Wednesday, November 30, 2016
Trump Scores a Victory Today That Obama Would Have Never Gotten
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXnsF2-pav8
First they came for Assange (Yanis Varoufakis & Srećko Horvat)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BROVnNhFWc&t=4s
Why There Are No Viable Political Alternatives to Unbridled Capitalism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7JgfB8PaAk
Sunday, November 27, 2016
How Fidel Outlived His U.S. Government Assassins
Editor’s note: On the occasion
of the death of former longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro, we are republishing
this article by Truthdig Editor in Chief Robert Scheer, about U.S. relations
with and actions toward Cuba. It was originally published in the Los Angeles Times on Nov. 11, 1997.
You don’t need to rely on
Seymour Hersh’s racy new book, “The Dark Side of Camelot,” to know that John F.
Kennedy’s administration tried to assassinate Fidel Castro by using Mafia hit
men. Denials by former Kennedy aides, led by historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
and speech writer Ted Sorensen, are simply wrong.
The entire nefarious business
is documented in excruciating detail in “Report on Plots to Assassinate Fidel
Castro,” a 133-page memorandum prepared in 1967 by CIA Inspector General J.S.
Earman for Director Richard Helms. The supersecret report was so hot that after
Helms read it, he instructed Earman: “Destroy all notes and other source
materials” and “Destroy the one burn copy retained temporarily by the inspector
general.” This left only one “ribbon copy” kept by the inspector general for
“personal EYES ONLY safekeeping.”
Fortunately, that one copy
survived; after lengthy lawsuits it was finally declassified in 1993. When
Hersh came under attack last week for his new book, I dug out my copy of the
CIA report, and there’s no question he got this point right.
I don’t know if Hersh is
correct in his assertion that Chicago gangster Sam Giancana stole the 1960
election for Kennedy or that the president shared sexual intimacies with
Giancana’s lady friend. But the CIA report makes it quite clear that during the
Kennedy years, Giancana was a key player in the effort to overthrow Castro and
that the president’s brother, the country’s top law enforcement official, knew
all about it.
Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy was
told about the Mafia’s assassination plot on May 7, 1962, by CIA agents who,
according to the report, “briefed him all the way.” Castro’s revolution had
wiped out organized crime’s Havana gambling empire and the revengeful mob was
eager to return. But Castro had also nationalized other U.S.-owned businesses,
incurring the enmity of American policymakers and thereby making an alliance
with the Mafia seem all the more opportune.
Later, in his fateful
candidacy for the presidency in 1968, Robert Kennedy would question the logic
of unremitting U.S. hostility toward Cuba. But back when he was in his
brother’s administration, the get-Castro mentality was all-pervasive. Even after
being informed of the use of well-known mobsters in the plot to kill Castro,
Robert Kennedy did not object except to wryly request of his CIA briefers that
“I trust that if you ever try to do business with organized crime again—with
gangsters—you will let the attorney general know before you do it.”
The efforts to kill Castro
continued with the clear blessings of the administration. On Aug. 10, 1962,
Secretary of State Dean Rusk convened a meeting of what was called the “special
group” and, according to the CIA report, “[Secretary of Defense Robert]
McNamara broached the subject of liquidation of Cuban leaders. The discussion
resulted in a Project Mongoose action memorandum prepared by [CIA operative]
Edward Lansdale.”
Mongoose was the name of a
general sabotage campaign against Cuba that, according to the memoir of a
subsequent CIA director, William Colby, included the “sabotage of Cuban
factories and rail lines” as well as “spreading nonlethal chemicals in sugar
fields to sicken cane cutters.” Efforts to kill Castro with poisoned cigars,
infected saccharine pills and explosives fit right in.
True, U.S. planning to kill
Castro began during the Eisenhower administration, but it hadn’t amounted to
much until the Kennedyites added their special macho zeal. As the CIA report
states: “We cannot overemphasize the extent to which responsible agency
officers felt themselves subject to the Kennedy administration’s severe
pressures to do something about Castro and his regime.” The pressure “to do
something” put the knights of Camelot in cahoots with the lords of crime whom
Castro had booted out.
That was 35 years ago, but the
arrogance of our Cuba policy has not changed. Only now the policy is so
ossified that a president who was merely a teenager when his idol Kennedy
initiated this policy of fitful revenge is held captive to its inherited
inanity.
Last week, President Clinton
sanctimoniously justified the continued isolation of Cuba despite his warm
welcome for the leader of communist China. Clinton said that the embargo
against Cuba must continue until Cuba could prove that “it can turn into a
modern state.” Perhaps it isn’t too late for the Cubans to do a joint venture
on gambling casinos with the mob to prove just how modern they are.
Bernie Sanders tries to teach moron news anchors why Hillary lost
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krP7rqYKHxs
Fidel at 90: a Revolutionary Life
This column originally ran in
August of 2016.
This August 13, Fidel Castro
Ruz, leader of the Cuban Revolution and international inspiration for people
struggling for a better world, turned 90. His age alone is a remarkable
achievement, considering more than 630 documented assassination attempts on his
life by the CIA and other nefarious agencies.
Despite the enormous historical
impact that Fidel Castro has had in Cuba and Latin America for more than 55
years, it is astounding that his voice has never been heard nor his words
widely known by the people of the United States.
But Fidel’s legendary life of
revolution is certainly noted elsewhere. All this year in Cuba, and around the
world as his birthday approaches, there are countless activities to celebrate
his life.
It is a shame that Fidel
Castro’s life and his audacity in defeating a bloody dictatorship to then build
socialism, is hardly known by the American people. They would find a man of
enormous courage and humanity who delivered his country from a neo-colonial
status to a sovereign country with a major imprint on the world stage.
They would learn that Fidel
Castro has expressed admiration for the American people, despite U.S.
government policy that has tried to overthrow the revolution and done so much
harm.
Think about this. In March of
this year, President Barack Obama in Havana spoke on Cuban national television,
uncensored on evening prime time, when undoubtedly millions of people watched
him, curious to know if and how U.S. policy would change toward Cuba.
Uncensored.
But how many people ever heard
Fidel Castro — or Raúl Castro — over the airwaves in the U.S. or in a daily
newspaper? To ask is to answer.
Part of the U.S. blockade of
Cuba has been the travel ban, keeping us from seeing Cuba with our own eyes.
Its intent was to isolate Cuba and keep people of the United States from
understanding the Cuban revolutionary process or who the Cubans and their
leaders really are.
Fidel Castro was one of
Washington’s first demonized leaders, to justify the U.S. government placing
the Cuban population under screws to extract their surrender to the old ways of
domination.
The blockade has been
extremely harsh, to the tune of more than 1 trillion dollars in damages to the
Cuban economy, not including the human toll. And yet, Cuba’s infant mortality
rate reached an astonishing low 4.2 deaths per 1,000 last year, a testament to
their healthcare system.
Fidel Castro’s proposals of
international solidarity also extended to the United States.
How many people know that
right after the Katrina disaster, Fidel Castro quietly — without fanfare —
offered George W. Bush more than 1,000 Cuban medical personnel, who were
prepared to arrive in New Orleans within five hours of Bush’s would-be approval
and treat the beleaguered victims along the Gulf Coast without a single cost to
the U.S.?
Bush completely ignored the
offer. After several days, Castro then publicly repeated the offer, hoping it
could become a reality. Instead more people died needless deaths.
How many people know that
young Americans are studying for free in Cuba, to become medical doctors in the
U.S., thanks to the Latin American School of Medicine?
Cuban medical workers were
decisive in combating Ebola in western Africa. When that health catastrophe
seemed as if it could potentially spread around the world, many breathed a sigh
of relief in witnessing Cuba’s role.
By extending support to the
people of southern Africa in the 1970s and 1980s, surely Fidel Castro knew that
would earn even deeper enmity from Washington, an ally of the apartheid regime.
But he nevertheless called on
Cuban volunteers to aid in defeating the invading South African army in Angola.
Those 300,000 men and women helped break the chains of apartheid, and led to
Namibia’s independence.
Fidel Castro’s 90th birthday
last Saturday should merit some reflection in the United States on who he
really is, beyond the relentlessly negative image that the U.S. administrations
and media have conveyed to the people of the United States.
Several times in the last 25
years, I have had the honor and privilege of meeting Fidel Castro. I am certain
that I will never personally meet a greater humanitarian or revolutionary.
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