------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the May 31, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- NOW IT'S HELMS-LIEBERMAN: NEW ANTI-CUBA BILL EARMARKS $100 MILLION FOR COUNTER-REVOLUTION By Gloria La Riva In a May 18 White House ceremony George W. Bush announced a series of moves against Cuba in which new legislation by senators Jesse Helms and Joseph Lieberman will play a key role. May 20--the date of Cuba's nominal independence--was used as a backdrop for this announcement. Cuba's independence war had been on the verge of victory when it was thwarted by U.S. intervention in 1898. On May 20, 1902, Cuba formally became a republic after the U.S. ended its four-year military occupation. But U.S. neocolonial rule remained until Cuba's true liberation was won in the 1959 revolution. Traditionally U.S. presidents have used May 20 to express their hostility to the Cuban socialist revolution in official gatherings at the White House--with their Miami- based Cuban-American right-wing allies by their side. Since the Cuban-American right-wingers have no problem with the fact that the U.S. exercised behind-the-scenes rule in Cuba from 1902 to 1959, they laud May 20 as a major holiday. Bush also embraces it as his own for the purpose of reaffirming U.S. imperialism's 42-year offensive against Cuba. Surrounded by Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, some U.S. politicians and right-wing Cuban-American allies, Bush spoke in glowing terms of the upcoming "Cuban Solidarity Act"--the latest anti-Cuba legislation to come down the pipeline. The act, if passed, would allocate $100 million to finance internal counter-revolutionary activity in Cuba. Jesse Helms of North Carolina, the notorious reactionary who currently heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, introduced it May 16 in the Senate. The other co-sponsor is Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, Al Gore's vice- presidential running mate last year. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who has built his political career in Florida with vitriolic anti-Cuba campaigns, introduced a similar measure in the House of Representatives. MORE LETHAL THAN FAX MACHINES The stated aim of the legislation is to funnel money to opposition groups inside Cuba, ostensibly for fax machines and computers but also for anti-government activities. It was touted by its sponsors as similar to campaigns carried out by the U.S. against the governments of Poland, China and Yugoslavia. U.S. aggression against the socialist camp--military and economic sabotage--was never publicly revealed in its entirety. The U.S. capitalist government did more than just send fax and copy machines to overturn socialism in Eastern Europe. It blockaded the socialist camp, allocated hundreds of billions to the Pentagon and waged a never-ending "cold war." And when the U.S. couldn't succeed in subjugating Yugoslavia, for example, it finally devastated the country with massive NATO bombing in 1999 to achieve its objective. Bush and Helms tout the bill as a new turn in U.S. policy toward Cuba. Bush says that the U.S. will now actively organize against the revolution from within Cuba. In reality the U.S. has carried out countless similar actions for 42 years. Washington has spent tens of billions to blockade, invade and sabotage Cuba. The U.S. ruling class has made counter-revolution in Cuba a top foreign-policy priority all along. The May 31, 1999, Cuban lawsuit against Washington for $181.1 billion in damages fully documents the 3,478 lives lost to U.S. aggression. But all these efforts have failed. If anything U.S. aggression--though it has caused tremendous suffering--has help ed strengthen the Cuban people's resolve to defend their revolution. The U.S. predicted that Cuba would not survive Eastern Europe's collapse. Yet the Cuban people's solemn oath to defend socialism and their homeland at all costs carried them through the most severe test imaginable: the post- Soviet economic crisis of the 1990s. It was to a great degree due to the revolutionary leadership of the Cuban Communist Party and President Fidel Castro as well as the heroic sacrifice of an entire people. The media recently questioned President Castro about the new U.S. legislation while he was in Lisbon, Portugal, awaiting departure to Cuba after a major tour to six countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. He responded, "The more mistakes they make, the weaker the U.S. position will be. The better for us, who grow in the mistakes that they constantly make." TV AND RADIO PROPAGANDA BEAMED AT CUBA Even if every dollar of the $100 million were to reach the tiny bands of pro-U.S. right-wing groups in Cuba, they would be incapable of reversing the people's will. Millions of Cubans have shown time and time again that they can gather in a few hours' notice to protest U.S. acts of aggression. The U.S. rulers can't help but be aware that the opposition inside the country is thoroughly discredited and scorned by 11 million Cubans. But it is not internal opposition the U.S. is depending on to carry out its objectives. These would-be recipients of the funding--whether in Miami or inside Cuba--are only the conveyor belts for U.S. imperialism. The counter-revolutionary groups are simply a pretext, like the mercenary army of Cubans at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 who were to be used as a "provisional government" to justify a much-larger U.S. invasion plan. That plan was defeated by the overwhelming response of the Cuban military, militias and people. Ricardo Alarcon, president of Cuba's National Assembly and a highly regarded former diplomat, gave his appraisal of the proposed U.S. legislation. He said, "Even if the bill is not approved, the [U.S.] government can spend that and more, and they are spending it already. "Similar amounts are being spent on Radio Marti and TV Marti and other publicly acknowledged activities, in addition to many others that--without publicity--are still being carried out." Alarcon believes that the bill's supporters are "looking for new publicity that will commit the United States even more to its anti-Cuban policy." The bill would seek millions more in funding to bolster the so-called Radio Marti and TV Marti anti-Cuba broadcasts that have operated for more than 10 years from U.S. territory. The CIA heads those misinformation operations. Cuba has successfully jammed the TV Marti station since its inception in 1990. The U.S. transmissions are a violation of international law and Cuba's sovereignty over its airspace. The latest legislation comes after a wave of anti-Cuba actions by the U.S. authorities. Bill Clinton handed over $160 million in frozen Cuban assets to the Miami right wing to bolster the CIA's "shock troops" in Florida, especially after their ignominious defeat in the return of young Elian Gonzalez. Bush's endorsement of the Helms-Lieberman bill is in many ways an admission that the blockade has not succeeded in its goal of defeating the revolution. Nevertheless, it is important to be vigilant about U.S. machinations and vigorously oppose the Bush administration's criminal and illegal plans. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. 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