China urges US to shut Guantanamo prison, end ‘occupation’ of Cuba
Lin Jian, spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, attends a press conference on March 18, 2024 in Beijing, China. [VCG/VCG via Getty Images]
MEMO | December 20, 2024
Read also: Guantanamo’s cruelty is medieval. It’s a horror story. And it’s true.
Russia’s Amended Nuclear Doctrine Signals Willingness to Take On ‘Global Power Obligations’ – Expert
Sputnik – 19.11.2024
The latest changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine were likely made for two main reasons, Mikael Valtersson, former Swedish military officer and ex-chief of staff with the Sweden Democrats, tells Sputnik.
“One is to make it even clearer that even attacks from Ukraine with conventional weapons with the active support of Western powers will be seen as a combined attack on Russia,” he says. “This will give Russia the opportunity to claim Casus belli [an event that either provokes or is used to justify a war], and legitimate defensive military action according to international law and the UN Charter.”
This move, Valtersson argues, is essentially an attempt by Russia to “strengthen deterrence towards the West and reduce the risk of Western escalation in Ukraine.”
“The second and very interesting aspect is the inclusion of allies in the nuclear deterrence,” he continues. “This must be seen in the light of the recent ratification of the new defense cooperation agreement with the DPRK (North Korea) that includes a paragraph akin to the NATO article 5. This stipulates mutual military aid to defend each other in case of aggression from other countries.”
“With the changes of Russian nuclear strategy, Russia says that aggression towards it’s allies will be seen as aggression towards Russia and might include a nuclear response,” Valtersson notes. “The Russian nuclear doctrine now reflects the fact that Russia has formal allies again.”
As Russia’s actions resulted in NATO ceasing to be the only military bloc in the post-Cold War world whose members “have been included in a common nuclear umbrella,” Valtersson suggests that this development has both pros and cons for Moscow.
“This makes Russia a more attractive ally, but also puts Russia into a more precarious situation, since it now has stronger obligations to live up to. A failure to live up to these obligations would result in a huge loss of confidence in Russian willingness to support allies, and the Kremlin of course knows this,” he elaborates. “That means that this decision to change the nuclear doctrine must be seen as a real willingness of Russia to extend its nuclear deterrence to other allies.”
Valtersson also remarks that it would be interesting to see what new defense agreements Russia might sign with nations such as Iran, Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Algeria “and a multitude of Sub-Saharan states,” which could both “greatly increase the security of these states and Russian standing in the world” and, “increase the risk of Russian involvement in new conflicts.”
“To summarise, this is a clear signal that Russia now is willing to take on the obligations that are needed to be a real global power,” he adds.
Chinese embassy dismisses US allegations of bases in Cuba as slander
Al Mayadeen | July 2, 2024
In response to ongoing allegations by the US regarding Chinese military bases in Cuba, the Chinese Embassy in Washington vehemently refuted these claims, labeling them as slanderous and malicious.
The remarks come after US think-tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) published a report using satellite imagery to identify four alleged Chinese listening stations in Cuba, including one located near Guantanamo Bay.
“The US side has repeatedly hyped up China’s establishment of spy bases or conducting surveillance activities in Cuba. Such claims are nothing but slander. The Cuban side has already made a clarification,” Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu told Sputnik on Tuesday.
Liu stressed the need for the US to halt its ongoing effort to make malicious accusations against China without delay.
Additionally, Liu highlighted that the US maintains a leading role in global surveillance operations, which encompass monitoring its allies as well.
Israel a ‘terrorist state’ – Cuba
RT | December 27, 2023
Israel is a terrorist state committing genocide in Gaza, Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on social media on Tuesday. He was commenting on the ongoing military operation that West Jerusalem launched against Hamas in retaliation following the militant group’s deadly October 7 surprise attack, in which approximately 1,200 were killed in the south of the country.
The Caribbean nation, which has no formal diplomatic relations with Israel, has been highly critical of Israel’s war on the militants, which maintain de facto rule over Gaza. During the military operation, large swathes of the enclave have been devastated and more than 20,400 Palestinians have been killed, according to local officials.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) Diaz-Canel called Israel’s actions “a humiliation for all humanity” and lamented that the nation was getting away with it.
“Cuba, which will never be among the indifferent, raises its voice for Palestine again and again,” he added.
Last week, the Cuban parliament passed a declaration expressing support for the Palestinian people and its aspiration for statehood. The document branded Israel’s conduct “genocide,” condemning its “barbaric acts” that highlight the failures of international diplomacy.
“We denounce in the strongest terms the responsibility and complicity of the government of the United States in this genocide,” the declaration said, referring to Washington’s use of its veto power at the UN Security Council on Israel’s behalf.
“The impunity with which Israel has historically acted can only be explained by its confidence that there will be no consequences due to the backing of the US government,” the lawmakers stated.
The administration of US President Joe Biden has expressed discontent due to the high number of civilian casualties in Gaza and claims that behind closed doors it is pressuring Israel to correct its approach.
Senior Israeli officials have repeatedly denied being under US pressure. Tal Heinrich, the spokesperson for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told MSNBC last Friday that the two nations are “in lockstep.”
Israel claims that it is doing everything possible to minimize risks for civilians and argues that Hamas is ultimately responsible for every such death.
A report published by the Tel Aviv-based +972 Magazine in late November claimed that the Israeli military is purposefully bombing “power targets” in Gaza, such as public buildings and high-rise blocks, in order to “create a shock” in the general population. The rationale is that it will somehow turn Palestinians against Hamas.
Another U.S. Spy for Cuba
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | December 13, 2023
U.S. spies for Cuba are in the news. Last week, U.S. officials announced the arrest of Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, a former U.S. ambassador, on charges of having spied for Cuba since the 1970s. Meanwhile, Ana Montes, a former analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency, was recently released from federal prison after serving a 20-year sentence for spying for Cuba. In the context of reporting on these two people, the media is also bringing up the case of Walter and Gwendolyn Myers, a husband and wife who worked for the State Department, who pleaded guilty in 2009 to spying for Cuba for 30 years.
Former US Ambassador Victor Manuel Rocha
As a Wall Street Journal story last month stated, these spies were not driven by money to spy for Cuba. The article stated that they were instead driven by “ideology.” My hunch is that these four people themselves would say that they were driven to spy for Cuba by conscience.
Ever since the Cuban revolution in 1959, Cuba has been considered to be an official enemy of the United States and, specifically, of the U.S. national-security establishment (i.e., the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA), which is the driving force of U.S. foreign policy within the U.S government.
Prior to the Cuban revolution, the Cuban government had been controlled by U.S. officials ever since the Spanish-American War of 1898. In essence, Cuba had been a U.S. colony up until the time of the 1959 revolution.
Prior to the revolution, Cuba was ruled by a brutal rightwing dictator named Fulgencio Batista, who was a loyal agent of the U.S. government. Many Cubans resented Batista, not only because of his brutal dictatorship, and not only because he was a loyal lackey of U.S. officials, but also because he had become a partner of the Mafia, the world’s premier criminal organization, which ran casinos in Havana and shared its profits with Batista under the table. One of Batista’s policies that many Cubans resented was the state-sponsored kidnapping of underaged girls in the countryside who Batista’s goons would deliver to the Mafia’s high rollers in the casinos as a sexual perk. In fact, it was that policy that set off the Cuban revolution.
Once the revolution was won, the new regime, headed by Fidel Castro, took Cuba in a different direction. Castro refused to become a lackey of the U.S. government and insisted that Cuba would henceforth be an independent nation. He also later made it clear that he was committed to socialism and communism and, in fact, was determined to establish friendly relations with the Soviet Union and the communist world (something that President Kennedy was also determined to do, as he outlined in his famous Peace Speech in June 1963).
Owing to these actions, Cuba was deemed to be a grave threat to U.S. “national security” (just as Kennedy was).
But there is something important to recognize about all this: Cuba never committed any act of aggression against the United States or even threatened to do so. Instead, it has always been the United States that has been the aggressor against Cuba.
For example, there were repeated assassination attempts by the U.S. government against Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Given that Castro had never initiated any aggressive action against the United States, these were nothing more than attempts at legalized murder. In fact, President Lyndon Johnson even candidly pointed out that the CIA was running a “damned Murder Inc.” in the Caribbean.
There was also Operation Mongoose, which entailed U.S. acts of sabotage and terrorism inside Cuba.
And, of course, there has been the ongoing brutal U.S. economic embargo against Cuba, which has targeted the Cuban people with death and economic suffering in the hopes that they would rise up in another revolution, one that would replace Cuba’s recalcitrant communist regime with another U.S.-approved rightwing stooge.
Therefore, since the U.S. government has always been the aggressor against Cuba — with assassinations, terrorism, sabotage, and its deadly embargo — and since Cuba has never aggressed against the United States — it stands to reason that any information that these four U.S. spies for Cuba delivered to Cuba almost certainly involved secret information that was designed to help Cuba protect itself and its citizens from the acts of aggression by the Pentagon and the CIA.
At Montez’s sentencing, federal Judge Ricardo Urbina, stated that she had put the United States “as a whole” at risk by spying for Cuba. It would be difficult to understand how she had done that, given that it has always been the United States that has been the aggressor against Cuba, not the other way around. More likely, Montez, along with those other three U.S. spies for Cuba, provided information that assisted the Cubans to protect themselves from U.S. attempts at murder, sabotage, terrorism, and the infliction of death and suffering from the U.S. embargo. U.S. officials say that they betrayed the United States and, therefore, need to be severely punished for helping the Cuban people protect themselves from Pentagon-CIA aggression.
Iran, Cuba must form coalition to counter US, West bullying: Ayatollah Khamenei
Press TV – December 4, 2023
Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says great political and economic capacities of Iran and Cuba should be used to form a coalition against bullying of the United States and its Western allies.
Ayatollah Khamenei made the remarks in a Monday meeting with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who is in Tehran on a historic visit. Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi was also present in the meeting.
Ayatollah Khamenei pointed to remarkable potentialities of Iran and Cuba and said, “These capacities should be used to set up an alliance and a coalition among those countries that share the same position against the US and Western bullying.”
“With its focus on economic cooperation, this coalition can take a common and effective position on important international issues such as the Palestinian issue,” the Leader stated.
The Leader emphasized that the Palestinian issue is not limited to the recent developments in Gaza and its bombardment as the Palestinian people have been exposed to various types of torture, sufferings and massacre over the past 75 years.
However, Gaza is currently faced with such a big catastrophe that cannot be concealed, Ayatollah Khamenei said, adding that the war revealed the realities on the ground to the world public opinion.
The Leader added that Iran and Cuba share a stance on many international developments, particularly the Palestinian issue.
Referring to Tehran-Havana cooperation in international forums, Ayatollah Khamenei stressed the importance of further promoting mutual relations in various fields, including science.
The Leader expressed hope that the two countries would implement bilateral agreements and memoranda of understanding now that the administration of Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi, which he described as the “administration of work and activity”, is at the helm.
Ayatollah Khamenei also pointed to his meeting with late Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Tehran 22 years ago, and said Cuba’s revolution and Castro’s personality have always been a fascination for Iranian revolutionaries even before the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution because of the sincerity in his revolutionary positions.
The Leader emphasized that “revolutionary sincerity”, “revolutionary resilience” and “revolutionary solemnity” are the common main features of the Cuban revolution and the Islamic Revolution in Iran.
Cuba urges further cooperation with Iran in various fields
Díaz-Canel, for his part, said Ayatollah Khamenei’s positions and statements correspond to concerns and stance of the Cuban government.
The Cuban president added that in his talks with Iranian authorities in Tehran, both sides focused all their efforts on ways to deepen mutual relations, especially in the economic and commercial spheres.
He emphasized that Iran and Cuba can complement each other in various fields, particularly in dealing with interventionist measures and sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies.
Regarding cooperation on global issues, the two countries should further develop their relations and play an influential role in leading developments such as the Palestinian issue, he said.
The Cuban president denounced the ongoing developments in Gaza as “unacceptable genocide” and said international organizations have turned a blind eye to the killing of tens of thousands of civilians, most of them children and women, in the besieged Strip.
He said those who were constantly complaining about the war between Ukraine and Russia and the killing of civilians are now silent vis-à-vis the massacre of tens of thousands of people in Gaza, which indicates the grave state of the world.
Algerian parliament unanimously votes to support Palestine militarily
The Cradle | November 3, 2023
The Algerian parliament on 2 November unanimously voted to authorize President Abdelmadjid Tebboune to enter the Gaza-Israel war and throw his support behind Palestine.
The 100/100 vote came a day after the anniversary of Algeria’s war of liberation against French colonialism.
Algeria is the second Arab nation that looks to enter the war against Israel, following Yemen’s declaration of war just two days prior.
“We launched a large number of ballistic and cruise missiles and a large number of drones at various targets of the Zionist enemy in the Palestine Occupied Territories,” the spokesperson of the Yemeni armed forces, General Yahya Saree, said earlier this week. “We emphasize that this operation is the third operation in support of our oppressed brothers in Palestine.”
Saree then added that “the position of our Yemeni people towards the cause of Palestine is fixed and principled, and the Palestinian people have the full right to defend themselves and use their full rights.” “Our forces performed their duty in supporting Gaza and fired ballistic and cruise missiles at enemy targets in the Occupied Territories.”
Arab nations have recently been following suit in their support of the Palestinian piece; Kuwait has condemned the Israeli aggression, Bahrain has cut all diplomatic ties, and Jordan has recalled their ambassador to Israel.
Nations outside of West Asia who have voiced their support for Palestine include Cuba, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia – who’ve cut diplomatic ties with Israel completely – Nicaragua, and others.
Is China reciprocating US aggression?
By Drago Bosnic | June 21, 2023
When the Soviet Union placed its nuclear weapons in Cuba in 1962, the United States threatened to attack if the R-12 “Dvina” and R-14 “Chusovaya” nuclear-tipped missiles deployed on the Caribbean island country weren’t removed. After most of October that year was spent in strenuous talks and strategic military maneuvers that nearly escalated into full-scale confrontation barely 17 years after WW2, Washington DC and Moscow finally negotiated a mutually beneficial (albeit last-minute) agreement that moved the world away from the thermonuclear abyss that threatened to destroy it.
For decades, much of the world was convinced that what today is (unjustly) called the Cuban Missile Crisis was initiated by Russia. And even nowadays, when we all know that it was started by the US and its 1961 deployment of the PGM-19 “Jupiter” nuclear-tipped missiles in Turkey and Italy, Washington DC still insists that Moscow was responsible for the crisis. Something eerily similar is unfolding as we speak. However, instead of Russia, the other party involved in this case is China. Namely, according to the Wall Street Journal, Beijing is currently in talks with Havana to establish new military facilities in Cuba.
The report, published on June 20, states that the two socialist allies are working out the final arrangements of the deal that would reportedly secure a military base for the PLA (People Liberation Army) in northern Cuba. The WSJ reports that this has “sparked fears among US officials that [Cuba] could eventually host a permanent Chinese troop presence”, prompting the troubled Biden administration to intervene with Cuban officials, seeking to block the establishment of permanent military installations. This will reportedly also include the expansion of ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) capabilities of the PLA’s existing military facility.
The claims about China’s supposed military bases in Cuba are based on anonymous sources from unnamed US intelligence services. However, the authors admit that the aforementioned services are not exactly certain about the possibility of a full-blown joint Chinese-Cuban military base, stating that “the reference to the proposed new training facility in Cuba is contained in the highly classified new US intelligence, which State Department officials described as convincing but fragmentary”. The report further adds that “it’s being interpreted with different levels of alarm among policymakers and intelligence analysts”.
“Most worrying for the US: The planned facility is part of China’s ‘Project 141’, an initiative by the People’s Liberation Army to expand its global military base and logistical support network, one current and one former US official said. China and Cuba already jointly run four eavesdropping stations on the island, according to US officials. That network underwent a significant upgrade around 2019, when a single station expanded to a network of four sites that are operated jointly, and Chinese involvement deepened, according to the officials,” the WSJ authors detail.
It’s quite difficult to measure the sheer magnitude of Washington DC’s hypocrisy and double standards when it comes to this issue. Considering not only the outright hostile and oftentimes openly Sinophobic rhetoric, but also the numerous concrete moves aimed against China, could anyone honestly blame Beijing for anything except reciprocity? Apart from the trade war initiated under former president Donald Trump, the US has been conducting a comprehensive crawling aggression against China, openly seeking to contain the Asian giant with a massive network of military bases and other installations across Asia-Pacific.
Most alarmingly for Beijing, the US is aiming to push its military infrastructure ever closer to China’s shores, particularly by exerting greater control over the Asian giant’s breakaway island province of Taiwan. And this is only the tip of the iceberg of resurgent Neo-McCarthyism in US foreign policy that involves the sending of entire delegations of Washington DC warhawks to Taipei, in addition to the massive shipments of weapons and equipment (that now includes F-16 Block 70/72 fighter jets and hundreds of anti-ship missiles), amounting to approximately $20 billion, albeit mostly backlogged due to US (over)focus on the Kiev regime.
Taking into account such unadulterated hostility, can anyone blame Beijing for wanting to strengthen its ties with Havana? Worse yet, Cuba is an independent country, while Taiwan is internationally recognized as part of China (including by the US itself), meaning that the expansion of America’s military infrastructure to the island directly threatens Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity. However, in its endless hypocrisy and double standards, Washington DC wants to maintain the Monroe Doctrine by exerting additional pressure on Latin America while encroaching on other superpowers’ geopolitical backyards.
“Some intelligence officials say that Beijing sees its actions in Cuba as a geographical response to the US relationship with Taiwan: The US invests heavily in arming and training the self-governing island that sits off mainland China and that Beijing sees as its own,” the WSJ admitted begrudgingly, adding: “The Journal reported that the US has deployed more than 100 troops to Taiwan to train its defense forces.”
In addition, the authors also acknowledged that “Taiwan is roughly 100 miles from mainland China, about the same distance Cuba is from Florida”, effectively conceding that there’s strategic equivalency between the two.
“China has no combat forces in Latin America, according to US officials. Meanwhile, the US has dozens of military bases throughout the Pacific, where it stations more than 350,000 troops. Chinese officials have pointed this out when they push back on American efforts to counter their military expansion outside of the Indo-Pacific,” the WSJ report concludes.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
The Goose and the Gander in Cuba
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | June 12, 2023
Hand it to the Chinese and Cubans for exposing the utter hypocrisy of the U.S. national-security state, its empire of foreign military bases, and its foreign policy of interventionism.
Last week the Wall Street Journal reported that China is paying Cuba billions of dollars in return for permitting China to construct a major facility in Cuba to spy on the United States.
China and Cuba deny the deal but what is so funny has been the reaction of U.S interventionists. They are going ballistic over China’s supposedly aggressive behavior.
Florida Senator Marc Rubio expressed the sentiments of all U.S. interventionists by exclaiming, “The threat to America from #Cuba isn’t just real, it is far worse than this.” Rubio and U.S. Senator Mark Warner from Virginia jointly stated, “We are deeply disturbed by reports that Havana and Beijing are working together to target the United States and our people. The United States must respond to China’s ongoing and brazen attacks on our nation’s security.”
The Reds are coming! The Reds are coming!
Wait a minute! What about all those military installations, including spying facilities, that the Pentagon and CIA have surrounding China and Russia? Indeed, what about the Pentagon’s and CIA’s imperial torture and prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, which is used to spy on Cuba?
Oh, there isn’t anything threatening about those facilities, U.S. interventionists exclaim. They are just for “defense.” The Chinese, Russians, and Cubans just suffer from extreme paranoia. The United States, U.S. interventionists say, is really just a peace-loving nation. Never mind that much of the world views the U.S. national-security state as Martin Luther King did — as the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world,” one that is responsible for the deaths and injuries of millions of people in the last 7o years.
Referring to the China-Cuba deal, John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, stated that U.S. officials are closely monitoring these activities and taking steps to counter them.
Really? Now why would they do that? One big reason: They don’t like it! They don’t like it when some foreign power from thousands of miles away establishes a spy facility only 90 miles away from American shores.
And what happens if that Chinese spy facility in Cuba begins to show signs of nuclear missiles? I will guarantee you that Kirby and all the other officials in the national-security establishment will go ballistic and begin calling for a bombing campaign against Cuba or an invasion, just like Pentagon and CIA officials did back in 1962. That’s because they won’t like the fact that there are Chinese nuclear missiles pointed at the U.S. from only 90 miles away.
But can you see the hypocrisy that the rest of the world sees? When Russia and China object to U.S. and NATO military installations and nuclear missiles on or near their borders, U.S. officials condemn them for their “aggressiveness.”
Moreover, let’s not forget that whenever there is some altercation between Chinese or Russian planes or ships and those of the Pentagon, the altercations always take place over there near Russia and China, not over here in our part of the world. That’s because U.S. military planes and ships are over there stirring up crises and conflicts to justify the continued existence of America’s Cold War-era national-security state.
Time will tell whether the Chinese-Cuba connection will erupt into another full-blown crisis, one that will naturally be used to justify ever-increasing taxpayer-funded largess for the national-security establishment. If so, it will only provide more confirmation of how U.S. interventionism abroad makes Americans less safe here at home.
But one can easily understand why the Chinese, Russians, and Cubans would behave in the same manner as the Pentagon and the CIA. After all, from their perspective, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Who Would Ukraine Supporters Support if the U.S. Invaded Cuba?
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | May 23, 2023
American statists cannot understand why the Russian people continue to support their president Vladimir Putin and their government’s invasion of Ukraine. For American statists, the issue is very simple: Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia bad. Russians should oppose Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Russian regime. End of story.
Fair enough. But let’s engage in a hypothetical.
Let’s assume that Russia establishes military bases and installs nuclear weapons in Cuba. The U.S. government declares, “No way, bud! We are just not going to permit you to do that. Remove them or experience the wrath of our all-powerful military machine.”
Suppose Russia takes the same position as Ukraine and says, “We are not budging. We have the right to enter into an alliance with Cuba, just as Ukraine has the right to join NATO. Moreover, Russia has the same right to establish military bases and install nuclear missiles in Cuba that NATO has to establish military bases and install nuclear missiles in Ukraine.”
A far-fetched hypothetical?
Well, not exactly.
In January 2022, Putin stated that he was thinking of sending Russian troops to Cuba. The U.S. reaction was immediate. U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan exclaimed, “If Russia were to move in that direction, we would deal with it decisively.”
What Sullivan meant by that statement was that the U.S. would issue an immediate demand that Russia cease and desist. If it refused to do so, a U.S. invasion of Cuba would follow.
In other words, the U.S. government was threatening to do to Cuba what Russia has done to Ukraine.
In fact, if we go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, that is what happened then. The Soviets had installed nuclear missiles in Cuba. The U.S. government demanded that they be removed. If they refused to remove them, the U.S. government declared that it would do exactly what the Russian government has done to Ukraine. It would bomb and invade Cuba.
So, my hypothetical clearly falls within the realm of reasonable possibility.
Given such, the question naturally arises: What would American statists who are exclaiming against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine do if that were to happen? Would they oppose the U.S. invasion of Cuba and come to the support of Cuba and Russia?
I think not. I think they would immediately come to the support of the U.S. government and its invasion of Cuba, just as most Russians have come to the support of their government and its invasion of Ukraine.
The United States Is in Conflict with Countries for Doing Things We Know They’re Not Doing
By Ted Snider | The Libertarian Institute | March 6, 2023
China, Balloons, and Spying
On February 4, the U.S. military shot down a Chinese balloon they claim was a surveillance device spying on U.S. territory. The unprecedented “kinetic action against an airborne object… within United States or American airspace” was followed by three more objects being shot down by the U.S. and Canada over their airspace.
The conflict that followed derailed potential and necessary Sino-American diplomacy. But Washington knows three crucial things: the surveillance balloon was not intentionally sent over American airspace, the next three objects were not even spying, and even if they had been spying, China would only be doing what the U.S. does every day. There was never a need for the conflict.
Biden has admitted that the three later objects that were shot down “were most likely research balloons, not spy craft.” The U.S. “intelligence community’s assessment is that the three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific studies.”
As for the balloon the United States still believes was a spy balloon, they knew all along that China had not deliberately sent it over American airspace. Far from being taken by surprise, as they portrayed, “U.S. military and intelligence agencies had been tracking it for nearly a week, watching as it lifted off from its home base on Hainan Island near China’s south coast.”
And they knew the intended destination was never the United States. Officials “are now examining the possibility that China didn’t intend to penetrate the American heartland with their airborne surveillance device.” The U.S. monitored the flight path that was taking it to Guam when “strong winds… appear to have pushed the balloon south into the continental United States.”
The U.S. initiated a potentially dangerous conflict with a country for doing something they knew the country wasn’t doing.
And even if China did send a spy balloon over the United States, the government knows that they do that to China every day. Three times a day actually! Retired Ambassador Chas Freeman, who accompanied Nixon to China in 1972, told me that the U.S. “mount[s] about three reconnaissance missions a day by air or sea along China’s borders, staying just outside the 12-mile limit but alarming the Chinese, who routinely intercept our flights and protest our perceived provocations.”
The U.S. has, not balloons, but satellites that spy on China. NBC’s Robert Windrem calls Washington’s “appetite for China’s secrets” “insatiable” and says that “spying on the People’s Republic of China has been one of the National Security Agency’s top priorities since it was established in 1952.”
But they have balloons too. On February 13, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said “that the U.S. had flown high-altitude balloons through its airspace more than 10 times since the start of 2022.” He went on to say that “U.S. balloons regularly flew through other countries’ airspace without permission.”
And in February 2022, Politico revealed that the Pentagon is working on “high-altitude inflatables” that would fly “at between 60,000 and 90,000 feet [and] would be added to the Pentagon’s extensive surveillance network…” The Pentagon, which has spent millions on the project, hopes the balloons “may help track and deter hypersonic weapons being developed by China and Russia.”
Cuba and Sponsoring Terrorism
On October 3, 2022, Colombian President Gustavo Petro asked U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to take Cuba off the list of state sponsors of international terrorism. At a press conference the same day, Blinken defended the Cuban listing, insisting that “When it comes to Cuba and when it comes to the state sponsor of terrorism designation, we have clear laws, clear criteria, clear requirements.” Petro disagreed, responding that “what has happened with Cuba is an injustice.”
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador agrees. In December, he said that the world must “unite and defend the independence and sovereignty of Cuba, and never, ever treat it as a ‘terrorist’ country, or put its profoundly humane people and government on a blacklist of supposed ‘terrorists.’”
The United States agrees. Though the Biden administration has insisted on keeping Cuba on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, they know that Cuba is not a sponsor of terrorism.
William LeoGrande, Professor of Government at American University and a specialist in U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America, told me that the region’s resistance to the American strangling of Cuba was “preventing Washington from engaging Latin American cooperation on a range of other issues.” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said U.S. policy on Cuba had become “an albatross” around the neck of the U.S., crippling their policy in the hemisphere.
So, President Obama ordered a review of the designation. In an act of extreme historical understatement, he told Congress that “the government of Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding six-month period” and “has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future.” After the State Department review, Secretary of State John Kerry declared that any remaining “concerns and disagreements” with Cuba “fall outside the criteria for designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.” The State Department issued an “assessment that Cuba meets the criteria established by Congress for rescission.” The U.S. intelligence community came to the same decision.
In May 2015, Obama removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Cuba’s Foreign Ministry announced that “The government of Cuba recognizes the just decision made by the President of the United States to remove Cuba” from the list, adding that “it never deserved to belong” on the list in the first place.
Cuba was placed on the list in 1982 in an act of hypocrisy and exceptionalism. President Reagan locked Cuba in the list for arming revolutionary left wing movements in Latin America, meanwhile Reagan was arming their right wing opponents. Reagan declared that supporting those groups was “self-defense” and waged secret proxy wars and armed and supported counter-revolutionary forces in El Salvador and Nicaragua. LeoGrande has said that the U.S. backed counter-revolutionary forces “guilty of far worse terrorist attacks against civilians” than the Cuban backed revolutionary forces.
Nonetheless, on January 11, 2021, as it was walking out the White House door, the Trump administration thrust Cuba back onto the list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Biden promised, while campaigning for the presidency, that he would “promptly reverse the failed Trump policies that have inflicted harm on the Cuban people and done nothing to advance democracy and human rights.” Instead, two months after Trump put Cuba back on the list, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki announced that a “Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.”
Cuba remains on the state sponsor of terrorism list even though Washington knows Havana is not a state sponsor of terrorism. The Obama administration liberated them from the list, knowing that “the government of Cuba has not provided any support for international terrorism.” The Trump administration locked them back in the list, knowing the same, and the Biden administration has no immediate plans to reverse it.
Iran and Nuclear Bombs
The pattern is the same with Iran. The Obama administration signs the JCPOA nuclear agreement with Iran, paving the way to end the conflict, the Trump administration illegally pulls out of the deal, renewing the conflict, and Joe Biden continues Trump’s failed policies instead of returning to Obama’s promising policies.
The Biden administration knows that the Trump era policy they are keeping alive is a mistake. Blinken called the Trump administration’s “decision to pull out of the agreement” a “disastrous mistake.” Biden, while campaigning, said that Trump “recklessly tossed away a policy that was working to keep America safe and replaced it with one that has worsened the threat.” He promised to “offer Tehran a credible path back to diplomacy.” He hasn’t.
Instead, the State Department has said that the negotiations with Iran are “not our focus right now.” Robert Malley, the top U.S. diplomat for negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran, said that “It is not on our agenda…we are not going to waste our time on it.”
So, Iran continues to be the recipient of American sanctions, threats, assassinations, and sabotage: all while the United States knows Iran is not building a nuclear bomb.
The 2007 and 2011 U.S. National Intelligence Estimates both concluded with “high confidence” that Iran was not building a bomb. But you don’t have to go back that far to find American admissions that they are continuing the conflict with Iran for doing things they know Iran is not doing.
The 2022 U.S. Department of Defense Nuclear Posture Review makes the stunning admission that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon nor has it even made a decision to pursue a nuclear weapon. The Nuclear Posture Review makes that admission, not once, but twice, and it is repeated again in the National Defense Strategy in which it is included.
The Nuclear Posture Review says that “Iran does not currently pose a nuclear threat but continues to develop capabilities that would enable it to produce a nuclear weapon should it make the decision to do so.” It then lays out the truth about Iran in the greatest clarity: “Iran does not today possess a nuclear weapon and we currently believe it is not pursuing one.”
That was true four months ago, when the Nuclear Posture Review was released, and it remains true today. On February 25, CIA Director William Burns said that “[t]o the best of our knowledge, we don’t believe that the supreme leader in Iran has yet made a decision to resume the weaponization program.”
As with its Cuba policy, the United States continues to engage in conflict with Iran for doing something they know Iran is not doing. In the case of Iran, that escalating, self-defeating policy is potentially very dangerous.
In all three cases—China, Cuba and Iran–the United States has engaged in hostile, and sometimes dangerous, conflict with countries for doing what Washington knew all along they weren’t doing.
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From the Archives
Four Ways to Spot Big Pharma’s Media Manipulation
By Heather Callaghan | ANTIMEDIA | July 17, 2015
… “In this eye-opening talk, veteran investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson shows how astroturf, or fake grassroots movements funded by political, corporate, or other special interests effectively manipulate and distort media messages.”
Remember to look for these four astroturfing techniques as you encounter health-related information online:
- Inflammatory and charged language – i.e., “quacks,” “kooks,” “pseudo,” or “conspiracy theorist”
- Made up myths that are “debunked,” which can wind up on Snopes (I call them Inception stories)
- Attacking the character of people or organizations instead of addressing the facts
- Those that reserve all of their public skepticism and criticism for those exposing the wrong-doers instead of directing that skepticism to the wrongdoers themselves. A prime example Attkisson mentions is those “skeptics” who, instead of questioning authority, question those that question the authority.
After watching this, you will never again read Wikipedia, Snopes, the news, blogs, Facebook comments, or Google results without a major guard. With just ten minutes and the tips above, you, too will be better at researching and spotting hidden propaganda and bots and not falling for the appearance of skeptics—which could actually be pharma-funded attackers on legitimate exposé. – View video
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