Were Gitmo Murders Covered Up As Suicides?

What really happened at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility on the night of June 9, 2006.

Kissinger Wanted to Bomb Havana for Fighting Apartheid

In the new book, "Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana," authors Peter Kornbluh and William LeoGrande use recently declassified documents to expose the secret history of dialogue between the United States and Cuba. Among the revelations are details of how then-U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger considered launching airstrikes against Cuba after Fidel Castro sent troops to support independence fighters in Angola in 1976. In the years that followed, top-secret U.S. emissaries, including former President Jimmy Carter and Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez, worked to normalize relations with Cuba. The book's release comes as Cuban leader Raúl Castro is set to participate for the first time in next year's Summit of the Americas in Panama. Cuba recently denounced the Obama administration for extending the more than 50-year embargo for another year in a little-noticed move in September.

180 documented victims of Ché in Cuba

Hollywood has dutifully churned out yet another cinematic agitprop paean to a leftist “martyr,” this time Ernesto Guevara. So let’s recall the real “Che” and try to discern why many supposedly democratic, civil libertarian liberals still swoon over this Stalinist mass-murderer.

The meticulous myth of Senor Guevara is of a handsome Argentine heroically helping Fidel Castro’s guerrillas liberate Cuba from Fulgencio Batista’s military dictatorship in 1959. Then he became a global revolutionary icon inspiring the downtrodden to rise up everywhere, even personally leading rebel warriors in the Congo before being executed doing the same in Bolivia in 1967. The (communist) party line says Che personifies the selfless humanitarian courageously fighting for “social justice.” He’s the Marxists’ martyred Christ figure replete with pictures of his half-naked corpse riddled with bullet holes. And the classic poster of an angry young Guevara has scarred countless college dorm rooms for over 40 years, putting a face on the eternally young rebel for angry adolescents everywhere.

The real Guevara was a reckless bourgeois adrenaline-junkie seeking a place in history as a liberator of the oppressed. But this fanatic’s vehicle of “liberation” was Stalinism, named for Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, murderer of well over 20 million of his own people. As one of Castro’s top lieutenants, Che helped steer Cuba’s revolutionary regime in a radically repressive direction. Soon after overthrowing Batista, Guevara choreographed the executions of hundreds of Batista officials without any fair trials. He thought nothing of summarily executing even fellow guerrillas suspected of disloyalty and shot one himself with no due process.

Che was a purist political fanatic who saw everything in stark black and white. Therefore he vociferously opposed freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, protest, or any other rights not completely consistent with his North Korean-style communism. How many rock music-loving teens sporting Guevara t-shirts today know their hero supported Cuba’s 1960s’ repression of the genre? How many homosexual fans know he had gays jailed?

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Chan Chan

Buena Vista Social Club

UN to send emergency food aid to storm-hit Cuba

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) is to deliver emergency aid to the south-east of Cuba, where Hurricane Sandy wrought widespread damage. It was "the worst catastrophe in 50 years in Santiago de Cuba," WFP spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs said. The WFP is also appealing for $20m (£12.5) to help some 425,000 Haitians affected by the storm.

Sandy caused widespread damage to infrastructure, crops and livestock in both Haiti and Cuba. The WFP is planning to work with the Cuban government to distribute emergency one-month aid in Santiago de Cuba, which is home to 500,000 residents. The hurricane, which hit Cuba on 25 October and left 11 people dead, brought down many buildings and knocked out the electricity.

BBC News

Cuba police arrest dissidents after Oswaldo Paya’s funeral

Cuban police arrested dozens of dissidents yesterday after the funeral of Oswaldo Paya, a political activist whose sudden death in a road accident triggered grief and suspicion, AFP reporters said. Those arrested included Guillermo Farinas, a leading rights activist, who was held for questioning by plainclothes police deployed outside the Havana church where Paya's funeral was held.

Farinas, known for hunger strikes that drew attention to the plight of political prisoners in Cuba, and about 50 others were stopped by police after emerging from the funeral mass shouting slogans against the government. They were forced onto two buses that the church had provided to take people to the cemetery where Paya was to be buried.

Two of Paya's children have questioned the official account of how their father was killed. Authorities said Paya, 60, died along with another dissident, Harold Cepero Escalante, on Sunday when their rental car went off the road and struck a tree in southeastern Cuba.

Jamaica Observer

Cuba marks 50th anniversary of Bay of Pigs invasion

Cuba has held one of its largest military parades in decades, to mark the 50th anniversary of the failed CIA-led invasion at the Bay of Pigs.

Hundreds of thousands of Cubans marched in Havana to celebrate the occasion, seen as a triumph over the US. A key Communist Party congress, which is expected to back moves towards market reform, is also taking place. President Raul Castro has said Cuba must shrink the state and encourage private enterprise to save socialism. BBC News

The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months after John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency in the United States. The Cuban armed forces, trained and equipped by Eastern Bloc nations, defeated the invading combatants within three days. (Wikipedia)

Guantanamo still open at 9th anniversary

Nine years ago to the day, a prison for "war on terror" detainees opened its doors in a remote US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And despite grand promises, it is unlikely to shut any time soon. "At this point, it is clear that Guantanamo will not be closed during this presidential term, or maybe even the next one, despite administration claims that it remains committed to the goal," Columbia University professor, Matthew Waxman, told AFP.

On January 11, 2002, about 20 prisoners arrived at the base, hooded, handcuffed and clothed in distinctive orange prison garb. They were put on display for the world to see, behind the bars of the prison erected on the military base rented from Cuba since the beginning of the 20th century.

Guantanamo quickly became a notorious symbol for the worst of the US excesses in the war on Al-Qaeda launched in the days that followed the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

And rights groups around the world celebrated when new President Barack Obama swore just after his inauguration on January 22, 2009 to shut down the prison, opened by his predecessor George W. Bush. But two years later some 173 prisoners still languish behind its doors. And Obama's room for manoeuvre has been severely curtailed amid a fierce debate over the future of its high-profile foreign inmates.

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