Posted on 12/19/2005 8:51:45 AM PST by Fedora
ROFL! They could add that to their slogan "All the Pravda that's fit to print" :-)
One of our other Freepers has an interesting take on the "fall" of the Soviet Union. That is, we were maybe better off with the wall standing to remind us of the stark contrast between communism and capitalism. We don't have the Soviet boogie man to kick around any more; he's gone underground. Out of sight, out of mind???
There's probably some truth in that, though I think that even when the threat was still visible the media had long stopped drawing sufficient attention to it--particularly in the case of Fidel Castro, whose espionage and terrorist operations in the US have been swept under the rug on a regular basis since the Cuban Missile Crisis for fear of escalating a diplomatic crisis into another nuclear confrontation (it seems to me that's the motive, anyway). Also I think the liberal elements in the media were only temporarily willing to portray Communism as a threat as long as it could be equated with a foreign enemy opposed to the Democratic Party's foreign policy (Stalin had made the mistake of getting on the wrong side of Harry Truman), but they have never been as enthusiastic about exposing the enemy within.
They sure did seem to get a lot of "volunteer" work from the media.
Fidel and terrorism? Say it ain't so! Actually, I know very little about Fidel's terrorist proclivities except to say I've picked up bits and pieces over the years. Not high on the "find out more" list I suppose. What if anything is he suspected of pulling off here in the states?
--Sending a team of saboteurs into New York to blow up public buildings in 1962; this was prevented when the FBI intercepted the plot at the last minute (on this see William Breuer's book Vendetta!: Fidel Castro and the Kennedy brothers)
--Helping the Soviets and North Vietnamese train domestic terrorist groups such as the Black Panthers and Weathermen in the 1960s (sources: FBI files on subject groups, HUAC and SISS investigations--for instance a 1966 SISS investigation which documented Cuba's sponsorship of a Tricontinental Conference that "established a Communist-dominated general headquarters to support, direct, intensify, and coordinate guerrilla operations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America" as well as the US; one attendee at this conference was Illich Ramirez Sanchez aka Carlos the Jackal--also see S. Steven Powell, Covert Cadre)
--Sponsoring Puerto Rican nationalist terrorist groups in the 1960s-1980s, including involvement in a $7 million bank robbery by the group Los Macheteros (aka FALN) of a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford, Connecticut in 1983 (for some references see FR thread Report links Cuban Communist Intelligence agents with Clinton's Pardoned FALN Terrorist)
--Training, arming, and otherwise aiding the PLO, Libyan terrorist groups, and other Middle Eastern terrorist groups beginning in the mid-1960s (on this see the link on "Castro and Terrorism: A Chronology" cited below)
--Allowing the Medellin Cartel to use Cuban waters and airspace to smuggle drugs into the US (IIRC this is discussed in Guy Gugliotta and Jeff Leen, Kings of Cocaine, James Mills, Underground Empire, and there is also a brief chapter on "Cuba and Nicaragua" in the 1989 Senate investigation of narcoterrorism online in pdf format at http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/north06.pdf)
For some more info see Castro and Terrorism: A Chronology. Also see the State Department's website:
Cuba continued to provide safehaven to several terrorists and US fugitives in 2000. A number of Basque ETA terrorists who gained sanctuary in Cuba some years ago continued to live on the island, as did several US terrorist fugitives.
Havana also maintained ties to other state sponsors of terrorism and Latin American insurgents. Colombia's two largest terrorist organizations, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army, both maintained a permanent presence on the island.
Thanks for your efforts. Seems Fidel has been a bad boy. For the sake of argument, and assuming Fidel is not a complete idiot, what possible rationale could he have used for firing spit balls at the U.S.? I mean, we're not France after all, so it's not like we were/are holding white flags behind our backs just waiting to unfurl 'em at the first opportunity. Maybe the old communist was expecting some force multipliers from somewhere???
He is not a complete idiot (in terms of his sense of self-preservation and political pragmatism, anyway), but he is desperate and vengeful: he has been expecting the CIA to kill him for many years, so he has nothing to lose, and if he is going to die anyway he would rather take someone with him. Beyond this psychological motivator, he does seem to have a strategic rationale, though. Prior to the Cuban Missile Crisis, I think his rationale was part of a Soviet strategy of seeing how far they could push Kennedy (as they were also doing in Berlin and Laos at the same time) before he would either back down or escalate to full-scale war. Once they had determined where that line was (they got Kennedy to pull NATO Jupiter missiles out of Turkey, without Fidel ever actually fulfilling his part of the deal by submitting to UN weapons inspections), Fidel knew how far he could push things and get away with it, so since then he has waged war within those boundaries. One of his objectives is to export the Cuban Revolution throughout Latin America, so he has been doing that with support from his allies, counting on the gamble that as long as this is done covertly the US cannot garner the international support to intervene directly and can only oppose him covertly in turn, and as long as the battle stays on the level of guerrilla warfare he can hold his own against us. Another of his objectives is to stir up domestic dissent in the US, which was his purpose in supporting several of the domestic terrorist groups mentioned--Panthers, Weather Underground, FALN--since if the US is divided at home it cannot act as decisively abroad (the strategy used against us in Vietnam and since then). He again seems to figure he can get away with this as long as it is done covertly enough that the American and European public does not become aware enough of his sponsorship to shift world opinion against him; and he knows he can count on our media to see to it that this does not happen.
He again seems to figure he can get away with this as long as it is done covertly enough that the American and European public does not become aware enough of his sponsorship to shift world opinion against him...
Makes sense. Where's W.R. Hearst when you need him to fire up the masses against a tin pot dictator? Never mind.
...and he knows he can count on our media to see to it that this does not happen.
Birds of a feather?
bookmark
I think he's being made into a movie by Orson Welles, LOL.
Part-time vocation.
wonderful writing! thanks.
bump
Thanks for reading and mentioning the Quinn broadcast!--glad it's getting some circulation.
bump for later
Bookmark and thank you!
MEDIA bump
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