Review of "Voices from the other side: An oral history of terrorism against Cuba"

Review of "Voices from the other side: An oral history of terrorism against Cuba"

Author: Keith Bolender

In his introduction to this book, Noam Chomsky quotes Henry Kissinger. "If we cannot control Central America, it will be impossible to convince threatened nations and in other places in the Persian Gulf and in other places that we know how to manage the global equilibrium".

He reminds us of what the CIA told the White House in the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, when they reported that the overthrow of the new regime "was the key to all of Latin America; if Cuba succeeds, we can expect most of Latin America to fall".

Chomsky's introduction describes the basis of the terrorist war against Cuba. The overthrow of a government and its replacement with a regime more in tune with the interests of Cuba's neighbour to its North.

The first act of terrorism recalled by Bolender is the the attack on the Cubana Airlines flight 455 on October 6, 1976. 73 Cubans were killed. Luis Posada Carriles, one of the 2 masterminds of the attack, told the New York Times in 1998;"the CIA taught us everything, how to use explosives, to kill, to make bombs...they trained us in acts of sabotage".

The chapter on the bombing of the Cubana Airlines flight sets the patterns for the book. Bolender describes the attacks and then allows the reader to witness the impact of terrorism against Cuba by recording the testimonies of some of those affected. It is a formula that works, allowing the victims to speak for themselves, and placing their words firmly in a political context.

There have been 1,000 documented incidents of terrorism against Cuba, causing 3,000 deaths and 2,000 injuries. In 14 chapters Bolender reveals the extent of the terrorist campaign; from the attacks on the literacy campaign in the aftermath of the revolution, to the hotel bombings of 1997.

The interviews do not deal exclusively with the personal. The testimonies touch on political and social subjects. In one of the most revealing, Marina Ochoa says "The blockade, the terrorist attacks, have all been designed to make things so bad that the Cuban people will rise up and overthrow the government".

In a book of interviews widely available in Cuba, Noam Chomsky advances a related point, suggesting that aim of the those behind the terrorist offensive is to provoke the government to put in place civil rights restrictions to encourage revolt within the population.

The book concludes with a chapter on the Cuban 5, the 5 men who were sent by the Cuban government to infiltrate counter revolutionary groups in Miami. The men were charged and jailed on conspiracy and espionage charges in September 2001. Calls for their release have come from various Nobel Prize winners and heads of state. Surveillance measures within Cuba and the United States are the primary methods applied by the Cuban government to deal with the terrorist threat.

This is a very worthwhile book that deserves a wide and attentive audience. It gives voice to victims whose stories may have been untold outside Cuba before and provides a series of very revealing glimpses into Cuban society. The book will also serve to inform its audience on the details of aggression against Cuba, as well as the impact of this aggression on both the Cuban government and broader Cuban society.

   Demonstration outside USA Embassy in Dublin in support of Cuba 5.(12.09.2012)

CABINET RIFT ON HEALTH CUTS:

   Disabled people protest outside Government Buildings in Dublin today.

                     (Photo :PA)

HEALTH CUTS WITHDRAWN 

AS CABINET RIFT 

EXPOSED:

The first meeting of the coalition cabinet ahead of the new Dáil session, two weeks from now, had to face massive protest from across the country to dramatic cuts in public health services announced in peremptory fashion by the Health Service Executive on Friday as Health Minister, Dr James Reilly, became the Invisible Man while the storm of protest raged across the media over the weekend.

Senior figures in the Labour Party half of the Coalition reacted strongly. Labour Party chairman, Colm Keaveney, said the €130 million in cuts to home help and services for high-dependency patients announced last week are unacceptable and said he expected the Taoiseach to review the decision at a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

Speaking on RTÉ radio soon after the HSE announcement, Mr Keaveney said the cuts were unjust and should be reviewed by the HSE and the Minister for Health Dr. James Reilly "as a matter of urgency." “It is my belief that we can identify savings of €130 million rather than focusing on an unjust cut. These cuts are in my view unacceptable and the Minister and HSE should review them as a matter of urgency,” he said. He said members of the Labour Party had contacted him with alarm and concern after the cuts were announced. “I understand there is a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday and I would hope and expect the Taoiseach would ensure we would review this situation to the satisfaction of vulnerable people who are concerned about the delivery of services,” he said. He was joined later by North Dublin TD, Aodhán Ó Ríordáin and Tánaiste (Deputy Premier) Éamonn Gilmore who said it was “regrettable” the HSE had announced cuts in services. “Every organisation, every department and every service has to obviously work within budget,” he added. Mr Gilmore said the priority would be to ensure services needed by people requiring care and assistance would continue to be provided.

Against that background, Ministers arrived for today's Cabinet meeting to face a poignant demonstration outside Government Buildings in Dublin by a large number of disabled people in their wheelchairs who stated their dismay in the reduction of their support services which would leave many of them confined to institutions, at greater expense to the state, than continuing with the current levels of service. Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Enda Kenny, avoided the protest by arriving early.

Of the eight cost-cutting proposals in the HSE plan outlined last week, at least three will affect older people or the disabled exclusively. Services for both groups are likely to be seriously affected by a 600,000-hour cut in home help hours, as well as a reduction of 200 home care packages and a €10 million reduction in hours for personal assistants for people who need high levels of support trying to live independently. Health minister, Dr James Reilly has consistently championed the care of patients in the community in preference to long-term stays in hospital, but advocacy groups predicted the effect of the cuts would be to increase hospital admissions. “If this culture of homecare cuts continues, children with life-limiting conditions will end up back in hospital unnecessarily, which nobody wants and which costs nine times more than homecare,” said Jonathan Irwin, chief executive of the Jack and Jill Foundation.The HSE had said “the impact of these reductions will be minimised by ensuring that services are provided for direct patient care”.

The outcome of today's Cabinet meeting was an embarrassing climbdown by Government with a withdrawal of the €10M cut in Personal Assistants for disabled people. The repercussions, political and financial, will continue as the €500M overrun in the health department budget for this year will require more debate and controversial decisions in the lead up to the December Budget for 2013 is put before Dáil Éireann. Obviously, with such a big hole in the Health budget, the argument for cuts will continue inside the Cabinet.

The consequences for the Labour Party leadership will be significant as Colm Keaveney's sharp condemnation of the proposed health cuts resonates with unrest and dissatisfaction within the Labour Party rank and file membership. Keaveney was elected Chair of the Party at this year's Annual Conference, in Galway, despite the hierarchy's determined efforts and bureaucratic manoeuvres to prevent him being elected which caused uproar at the conference centre while outside,  several thousand protesters from various political and civil groups besieged the building.

At government level, so far there has been no explanation from Minister Reilly of his failure to control expenditure in his Department. His usual combative and "Lone Ranger" style of politics strangely absent on this occasion. The issuing of the announcement via the HSE and the failure of Minister Reilly to alert Gilmore and the other Labour ministers including the two in the Health Department, Róisín Shorthall and Kathleen Lynch, added considerably to the cabinet tensions.

The severity of Budget cuts in Ireland since the state was forced into a bailout situation by the European Central Bank and the EU Commission with the IMF added as third party, are part of a worldwide agenda of the robber Banks and the Capitalist Financial Elite to make the majority of the population pay for the criminal debasement of the financial sector which is the direct cause of the crisis in the developed capitalist countries, and in our particular case, the Eurozone. There is now a determined and organised agenda to destroy the social welfare structures of European states in the interests of the Criminal Bandit Elite. 

While vicious hardship is being imposed all over Europe and the USA, the twin citadels of World Corporate Capitalism, 92,000 persons of the Criminal Elite have, between them, stashed more than $21 Trillion in tax havens across the globe. This shows that the financial "crisis" is being manipulated by these criminals to enrich themselves further at the direct expense of the rest of us and are boastful enough to declare publicly, as Mario Draghi, head of the ECB, said in an interview in the "Wall Street Journal", last year, "The European Social Model is over". This is a real challenge to the forces of the Left all over Europe which, regrettably, is not being met by the Irish Labour Party and European Social Democracy as a whole.

FearFeasaMacLéinn

Áth Cliath/Dublin

Meanfhomhair/September 4 2012

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Pilger answers Assange critics

 

Journalist John Pilger (L) and Julian Assange (R), founder of the WikiLeaks website, chat before addressing the crowd during the 'Antiwar Mass Assembly' organised by the Stop the War Coalition at Trafalgar Square on October 8, 2011 in London, England.

PILGER ANSWERS
ASSANGE CRITICS

International journalist and renowned anti-war and anti-secrecy campaigner, John Pilger, has produced a swift answer to the spineless meedja and pro-empire bandwaggoners who have been attacking Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, and the Ecuadorian Government which granted him political asylum under siege in their London Embassy this week:

"The British government's threat to invade the Ecuadorean embassy in London and seize Julian Assange is of historic significance. David Cameron, the former PR man to a television industry huckster and arms salesman to sheikdoms, is well placed to dishonour international conventions that have protected Britons in places of upheaval. Just as Tony Blair's invasion of Iraq led directly to the acts of terrorism in London on 7 July 2005, so Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague have compromised the safety of British representatives across the world.

Threatening to abuse a law designed to expel murderers from foreign embassies, while defaming an innocent man as an "alleged criminal", Hague has made a laughing stock of Britain across the world, though this view is mostly suppressed in Britain. The same brave newspapers and broadcasters that have supported Britain's part in epic bloody crimes, from the genocide in Indonesia to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, now attack the "human rights record" of Ecuador, whose real crime is to stand up to the bullies in London and Washington.

It is as if the Olympics happy-clappery has been subverted overnight by a revealing display of colonial thuggery. Witness the British army officer-cum-BBC reporter Mark Urban "interviewing" a braying Sir Christopher Meyer, Blair's former apologist in Washington, outside the Ecuadorean embassy, the pair of them erupting with Blimpish indignation that the unclubbable Assange and the uncowed Rafael Correa should expose the western system of rapacious power. Similar affront is vivid in the pages of the Guardian, which has counselled Hague to be "patient" and that storming the embassy would be "more trouble than it is worth". Assange was not a political refugee, the Guardian declared, because "neither Sweden nor the UK would in any case deport someone who might face torture or the death penalty".

The irresponsibility of this statement matches the Guardian's perfidious role in the whole Assange affair. The paper knows full well that documents released by WikiLeaks indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters of civil rights. In December 2001, the Swedish government abruptly revoked the political refugee status of two Egyptians, Ahmed Agiza and Mohammedel-Zari, who were handed to a CIA kidnap squad at Stockholm airport and "rendered" to Egypt, where they were tortured. An investigation by the Swedish ombudsman for justice found that the government had "seriously violated" the two men's human rights. In a 2009 US embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks, entitled "WikiLeaks puts neutrality in the Dustbin of History", the Swedish elite's vaunted reputation for neutrality is exposed as a sham. Another US cable reveals that "the extent of [Sweden's military and intelligence] cooperation [with Nato] is not widely known" and unless kept secret "would open the government to domestic criticism".

The Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, played a notorious leading role in George W Bush's Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and retains close ties to the Republican Party's extreme right. According to the former Swedish director of public prosecutions Sven-Erik Alhem, Sweden's decision to seek the extradition of Assange on allegations of sexual misconduct is "unreasonable and unprofessional, as well as unfair and disproportionate". Having offered himself for questioning, Assange was given permission to leave Sweden for London where, again, he offered to be questioned. In May, in a final appeal judgment on the extradition, Britain's Supreme Court introduced more farce by referring to non-existent "charges".

Accompanying this has been a vituperative personal campaign against Assange. Much of it has emanated from the Guardian, which, like a spurned lover,has turned on its besieged former source, having hugely profited from WikiLeaks disclosures. With not a penny going to Assange or WikiLeaks, a Guardian book has led to a lucrative Hollywood movie deal.The authors, David Leigh and Luke Harding, gratuitously abuse Assange as a "damaged personality" and "callous". They also reveal the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables. On 20 August, Harding was outside the Ecuadorean embassy, gloating on his blog that "Scotland Yard may get the last laugh". It is ironic, if entirely appropriate, that a Guardian editorial putting the paper's latest boot into Assange bears an uncanny likeness to the Murdoch press's predictable augmented bigotry on the same subject. How the glory of Leveson, Hackgate and honourable, independent journalism doth fade.

His tormentors make the point of Assange's persecution. Charged with no crime, he is not a fugitive from justice. Swedish case documents, including the text messages of the women involved, demonstrate to any fair-minded person the absurdity of the sex allegations - allegations almost entirely promptly dismissed by the senior prosecutor in Stockholm, Eva Finne, before the intervention of a politician, Claes Borgstr? At the pre-trial of Bradley Manning, a US army investigator confirmed that the FBI was secretly targeting the "founders, owners or managers of WikiLeaks" for espionage.

Four years ago, a barely noticed Pentagon document, leaked by WikiLeaks, described how WikiLeaks and Assange would be destroyed with a smear campaign leading to "criminal prosecution". On 18 August, the Sydney Morning Herald disclosed, in a Freedom of Information release of official files, that the Australian government had repeatedly received confirmation that the US was conducting an "unprecedented" pursuit of Assange and had raised no objections. Among Ecuador's reasons for granting asylum is Assange's abandonment "by the state of which he is a citizen". In 2010, an investigation by the Australian Federal Police found that Assange and WikiLeaks had committed no crime. His persecution is an assault on us all and on freedom".

FearFeasaMacLéinn

Áth Cliath/Dublin

Lunasa/August 24 2012