I. Nahem
Date: August 27, 2014

 

New concrete examples of Washington’s ongoing economic and political subversion and covert intervention against the sovereign and independent island nation of Cuba has come to light in recent months. As reported by the Associated Press, this latest scheme was approved and directed by the Obama Administration under the auspices of the State Department’s Agency for International Development. Washington, from 2009-12, sent some dozen young operatives from Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Peru to organize opposition to the Cuban government by attempting to recruit Cuban youth encountered through infiltrating Cuban civic programs.

The scheme, which was a resounding failure and closed up shop in 2012, was fronted by a “private” group, Creative Associates International. This was the same outfit that was exposed in another Obama White House “project” revealed in an AP piece in April 2014 to organize a secret “Cuban Twitter” network that aiming to build a counter-revolutionary base to carry out US anti-Cuba policy. This also failed miserably and was discontinued. A similar front organization, Development Alternatives, Inc. was the vehicle by which US operative Alan Gross smuggled ultra-high tech satellite communications equipment into Cuba as part of yet another US covert action in blatant violation of Cuban law and for which he was convicted and imprisoned. Gross has been essentially abandoned by Washington which has repeatedly rejected efforts to resolve his situation by releasing him in exchange for freeing the remaining three Cuban Five political prisoners who were framed up and imprisoned for infiltrating and monitoring groups in south Florida planning and implementing violent acts against Cuba in the 1990s in formal violation of US law

Among the more despicable elements of this latest exposed scheme was the targeting of Cuba’s health-care system in general and it’s program to combat HIV-AIDS in particular. This program is among the most effective and humane in the world, certainly in the Americas, including the United States. Cuba’s rate of HIV infection in one of the lowest in the world, one-sixth that of the US. Instead of attempting to undermine and sabotage Cuba’s exemplary efforts, US authorities should be sending administrators, scientists, and doctors to learn from and emulate the Cuban example.

In fact these two recently exposed programs are just a tip of the iceberg of the practices and policies of the US government over many decades that continue to this day. The US Congress, whether controlled by Republicans or Democrats, approves regularly and openly the spending of many tens of millions of dollars with the aim of overturning the Cuban government and destroying the Cuban Revolution and it’s example for oppressed and exploited humanity, especially across the Americas, once and for all. There are additional funds secretly allocated for other subversive actions that are more deeply buried. All of this is the complement the generalized policy of severe economic and travel sanctions against Cuba and US citizens right to freely travel there. All told, with minor tactical and cosmetic adjustments here and there, these policies have maintained an essential continuity from the Dwight Eisenhower Administration to the current White House of Barack Obama.

While the triumphant revolutionary government in Cuba was implementing policies and programs that benefited the great majority: eliminating illiteracy, radical land reform, abolition of segregation and race discrimination, huge advances in women’s rights and position in society, the eradication of US-based Mafia rackets, and so on, Washington embarked on counter-revolutionary policies that have included over the years mercenary invasions, targeted political assassinations, economic and agricultural sabotage, bombing attacks and other forms of terrorism, and myriad subversive schemes and plots. All of these have failed for the same reasons as the current efforts directed by the Obama Administration and State Department have failed. That is, because the Cuban people remain overwhelmingly in support of their Revolution and their government.

Today this large majority has no illusions whatsoever about Cuba’s difficult economic reality. Nor of the necessity for steady, significant changes in economic policies that will advance industrial and infrastructure development, economic modernization, accelerate and increase labor productivity concurrent with technical and technological progress. But it is a sick joke to think that any patriotic Cuban would for a nanosecond think that the source of such needed transformations and the resolution of social and economic problems could come from the US government — which for over has been the five decades has been carrying out an unremitting economic and political war against Cuba’s socialist revolution. This has included the direct sponsorship and organization of violent attacks — or the failure to stop such attacks organized illegally from US soil — that have killed over 3000 Cuban civilians since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution on January 1, 1959.

That triumph set in motion the revolutionary transformation of the island from the social oppression and harsh exploitation of the majority under what was the utter economic and political domination of US capital and the the US government.

Some liberal and conservative opponents of the Cuban Revolution have criticized these programs — once they became public — as ineffective, bumbling, and even pathetic. While this is no doubt true, these critics are simply registering their political embarrassment not any principled defense of Cuba’s sovereignty or right to self-determination. US subversive schemes cannot help but be ineffective and even ludicrous because there is no material or political basis in Cuban society for a US-based and directed political “opposition” to gain traction and a mass social base. These Establishment critics want more EFFECTIVE subversion not its END. They accept Washington’s RIGHT to carry out subversion policies, interventions, and sanctions in the name of “regime change” but they are uncomfortable and politically embarrassed when they are exposed.

The undersigned friends of Cuba demand an end to all US government subversive policies and plots against Cuba. We demand an unconditional end to all economic and travel sanctions and the full normalizations of relations. We further demand the immediate release of the remaining three Cuban Five political prisoners

Ike Naham

Date: August 27, 2014