Mick Hall ☭ Poor Cuba So Far From God, So Close To The USA.*

With Joe Biden in the White House, the political, military and industrial complex is on the march again. Ever since Biden first became a senator in 1972, there is not a single US military intervention overseas which he hasn’t supported. So, we shouldn’t be surprised he has Cuba in his gunsights.

For me, the Cuban Revolution was an iconic event and all these years later I see no reason to change my mind. True there have been naysayers on the left but their criticism basically boiled down to it wasn’t the right type of Revolution. A member of a long forgotten sect once told me “we support it unconditionally and critically” which seemed a bit of an oxymoron to me.

It has always been internationalist to it’s core. An example of this was when Mandela first came out of prison, his first major overseas visit was to Cuba. He knew the critical role the Cubans played in the defeat of apartheid, especially when backing militarily the People’s Armed Forces of Liberation in Angola with 3,000 Cuban frontline troops in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. That helped turn the tide against apartheid in South West Africa.

The same could be said for the support it gave to National Liberations Movements in Central and South America and even those closer to home. For Cuba a friend in need was never a nuisance!

Revolutions ebb and flow and life does not stand still and as Milovan Djilas once said “Normal life cannot sustain revolutionary attitudes for long.” This may have been true about Yugoslavia but the Republic of Cuba has sustained and thrived on revolutionary attitudes and I’m sure it will overcome the current crisis which like many others is not of it’s own making.

It is worth remembering just how appalling, violent and vengeful US governments have been towards Cuba since 1959, as Jeff St Clair points out here:

The US has invaded Cuba, funded multiple insurrections, tried dozens of times to assassinate its leaders, used biological weapons to wilt its crops and poison its livestock, tracked down and executed Che Guevara, bombarded the island with hysterical propaganda, ranted against it at the UN, financed, trained and protected a gang of thugs that planned and executed the bombing of a Cuban passenger plane (killing 73 civilians), plotted false flag ops in Miami to blame on the Castro government, and enforced a decades long embargo (that even China finds it hard to break) that would have crippled almost any other nation. The fact that Cuba is still standing, a little wobbly at times, but still defiant, simply drives the US nuts. It’s a living example of another way to organise a society and it can’t be tolerated by the USA, especially as it’s so close to home.

Who is the victim here? Who are the perpetrators? It doesn’t take long to work this out. Besides we have been here before. When it comes to destabilising nations, the recent demonstrations in Cuba are straight out of the CIA’s manual. This type of reprehensible behaviour by the US government goes back decades. The overthrow of the Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 by the CIA / MI6 was one of it’s first outings in the post WW2 period.

With the internet it’s become easier to do this dirty work, although the foundations are much the same: find a grievance - it doesn’t much matter what it is - use an over ambitious useful idiot to stoke up trouble, spread the dollar around liberally and use the MSM to propagate it far and wide and then wait for the herd mentality to kick in.

The Cuban Revolution has survived many set backs since 1959 and have, despite the hardships, overcome them. If anyone thinks a march and demo orchestrated from the outside will bring it down, they are sadly mistaken.

Viva Cuba!

* Original quote was by Porfirio Diaz, Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos!" (Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!

⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.

Appalling, Violent, Vengeful

Mick Hall ☭ Poor Cuba So Far From God, So Close To The USA.*

With Joe Biden in the White House, the political, military and industrial complex is on the march again. Ever since Biden first became a senator in 1972, there is not a single US military intervention overseas which he hasn’t supported. So, we shouldn’t be surprised he has Cuba in his gunsights.

For me, the Cuban Revolution was an iconic event and all these years later I see no reason to change my mind. True there have been naysayers on the left but their criticism basically boiled down to it wasn’t the right type of Revolution. A member of a long forgotten sect once told me “we support it unconditionally and critically” which seemed a bit of an oxymoron to me.

It has always been internationalist to it’s core. An example of this was when Mandela first came out of prison, his first major overseas visit was to Cuba. He knew the critical role the Cubans played in the defeat of apartheid, especially when backing militarily the People’s Armed Forces of Liberation in Angola with 3,000 Cuban frontline troops in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale. That helped turn the tide against apartheid in South West Africa.

The same could be said for the support it gave to National Liberations Movements in Central and South America and even those closer to home. For Cuba a friend in need was never a nuisance!

Revolutions ebb and flow and life does not stand still and as Milovan Djilas once said “Normal life cannot sustain revolutionary attitudes for long.” This may have been true about Yugoslavia but the Republic of Cuba has sustained and thrived on revolutionary attitudes and I’m sure it will overcome the current crisis which like many others is not of it’s own making.

It is worth remembering just how appalling, violent and vengeful US governments have been towards Cuba since 1959, as Jeff St Clair points out here:

The US has invaded Cuba, funded multiple insurrections, tried dozens of times to assassinate its leaders, used biological weapons to wilt its crops and poison its livestock, tracked down and executed Che Guevara, bombarded the island with hysterical propaganda, ranted against it at the UN, financed, trained and protected a gang of thugs that planned and executed the bombing of a Cuban passenger plane (killing 73 civilians), plotted false flag ops in Miami to blame on the Castro government, and enforced a decades long embargo (that even China finds it hard to break) that would have crippled almost any other nation. The fact that Cuba is still standing, a little wobbly at times, but still defiant, simply drives the US nuts. It’s a living example of another way to organise a society and it can’t be tolerated by the USA, especially as it’s so close to home.

Who is the victim here? Who are the perpetrators? It doesn’t take long to work this out. Besides we have been here before. When it comes to destabilising nations, the recent demonstrations in Cuba are straight out of the CIA’s manual. This type of reprehensible behaviour by the US government goes back decades. The overthrow of the Iranian Prime Minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 by the CIA / MI6 was one of it’s first outings in the post WW2 period.

With the internet it’s become easier to do this dirty work, although the foundations are much the same: find a grievance - it doesn’t much matter what it is - use an over ambitious useful idiot to stoke up trouble, spread the dollar around liberally and use the MSM to propagate it far and wide and then wait for the herd mentality to kick in.

The Cuban Revolution has survived many set backs since 1959 and have, despite the hardships, overcome them. If anyone thinks a march and demo orchestrated from the outside will bring it down, they are sadly mistaken.

Viva Cuba!

* Original quote was by Porfirio Diaz, Pobre México! ¡Tan lejos de Dios y tan cerca de los Estados Unidos!" (Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!

⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.

3 comments:

  1. So the Cuban protestors who are complaining about poor standards of living and for freedom of expression (and LTGTB+ rights)and who are experiencing swift justice from revolutionary defence committees are puppets of US imperialism with no agency of their own? Are independent trade unions allowed in this socialist paradise?

    Defence of universal human rights over the particularity of a ruling regime must be top of all left/progressive agendas.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Would this "long forgotten sect" be the SWP? It is their language, "unconditional but critical support" they had the same language for the war in the six counties. "Unconditional but critical support" for the IRA and later the INLA. I could never make head nor tail of such ambiguities.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Boatloads of people leave Florida every day & row 🚣 to Cuba.

    ReplyDelete