Neueste Ausgabe von Peter Lavelles Crosstalk diskutiert Trump versus Hillary kontrovers und sehr aufschlussreich
https://www.rt.com/on-air/
https://www.rt.com/on-air/
Wednesday, March 23, 2016
Obama in Cuba… History in the Faking by FINIAN CUNNINGHAM
US President Obama said his three-day state visit to Cuba was an «historic opportunity for the two countries to build relations».
As he arrived onboard Air Force One with his family, Obama announced: «I look forward to meeting and hearing directly from the Cuban people».
Such hubris. One can imagine the uproar in Washington if Cuban President Raul Castro made a similar condescending appeal to the American public, bypassing their rulers.
The New York Times headlined: «Obama lands in Cuba with a pledge to listen to its people».
It all sounds momentous and conciliatory. Sadly, it is not. US media hype belies the fact that Washington’s view of Cuba is one-sided and grotesquely distorted.
The fact is that Washington continues to impose a brutal trade embargo on the impoverished island of 11 million people. That is nothing short of economic warfare and for alleged reasons that many people can’t even remember. The official justifications for the embargo are suitably forgettable because the real reason is simply this: might is right, to crush any form of political dissent in Washington’s presumed backyard.
The US also continues to occupy Cuban territory with its military base-torture center at Guantanamo Bay.
On both counts, these fundamental violations of Cuban sovereignty are not up for discussion, according to imperious Washington.
But Cuba is expected to give way on US allegations of crimping democratic rights and freedom of speech. In any case, those Cuban offenses are relatively minor in the scale of world-class crimes committed by Washington, from its relentless subversion of foreign countries to all-out wars of aggression.
That dissonance in reality captures the nub of the problem: official US arrogance and self-entitlement to trample over weaker nations, without a hint of remorse.
Official US hubris is so rampant that Obama’s tour of Cuba is turned into a farcical narrative of Washington bringing change and hope, instead of it being a moment for Americans to genuinely reappraise their country’s history and its pernicious role in international relations.
Fawning media reports on Obama’s visit tell us it is the first time since a sitting American president visited the Caribbean island state in nearly 90 years. That was when Calvin Coolidge landed in 1928 – aboard a US warship. That little bit of information tends to be overlooked, yet it hints at the sinister background.
US-Cuba relations are indeed replete with historical significance. When the US took possession of Cuba in 1898 after the Spanish-American War, it marked the rise of Yankee imperialism in the hemisphere under which Latin American countries would be routinely carved up and subjugated to Wall Street capitalism. Dictators and death squads abounded and millions were consigned to horrific violence and deprivation.
When Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Fidel’s brother Raul led the Cuban revolution in 1959 they managed to extricate the country from a US-backed tyrant. Like so many other US-backed despot-regimes, Cuba had been a byword for poverty and barbarity for the masses.
The Cuban revolution defied this fate and became a model for social development, a country where hunger and disease would become abolished, and where free education and healthcare were enshrined. Today, despite more than five decades of a vicious economic blockade, Cubans have a life expectancy better than most US citizens.
Socialist Cuba embraced the Soviet Union only after the island was attacked by the US in the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. That failed invasion was an embarrassing fiasco for the Central Intelligence Agency. Nevertheless, it was an act of war by the US against its southern neighbor.
Over the next decades, there would be countless other acts of war committed by the US on Cuba, including dozens of attempted assassinations on President Fidel Castro, acts of terror and sabotage, such as the blowing up of a Cuban civilian airliner in 1976, as well as large-scale poisoning of agricultural crops and animals.
Another historical connection conveniently omitted by mass media is that Cuba was pivotal in the rise of the modern US «deep state». The real, shadow government of the US – dominated by the military-industrial complex, Wall Street banks and corporate power – was born out of the obsession to crush the Cuban revolution.
The CIA under director Allen Dulles and the US ruling clique never forgave President John F Kennedy for refusing to send in a large-scale military invasion to salvage the Bay of Pigs debacle. JFK’s subsequent policy of rapprochement with Castro, as with other Third World revolutionary governments at the time, was seen by the CIA, the bankers and industrialists as a betrayal of American capitalism. It would cost Kennedy his life when CIA snipers blew his head off in Dallas in November 1963.
It is arguable that for the past 50 years, US democracy has ceased to exist. Presidents come and go like so much puppets, while the unelected, unaccountable deep state exercises the real power. Is it any wonder that US social conditions continue to deteriorate year after year, with poverty and inequality at runaway record levels? Because since the CIA coup in 1963, US democracy is a window-dressing charade to conceal the wielding of corporate power against the interests of the people.
Cuba is central to the hidden history of the demise of US democracy. But you would never know from reading mainstream media coverage of Obama’s «historic» visit to the island this week.
The refusal to end the US trade embargo on Cuba and return Guantanamo Bay are key indicators that Washington remains an unrepentant offender regime.
Terror Needed to Reassure EU-Unity??? Possible Background
EU Urges UN to Join Anti-Russia Sanctions
The European Union called on March 18 for more countries to impose sanctions on Russia over Crimea joining the Russian Federation two years ago.
In a statement issued on the anniversary of Crimea’s formal accession to Russia, the EU said it will maintain its sanctions that ban European companies from investing in Russian Black Sea oil and gas exploration.
«The European Union remains committed to fully implementing its non-recognition policy, including through restrictive measures», the European Council, which represents EU governments, said. «The EU calls again on UN member states to consider similar non-recognition measures».
Separately, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urged the EU and United States to maintain their broader economic sanctions against Russia over its support for self-declared republics in the eastern part of Ukraine. «It is important that we continue the economic sanctions», Stoltenberg told an event in Brussels.
The Crimean Peninsula became a part of the Russian Federation on March 18, 2014 after the referendum carried out on March 16 showed 97 percent of voters supported joining Russia.
The Kremlin responded by saying that the issue of Crimea could not be «a matter of negotiations or international contacts». «Our position is known: this is a region of the Russian Federation. Russia has not discussed and will never discuss its regions with anyone», President Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a teleconference with reporters.
«In this case we should treat with respect the expression of the will of Crimean residents and the decision which was taken two years ago», he emphasized.
The 28-nation EU imposed its Crimea sanctions in July 2014 and then tightened them in December 2014, banning EU citizens from buying or financing companies in Crimea. The United States, Japan and some other major economies, including Australia and Canada, also imposed sanctions on Russia, whereas many other economically developed nations, like, for instance, China and Brazil, refused to join.
It should be noted that the extension of anti-Russian sanctions is a very much divisive issue inside the European Union.
Hungary and Italy said last week they would not agree to extend the EU’s toughest economic sanctions on Russia, the EU’s major energy supplier, without discussions before the summer.
Germany’s Economy Minister Sigmar Gabriel called on March 17 for the EU to try to create conditions by this summer to lift sanctions.
France’s Minister for the Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs Emmanuel Macron said in January that Paris will look to assist in the lifting of Western backed sanctions on Russia by the summer.
Serbia, a nation in talks on joining the EU, has firmly rejected the idea of joining the sanctions regime.
US Republican Senator John McCain has the reputation of hawk calling for getting tough on Russia. But even he had to admit the fact that the sanctions are becoming increasingly unpopular inside the EU. «I think there is clearly a lot of conversation amongst the Europeans about lifting the sanctions… There are many countries that are looking for the exit sign», the Senator said in February. «I have been hearing it for months, that there is enormous pressure in a lot of countries, particularly Germany, to lift the sanctions», he noted.
At that the prominent US politician believes it is up to Washington if and when the sanctions are eventually lifted, saying that the final decision will «to some degree depend on American leadership». Actually, the US right-wing politician openly stated the EU decision on the sanctions is made under US pressure.
Indeed, the EU is following the US. President Obama announced American sanctions against Russia are to be prolonged for another year on March 2.
The EU obediently chimed in 16 days later.
The attempts of the EU to influence other countries into joining the anti-Russia sanctions regime look especially ridiculous against the organization’s failure to make the tiny nation of San Marino, an enclaved microstate surrounded by Italy, comply with the EU’s demands. The republic is not officially part of the European Union and does not face Russia's food embargo. According to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, a Russian government daily newspaper of record which publishes the official decrees, statements and documents of state bodies, San Marino and Russia signed an export agreement on March 18 during the International Economic Forum of CIS countries.
San Marino’s Minister of Regional Development and International Economic Cooperation Antonella Mularoni attended the forum. Now this European country will export to Russia a range of products, including Parmesan cheese and premium meat products like local Parma type ham. «There are 24 dairies in the republic, and a lot of enterprises engaged in meat smoking», the executive director of the national wholesalers association Vladimir Lishchuk told Rossiyskaya Gazeta. According to him, imports will take the place of illegal goods bypassing the Russian food embargo. Russia’s food safety watchdog Rosselkhoznadzor said it would monitor food imports from San Marino to prevent re-exports of sanctioned products from neighboring EU countries. Russia introduced the food embargo in August 2014 in response to Western sanctions. The ban applied to meat, poultry and fish, cheese, milk, fruit and vegetables from the United States, the EU, Australia, Canada, Norway, Japan and a number of other countries. According to Russia's Ministry of Economic Development, the import of banned products has fallen by nearly half to $6 billion in the first six months of 2015. Overall imports from the EU have fallen by 45 percent.
Evidently, the EU’s call for UN members to join the sanctions is an effort doomed to go down the drain. The European Union has no leverage strong enough to make world nations comply.
The organization itself is not in a strong position. Looks like it has seen its best days. Brussels is facing a host of acute problems. Many of them seem to be a tall order, for instance: the flows of migrants, the economic inequality of the Union’s members, debt problem and the conflicting views of the UK and Germany on European integration, to name a few.
Doing away with the divisive issue of anti-Russia sanctions could provide an impetus to making progress in other fields, but Brussels prefers a different approach.
The EU statement shows the Union’s leadership is adamant in its desire to go down the slippery slope risking a revolt among the member-states with tensions running already high inside «the European family».
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