Armey Urges End to Cuba Sanctions

Los Angeles Times ^ | 08/09/02 | Paul Richter

[xsmommy]

dang, i really want to see the pic but it is a red X for me.

[xsmommy]

even if he doesn't admit to it, i can tell you that it was the most grievous of all insults and i LMAO every time i think of it to this day!

[Cincinatus' Wife]

I think Armey is doing an "In Your Face" as he leaves. His son didn't win his seat so I guess he's flashing his finger on the way out the door. Too bad, I used to respect Dick Armey.

Ventura's Havana trip will be an anomaly*** Gov. Jesse Ventura, who has shied away from international politics during his globetrotting trade missions to sell Minnesota products, may make an exception when he visits Cuba next month. Long a foe of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba, Ventura made it clear this week that his trip will have a political mission - to argue against his country's 40-year-long attempt to isolate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. He may have a prime forum for making his case: He is tentatively scheduled to address students at the University of Havana, and he could bump into the leader himself at a food-products exposition both are expected to attend.

"I want to go there to bring light to the fact that it's a failed policy,'' Ventura said in a radio interview last week. "It's time to change how we view Cuba today. Cuba's no threat to the U.S. anymore.'' Ventura, who is leaving office at the end of the year, has been looking for an opportunity to visit Cuba for several years. It hasn't been easy.***

[bjs1779]

Good seein' you too OPH. I've been taking a break from FR to clear my head..... Too much negativity and nastiness..... at least until some hyperventilating poster comes along or lingering inconsistencies re the death of Ron Brown...

While you were out:

BeAChooser signed up 1999-08-25.
This account has been banned.

[Luis Gonzalez]

If I remember right, I took out the entire bigsigh family.

Well, except for that one uncle of his that died during WWII, you know the one.

[Luis Gonzalez]

Hey Fletcher! We're talking about you!

Check out #139.

[f.Christian]

I thought my best was...

janet drano flushed algore down the toilet---

now the reno rotor-routine to get the devilcrat sludge out to pasture---buried!!

[Dqban22]

USA Today, August 12, 2002

Don't encourage Castro

By Frank Calzon

Since 1982, when Washington began identifying states that sponsor terrorism, Cuba has been on the list. Moreover, there is a demonstrable relationship between Fidel Castro's ability to raise money and his support of anti-American terrorism. That's why the U.S. government works to contain Havana by limiting its access to dollars.

Secretary of State Colin Powell recently wrote Congress reaffirming U.S. policy: "Cuba has refused to cooperate with the global coalition's efforts to combat terrorism. Unrestricted tourist travel to Cuba would benefit the government of Cuba more than the Cuban people. (And) the administration is determined to oppose any policy action that would bolster the Cuban dictatorship."

There are other reasons as well: Castro provides a safe haven for more than 70 fugitives from U.S. justice, including several accused of killing U.S. police officers. Cuba's tourist facilities  hotels, beaches, medical clinics  remain off-limits to most Cubans, an internal apartheid that defeats meaningful "people-to-people" contact.

Also, a Johns Hopkins University report says, "Canadian and American tourists have contributed to a sharp increase in child prostitution and exploitation of women in Cuba (due to) a current drop in political restrictions on travel to Cuba and a crackdown on sex tourism in Southeast Asia." Castro allows most foreigners to get away with it.

Foreign investment has plummeted to $38.9 million in 2001 from $488 million in 2000. One-third of the island's sugar mills are closed. The Associated Press reports that "the European Union excluded Cuba from a multibillion-dollar pool of aid because of its poor human-rights record." Exiles' remittances are down. When Russia closed its spy facility near Havana, Castro lost $200 million a year. All of this has weakened him.

Yet, like a bad scene out of a Hollywood movie about the Old West, there are Americans trying to muster a cavalry. In this instance, it's a cavalry of U.S. tourists to rescue the regime, extend the repression and misery it wreaks on the Cuban people and provide the wherewithal for the country to continue its support for anti-American movements and dictators around the world.


Frank Calzon is executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., that promotes human rights and democracy for Cuba.


http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2002-08-11-oppose_x.htm


Distributed by the Free Cuba Foundation
http://www.fiu.edu/~fcf/
__________________-

Wishful thinking. Those still supporting Castro have their brains damaged beyond repair.

[Cardenas]

Defector Warns of 'Social Explosion' in Cuba

Former U.N. Ambassador Cites Skyrocketing Unemployment, Food Shortages in Growing Unrest

By George Gedda
Associated Press
Tuesday, August 13, 2002; Page A09

A former Cuban ambassador to the United Nations who recently defected said yesterday that widespread economic problems on the island could produce an uprising against President Fidel Castro and his system.

Alcibiades Hidalgo, who arrived in South Florida on July 29, said many aspects of daily life in Cuba could produce a "social explosion" at any time.

"There is lot of concern among the elite that this could occur," said Hidalgo, who also served as chief of staff to Defense Minister Raul Castro, brother of the Cuban leader.

One element of the unrest is what he called "skyrocketing unemployment across the country." Food is scarce, and many Cubans must get by on one meal a day, he said.

If there is an uprising, he said, the top brass of Cuba's military all insist they would use force against the public to preserve the revolution. But he noted that any high-ranking officer who declined to take such a stand would be immediately purged.

Hidalgo said virtually all Cubans have access to the country's cost-free health care system but many basic medicines have not been available for years.

A slight man with a neatly trimmed beard and mustache, Hidalgo left Cuba on July 21 with 19 others aboard two motorboats. Thirst was his biggest problem on arrival.

To discourage his defection, security agents had trailed him virtually nonstop since 1993, when he fell into disfavor with the authorities and was abruptly dismissed from his U.N. post, he said.

He flew to the District on Sunday from Miami and told his story to a reporter and others who specialize in Cuban affairs. The session was arranged by the Center for a Free Cuba, a pro-democracy group.

Hidalgo is one of the most important Cuban defectors whose escape has been publicly reported since Gen. Rafael del Pino fled the island in May 1987. Del Pino was instrumental in the defeat of the U.S.-sponsored invasion at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Hidalgo said his defection has not yet been reported in Cuba's state-controlled press.

Hidalgo, 56, talked for several hours about his experiences, answering questions with little emotion and without displays of bitterness toward his former Communist colleagues. He left behind a daughter, Carolina, who lives with her mother, from whom Hidalgo is divorced.

Speaking in Spanish, Hidalgo said Castro, who turns 76 today, has differences with his brother Raul, 71, who is defense minister and the second ranking official in the Council of State and the Council of Ministers.

Although Raul is the heir apparent, Hidalgo said he drinks too much, has health problems and doesn't sleep much. Fidel, in contrast, takes care of himself, he said.

Raul would be less inclined toward one-man rule than Fidel, would be more disposed toward economic reform and would show greater flexibility in relations with the United States, Hidalgo said.

Hidalgo got to know Raul Castro well during the 1980s, when he served as his chief of staff. The Cuban military, under Raul's direction, has become an economic powerhouse through its involvement in tourism and other dollar-generating activities, he said.

When Hidalgo fled the island, he was the No. 2 official at the newspaper Trabajadores, a publication designed to appeal to Cuban workers. He said he decided to leave because there was no opportunity to espouse views that differ from those of Fidel Castro.

"The first right is the right to independent thought," he said.

Cuba has endured a series of economic blows over the past year. Like other Caribbean islands, Cuba suffered a severe drop in tourism after Sept. 11 and is recovering from a devastating hurricane that struck Nov. 8.

Hidalgo shares the Bush administration's view that congressional attempts to end curbs on Americans' travel to Cuba, if approved, would be an economic windfall for Cuba and a "gift for Fidel."

The U.S. economic embargo against Cuba aggravates the island's problems, he said, but he believes Castro's socialist policies are principally to blame, something he did not say when he was ambassador to the United Nations in 1992-93. Then he followed the party line by identifying the embargo as the culprit.

"The truth," he said Monday, "is otherwise."

Hidalgo disagreed with Cuba's policy of using its U.N. mission as an espionage hub. He estimated that 90 percent of the 50 to 60 personnel working there were spies, but he was not told details of their activities.
© 2002 The Washington Post Company

[Dqban22]

Facts on free American tourism and Trade with Castro's Cuba.

1. For 42 years trade with and tourism to Cuba has occured from Spanish speaking countries (Spain, Latin America), other European countries and Canada in a legal fashion and many Americans have traveled to the Island braking our laws without any improvement in Human and Civil Rights.

2. There has been minimal contact of tourists with Cuban naturals due to a Tourist Apartheid system that preclude the average citizen from entering tourist hotels or resorts often with the explanation that foreign visitors are afraid of catching diseases from "the natives". This is not likely to change since the govermenent exerts absolute control on the movement of visitors and on exchanges with Cuban citizens.

3. The Cubans that work in tourist facilities, although employed by foreign companies, are paid in useless Cuban pesos while the goverment pockets the dollars. Therefore dollars from tourists will be as in the past, a transfusion to a bankrupt nomenklatura, which will allow the goverment to strengthen its weakened military might and allowing for more resources to be used for repression, propaganda and subversion.

4. Cuban people don't need democratic example. They know where Democracy is and a large number of citizens would travel 90 miles north by any means to get it if they were allowed. Remember Mariel, rafters, desertors and the thousands eagerly waiting for "legal USA visas" in Havana. Besides, American tourists have minimal interest in promoting Democracy in their pleasure trips and are not properly equipped for such a task in a dictatorial, police state. The vast experience of American tourists in Latin America and Europe has produced nothing but hatred toward the "gringos" which is easily confirmed by reading Spanish, Mexican, French newspapers and magazines to mention a few or by getting this information from the few pro-American people in many of these countries.

5. Free Trade and Tourism did not contribute to hasten the collapse of such notorious dictatorships such as Franco's, Somoza's, Pinochet's or Trujillo's and in fact managed to prolong their tyrannies. Confrontation and economic isolation rather than policies of compromise contributed to the disappearance of despotic systems such as the ones of the USSR, Nazi Germany and South Africa. The latter case was a clear example of how in the right circumstances and politically correct ideological context, Economic Embargo was accepted and effective. It is inaccurate to say the Cuban Embargo has failed since it has had only a decade to prove itself, after the billionaire subsidy from the Soviet Union ceased and it is clear the economy of the country continues its spiraling decline, preventing Castro from investing as much in international terrorism.

6. Trading with Castro's Cuba does not make economic sense for the US. Castro has enormous debts (40 billion dollars) which he has stopped paying. He has no credit in the World and many countries have stopped trading with Cuba altoghether except on a cash basis. There are constant complaints of countries in the European Union on the erratic, disorganized and irresponsible trade policies of the Cuban goverment. What Castro wishes is to obtain credit from his sworn enemy to add it to the long list of his debtors. He firmly believes we owe it to him.
How are Cubans going to become a profitable business partner to the US with an economy in such a state of decay. The per capita income in Cuba is the lowest in the Western hemisphere with the exception of Haiti. Are we now getting significant profits from trading with Haiti, Guatemala, etc. who have democratic goverments?

7. For years we have read the criticisms of the press on our foreign policies of the past when we traded with corrupt despots to serve our economic interests. We would not condone Trade and Tourism relations with Hitler's Germany in this day and age, would we?

8. China has made significant economic reforms and is a colossal business partner, but the tight control of Human and Civil rights by the Communist Party has not changed. Castro is not interested and so he has stated repeatedly, in changing the economic structure of the Cuban system.

Tambien acabo de ler esto otros argumentos: *** Other arguments:
1.Castro provides safe haven to about 70 fugitives from US justice several who killed American police officers 2.Tourists facilities are off limits to most Cubans, therefore "people to people contact" concept is defeated
3.Johns Hopkins University report says Canadian and American tourists have contributed sharply to increase in child prostitution and exploitation of women due to a current drop in political restrictions on travel to Cuba and crackdown on sex tourism in South East Asia. (Perdona la mescolanza de idiomas).

Carlos M. Garcia, MD
President
MS&G Benefits
Cranford, NJ
cggarcia@comcast.net

---

The above is sent to you by
RCB
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
FOR FREEDOM & JUSTICE GROUP
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ForFreedomandJustice

[Cardenas]

Fidel's daughter calls for continuation of US embargo against Cuba

Agence France Presse
August 19, 2002 Monday 11:28 PM Eastern Time

MIAMI, Aug 18--The estranged daughter of Cuban President Fidel Castro called Sunday for a continuation of the US economic embargo against Havana, as US lawmakers mull plans to ease sanctions against the Communist island nation.

Alina Fernandez, a former dissident and vocal opponent of her father who now lives in exile in Miami, told Fox television that it was more important to tighten the screws on Cuba's Communist system -- hopefully to force its collapse -- than to attempt to reap economic gain from trade with the island. "It used to be a moral issue, but now it's becoming a business issue, and that's the problem. You're not thinking any more about the human rights or the freedom of the Cubans -- solidarity with the Cubans," she said.

Her advice to US government officials and business leaders seeking to resume trade ties was succinct: "Stay away, that's my idea. You have to think in human terms first," she said.

By doing away with the trade embargo on Cuba "you'll only be putting money in the dictator's pockets," she said of her father, whom she has not seen or spoken to in 20 years.

Forty-three years after taking power in an armed revolution, Castro celebrated his 76th birthday last week, still firmly in control of the Cuban political scene and showing no signs of abandoning socialism or the one-party state.

Many US politicians, however, have softened their views about the advisability of trade and travel to Cuba: the House of Representatives last month called for an easing of the travel ban and other aspects of the economic embargo -- a measure that is now before the US Senate.

[lavaroise]

Repeat after him: The embargo on Cuba has run its course. The embargo on Cuba has run its course. The embargo on Cuba has run its course. The embargo on Cuba has run its course. The embargo on Cuba has run its course. The embargo on Cuba has run its course. The embargo on Cuba has run its course. The embargo on Cuba has run its course. The embargo on Cuba has run its course. The embargo on Cuba has run its course. The embargo on Cuba has run its course. The embargo on Cuba has run its course.

Bull sh!t.

[philosofy123]

Dick Armey is not running for reelection. Hence, he is not politically sensitive to the interest groups like the rest of the spineless politicians.

Casro is almost bankrupt, and his country is starving. If we keep the embargo, Cuba and the Cubans will continue to suffer, just like the Iraqis are. Regardless how much outside pressure on a dictatorship--poloce state, the leaders will survive.

The USSR collapsed under the availability of consumer goods. I imagine Castro would also fall once an open border and trade starts.

[Dqban22]

THE CONGRESS AND SENATE’S SUPPORT OF CASTRO’S TERROR NETWORK.

Jesús J. Chao

In view of the appalling betrayal of President Bush’s war against terrorism by members of the U.S. Congress and Senate by supporting Cuba’s terrorist regime we should expose to the American people the profound danger in which they have placed our country.

World renown and highly respected American investigative journalist and author, Claire Sterling, who is considered one of the foremost experts on international terrorism, wrote in 1981 a definitive report on this theme in her book “The Terror Network, The Secret War on International terrorism.”

According to her: “All of the world’s emerging terrorist bands in the 1970’s were indebted to the Cubans and their Russian patrons for that honeycomb of camps around Havana. **** could have started without rudimentary training, and those who didn’t train in Cuba were trained by others who did.”

Twenty years later, the central and main head of the terrorism network is still the same diabolical tyrant, Fidel Castro. What Sterling wrote then, still applies and helps to understand the central role of Castro in today’s terrorist explosion and his relationship with the “axis of evil.”

Sterling mentions “in the summer of 1968, the Soviet Union forced Fidel Castro into a secret agreement whereby Cuba surrendered sovereign control over its foreign policy to the Kremlin and consigned its intelligence service – the Dirección General de Inteligencia - (DGI) to the KGB.

That same summer, the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee decided, at the KGB’s urging, to reverse its old policy of avoiding Palestinian entanglements. Arab Communists, meeting secretly in Moscow in July, were instructed to infiltrate, spy upon, and gain ascendancy over the Palestine Resistance. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union itself began to train and arm the Palestinians.”

This fact was well known in 1968 by our intelligence services as stated by John Barron in his book “KGB”, since the United States learned about it through penetration of the KGB. By 1970, promising Fedayeen were being sent to officers’ Special Schools in Egypt, Algeria, Syria, Libya, Iraq, China North Vietnam and Cuba where they received political indoctrination on Marx, Lenin and Stalin.

But, according to Sterling, Castro’s relationship with international terrorism was already strong and deep for over ten years before the Soviets got involved in the promotion of terrorism against the West.

Sterling held that “Castro had always wanted to export his revolution. No sooner did he come into power in January 1959 than he sent his first expeditionary force to Panama, where he flopped. He tried again three times that year, in Nicaragua, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, and sent a full battalion of Cuban ‘medics’ to liberate Algeria. Barely two years later, he had already bagged the future leader of Africa’s first successful Marxist coup, in Zanzibar… Few knew that ‘Field Marshall’ John Okello seized this small island off East African Coast in January 1964, after spending three years in Havana training for the job… His coup was flawless. It took just a few hours for his six hundred men – many of them Cuban-trained – to overthrow the Arab sultanate and proclaim a Communist ‘people’s republic.’ Thousands of non-black Zanzibaris, Arab and Indian, were slaughtered with deliberate savagery in next few days, and thousands more fled in terror…” The small island of 300,000 inhabitants became a base for Castro’s penetration into the African mainland.

Castro’s dreams of a Cuban presence in Africa were well advanced before the Soviet joined the game. According to Sterling, “as early as 1961, Castro sent a shipload of Cuban weapons to the West African Coast. Offloading in Casablanca, it took on a return cargo of guerrilla trainees from Ghana, Nigeria, Mali, the Congo, South Africa, Kenya, Tanganyika, Spanish Equatorial Guinea, and Zanzibar itself… From then on, Cuba would keep turning out professional guerrilla fighters for just about every new African state.”

When Spain withdrew from Equatorial Guinea, Castro’s man, Francisco Macias Nguema, came into power shielded by Cuban elite henchmen who kept him in power for the next ten years. About three to four hundred Cuban ‘counselors’ were at his side till the end while 50,000 of his 350,000 subjects were murdered (many with his own hands), and another 100,000 were driven into exile. Nguema paid himself a state salary of $5 million a year, and turned his once prosperous mini-state into a derelict non-country in the name of scientific socialism. He was drinking a glass of human blood a day by 1979, when he was overthrown and executed.”

Castro’s expertise running down prosperous countries into wastelands mired with slavery and misery worked in Africa as efficiently as it worked in Cuba.

Meanwhile, reported Sterling, “Castro was training the advance guards of the coming European fright decade – Palestinians, Italians, Germans, French, Spanish Basques – and forming guerrilla nuclei in practically every Western hemisphere state south of the American border. As far back as 1962, Castro’s camps were taking in 1,500 Latin American guerrillas a year. . ‘Any revolutionary movement anywhere in the world can count on Cuba’s unconditional support,’ declared Castro at the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Havana”. It was then and there that the international terrorism network was consolidated under Castro’s leadership.

By then, however, said Sterling, “Colonel Kotchergine of the KGB would soon be supervising a new honeycomb of training camps around Havana for Russian – approved candidates from Europe, Africa, and Asia.” In 1968 the Soviets were underwriting the entire Cuban economy and, “as a part of the bargain, Castro also accepted five thousand Russian advisers, (growing to ten thousand later) posted in various economic sectors, the armed forces, and the DGI. Soviet Colonel Viktor Simenov of the KGB was given an office adjoining the director’s own at DGI headquarters in Havana. Twenty-five DGI agents a year (which later became fifty) would be selected with his approval for training in Moscow. All the DGI’s operational decisions, and its annual budget, had to be cleared through Colonel Simenov. From then on, Cuba would be the only Soviet satellite state whose intelligence service was directly subsidized by Russia ‘for extending its range of activities abroad.’”

“Anything Cuba did in aid of worldwide terrorism after that would have to be done with the Russians’ knowledge and consent, under their close supervision if not their express command,” stated Sterling.

Orlando Castro Hidalgo a Cuban DGI operative in Castro’s embassy in Paris, who defected in 1969, testified before the United States Senate Committee, giving a valuable opportunity for our senators to learn first hand of Castro’s involvement with the international terrorism network. Hidalgo’s duties in Paris at the time were “mainly to support revolutionary activities in Latin American and African countries. The candidates for training would fly over to Paris at Castro’s expense, and Hidalgo would then ‘provide lodging, money, messages from Havana, and visas to Czechoslovakia to camouflage the trail of guerilla trainees on their way to Cuba. He also had to screen young Europeans signing up for Castro’s ‘summer camps’… two thousand from France itself, another six thousand from elsewhere in Europe. Before they were allowed to leave for Cuba, they had to pass a final screening by a high-ranking DGI officer named Adalberto Quintana, sent to Paris specially from Havana.”

According to Hidalgo: “The same meticulous selection went into recruiting 2,500 young Americans in the ‘Venceremos Brigades’, which appeared the following year. A smashing success for the DGI (and KGB), the Brigades visited Cuba in ten contingents between 1966 and 1977. Under Colonel Simenov’s fatherly eye, they learned how to mount a truly effective campaign to destabilize the United States. The pace was set by the U.S. Weathermen, whose Bernardine Dohrn and Peter Clapp were invited to Havana midway through 1969 to meet a delegation from North Vietnam and the Viet Cong. Chicago’s ‘days of rage’ devoted to ‘bringing the war home’ followed within weeks of their return to U.S. soil. (The art of rioting was passed on to thousands of other Americans students through do-it-yourself publications as The Anarchists’ Cookbook. Drive a large nail through a plank if another lethal weapon is not handy, advised this manual, whose contents were copied word for word from lectures in Cuba’s guerrilla classroom.”

It is amazing to learn how short is the memory of the American Senators is, especially those who acquiesced to give a helping hand to Castro at the expense of our taxpayers even though Cuba is involved now more than ever in the sponsoring of international terrorism.

“Castro’s guerrilla camps in Cuba went on catering to capacity crowds. Palestinians in particular began to check in several hundreds at a time, as they would go in doing through the decade; both, Yassir Arafat and George Habash paid stately visits to Havana to discuss these ongoing arrangements.” In August 1976, the CIA estimated that three hundred Arab fedayeen were training in Cuban camps. George Habash was received by Castro in April 22, 1978, and requested training for five hundred more fedayeen in the PFLP. Arafat, who had maintained a PLO office in Havana since 1974, signed in the summer of 1978 a formal military pact with Castro that September (according to the Jerusalem Post, July 27, 1978; Economist Foreign Report, June 28, 1978).

Before long, however, affirmed Sterling, Cuban instructors in guerrilla warfare began to go abroad, fanning out over the great Arab arc sheltering the Palestine Resistance. Barely two months after the October Middle East War, Cuban experts in terrorist warfare arrived secretly in South Yemen. On June 26, 1978, after Aden was shelled by Soviet naval forces and severely bombed by Cuban-piloted Soviet aircrafts, South Yemen was openly annexed as a Soviet colony converting the country into a terrorist safe haven becoming the heart of Palestinian training network.

According to Sterling, “everybody who was anybody in planetary terrorism passed through South Yemen sooner or later, for training or shelter or both. That was true of the whole German underground…Japanese, Turks, Iranians, Armenians, Kurds, Italians, French, Irish, Dutch, Belgians, South Moluccans, the Polisario Sahraouis, the Dhofar tribesman of oil rich Oman. All received advanced instruction in guerrilla warfare from Cubans and East Germans.”

When Colonel Qaddafi went into the guerrilla training business for the Palestinians’ sake, the Cubans moved in on Colonel Qadaffi. In 1976, the first reliable account of Libya’s camp network reports that Cuban instructors were teaching Spanish Basques there just when a democratic government was struggling to take hold in Spain… Some 150 Cuban guerrilla instructors were installed in Libya by 1980 while another 200 were installed in Algeria to train Sahraoui guerrillas from the Polisario Front.

“Meanwhile, yet another platoon of Cuban instructors moved in on Syria. Some were detailed to the Syrian army, others to guerrilla training camps. The first of these were spotted in 1976; according to former U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, they were training Japanese, Germans, and Iranians terrorist as well as Arabs. Then came a massive infiltration of southern Lebanon …with the Palestinians entrenched there by March 1978, a Cuban team turned up at the port of Tyre.”

According to the Journal de Geneve, “Two months afterward, a second team of Cuban instructors arrived, engineers, and experts in setting up military bases and installing missile-launching ramps. All the equipment arrived in Tyre aboard Soviet freighters: SAM missiles, artillery, transceivers … At the end of an intensive eight month training period, the first group of terrorists was reportedly ready to embark for the Persian Gulf countries, carrying ***** passports, ***** work permits, and possessing perfect knowledge of the accents, ways, and customs of these countries. Preceding these revolutionaries, large quantities of arms were routed to the Persian Gulf countries through intermediaries traveling that route.”

Sterling stated, “The uses of Cuban expertise abroad, starting in the mid-seventies, grew clearer when plans for the Latin American European were discovered by Argentinean police around that time (1979). As we have seen, the top-secret Tucumán Plan, drafted under DGI-KGB supervision, involved the transfer in a body of the Cuban-sponsored Junta for Revolutionary Coordination, the JCR, to Western Europe. Its four main guerrilla bands- Uruguay’s Tupamaros and like-minded groups from Argentina, Bolivia, and Chile, all forced into exile with the advent of right-wing military regimes – were to work out of headquarters in Lisbon and Paris, for an orchestrated assault to the Continent. Castro had set up special camps for them, on a four thousand acre state near Guanabo (a beach about 15 Km. From Havana), providing intensive three-month courses in explosive, sabotage, weaponry, and urban guerrilla tactics.”

In her book Sterling states that “there is another and bigger side to the Cuban story abroad. Russia’s deal with Fidel Castro in 1968 included his armed forces as well as his intelligence service. Starting in the mid-seventies, he would send Cuban troops halfway around the planet on the Kremlin’s behalf. Between forty and fifty thousand of them were deployed around Africa and the Arabian peninsula by 1980.”

Twenty-odd thousand men were in Angolan alone helping the pro-Soviet revolutionary army junta, seventeen thousand Cuban troops were in Ethiopia, and the first wholly sovietized black African state. “To help install Colonel Mengistu’s Marxist-Leninist regime, the Russians had airlifted ten thousand Cubans from Angola to Ethiopia, another ten thousand from Cuba to Angola for its replacement. According to London’s Institute for the Study of Conflict, the Soviet airlift required about five thousand flights within seven months, flying all day and night, twenty four hours a day.” The airlift also rushed Cuban troops from Ethiopia to South Yemen in the cover of night, the following winter.

The trail of blood and suffering left by Castro’s exploits, especially throughout Africa and Latin America, has had no bearing on the American Black Caucus and other members of both parties that keep supporting Castro disregarding that his victims were both blacks and whites, Cubans as well as Africans. Che Guevara expressed in paradigmatic words the essence of Castro’s regime when he stated: “We must above all keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm… hate as a factor of struggle, intransigent hate to the enemy, hate that can push a human being beyond his natural limits and make him a cold, violent, selective, and effective killing machine.“ This is the kind of regime our Senators and Congressmen want to support with our taxpayers’ money.