida explains why. Respondents overwhelmingly opposed Biden’s Cuba policy—72 percent to 28 percent—even though it was not substantially different from Trump’s, which they supported overwhelmingly. Cuban American antipathy toward Democrats goes far beyond Cuba policy, reaching across a wide range of issues, foreign and domestic. Cuban American Republicans greatly outnumber Democrats in party registration, and according to exit polls, 67 percent voted for Rubio and 69 percent for DeSantis.

If Florida is lost for the foreseeable future to Democrats running statewide, freeing the national Democratic Party to formulate Cuba policy based on national interests, what would that policy look like?

It would begin from the premise of promoting regime change or coercing the Cuban government into compliance with U.S. demands, but both approaches have an unbroken record of failure stretching back more than 50 years. As Democratic icon and former President Franklin D. Roosevelt advised: “Do something. If it works, do more of it. If it doesn’t, do something else.” Time to do something else.

A Cuba policy based on national interests would recognize that inescapable geography gives the United States and Cuba significant interests in common, ranging from migration to environmental protection, public health, narcotics interdiction, and more—interests that can only be advanced through cooperation.

It would acknowledge that no other country in the world supports Washington’s policy of hostility, as the near-unanimous annual United Nations vote against the embargo has recorded for 30 years in a row. Many U.S. allies, especially the left-center governments now predominant in Latin America, actively oppose that policy, as they told Secretary of State Antony Blinken on his recent trip to the region. By stubbornly sticking to a policy of hostility, the Biden administration is hobbling its hemispheric agenda, as the partial boycott of the Summit of the Americas in May illustrated—and this at a moment when China’s influence in the region is on the rise.

Finally, a realistic policy aimed at promoting a more open Cuba, politically and economically, would recognize that if the United States hopes to have a positive impact on the dramatic changes underway on the island in the post-Castro era, it has to actively engage with Cuba’s new leaders and with its increasingly vibrant civil society.

In short, a policy based on U.S. national interests would look a lot like the policy Obama announced on Dec. 17, 2014—the policy Biden promised during the 2020 campaign to return to “in large part” but hasn’t. Obama’s policy was hailed by U.S. allies across Latin America and Europe and praised by both former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Pope Francis. One would be hard-pressed to name another U.S. foreign-policy initiative in recent decades so universally applauded. If Biden is prepared to craft a Cuba policy that makes sense as a foreign policy, he doesn’t have to reinvent the wheel. He just has to put it back on the cart.

[bring-it-all-down]

I am begging people to familiarize themselves with US efforts to overthrow the Cuban government in order to reinstate private corporations. 

Prior to the 1959 revolution, American businesses owned the vast majority of the country’s sugar production as well as roughly 70% of the country’s land. This land was organized into a plantation system consisting of latifundia––large privately-owned pieces of land worked by slaves. This ownership was aided by America’s support (and installation) of the brutal dictator, Fulgencio Batista, who received monetary and military support in violently silencing the poor Cubans who opposed his suspension of civil liberties, including the right to strike. During the Cuban revolution, many of these landowners and business owners escaped to America rather than cooperating with the revolution and allowing their property to be nationally controlled. JFK in 1963 admitted that Batista’s regime was the fault of the US.

After the nationalization of Cuba’s industries, like sugar plantations, oil refineries, and banks, the U.S. authorized the CIA to begin attempts to overthrow the government and re-establish American private corporations on the island.

The first such attempt was the Bay of Pigs invasion in April of 1961. The invasion was carried out by a combination of CIA-funded Cuban exiles (named the Democratic Revolutionary Front) and members of the US military. The 1,400 invaders where defeated after only three days, however, after Castro took over leadership of the Cuban troops.

Following this embarrassment, JFK announced a full trade embargo on Cuba, beginning in February 1962. This trade embargo is still in place and has denied Cuba roughly $130 billion over the past 6 decades, according to both Cuban and United Nations estimates.

In November of 1961, the US government created another project to overthrow the Cuban government, titled Operation Mongoose. This project was more secretive and sinister than the Bay of Pigs invasion, involving political, psychological, military, intelligence, and assassination components meant to destabilize the entire Castro regime and bring the island back under American control. This operation distributed anti-Castro propaganda in Cuba, the US, and worldwide; funded militias in Cuba; established guerilla bases throughout the country; carried out attacks on power plants, oil refineries, sugar mills, and other manufacturing sites; and attempted multiple times to assassinate Castro and other Communist Party members (the CIA planned at least 500 assassination attempts against Castro in his lifetime). The Operation was scaled back in late 1962 due to the Cuban Missile Crisis.

In conjunction with Operation Mongoose, the US considered implementing Operation Bounty––distributing leaflets around Cuba offering significant monetary rewards for the murder of Castro and a handful of other party members––and Operation Northwoods––committing acts of terrorism against US military and civilians in the US and Cuba and blaming them on Cuba. These projects were both allegedly ultimately rejected.

From 1960 to 1962, the US facilitated Operation Peter Pan, in which Catholic “charities” and the US government sent 14,000 unaccompanied children (mainly of upperclass families) to the US so they wouldn’t be enrolled in the government’s literacy campaign. While many children were eventually reunited with their families, others were placed in foster families as far away as Illinois and New York. They were all made to learn English and speak only in English in the orphanages in which they all lived for at least 6 months. The result was an alienation from their Cuban culture and an indoctrination into US propaganda.

On October 6, 1976, CIA-assisted Cuban exiles planted bombs on Cubana de Aviación Flight 455, departing from Barbados and heading toward Jamaica. The bombs detonated, exploding the plane and killing all 73 passengers, including the entire Cuban Olympic fencing team. Two of the terrorists, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles eventually moved to the US, and Bosch was pardoned by George H.W. Bush in 1990.

In 2010, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) created ZunZuneo, named “Cuban Twitter.” This social media platform, designed to undermine the communist Cuban government, spammed its users with propaganda and collected private data to assist them in fomenting a revolution among Cuban youths.  

These are just the very basics of the US’s efforts to overthrow the Castro government and reinstitute Cuba as a resource for American capitalism and imperialism. If you want to talk about whatever protests may or may not be happening in Cuba right now, you cannot do so outside of this context. You cannot talk about the poverty of Cuba without placing the blame on American embargoes.

If you want to discuss America’s understanding of Cuban humanitarian need, you cannot do so without reckoning with America’s use of Guantanamo Bay on the same island which we are supposed to believe they want to liberate.

Just last week, the President submitted a budget to Congress, asking for $20,000,000 to fund support for private businesses in Cuba and $13,000,000 to find Office of Cuba Broadcasting, which transmits American propaganda in Spanish to Cuba. This office was created in the 1980s for the explicit purpose of undermining communism in Cuba.

This is not to say that every single Cuban is happy with the Cuban government at all times, but rather that the US has a vested interest in overthrowing the government and establishing a capitalist, US-friendly one in its place. Any international protest crowd that is full of American flags should be a GIANT tip-off that the CIA/US government might just be involved! Just imagine what the CIA is hiding when all of the information comes from declassified files!!!!!