We Must Not Lose Revolutionary Cuba

Tiny Cuba-- the Jewel of the Caribbean, the Isle of Freedom, the Beacon for the Oppressed-- is clinging by a thread to its independence and its vision. Revolutionary Cuba-- defiant of the world’s most powerful imperialist center-- suffers from a brutal, ever-tightening blockade imposed by the US ruling class. Fidel’s Cuba-- a bastion of socialism and proletarian internationalism-- refuses to surrender its integrity and its devotion to its people.

The US government first imposed an economic and financial blockade on Cuba sixty-six years ago, the longest forced, complete economic sanctions ever imposed by one state on another. Despite widespread, and frequent condemnation, the blockade has intensified, resulting in today’s genocidal denial of energy resources, leaving the island frequently without light, domestic safety, transportation, health care, education, or food security. While Cubans endure, they are facing more and more difficult circumstances.

It is said that the Great Powers never forgave Haiti for its successful slave rebellion. Since the uprising led by Toussaint L’Ouverture, powerful nations have guaranteed that the people of Haiti would suffer for their audacity and rebelliousness. The same could be said for Cuba. The US and its allies will never forgive a small, racially and culturally diverse country for its embrace of socialism and its unparalleled commitment to international solidarity. Cuba has offered an alternative vision to the peoples of the former colonies, a vision that continues to challenge the decadence and mindless consumerism of capitalism.

From the 1959 revolution forward, Cuba offered unlimited selfless aid to the oppressed and exploited of the world. For Cuba’s revolutionaries, it was not enough to be generous with material and moral aid to liberation movements like Algeria or the Congo, it was not enough to simply stand with Vietnam or with the former Portuguese colonies. Mere generosity was not enough for Cuba- a resource-poor, long-exploited country. Sacrifice was demanded by Cuba’s version of socialism-- the sacrifice made by brothers and sisters, by comrades. Since the revolution, Cuban internationalists have died in almost every area of resistance, like the construction workers resisting the unprovoked invasion of Grenada. And as recently as this past January, 32 Cuban security personnel were murdered defending Venezuelan sovereignty from US invaders.

Back when most of the peoples of the world were decrying the brutality of South African Apartheid, few of their governments did more than issue proclamations denouncing racial discrimination and limit some economic activity. Among those who offered concrete aid to those resisting South African racialism, one government rallied its people to join those fighting the brutal regime and its surrogates. With South Africa (and the US, Zaire, China, Israel, among others) actively supporting counter-revolutionaries in Angola, Cuba sent volunteers to fight alongside the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). With the material support of the USSR, Cuba met every escalation of the war-- including the active intervention of the Apartheid forces-- with more troops and weapons.

Under Operation Carlota, Cuban volunteers helped secure the creation of an independent Angolan government in 1975, free of their colonial masters, and their Angolan surrogates. Most importantly, Cuban support was critical in defeating the Apartheid and mercenary intervention.

In response to reactionary indignation over Cuban engagement, Fidel Castro responded directly:

Why were they vexed? Why had they planned everything to take possession of Angola before 11 November? Angola is a country rich in resources. In Cabinda there is lots of oil. Some imperialists wonder why we help the Angolans, which interests we have. They are used to thinking that one country helps another one only when it wants its oil, copper, diamonds or other resources. No, we are not after material interests and it is logical that this is not understood by the imperialists. They only know chauvinistic, nationalistic and selfish criteria. By helping the people of Angola, we are fulfilling a fundamental duty of Internationalism.

In desperation and with the urging and support of the US government, South Africa returned again to remove Angola from the struggle for Namibian and South African freedom. With Operation Maniobra XXXI Aniversario, the Cubans delivered a decisive defeat to the racists at Cuito Cuanavale. Upon his first visit to any country after his release from prison, South African leader Nelson Mandela spoke the following remarks in Havana, Cuba:

The Cuban people hold a special place in the hearts of the people of Africa. The Cuban internationalists have made a contribution to African independence, freedom and justice unparalleled for its principled and selfless character - We in Africa are used to being victims of countries wanting to carve up our territory or subvert our sovereignty. It is unparalleled in African history to have another people rise to the defence of one of us - The defeat of the apartheid army was an inspiration to the struggling people in South Africa! Without the defeat of Cuito Cuanavale our organizations would not have been unbanned! The defeat of the racist army at Cuito Cuanavale has made it possible for me to be here today! Cuito Cuanavale was a milestone in the history of the struggle for southern African liberation!

Yes, imperialism never forgave Cuba for its sacrifices for the liberation of Africa. Like the Haitian revolutionaries, Cuban freedom fighters earned the ire of every scoundrel, racist, grifter, and killer in the empires. Cubans wrote one of the greatest chapters in the history of working-class internationalism.

Quietly, but effectively, Cuba has sent doctors and health care workers to every corner of the world, wherever there was a need. No country has stepped up more than Cuba in giving life where life was most in danger. Cuban volunteers even offered their services to countries whose governments did not want them! 

Tens of thousands of students, lacking educational opportunities in their own poor countries, have received a free, advanced education in Cuba, a country that has built an impressive truly public educational system in the relatively short history of the revolution.

Cuba has accomplished unmatched feats of solidarity with a population smaller than some of the world’s largest cities!

While millions of the oppressed, exploited, and needy understand and appreciate the Cuban revolution, their oppressors and exploiters despise the existence of an alternative vision-- a counter-vision-- to a world where markets, commodities, and self-interest determine every motive, every action.

In a capitalist-dominated world where one’s place in society is decided by a competitive zero-sum game, where social life divides between winners and losers, where personal identity trumps common humanity, revolutionary Cuba is one of the few places remaining where one can find an alternative. Cuba lives and breathes the call of The Communist Manifesto: Workers of the World Unite! 

Every US administration has supported the blockade of Cuba and sought the overthrow of the Cuban revolution’s leadership. It should be no surprise that the most powerful force in the imperialist system-- the state that assumes the global defense of the capitalist mode of production-- would do all it can to destroy this living proof that there is an alternative.

Today, the Trump administration has severely tightened the grip on the Cuban economy, not only thwarting commerce with Cuba, but also denying Cuban access to the very essentials of life. A resource-poor country, Cuba has been denied the energy resources essential to maintain daily life. Existing energy lifelines have been severed by the US blockade.

Further, the Trump regime has charged the retired head of the FAR (the Cuban military), Raúl Castro, with permitting the interception of a plane from Cuban-exile provocateur Jose Basulto’s private air force in 1996. As the National Security Archives has shown, this charge is ludicrous. 

Basulto’s group had violated Cuban air space on numerous occasions, despite Cuban objections and warnings. Both the State Department and the FAA had also warned Basulto about the provocations. On the night of the fatal shootdown, the State Department asked the FAA to deny the plane’s departure, but the FAA ignored the request. Before the defensive action, the Cuban flight controller told the pilot calmly that “the zone north of Havana is active. You run danger by penetrating that side of North 24.” The charge against Raul Castro is absurd and a ridiculous attempt to justify US intervention in Cuban affairs.

It must be said that countries once benefited by Cuban sacrifices have failed to show the same selfless solidarity in response to the imperialist-imposed crisis. Sadly, far wealthier, more powerful countries have succumbed to US pressure as well as commercial concerns, and denied sufficient assistance to Cuba in its desperate time of need-- a moral failing that could never be said of the Cuban people and their government. The failings of others only underscore the unique greatness of Cuban internationalism.

We must make every effort to see that the flame of international solidarity maintained by Fidel and his comrades is never extinguished by the brutal regime from the North.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Bogus Anti-imperialism and the Fight for Peace

Where VI Lenin in 1916 wove together a theory of imperialism that placed capitalist exploitation and accumulation at its core, explaining competition between greater and lesser powers and their coalitions and alliances as leading to war, a prominent Marxist, Karl Kautsky, asserted that war or the threat of war would persuade states to coexist, to put aside rivalries and create-- in Kautsky’s words-- “...a federation of the strongest, who renounce their arms race.” 

Lenin believed that competition between great powers will inevitably result in war; Kautsky believed that competition between great powers will inevitably bring a settled peace.

Similarly, today’s advocates of multipolarity argue that the only obstacle to the world imagined by Kautsky is the United States. As the former Cold War leader of the capitalist order, the US is now the meddler, war monger, aggressor, and imperialist standing in the way of a multipolar world that will establish a more tolerant, cooperative, and peaceful world. 

Advocates see the agency for this Kautskyian utopia in the BRICS coalition, established formally in 2009, subsequently adding new members and partners along the way. Its supporters remind us that BRICS+ commands a greater share of global GDP than does the G7 nations or the EU. The original BRICS economies grew by a stunning 356.27% between 1990 and 2019. 

Despite these impressive economic numbers, BRICS’s most zealous proponents posture the alliance as representative of the peripheral “Global South” --as the arm of the ‘have-nots’-- in the struggle against the ‘haves’ of the core-- the US and its Eurasian allies.

While this may make a soothing story, a popular source of hope for peace and social justice, it completely fails the test presented by the realities of this moment. Measured by any rigorous standards of inquiry, multipolarity is a fraud.

On its face, the idea that an alleged powerhouse economic bloc is the advocate, the savior for the poorest, most disadvantaged countries is surely paradoxical. No one would take a similar claim seriously if it came from the mouths of foreign ministers of the G7 or the EU.

But the failure of the BRICS fantasy is best shown by examining BRICS and its member states' response to recent monumental world events.  

On the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza by Israeli forces: BRICS and its member states voiced some stern objections, but took no substantial measures to stop it or to punish Israel. In fact, they continued their substantial economic relations with the rogue state, failed to defy the Israeli blockade, and offered no material aid to the Palestinians.

On the aggression against Venezuelan sovereignty: BRICS and some of its member states raised objections, but took no concrete action; some benefitted from the US action, some were set back by it. Security agents from material-poor Cuba heroically gave their lives resisting the invasion.

On the attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran (a BRICS member state) by the US and Israel: BRICS and its member states again voiced objections, but offered little or no material support. As The Wall Street Journal noted “Iran has sought for years to build closer military ties with China and Russia, but its powerful friends are proving reluctant to step forward as the regime faces the most acute U.S. threat to its survival in decades.” 

On the escalating aggression against Cuba, suffering acute energy crises under the intensified US blockade: old beneficiaries of Cuban internationalist sacrifices-- including BRICS members and partners-- are offering marginal support for socialist Cuba as it faces possibly its worst existential crisis. 

If BRICS is the guarantor of the interests of the so-called Global South against US and Israeli aggression, if this is the counterforce to imperialism that US and European leftists imagine, then much of the world needs new, more militant friends. The facts contradict the false theory of multipolarity and its embodiment in the BRICS alliance. Rather than exhibiting a new spirit of cooperation, mutual interest, internationalism, and solidarity, the BRICS members seem bent on basing foreign policy on narrow self-interest.

Critics are, however, stepping forward, some with doubts, some with sharp and incisive rebukes of the multipolarity dogma and the BRICS myth. 

Many doubters were repelled by the recent UN Security Council vote crafted by the US and condemning Iran’s retaliation against US allies on the Arabian Peninsula, without calling out the war’s initiators, the US and Israel.

Betwa Sharma, writing in Consortium News, protests that “both Moscow and Beijing abandoned Tehran by abstaining on a March 11 U.N. Security Council resolution that falsely portrayed Iran as the aggressor. China and Russia’s own interests took precedence over a BRICS partner under attack.”

She concludes: 

The war on Iran has exposed the fragility of BRICS as a rising alternative to the U.S.-led global order.

U.S. economic pressure and geopolitical shocks, especially the attack on Iran, have revealed BRICS less as a unified bloc with a common strategic goal, than a collection of countries with overlapping interests that diverge sharply under pressure.

Focusing mainly on Gaza, Patrick Bond recently wrote a detailed, scathing exposé of BRICS hypocrisy.

Bond acknowledges that BRIC member, South Africa, provided 15% of Israel’s coal needs as of 2025. As for another BRICS founding member, “...in addition to wheat and metals, Russia sells coal and – in just the two years since the genocide began in 2023 – made 105 oil transfers comprising 30% of Israel’s total crude and 45% of refined petroleum imported, via Novorossiysk (originating from BRICS-partner Kazakhstan.”

Bond reports on another founding member: "Chinese drones (tens of thousands by now) made by DJI and Autel buzz Gaza and the West Bank, and are used to drop grenades on civilians… and moreover, a Chinese parastatal owns the new Haifa Bayport while another built the ‘union-busting’ Ashdod harbour, which together have facilitated a 5% annual increase in bilateral trade since 2021, confirming Netanyahu’s 2017 term for the two economies, namely, a 'marriage made in heaven.'"

Further: “New Delhi assures a strengthened Israeli-Indian military alliance, the September 2025 Bilateral Investment Treaty, and Modi’s ‘Special Strategic Partnership’ solidaristic visit to the Knesset featuring ‘immense progress’ in ‘defence, security, and more.’”

Bond reveals similar embarrassing economic ties between other BRICS members and Israel, including with Brazil, UAE, Egypt, Ethiopia, and Indonesia. He concludes by asserting that, in fact, the “BRICS Promote Global-Corporate Power Under the Cover of Multipolarism.” 

Facts, facts, facts… they often make for stubborn, unfriendly encounters with cherished theories and opinions. At least some of our friends on the left are paying attention.

In a moving “j’accuse”, Josué Veloz Serrade writes in his article translated and posted on Black Agenda Report of “un multilaterismo hipócrita”-- a hypocritical multilateralism toward Cuba.

Veloz Serrade casts scorn on all of the nations that could respond to Cuba’s abandonment before an existential threat from the US Empire, especially those who preach multipolarity and hail BRICS as the anti-Empire:

In their rhetoric, Russia and China demand an end to unipolarity, the construction of a multipolar world, respect for international law, and, in particular, for the sovereignty of each country. But their real desire, revealed by their actions rather than their words, is the gradual integration into the rules of the very system they claim to contest…

As bitter as it may be to hear, by abandoning Cuba, they are not simply being pragmatic; they are admitting that their real goal is not the transformation of the world order, but the negotiation of a more comfortable place within it…

…they have incorporated the logic of the imperial playing field—its institutions, its markets, its values, its rules, its default ideology—to such an extent that they have become incapable of imagining political action that breaks with that field, even though they proclaim it necessary in their rhetoric…

The Empire supports its allies to the very end because it understands that loyalty to its own is a condition of its own power. But Cuba’s allies do the opposite: they abandon it when the political cost of supporting Cuba outweighs the benefit of not doing so…

Those who today are abandoning Cuba are not only calculating their own narrow interests; they are also, in a way, renouncing their own desire for transformation. The abandonment of Cuba is the renunciation of the possibility of another world… 

Progressive Latin American governments, the BRICS, American and Western European left-wing parties, solidarity organizations that today look the other way: all have found, in one way or another, their niche within the order. They have obtained their share of recognition, their space for comfortable dissent, their permitted or simply tolerated gestures. And in that process, they have ceased to see Cuba as a mirror of what they could be, instead viewing it as an uncomfortable reminder of what they have ceased to be, but above all of what they never were…

Those who today betray Cuba are betraying themselves. Not in a metaphorical sense, but in a strategic one. A world order that claims to be multipolar but fails to protect the most vulnerable when the Master tightens the screws is not an alternative order; it is a decentralized extension of unipolarity, a system in which the ritual invocation of multipolarity is a rhetorical exercise in futility… 

Veloz Serrade’s bitter eloquence speaks not only to the fraud of multipolarity and the hypocrisy of BRICS, but to the possible loss of the last outpost of authentic solidarity, internationalism, and anti-imperialism. The hope of a just world may well be extinguished for millions who saw Cuba as a beacon.

Multipolarity is neither anti-imperialist nor a substitute for fighting the imperialist system. Those who are invested in multipolarity and the ‘promise’ of BRICS do grave disservice to the fight for global justice and for peace. The shame of BRICS failure to resist brazen, death-dealing aggression against weaker parties will fall on them as well.

There can be no effective anti-war movement in this time without clarity on the imperialist system. Peace is only attainable if we understand and resist the causes of war, while not deferring or relying on a group of countries committed to protecting or improving their place in that system. 

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Internationalism: Is It Dead or Dying?

It is difficult to think about Cuba without engaging emotionally. I couldn’t get back to sleep the other night, distressed over the tragic blackout of nearly the entire country with a hurricane approaching. 

Yes, the genocide in Palestine and Lebanon evokes similar fits of emotion and sleeplessness; the actions of the Israeli government are obscenely bestial and criminal. Yet Cuba, because of its over six decades of defiance of US imperialism and its enormous sacrifices for other peoples, holds a special place for me. 

No country with so little has done so much for others.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the example of the selfless support for the struggling Spanish Republic defined solidarity with others as well as internationalism. The Soviet Union sent weapons and advisors, defying the great-power blockade and confronting German Nazi and Italian Fascist support for the military insurrectionists. Tens of thousands of volunteers, largely organized by the Communist International, came to Spain clandestinely, overcoming closed borders, to defend the nascent Republic. 

Millions rallied in support of the Republic-- though it fell, in significant part because of the indifference and active hostility of the so-called democracies. How was it-- many came to see for the first time-- that democracies would not defend an emerging democracy?

For the last sixty years, tiny Cuba has been the beacon of solidarity and internationalism for later generations. Cuban internationalists have aided and fought alongside nearly every legitimate liberation movement, every movement for socialism in Asia, Africa, and South America. Cuban doctors and relief workers have rushed to disasters in uncountable countries. Wherever need arose, Cubans were the first to volunteer, including in the US (Hurricane Katrina), the country where the government has been most damaging to Cuba’s fate. 

It was not so long ago that Cuba organized assistance to the Vietnamese freedom fighters. 

Even more recently, we should remember, as well, those heroes sacrificing life and limb helping liberate the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. Cubans heroically gave their lives fighting and defeating the racist military of Apartheid South Africa and the US’s surrogates, inflicting one of the most significant blows against US imperialism since the Vietnam war. The US ruling class has never forgotten this humiliating defeat. 

Undoubtedly, Apartheid would have eventually fallen, but those tens of thousands of Cuban volunteers hastened that end by many, many years. 

But Cubans were sacrificing for others’ freedom before that remarkable struggle and after. Paraphrasing the song about Joe Hill, wherever people were struggling, you would find Cuban internationalists-- from Lumumba’s Congo to Allende’s Chile, from Bishop’s Grenada to Chavez’s Venezuela.

Some will remember that when Nelson Mandela was freed, he chose to first visit Cuba to thank the Cuban people for their contribution to African liberation.

Of course, Cuba alone lacked the material resources to confront the well-armed Apartheid military and their Western-armed African collaborators. Beside Cuba and behind Cuba was the material and military support of the Soviet Union. This legacy of Soviet internationalism, combined with the inspiring selflessness of Fidel’s Cuba, gave hope to many millions fighting to free themselves from the yoke of imperialism and capitalism.

Without a doubt, the overarching cause of Cuba’s ongoing pain is the United States and its closest allies. The great powers have never forgiven Cuba for mounting the first and only socialist revolution in the Americas, as they have never forgiven Haiti for showing that African slaves could rise and defeat a great power and free an enslaved people. The US blockade of Cuba has done irreparable harm to a people hoping to develop and follow an independent political course. Imperialism punishes a people that values its sovereignty with the same uncompromising integrity as it demonstrates with its passionate commitment to solidarity with others and its selfless internationalism.

Yet the Cuban people persevere. It does not go unnoticed by the plotters at the CIA and other nefarious agencies and the State Department that-- even in its most weakened state, its most challenging moments-- the Cuban people keep the torch lit that was passed on to them by Fidel. Despite the best efforts of the capitalist behemoth to the North, Cuban socialism endures.

In better times, the Soviet Union generously aided Cuba on its chosen development path. Lacking few industrially desirable resources and despite the stultifying effects of centuries of imperialist exploitation, Soviet aid enabled Cuba to integrate into the socialist community’s Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) on an equal, even privileged, footing. The capitalist media often compared CMEA aid to Cuba to the US’s robust aid to Israel. Ironically, Cuba used the aid to become a force for global social justice, while Israel has used the US subsidy to make mischief, to become a force for genocidal campaigns to create a “greater” Israel.   

But Soviet aid is gone.

It is a source of sorrow, and not a little shame, that no country avowing the socialist road or benefitting from Cuba’s sacrifices has stepped up to even partially fill the void. Sure, countries thought to be “friends” of Cuba have made strong statements condemning the blockade, have made “fraternal” gestures, and have sent token shipments of basic foodstuffs, but not nearly enough to allow Cuba to step away from the dire economic disaster that has been multiplied a hundred-fold by the US blockade.

Lands where Cuban internationalist fighters are buried in the soil, lands with abundant energy resources, lands with modern economies that dwarf the former Soviet economy, fail to remember Cuba’s selfless sacrifices with pledges to help or to organize help at this particularly difficult moment. It may be presumptuous to expect the recipients of Cuban friendship and solidarity to make similar sacrifices for Cuba-- that is what makes the legacy of Fidelismo so special in the annals of socialism. But surely, those countries could individually or collectively repair and guarantee Cuba’s basic infrastructure without great sacrifice-- to give Cuba the minimal means to survive the punishment that imperialism has imposed.

It must be said that “socialism with national characteristics” seems to exclude the internationalism so central to socialism in the twentieth century. 

In truth, what kind of socialism fails to sacrifice little to aid a struggling socialist country strangling from a capitalist blockade? 

On a personal note, I remember well passing back through Checkpoint Charlie-- the famous portal between German socialism and German capitalism. Tourists and others from the West, seeking to visit East Berlin had to return via the checkpoint. They learned on their return that they could neither exchange nor keep remaining GDR currency used while in the German Democratic Republic. Guards helpfully offered the often-unhappy returnees an option. They pointed to a large vessel brimming with cash with a sign in several languages: “Help rebuild Vietnam.” 

I felt pride in knowing that I was a small part of a global movement determined to help rebuild what imperialism had torn down. 

I see that pledge to internationalism again honored in the refusal of workers to load ammunition bound for Israel in the port of Piraeus, Greece.  

I can only hope that the socialism of the twenty-first century will restore the internationalism that was a signature of the socialism of the twentieth century.

 Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

A Foreign Policy Built on a Foundation of Lies

Cuba, a country with a population roughly the size of Paris, France, poses no threat to the United States, except in the minds of the deranged. Yet there is a remarkable number of “deranged” people populating the upper echelons of US government officialdom, the foreign policy academy, and the media.

Given that Cuba has a military largely armed with, at its best, late Soviet-era armaments, the idea of any military threat to the US is ludicrous.

Nor does Cuba have any binding mutual defense pact with any great power.

What Cuba does have is a citizenry organized and impassioned to defend the country’s integrity and independence.

So, we must conclude that the virulent hostility that the US government has shown since the revolution until today comes from tiny Cuba’s audacity, the audacity to insist upon its unflinching, uncompromising independence.

With a long and well documented history of obsessive US intervention in Cuban affairs-- from the ludicrous to the outrageous-- it should be clear that Cuba is a constantly irritating mote in its giant Northern neighbor’s eye.

From unending, James Bond-inspired assassination attempts on the revolution’s venerated leader, Fidel Castro Ruz, to criminal, false-flag operations jeopardizing, even potentially taking the lives of US citizens, as proposed by the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (Operation Northwoods), the US has shown no restraint in seeking to remove that mote.

With very few exceptions, the US ruling class has been united and unabashed in its demented determination to overthrow the Cuban government. Well over half a century of a cruel, inhuman economic blockade attests to the perfidy of the US government, its office holders, and apologists.

When called out by public UN resolutions condemning the illegal blockade, most US allies vote against it; yet, none dare defy the US and break it-- a shameful, disgusting stain on their cowardly leaders of every conventional political persuasion.

When we think that US policymakers have reached the limits of insane depravity toward Cuba, they reach beyond that limit. In 2017, the US government concocted the “Havana Syndrome,” a mysterious Flash Gordon-like death ray that Cuba uses to incapacitate only those who represent US interests, leaving others untouched.

While this absurd claim should evoke some doubts from even the most gullible, the US (and European) media pounced on the story like it was bloody red meat.

Even after headaches, dizziness, and anxiety “struck” stalwart US officials in such diverse and seemingly unrelated places as Peoples’ China, Russia, Taiwan, Austria, Poland, Georgia, Russia, Serbia, Colombia, Vietnam, Geneva, and Paris, the media and the State Department saw a deep conspiracy. A support group, Advocacy for Victims of Havana Syndrome was founded. A Helping American Victims Afflicted by Neurological Attacks Act was passed by our caring Congress and signed by President Biden in October.

For over five years of relentless fear-mongering, we have been led to believe that Cuba and possibly her malicious friends are in possession of a powerful new weapon that could distress the heroic efforts of US agents of imperialism.

But now we are told by a no-less-authoritative source than the Central Intelligence Agency that the “Havana Syndrome” was not likely caused by US foes. Quoting the noticeably disappointed Wall Street Journal, “Instead, the agency concluded that other medical conditions, stress or unexplained factors could be behind the ailments…”

Another fable of imperialism exposed, yet the fantasy will persist.

******

The same hysteria purveyors who have for decades abused tiny Cuba with serial lies are now turning their attention on giant Peoples’ China (PRC). 

Recognizing that the PRC is today an economic rival and a relatively independent force with a significant military and its own foreign policy, the guardians of the empire have focused their security scrutiny on those of Chinese descent who are working and living in the US. One such unfortunate person, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and former head of his department, was arrested and accused of lying on an application for a US Department of Energy grant in 2017.

Gang Chen was charged in January, 2021 with failing to reveal information required on his Energy Department grant application and failing to report money received from Chinese institutions ($19 million!).

The problem with the FBI’s investigation and their xenophobic dragnet was that Professor Chen’s Energy Department application did NOT require him reveal the information allegedly withheld. Furthermore, the money allegedly received by Chen was in actuality a GRANT awarded to MIT from the PRC’s Southern University of Science and Technology.

Chen’s tragic story is part of a 2018 “China Initiative” undertaken by the US Department of Justice to ferret out spies, saboteurs, and other nefarious agents of People’s China bent on taking unfair advantage of the US, its research facilities, and universities. Implicit in the initiative is the understanding that the PRC is catching or overtaking the US in technological innovation, explicitly 5G networks. Thus was born a racist and nationalistic witch hunt of academics, students, and researchers of Chinese ethnicity.

Thousands have been investigated, with few convictions but lots of disrupted lives, discredited careers, and an experience “traumatic and deeply disillusioning” in the words of the exonerated Gang Chen. The US is finally dropping the charges after a year of public pillorying.

The unwarranted harassment of both Chinese Americans and Chinese nationals mirrors the anti-Communist witch hunts of the 1950s and the accompanying illegalities committed by the FBI, all in the service of bolstering a rabid anti-PRC foreign policy.

After five years of scandalizing Cuba’s good name and nearly four years of demonizing Chinese and Chinese American academics, US officials have recognized their folly. Of course, irreparable damage has been done.

******

To read the universally compliant US capitalist media, Russia has amassed 100,000 troops on the border of Ukraine and is waiting for the moment-- frozen turf, a false-flag operation, an inadequate US response, a provocation, etc.-- to cross the border and march on Kyiv. The figure of 100,000 appears constantly without even a cautious media challenge. Where does the number come from? What does it mean?

Russian intentions are never questioned by US talking heads. “Putin is evil” replaces serious analysis.

Russian interests in the confrontation are never explained. The betrayal of US, Western, and NATO promises to refrain from eastern expansion go unmentioned or derided. And aggressive moves by the Eastern European extreme nationalists-- Poland and the Baltic states-- are whitewashed as defensive.

The entire establishment-- politicians, academics, think-tankers, NGO directors, newspaper editors and their toadies, celebrities, etc.-- are united in predicting an imminent invasion of Ukraine by Russian hordes. All march in step with the State Department press releases crafted by the Russia-haters, Blinken and Nuland.

The feverish campaign reached its most absurd moment with the phone call from US President Biden to Ukraine President Zelensky warning of a fast-approaching barbarian invasion and the “sacking” of Kyiv. The next day, Zelensky asked the Western press to report Ukrainian calm and to tone down the imminent-war rhetoric.

Few in the West have noticed the President and State Department’s inconsistency. On the one hand, they project an Eastern European apocalypse and on the other hand, they propose no serious military deterrent on the part of the US or NATO. Instead, Biden’s administration harps on Trump-like sanctions aimed at the Russian economy and, not least of all, its energy sector.

If oil was a motivating factor in US foreign policy activism in the 1980s and 1990s, then natural gas is a decisive motivating factor today. Where the US was determined to secure oil resources in the past, energy independence and the fracking revolution motivate US policy makers to secure natural gas markets today.

In essence, the US is baiting the Russians into actions that will encourage the Europeans to reject their dependence upon cheap Russian natural gas. Instead, they want Europe to rely on expensive US liquified natural gas, a change that Europeans have, so far, resisted. War hysteria is meant to frighten the Europeans into rejecting the nearly completed Nord Stream pipeline and, instead, build costly liquified natural gas terminals to accept US gas. Thus, the underlying strategy is economic-- a not-so-subtle bullying of Europe into aligning with US economic interests.

The goal is to restart the botched, overinvested, badly managed fracking revolution that would now ride the tide of high energy prices.

The French and German leadership understand this gambit and have tactfully urged negotiation. The Germans, in particular, recognize the dangerous consequences for their economy. Their recent commitment to move away from nuclear energy and coal, leave their export-driven industries vulnerable to natural gas prices.

While visiting an Indian think tank, the German naval chief, Schönbach, recently spoke candidly of the confrontation in Eastern Europe, urging discussion and “respect” for President Putin. Though a voice of moderation and, no doubt, reflecting a broad section of European opinion, NATO hardliners forced his resignation.

Clearly, the Biden administration is fishing in troubled waters, exploiting unjustified fears of Russian aggression to advance narrow economic goals: natural gas sales and military-armament production and sales. Unfortunately, the dangers of violent confrontation are only multiplied by the boot-licking of many European leaders and the media. Much hinges on how the Russians weigh their options. They, too, have narrow interests, opportunists, and warmongers.

All wars based on lies end tragically.

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

A Tale of Two Countries

Two countries have made the front pages and lead stories in our lemming-like capitalist media: Haiti and Cuba.

One country-- Haiti-- has earned the ire of the self-styled Western democracies by overthrowing its colonial slave masters and establishing a free state in 1803, the first country in history to liberate itself from European-imposed slavery. The Europeans and elites in the US never forgave the rebellious followers of Toussaint L’Ouverture and their descendants. Through occupations, threats, “incentives,” and economic extortion, imperialism has ensured that Haiti remains among the poorest countries of the Americas, ranking 145 on the UN’s Human Development Index.

The brutal assassination of the Haitian President, an attempted coup d’état by rightwing mercenaries, only added to the country’s miseries.

Meanwhile, the US cannot decide who it wants to lead Haiti since the assassination: The UN special representative for Haiti, Helen La Lime, a US citizen, designated Claude Joseph. But the self-styled International Core group-- a collection of ambassadors led by the US-- has designated Ariel Henry. As has become the custom, the Haitian people will have little say.

The other country-- Cuba-- earned its punishment in 1959 when Cuban revolutionaries defeated the US puppet government of Fulgencio Battista, liberating the island’s people from a destiny as the US’s playground and a source of super-exploited labor. The US has never forgiven the Fidelistas for their defiance of the empire to the north. Cuba’s embrace of socialism only enraged the beast even more.

US agencies devote persistent attention to overthrowing the government of Cuba and many millions of dollars back up those goals. Against the expressed UN opposition of nearly every country in the world, the US has imposed an air-tight blockade against the tiny island of eleven million people, denying its people even the most basic fruits of economic activity. Moreover, a day has not passed in the last sixty years that the US was not intervening in Cuban affairs.

Therefore, anyone who has any familiarity with recent Cuban history and has read reports of “demonstrations” on July 11 directed against the Cuban government must immediately look for the barely-hidden hand of US agency, supporting, even directing these demonstrations. It is impossible for any honest journalist to not at least entertain the possibility of US involvement.

And yet the first reports from NPR referred to the spontaneity of these demonstrations, as though there was no organization or planning, a ridiculous claim for a network that also insists that Cuba is a police state. Excited reporters inflated the numbers engaged from hundreds to thousands. Pictures cropped or lifted from entirely different, even pro-Cuba events were disseminated by the blood-lusting media, including AP, Reuters, The Financial Times, and The Guardian, and others, as evidence of street opposition.

The number of wild, outlandish claims about Cuba grew geometrically after the events of July 11. The watchdogs of social media were uncharacteristically docile as every imaginable slander of Cuba emerged, a commonplace of US destabilization campaigns.

NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and other media sources attributed the spark for these demonstrations to a dissident rapper who created a slick video in collaboration with a “superstar” expatriate rapper with deep pockets. While this made for an attractive cover-- a feel-good story of individual courage and initiative-- the mainstream media showed little interest in the US-financed twitter campaign waged through automated tweets emanating from outside the island and backed by US dollars.

They also fail to mention the focused US campaign to fund and influence the island’s youth culture against the Cuban government. 

For an industry fixated on exposing “meddling” in US affairs, the infotainment corporations chose to ignore the long history of US-funded regime-change fronts assigned to destabilize Cuba. The World Peace Council provides a handy guide to numerous US-sponsored media organs aligned against the leadership of the Cuban Communist Party, all of which barely conceal their interference in Cuban affairs.

Shamefully, those who are today aghast at conditions in Cuba and blame Cuban problems on the revolutionary leadership that Cuban citizens have chosen never directly address the cruel blockade, the even more stringent sanctions, and the intimidation of Cuba’s friends by its unfriendly neighbor. They do not point to the lost trade, the forbidden remittances, the denied tourism that would allow Cubans to live a more prosperous life. 

In a matter-of-fact fashion, Western commentators cite the recent rise of COVID cases in Cuba, neglecting to mention the lack of syringes to deliver the vaccines developed by Cuba’s advanced biomedical programs, a lack that is the direct result of the US-imposed blockade. A campaign to counter the blockade and provide syringes to save Cubans from COVID death has been in effect for many months, entirely ignored by the capitalist media.

While conditions are difficult in Cuba, the vast majority of Cubans have and will continue to support a revolutionary government that stands between them and the world of grinding poverty and degradation that their grandparents knew. Even the younger generations that never experienced the colonial horrors of gangster rule and slave-like working conditions bear the pride in independence that stretches from Jose Martí to Fidel Castro. They will not surrender their right to determine Cuba’s future to foreign interests and democracy haters.

The US’s capitalist allies choose to stand with the bully against a proud, but poor victim, surrendering their integrity to a vicious blockade. The values that NATO so sanctimoniously proclaims are mocked by the organization’s complicity in strangling the tiny Caribbean Island.

Of course, there is a lesson for those umbilically tied to the Democratic Party. Despite campaign pledges, Biden has continued, even exceeded, Trump’s assault on Cuban independence. Journalists have urged his press secretary to elaborate his Cuba policy, but received only evasions. That policy is now clear. The Miami Mafia and New Jersey’s Havana on the Hudson drive Biden’s team to retreat from Obama’s opening and toward subversion of Cuba’s right to self-determination. For the ethically challenged New Jersey Senator Menendez’s vote, the Biden administration is willing to sell out Cuba.

In the midst of the July 11 excuse for attacking Cuban socialism and Cuban sovereignty, a group including “leftist” intellectuals Etienne Balibar, Noam Chomsky, Robert Brenner, and Mike Davis picked this particular moment to circulate a petition to free Cuban intellectuals allegedly arrested by Cuban authorities on July 11. While propounding their solidarity with Cuba, they show no indication that they discussed the allegation publicly or privately with Cuban authorities; they grant no prima facie credibility to the Cuban criminal justice system; from afar, they assume innocence of charges despite little or no knowledge of the circumstances. In short, they presume that the Cuban authorities engage in arbitrary, unwarranted arrests-- a hallmark of a police state. This is a strange posture for “friends” of the Cuban revolution-- an irresponsible, unconscionable act while Cuba is under severe duress from imperialism.

This is not a moment for quarreling over individual rights-- the manic obsession of the comfortable and the privileged-- when the collective right of self-determination claimed by eleven million Cubans is under attack by our leaders. 

At great costs, Cuba has escaped the plight of Haiti, successfully holding off the domination of the North American behemoth. Should US imperialism succeed, Cuba will be swarmed by US agencies, corrupt aid packages, World Bank and IMF carpetbaggers, and the other counterparts to the sanctimonious missionaries of the Colonial era.

Haiti and Cuba have the same enemies. They are victimized by the same opportunistic politicians, the same jaded journalists, and the same spies, who all work to maintain or turn both into neo-colonies.

The same nest of counter revolutionaries, criminals, and vultures headquartered in Miami that now call for the bombing or invasion of Cuba and for sending troops to Haiti gave birth to the assassination of Haiti’s president on July 7.

Cuba and Haiti will win!

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com

Inhumanity Unbound: the Case for Socialism

Nothing exposes the hypocrisy, arrogance, and selfishness of capitalism and its backers like a major threat or catastrophe. 

Three hundred Chinese doctors began arriving in Italy on Wednesday, March 18 to help the local effort against the coronavirus  (Fifty-two health professionals also arrived from socialist Cuba last week). In addition, PRChina (PRC) is sending testing kits and protective clothing. PRC has sent kits and gear to Spain, Greece, and Poland as well.

While The Wall Street Journal (3-19-2020) grudgingly reports this international solidarity, it is also compelled to admit that “many people feel let down by the European Union… No other EU countries responded to an Italian plea for masks earlier in March, and German authorities temporarily impeded deliveries of medical supplies to Italy.” The head of a European think tank remarked: “This is a shocking failure of European solidarity. The impression in Italy, Spain, and Serbia and so on is that the weaker links will be left alone.” 

The Italian and Chinese governments announced that PRC will supply needed ventilators and face masks. Balkan countries unable to acquire supplies from the EU are also getting assistance from the PRC, according to the WSJ. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic bitterly commented: “European solidarity does not exist. It was a fairytale.”

Contrast this commentary on European indifference with the arrogant self-righteousness of the policy of “open-borders” as formerly proclaimed by EU leaders. When workers expressed their reservations about unlimited immigration eroding wages and benefits in the EU, the Euro-leadership indignantly charged “xenophobia.” Waving the banner of human rights, the EU chiefs welcomed immigrants-- mostly the victims of imperialist aggression-- desperately looking for jobs at any cost, while appearing to take the moral high ground.

Once the “reserve army” overflowed to create stress on the EU safety net, the welcome mat was quietly removed. 

European workers understood the simple fact that in a capitalist economy the labor of workers is a commodity like any other element in the productive process and that capitalists seek to purchase that commodity as cheaply as possible. They anticipated that humanitarian sentiments were too often a cover for cheapening the cost of labor.

The formerly putative human rights crusaders of an EU without borders are now panicked in a mad dash of self-preservation, hoarding resources and closing borders. Today’s pandemic crisis exposes their hypocrisy.

But neither neglect nor arrogance is a monopoly of the capitalist European Union. It is now widely acknowledged that the austerity imposed upon the US public sector since the crash of 2007-2009 bears a responsibility for the lack of funding for the agencies, like the Center for Disease Control (CDC), that needed to address the threat from the coronavirus.

In addition, the CDC displayed an unforgivable hubris, ignoring the international efforts to contain the virus and the lessons learned. In accounts from as diverse sources as National Public Radio and The Wall Street Journal, we learn that the CDC chose to develop its own testing kits for the virus, ignoring the existing technologies of the World Health Organization and the PRC.

When their own kits went into production, they proved faulty, setting the program back. Rather than turning to existing internationally used designs, the CDC sought to make its own corrections, further delaying production. The CDC vastly underestimated the virus’s deadliness and its contagion. The spread of the virus is rapidly outstripping the availability of testing kits, attesting to the conceit of Make America Great Again.

Despite the lack of testing kits in the US, many have noticed that celebrities, sports figures, politicians and others of our “betters” have cut the line and acquired tests before the most needy-- the ugliest side of the inequality of class society. 

Also, reliable accounts have surfaced that some US elected officials have used their privileged information to enable them to liquidate their equity portfolios before the great March stock market collapse.

Workers employed in low-wage, service-sector jobs are the most vulnerable to intensive and persisting human contact and potential infection and are the least able to sustain the economic consequences of the pandemic.

It is not true that we are all in this together. Some are in it for themselves.

For any thinking observer, the coronavirus pandemic is fast becoming an argument for socialism. Even a bitter enemy of public ownership, planning, and economic equality like The Wall Street Journal caustically acknowledges that the PRC’s remarkable defeat of the coronavirus epidemic was achieved with the quickly mobilized, effective state-owned-enterprises (SOEs). In a tellingly titled article (China Steps Back From Market Economy, 3-19-2020), Lingling Wei cites the 20,000 SOE construction workers and supportive public enterprises that built two hospitals with 2,600 beds within two weeks, an achievement impossible in the capitalist West. Lingling cites an official: “It’s like in a battlefield, and state-owned enterprises are the ones who can act fast and decisively.”

The coordination of SOEs was formidable, with petrochemical enterprises working to produce materials for masks and pharmaceuticals. State-owned housing ordered reduced rents by “tens of millions of dollars.” Despite the reduced production necessitated by social isolation, the central government pressed SOEs to maintain employment, even “hire more, especially college graduates.”

The WSJ concedes that “Many private manufacturers are struggling to restore production, yet more than 95% of some 20,000 industrial companies controlled by the central government are churning out masks, medicines, steel, heavy machinery and other products-- keeping workers on the job.”

Western commentators bemoan the success of the SOEs, interpreting it as a setback for the hope of privatization (so-called “market reforms”) in PRC. One former WSJ writer complained: “If and when the outbreak fades, the conclusion is inevitably going to be that the overwhelming exercise of state power saved China.”

In exemplary acts of solidarity fully consistent with its long history of internationalism, tiny socialist Cuba, suffering a criminal US blockade and brutal sanctions, is offering doctors and drugs to several stricken countries.

When the US refused to allow the British cruise ship, MS Braemer, to dock, Cuba met its humanitarian duty and allowed its passengers to disembark and travel home by air. 

The contrast with Western, capitalist efforts is striking. The PRC (and DRVietnam) have largely arrested the virus. As of March 21, the total cases per million of population is lower in the PRC than in the US and the UK, countries only at the beginning of their infection cycle. Italy had 6,557 new cases compared to only 41 in the PRC (4,759 in the US). 

Chinese health workers celebrate by removing their masks for the first time in months as the last of the temporary Covid-19 treatment centres closes in Wuhan, China.

In the US, there are far too few test kits, masks, and ventilators. New York City hospitals are overwhelmed. State administrations and the Federal government are in dispute over responsibilities while disaster looms. 

And tragically, the political and economic elites are more determined to rescue markets and corporations than humans. Trillions have been earmarked to bail capitalism. 

The idiocies, irrationalities, and unnecessary injuries of twenty-first-century capitalism are coming into full, tragic view. 

Greg Godels

zzsblogml@gmail.com