Cuba has experienced – or is experiencing – a severe crisis comparable to the one that fell to it in 1994 after the collapse of the Soviet Union
The COVID-19 wave, a new mutation that has raised the number of sick people and deaths to unprecedented heights, has hit the island. Cuba had been little affected by previous waves but this time, despite active vaccination with its own vaccine and a well-developed public health system, the virus has taken a heavy toll. Tourism has all but nullified, with US sanctions preventing trade. In these conditions, a wave of riots, triggered by the American fifth column and immediately supported by Washington, has swept through Cuba. Protest demonstrations turned vividly into pogroms.
Finally, the end of the red Cuba is in sight, as was happily said in Florida, where so many Freedom Islanders live. But it was not to be. The President of the Republic of Cuba, Miguel Diaz-Canel, addressed the people and urged them to take to the streets, not to sit at home. The streets cannot be turned over to pogroms, he said. And indeed tens of thousands of supporters of Cuban independence took to the streets and fought back. The rebellious youths fled. This is how the problem of “what to do about the “Maidan” in Cuba was solved.
Today the protests are still going on, although they have been considerably reduced in number and scope. The President and the Minister of Foreign Affairs are addressing the people, giving all the details of what happened on the island, how and why. In these conditions of publicity we are learning details which would otherwise not be known.
There is an acute economic crisis in Cuba. The reasons are sanctions and COVID-19. COVID-19 has cut off the flow of tourism, the main source of currency. And the sanctions have cut off Cuba’s ability to sell and buy using the international banking system. You can’t get fuel because the US is blocking both Venezuela, the main fuel supplier, and Iran, which was also helping. When there is no fuel, there is no electricity; when there is no way to buy food, the people starve. Hundreds of sanctions have been imposed on Cuba. The latest package of sanctions was imposed by President Trump, who wanted the support of Cuban immigrants and the Mafia, Cuba’s main and ardent enemies. The US has put Cuba on a list of countries that support terror, though of course no terror is thought of in Havana – just as Russia does not think of hacking attacks on US meatpacking plants.
President Biden has also added sanctions. Cuba sends teams of its medics to Latin American and African countries – so they help the peoples of friendly countries and earn currency. The Biden administration has equated medical missions with… slave trade (!) and added new restrictions. Even syringes and needles for vaccinations are not allowed into Cuba. Under these conditions, infectious scabies has spread, and the US does not allow medicine to be brought in.
After the country had been cornered, starved and cut off, the US demanded that a humanitarian corridor be opened to allow free entry of humanitarian aid to the population. Aid – without government involvement. Give us a free port and airport, we will come, fly and feed. This is a traditional American trick. They tried it in Venezuela and Yugoslavia. The humanitarian aid came in conjunction with American Marines, PMC fighters, experts in fomenting civil wars and organizing coups.
This technique – first to collapse the economy, to bring the country to starvation, and then to send the aid as a cover for landing – was applied by the U.S. in Vietnam in the 60s.
Then, as we know today from the Pentagon Papers, the US military decided, instead of bombing the cities of Hanoi and Haiphong, to bomb dams in order to disrupt rice production and cause mass starvation. Millions of Vietnamese would starve to death, the Pentagon projected, and we, the US, would bring in food and rescue the survivors. That way the whole world will praise us and the Vietnamese will be humbled.
For me, a young man who grew up in an anti-Soviet and pro-Western environment, these documents were a sobering tool. I read for the first time how the military – not some Nazis, but cultured Americans – were planning to kill millions of civilians in order to earn propaganda capital from saving survivors. Then the Soviet Union, its air defence, its combat aviation were able to foil the American plan to kill millions of Vietnamese. But now the Soviet Union is gone. And Russia’s forces, though its heart is in the right place and it supports Cuba, are limited.
We need to remember that the US is doing to Cuba what they would like to do to Russia. They are strangling Russia with sanctions too. Only Russia is much bigger, it’s not easy to strangle. It’s easier with Cuba. Cuba has been under sanctions since the famous Caribbean crisis. Although every country in the world at the UN General Assemblies year after year has demanded that the US lift sanctions on Cuba and let the Cuban people live in peace, the US refuses to comply with these UN resolutions. (Only Israel has consistently supported the US in votes on Cuba, and the US has responded by blocking resolutions condemning the Israeli blockade and occupation of Palestine.)
It cannot be ruled out that the outbreak of COVID-19 on the island, where it has so far run fairly smoothly and where their own vaccines have been developed, was caused by a biological attack, as was surely the COVID-19 outbreak in the Iranian city of Qom in the late winter of last year. Many leaders of the Iranian republic fell ill and died then. At the time, COVID-19 was nowhere to be found except in Wuhan, and the US and Israel were already engaged in an active covert war against Iran at the time.
Vaccination is active in Cuba, but it takes time – the vaccine must be produced in large quantities, electricity is needed to store it, syringes are needed for vaccination, and all this is in short supply under the American blockade.
We can see from Cuba, what the Americans had planned for Russia, if Russia had not had their vaccine – their fifth column would have raised protests in Moscow, demanding to open the airports for American aid and their lifesaver. But Cuba, like Russia, is holding out. As Russia coped with the Bolotnaya riots in 2012 – with a rally on Poklonnaya Square – so now Cuba is coping with pogroms – with a popular appeal, demonstrations for Cuban independence and, if necessary, baseball bats in the hands of free Cubans.
And the organiser of the nightmare, the United States, defends the protesters and calls for support and assistance. But Cubans are in no hurry to surrender their embattled freedom and return to the state of a floating casino and brothel near Miami, the property of the Meyer Lansky mafia. There are no protests in Cuba, said the Cuban president, there are riots raised by American agents. And by agents of the same Mafia, we might add.
Yisrael Shamir, RT
There are no protests in Cuba, there are riots raised by US agents
