The Palestinization of Cuba

By Nelson Taylor
Ontario, Canada

We have grown accustomed to listen throughout the years that the pacification of the Middle East will not happen so long the Palestinian problem isn’t solved. So many times has it been repeated by leaders and political analysts that, eventually, we give it for granted.

Take, for instance, the cause-effect between refusing to evacuate a Jewish settlement in Samaria and the hanging of gays in Teheran. No matter how hard we, the people, work in trying to connect the dots, they, the intelligentsia, see the link crystal clear.

It might seem that the same kind of academic-political lucidity has come to create certain adages, as it starts to be the case with the so-called “full integration of Cuba to the regional institutions”. According to Nelson Jobim, the Brazilian minister of defence, “for the US to attain good relationship with South America...it is important that it changes its policy toward Cuba”. The former was stated on March 9, as the South American Defence Council (SADC) gathered in Santiago de Chile. Mr. Jobim continued as saying: “it’s a premise for the US to have a representation at SADC, to change its stand toward Cuba”. It’s quite suspicious why would he even bother to condition the US presence in a regional body that, semantically, excludes any non-South American nation.

The ministers of Argentina, Chile, Bolivia and Uruguay expressed themselves in similar terms. They all made references to the necessity of ending the ‘discriminatory and unfair blockade, the isolation and cold war mentality’ from the US toward Castro’s Cuba. The Uruguayan emphasised that “today, Cuba does not represent a problem for the security of the US at all, and the US policy to Cuba is determined by a Cuban-American ‘lobby’ rather than a cool-headed analysis of the facts that determine the relationships between the two countries”. Well, I guess he hasn’t been informed that in September 2001, Ana Belen Montes, the most Senior Cuba analyst at the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) in the United States, was arrested for espionage. Montes, who spied for Castro since the early 80’s, is deemed responsible for, at least, the death of one American officer. According to Wikipedia, “prosecutors stated that Montes had been privy to classified information about the U.S. military's impending invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, and that they did not want her revealing this information to potential enemies”.

Perhaps the Uruguayan minister should also be told that Montes participated in the confection of an official 1998 report, which caused the Clinton administration to conclude that ‘Cuba is no longer a significant military threat to the United States or the region’. Have we heard that before? I would call it a rather interesting coincidence in the selection of the wording. So much for a “misinformed” high ranking member of SADC. Hence, we have witnessed the consolidation of a new term that I have defined as the Palestinization of Cuba, which is the politically manufactured linkage between unrelated phenomena. It also implies that the new US administration should look at Raul Castro as a legitimate partner, rather than an international criminal handpicked as a successor by a known tyrant and power usurper.

Maybe the Latin-American dignitaries in pilgrimage to Havana to bid farewell to the spiritual leader of the left and legitimize Raul Castro - while ignoring dissidents and denying a single act of recognition to Cuban prisoners of conscience - should, once and for all, heed the allegations made by the “worms nest” (as Castro refers to the exile community) of Miami. There is a non-stop display in the Florida’s Spanish speaking TV stations of former Cuban agents who keep naming dozens of infiltrated in North American institutions, mostly universities and academic related. It is estimated that hundreds of Castro’s spies are disseminated not only in North America, but also in South and Central America, as well as Europe.

Just last week, Lt. Colonel Juan Reynaldo Sanchez has started to provide first-hand account of the deeply corrupt nature of Fidel Castro, whom he served as a bodyguard for 17 years. Following orders of Castro himself, Sanchez took note of the daily incidence of covert operations such as narcotraffic and arms smuggling. Fidel Castro, according to Sanchez, personally led every aspect of this international ring that has brought so much bloodshed and regional instability.

The former bodyguard told stories of shipments of diamonds sent from Angola to Fidel Castro, where Cuban troops were sent to die in the name of “proletarian internationalism”. But one of the most outrageous allegations was the dictator’s habit of making his cows marked with nametags. That is done in order to match animals with the members of his extended family, because of the variance in milk fat content and taste. The sad part of this more or less funny story is that Cubans aren’t entitled to purchase milk once they turn 7 years of age. Only those with access to remittance can afford to put milk on the breakfast table of their school children.

Nevertheless, a chamber choir, integrated (for the moment) by the elite voices of “erudite” in Cuban affairs and leftie politicians plus the back up voices of some absent-minded fellows (also known as useful idiots), is starting to produce the new symphony of change. This Castro-Chavist trick pursues cornering the Obama administration in a position with no alternative other than obeying the concerted voices of academics and representatives of the mob democracies of Latin America, lest it ends up as a regional pariah. After all, that seems to fit the change-we-can-believe-in doctrine.

It is interesting though that Cuba, which as the U.S. is not geographically located in South America, comes out as a gambit piece by the South American Defence Council. In this same context, it is even more remarkable the Brazilian minister’s statement regarding the entry of Russia as an observer: “not for now...the Russians are too far away, some others are closer”.

Are we witnessing the rebirth of the Warsaw Pact, this time around made up of Bolivarian democracies? Who knows, perhaps one day we wake up to find out that a new South American Defence Council is being integrated by the likes of Castro, Chavez, Ortega, Putin and Khamenei!
For now, we just know with certainty that the Castro mafia, like Hamas in Gaza, is interested neither in chamber music nor in transition toward democracy, but only in absolute power. Meanwhile, he lets the world organize peace concerts in exchange for financial credit and political legitimacy.