Cuban Referendum on New Constitution contrasts with US Abuse of Cuba and International Interventions

Jim Fetzer

It was a great pleasure to be interviewed for the Russian journal, 360tv.ru, about the referendum being conduction on the new Constitution in Cuba, where most Americans are unaware of the democratic character of Cuba today, just as they are unaware that Nicholas Maduro is the democratically-elected President of Venezuela or that Bashar al-Assad is the democratically-elected President of Syria. The control of the mainstream media by the Ziocons (combination of Neocons and Zionists) has become so massive that we know of 100 executives of CNN who are dual US-Israeli citizens, of 100 executives of NBC who are dual US-Israeli citizens, and of 100 executives of The New York Times, who are dual US-Israeli citizens.

The original article on which I based my comments, Only a few quotes were taken from my response to the questions posed about the Cuban Referendum when published here, “Cubans vote on New Constitution to Replace Cold-War-Era Charter”,  The article using a few quotes from my response the following questions was published under the title, Получит ли остров больше свободы? Как реформа Конституции изменит жизнь на Кубе, can be translated from Russia using on-line translators.What I find ironic is that, today, citizens of Cuba appear to enjoy more freedom of speech and freedom of the press than do the American people.The public must understand that they are living in a world of propaganda and illusion–and not let themselves continue to be played!

1. How serious will be changes in the country’s governance system?

In historical perspective, the referendum on which Cubans are to vote would formalize developments that have taken place across the island nation incrementally for decades. Although the United States initially expressed support for Fidel Castro as a nationalist leader who deposed the Batista dictatorship, when he nationalized the properties of United Fruit and Anaconda Copper in the belief that the resources of Cuba ought to be used to benefit the Cuban people, those companies—true to form—declared that he was a “communist” to be opposed with all the economic and military might the US could bring to bear, which has become the standard response of corporations when their profit margins are diminished by nationalistic leaders in nations around the world. John Perkins has a book about it.

Castro had no choice but to impose a strong, authoritarian government upon Cuba in the face of insurgent resistance and external interference. The Bay of Pigs fiasco was the ultimate response of the United States, where JFK was played by the CIA into the false belief that there would be a popular uprising to depose Castro and the people would greet anti-Castro forces with great enthusiasm. Similar claims would subsequently be used to prime the pump for the invasion of Iraq, where Saddam Hussein was of necessity a strong authoritarian leader, who had to rule with an iron hand to keep conflicting factions in Iraq—in that case, the Sunni, the Shia and the Kurds—from fragmenting.

The new Constitution–assuming ratification, which appears to be highly probable—formalizes the right to private property and encourages foreign investments, which are not features of Communist programs. As Aljazeera reports, state enterprise will remain the cornerstone of the economy, private enterprise will be encouraged, which reflects the reality in the modern Cuba, where estimates have as many as 600,000 residents who are self-employed today, a dramatic increase from 2010, when the number of self-employed was estimated to have been 150,000. If the objections of the US to Cuba were rooted in Communism, then this would mark a great step forward and ought to have a powerful effect in diminishing opposition to its government.

2. How formal will be the posts of the president and the prime minister? Will they get a real power in the country?

But, of course, politics is dominated by illusions, not reality. The US has claimed to be promoting freedom and democracy when it had invaded many sovereign nations, including those with Constitutions and Presidents who were democratically elected. We saw that in Ukraine, where the democratically elected President of Ukraine was forced to flee because of unrest that was induced by agitation from the US, where Victoria Nuland, as then Assistant Secretary of State, invested $5,000,000 US taxpayer dollars to drive him out of office and install a puppet more friends to the US and less closely allied with Russia.

This patter has been repeated in Syria, where, even today, most Americans are completely unware that Bashir al-Assad is the democratically elected President of Syria, who enjoys a higher level of popular support from the public than US presidents. Or that the CIA fomented a coup in Iran in 1953 to remove the democratically-elected government of Mohammed Mosaddgh and install the tyrannical Shah in order to regain US and UK control over Iranian oil. The same pattern is taking place today with the absurd claim that Nicholas Maduro is the “dictator” of Venezuela, when he was recently elected to his second term as its President in elections that Jimmy Carter described as “the best in the world”. Politics bears scant relation to reality.

What is most important about the new Cuban Constitution is less the formal distribution of power between the President and the Prime Minister than that many forms of political discrimination are being formally opposed, including discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Even more striking and significant, however, is the embrace of broader recognition of freedom of thought and of expression, the right to request and receive information from the state, and the ability to hold dual citizenships. In some respects, given the massive censorship taking place in the US now because the Social Media Giants are massively censoring their American users, it may be the case that there is more freedom of speech in Cuba than in the United States today.

3. Will these innovations help to establish better relations between Cuba and the USA?

Were relations between the US and Cuba rooted in reality rather than illusion, these measures would be expected to rapidly improve relations between the two countries. Every serious analyst of the mainstream media in the US, however, knows that the CIA began infiltrating the media in the 1950s, where by 1975, William Colby, then its Director, could inform Congress that the agency owned everyone of any significance in the media. His report was confirmed by Carl Bernstein in his classic, “The CIA and the Media”, which was published in Rolling Stone two years later and including boasts from high officials of the agency that their greatest successes had been with CBS, Time/Life and The New York Times, which meant that the CIA had a lock on the distribution of news in that era.

The situation, alas, has only become worse, where a recent survey confirmed that collusion between CIA and Mossad has led to the appalling situation that 100 officials of CNN turn out to have dual US-Israeli citizenship; 100 officials of NBC also have dual US-Israeli citizenship; and 100 officials of The New York Times have dual US-Israeli citizenship as well. Criticism of US foreign policy, especially in relation to Israel, therefore, turns out to be tightly controlled, where most Americans are themselves unaware of the extent to which they are being bombarded by propaganda and disinformation, which appears to be reaching the point of realizing the objective declared by Ronald Reagan’s CIA Director, William Casey, who has been reported to have told his staff at their first meeting that the agencies campaign of disinformation will be a success when everything the American people believe is false.

A perfect example turns out to be the unrelenting stories of alleged “Russian hacking” to affect the outcome of the 2016 election. As Bill Binney of Veteran Intelligence Professions for Sanity has reported, the DNC files were downloaded at a rate too fast to have been distant Russian hacking—and in the Eastern Time Zone. Kim Dotcom, a familiar internet personality, has acknowledged assisting Seth Rich, IT guy for the DNC, in doing precisely that. There was no “Russian hacking”. But, as even Noam Chomsky has observed, there was interference in the election by a foreign nation, but it was Israel, not Russia.

4. Will it make Cuba a more democratic country?

Without any doubt, the new Constitution will formalize the existence of a more democratic and egalitarian Cuba. That, of course, is good for the Cuban people and for the spread of democracy around the world. Were the United States really committed to increasing democracy and freedom around the world, this would be cause for rejoicing in the streets of the District of Columbia. But the United States has become the most hypocritical and dishonest nation the world has ever seen—with the possible exception of its gallant ally, Israel—by cynically advocating policies for other nations that it does not even believe in for its own citizens.

It was not by accident that the current US President, Donald Trump, chose to speak in Miami about the alleged threat to democracy and freedom in Venezuela. Speaking at Florida International University in Miami-Dade County, he affirmed the US recognition of Juan Guaido as the rightful President of that nation, which has been suffering from problems with inflation, unemployment and the economy that have been powerfully adversely influenced by US policies, which, unsurprisingly, are directed at gaining control of Venezuela’s oil, perhaps the most extensive in the world although more viscous than the “sweet crude” of Iraq, which the US has also sought to manage.

Guaido has never even run for the Presidency of Venezuela and the absurdity of the situation comes home when you note that, the US declaration of Guaido as President by the US, UK, France and other miscreant nations would be as though Russia, China and Iran were to declare Nancy Pelosi the rightful President of the United States! And now the Zionist US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, is encouraging Guaido to ask the US to intervene in Venezuela! The world deserves better than the United States can provide. The Cuban people are doing better, but not the American government. When it comes to US foreign policy, alas, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

James H. Fetzer, a former US Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus on the Duluth Campus of the University of Minnesota.

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