Now it's Helms-Lieberman
New anti-Cuba bill earmarks $100 million for
counter-revolution
By Gloria La
Riva
In a May 18 White House ceremony George W. Bush announced a
series of moves against Cuba in which new legislation by
senators Jesse Helms and Joseph Lieberman will play a key
role.
May 20--the date of Cuba's nominal independence--was used as
a backdrop for this announcement. Cuba's independence war had
been on the verge of victory when it was thwarted by U.S.
intervention in 1898. On May 20, 1902, Cuba formally became a
republic after the U.S. ended its four-year military
occupation.
But U.S. neocolonial rule remained until Cuba's true
liberation was won in the 1959 revolution.
Traditionally U.S. presidents have used May 20 to express
their hostility to the Cuban socialist revolution in official
gatherings at the White House--with their Miami-based
Cuban-American right-wing allies by their side.
Since the Cuban-American right-wingers have no problem with
the fact that the U.S. exercised behind-the-scenes rule in Cuba
from 1902 to 1959, they laud May 20 as a major holiday. Bush
also embraces it as his own for the purpose of reaffirming U.S.
imperialism's 42-year offensive against Cuba.
Surrounded by Secretary of State Colin Powell, National
Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, some U.S. politicians and
right-wing Cuban-American allies, Bush spoke in glowing terms
of the upcoming "Cuban Solidarity Act"--the latest anti-Cuba
legislation to come down the pipeline.
The act, if passed, would allocate $100 million to finance
internal counter-revolutionary activity in Cuba.
Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the notorious reactionary who
currently heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
introduced it May 16 in the Senate. The other co-sponsor is
Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Al Gore's
vice-presidential running mate last year.
Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who has built his political career in
Florida with vitriolic anti-Cuba campaigns, introduced a
similar measure in the House of Representatives.
More lethal than fax machines
The stated aim of the legislation is to funnel money to
opposition groups inside Cuba, ostensibly for fax machines and
computers but also for anti-government activities. It was
touted by its sponsors as similar to campaigns carried out by
the U.S. against the governments of Poland, China and
Yugoslavia.
U.S. aggression against the socialist camp--military and
economic sabotage--was never publicly revealed in its entirety.
The U.S. capitalist government did more than just send fax and
copy machines to overturn socialism in Eastern Europe.
It blockaded the socialist camp, allocated hundreds of
billions to the Pentagon and waged a never-ending "cold war."
And when the U.S. couldn't succeed in subjugating Yugoslavia,
for example, it finally devastated the country with massive
NATO bombing in 1999 to achieve its objective.
Bush and Helms tout the bill as a new turn in U.S. policy
toward Cuba. Bush says that the U.S. will now actively organize
against the revolution from within Cuba.
In reality the U.S. has carried out countless similar
actions for 42 years. Washington has spent tens of billions to
blockade, invade and sabotage Cuba.
The U.S. ruling class has made counter-revolution in Cuba a
top foreign-policy priority all along. The May 31, 1999, Cuban
lawsuit against Washington for $181.1 billion in damages fully
documents the 3,478 lives lost to U.S. aggression.
But all these efforts have failed. If anything U.S.
aggression--though it has caused tremendous suffering--has help
ed strengthen the Cuban people's resolve to defend their
revolution.
The U.S. predicted that Cuba would not survive Eastern
Europe's collapse. Yet the Cuban people's solemn oath to defend
socialism and their homeland at all costs carried them through
the most severe test imaginable: the post-Soviet economic
crisis of the 1990s.
It was to a great degree due to the revolutionary leadership
of the Cuban Communist Party and President Fidel Castro as well
as the heroic sacrifice of an entire people.
The media recently questioned President Castro about the new
U.S. legislation while he was in Lisbon, Portugal, awaiting
departure to Cuba after a major tour to six countries in
Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
He responded, "The more mistakes they make, the weaker the
U.S. position will be. The better for us, who grow in the
mistakes that they constantly make."
TV and radio propaganda
beamed at Cuba
Even if every dollar of the $100 million were to reach the
tiny bands of pro-U.S. right-wing groups in Cuba, they would be
incapable of reversing the people's will. Millions of Cubans
have shown time and time again that they can gather in a few
hours' notice to protest U.S. acts of aggression.
The U.S. rulers can't help but be aware that the opposition
inside the country is thoroughly discredited and scorned by 11
million Cubans.
But it is not internal opposition the U.S. is depending on
to carry out its objectives. These would-be recipients of the
funding--whether in Miami or inside Cuba--are only the conveyor
belts for U.S. imperialism.
The counter-revolutionary groups are simply a pretext, like
the mercenary army of Cubans at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 who
were to be used as a "provisional government" to justify a
much-larger U.S. invasion plan. That plan was defeated by the
overwhelming response of the Cuban military, militias and
people.
Ricardo Alarcón, president of Cuba's National
Assembly and a highly regarded former diplomat, gave his
appraisal of the proposed U.S. legislation. He said, "Even if
the bill is not approved, the [U.S.] government can spend that
and more, and they are spending it already.
"Similar amounts are being spent on Radio Martí and
TV Martí and other publicly acknowledged activities, in
addition to many others that--without publicity--are still
being carried out."
Alarcón believes that the bill's supporters are
"looking for new publicity that will commit the United States
even more to its anti-Cuban policy."
The bill would seek millions more in funding to bolster the
so-called Radio Martí and TV Martí anti-Cuba
broadcasts that have operated for more than 10 years from U.S.
territory. The CIA heads those misinformation operations.
Cuba has successfully jammed the TV Martí station
since its inception in 1990. The U.S. transmissions are a
violation of international law and Cuba's sovereignty over its
airspace.
The latest legislation comes after a wave of anti-Cuba
actions by the U.S. authorities.
Bill Clinton handed over $160 million in frozen Cuban assets
to the Miami right wing to bolster the CIA's "shock troops" in
Florida, especially after their ignominious defeat in the
return of young Elián González.
Bush's endorsement of the Helms-Lieberman bill is in many
ways an admission that the blockade has not succeeded in its
goal of defeating the revolution. Nevertheless, it is important
to be vigilant about U.S. machinations and vigorously oppose
the Bush administration's criminal and illegal plans.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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