* 1986: Roy Cohn, who achieved considerable fame and notoriety in the 1950s as an assistant to the communist-witch-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy, died, reportedly of AIDS. Cohn, though homosexual, had denied that he was and had denounced such rumors as communist smears.
* 1986: After American journalist Nicholas Daniloff was arrested in Moscow for "spying" and held in custody for two weeks, New York Mayor, Edward Koch, sent a group of 10 visiting Soviet students storming out of City Hall in fury. "The Soviet government is the pits," said Koch, visibly shocking the students, ranging in age from 10 to 18 years. One 14-year-old student was so outraged he declared: "I don't want to stay in this house. I want to go to the bus and go far away from this place. The mayor is very rude. We never had a worse welcome anywhere." As matters turned out, it appeared that Daniloff had not been completely pure when it came to his news gathering.
* 1989: After the infamous Chinese crackdown on dissenters in Tiananmen Square in June, the US news media was replete with reports that the governments of Nicaragua, Vietnam and Cuba had expressed their support of the Chinese leadership. Said the Wall Street Journal: "Nicaragua, with Cuba and Vietnam, constituted the only countries in the world to approve the Chinese Communists' slaughter of the students in Tiananmen Square." But it was all someone's fabrication; no such support had been expressed by any of the three governments. At that time, as now, there were few, if any, organizations other than the CIA which could manipulate major Western media in such a manner.
NOTE: It should be remembered that the worst consequences of anti-communism were not those discussed above. The worst consequences, the ultra-criminal consequences, were the abominable death, destruction, and violation of human rights that we know under various names: Vietnam, Chile, Korea, Guatemala, Cambodia, Indonesia, Brazil, Greece, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and many others.1
Anti-Communism, alive and well
Anti-communism continues to have a detrimental effect upon the intelligence and honesty of Americans. In April, US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, stated that the Castro brothers "do not want to see an end to the embargo and do not want to see normalization with the United States because they would then lose all the excuses for what hasn't happened in Cuba in the last 50 years."2
She doesn't believe that herself. But she thinks the rest or us are stupid enough to swallow it. If she did believe it, she'd advocate normalization of US-Cuban relations just to stick it to the Castros and show them up for the frauds she says they are. In effect the American Secretary of State declared that the central element of US Cuba policy for 50 years has done exactly the opposite of what it was intended to accomplish. Washington, for all practical purposes, has been a loyal -- if unwitting -- ally of the Havana regime.
As to "what hasn't happened in Cuba in the last 50 years" -- to add to the mountain of other evidence of the benevolence of Cuban society we now have Save the Children's "State of the World's Mothers Report 2010". Save the Children, an internationally acclaimed children's advocate organization, annually ranks the best and worst places to be a mother. Amongst the 81 "Less Developed Countries" analyzed, Cuba is ranked number one; i.e., the best place to be a mother. (Amongst the 43 "More Developed Countries" analyzed, the United States is ranked number 28.)
Cuban National Assembly president, Ricardo Alarcon, responded to Clinton's statement by saying: "If she really thinks that the blockade benefits the Cuban government -- which she wants to undermine -- the solution is very simple: that they lift it even for a year to see whether it is in our interest or theirs."2
Israel, US foreign policy and my video
Last month I sent out the video that I wrote the script for "Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country."
I, of course, received the usual right-wing frothing at the mouth, but I also heard from five or six people on the left who expressed political criticism of it, two of them asking to be removed from my mailing list.
All of them were upset for the same reason - the video makes no mention of Israel. More to the point, it makes no mention of how Israel is the driving force behind [most? almost all? all?] US foreign interventions. I sent each of my critics the following letter:
So, let me see if I have this right. It's because of Israel that the US:
** invaded
Grenada in 1983
** tried to overthrow the government of Suriname
in 1982-4
** overthrew the government of Fiji in 1987
** invaded Panama in 1989
** overthrew the government of Afghanistan in
the 1980s-90s
** suppressed the left in El Salvador 1980-92
** overthrew the government of Nicaragua in 1990
** supported the overthrow of Aristide in Haiti
in 1991
** overthrew the government of Bulgaria in 1991
** overthrew the government of Albania in 1992
** invaded Somalia in 1993
** has supported the right-wing government of
Colombia for the past 20 years
** bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days in 1999
** suppressed a leftist coup in Ecuador in 2000
** invaded Afghanistan in 2001
** has tried to destabilize the Chavez
government in Venezuela for the past 10 years
** overthrew the government of Haiti in 2004
I received no reply from any of the comrades.
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