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The Acts of the Democracies
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Victim Country : Cuba
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[Search Acts of the Democracies]
[Why The USA?]
[The UK, USA and Iran] [Readers' Feedback (Democracy)]
[Language]
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The Acts of the Democracies
Search Results
Years : ALL
Victim Country : Cuba
14 Items Selected |
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A military coup occurs in Cuba. The elected government of Carlos Prio Socorras is deposed by Fulgencio Batista.
The USA supports the new Cuban dictator who is a particularly brutal ruler. Under his regime, Cuba becomes a haven for drugs, gambling, vice and mobsters. USA business interests benefit.
Freedom of speech is curtailed and hundreds of teachers, lawyers and public officials are fired from their jobs. Death squads torture and kill thousands of "communists".
Castro had attempted to stand in elections in 1952. These elections were cancelled when Batista took power. American businesses (set up under the un-elected Batista with terms favourable to the USA) are taken over after the USA stops sugar imports from Cuba.
Castro, originally pro-West, turns to the USSR for financial help. Cuba's people would suffer greatly from American trade embargoes, terrorist attacks, bombings, biological warfare, a military invasion, sanctions, isolation and assassination.
The USA attempts to persuade and coerce other countries to join the boycott of Cuba, saying that the country is a threat to the Western Hemisphere. A Mexican diplomat responds with "If we publicly declare that Cuba is a threat to our security, forty million Mexicans will die laughing".
By 1973 Cuba will have the lowest child mortality and the highest literacy in Latin America. In spite of these measures, popular with the majority of the population, the USA puts pressure on its allies to exclude Cuba from various inter-American forums. The USA continues to blockade the country and even attempts to assassinate the president, Fidel Castro.
A UK freighter bound from Cuba to the USSR with 80,000 bags of sugar stops in Puerto Rico for repairs. Agents from the USA CIA contaminate the sugar with a harmless chemical that makes the sugar unpalatable. A CIA official later reveals:
"There was lots of sugar being sent out from Cuba, and we were putting a lot of contaminates in it."
The USA president, John Kennedy, is angry when he hears of the operation because it had occurred on USA territory and could hand the USSR a propaganda weapon.
A Canadian worker in Cuba is paid $5,000 "by an American military intelligence agent" to infect turkeys with a fatal disease; 8,000 turkeys die.
A group of CIA dispatched rebels blow up an industrial facility killing 400 workers.
Posada was trained by the USA's CIA and later turns up supplying the anti Nicaragua Contras for the USA covert war against that country. In the 1990s he would be involved in destabilising Honduras.
The USA's boycotts of countries like Cuba as well as threats to retaliate against non-USA companies doing business with them violates the global trade rules that the USA has signed. Although it exempts itself from these rules, the USA insists on other countries abiding by them.
When European countries refuse to boycott Cuba, the USA's President Clinton asserts in the Newspaper of Record:
"Europe is challenging 'three decades of American Cuba policy that goes back to the Kennedy Administration,' and is aimed entirely at forcing a change of government in Havana.".
Despite the USA embargo and the assumption that the USA has the right to change the government of a foreign country, Cuba has 57,000 doctors for its 11 million people. Associated Press has reported that since 1963, Cuba has sent 51,820 doctors, dentists, nurses and other medical doctors to the poorest nations, providing free medical aid. During the 1960s, the USA was behind many attempts to assassinate the Cuban president, Fidel Castro.
Two months later a plague of Thrips Palmi, a pesticide resistant insect, is observed in the area. This spreads rapidly affecting corn, beans, squash, cucumbers and other crops. When questioned, the USA replies that the pilot had sprayed smoke to indicate his position. This is contradicted by the USA Federal Aviation Administration which knows of "no regulation calling for this practice".
In 1977 a released CIA document had admitted that it "maintained a clandestine anti-crop warfare research program targeted during the 1960s at a number of countries around the world".
| Year | Votes | Against |
| 1992 | 59 to 2 | USA, Israel |
| 1993 | 88 to 4 | USA, Israel, Albania, Paraguay |
| 1994 | 101 to 2 | USA, Israel |
| 1995 | 117 to 3 | USA, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1996 | 138 to 2 | USA, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1997 | 143 to 2 | USA, Israel, Uzbekistan |
| 1998 | 157 to 2 | USA, Israel |
| 1999 | 155 to 2 | USA, Israel |
The USA president, Bill Clinton states that "Cuba is the only non democracy in the Western Hemisphere". This is in spite of the fact that Cuba has none of the systematic death squad activities and military control of USA client states like El Salvador, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, Haiti and Honduras. The USA and the media refer to these countries as "fledgling democracies".
In addition, education and health care are better in Cuba than in most other country's in the region. As Clinton admits "both of which work better than in most other countries".
Left alone, without years of USA destabilisation and economic sabotage, Cuba may have been a beacon to other countries in the region. This is the real threat of Fidel Castro's regime.
The plan involves privatising Cuba's public services, including communications, electric power, transport, mining, industry, agriculture and medical services.
The report recommends the continuing destabilisation of Cuba including radio and television propaganda currently supplied by illegal flights over Cuban, the denying of hard currency to the country by a tightening of the long-running blockade, the fining foreign banks which deal in Cuba transactions, punishing and rewarding foreign governments which increase or decrease trade with Cuba, and the tightening with increased punishment for travel to the country. The destabilisation is funded with $80 million per year.
The report fails to mention the social systems that currently exist in Cuba as well as the effects of the USA blockade on Cubans. The Cubans themselves are treated as helpless children in the report with no thought given to their wishes. The plan talks of setting up a Cuban Transition Government (a puppet government). The puppet government will request help from the USA. Reconstruction will be funded by a loan from the International Monetary Fund as well as international (mainly USA) investment.
The report makes allegations that Cuba and Venezuela have been meddling in other Latin American countries' internal affairs (which is ironic coming from the USA). No country from the region has complained of meddling by Cuba and the report offers no evidence to support the allegation. Cuba does in fact send doctors, nurses and teachers to help people in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa, but only with their governments' permission.
After a century of USA corporate exploitation, some of the countries in South America are becoming independent nations. Cuba stands as an example that countries can survive and prosper outside of the USA controlled global system.
The USA votes against the ending of the financial embargo against Cuba in the United Nations.