Unhappy 60th birthday El Bloquero

February 3 marked 60 years since JFK imposed the full blown Cuban embargo designed to overthrow the Castro government and return Cuba as an economic piggybank for American capitalism, both legal multi nationals and illegal organized crime. It’s actually 62 years since President Eisenhower first imposed crushing U.S. sanctions against Cuba in 1960. He imposed them for revolutionary Fidel Castro daring to stop its American exploiters from stealing Cuba’s wealth for the previous 62 years following our takeover of Cuba from Spain in the Spanish American War of 1898.

Cuba rightly calls it El Bloquero (blockade) because the embargo effectively blockaded Cuba from doing business with much of the world economy. When implemented, the U.S. didn’t hide its ghoulish purpose. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Lester Mallory trumpeted “Every possible means should be undertaken promptly to weaken the economic life of Cuba…denying money and supplies to Cuba, to decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government.”

The embargo has been codified into U.S. law primarily thru the Cuba Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act and other legislation that make it practically impossible, both legally and politically, for any president to unilaterally overturn the embargo. America simply thumbs its pompous nose at the UN which has, for the past 29 years, voted to demand its abolition. The vote last year wasn’t close: 184-2. Only Israel voted with the U.S. against UN demands America adhere to international law and end its destructive embargo. Hey, if we’ll support Israel’s destruction of the Palestinian people, they’ll protect our back in our destruction of the Cuban people.

But we can take heart that America’s third means of overturning the communist Cuban regime is the least violent. First, we launched a proxy invasion in April, 1961, to do so militarily. That failed. Then we spent the next few years trying to assassinate Cuban head of state Fidel Castro. That failed. For the past 60 years we’re simply killing the Cuban people softly with a strangling economic blockade.

America may be cruel. America may ignore international law. But one has to admit, when it comes to effecting regime change, America is resolute.

Time for U.S. to recognize Taliban Afghan government and stop starving millions

President Biden is calling on the Taliban Afghan government to release Navy vet and civil engineer Mark Frerichs after 2 years of captivity in Afghanistan. Once America was ousted from Afghanistan last August 30, the victorious Taliban should have released Frerichs forthwith. Their failure to do so is a cruel act causing much needless pain to Frerichs, his family, friends, neighbors; indeed all Americans.

But while Biden is demanding Frerichs release, he’s strangling the Afghan economy with cruel, inhuman sanctions that degreed life for Afghanistan’s 40 million people. His cruelest sanction is withholding of $9.4 billion of Afghan assets in the Federal Reserve. Upwards of 23 million Afghans face starvation this year. Food insufficiency affects 98% of Afghans. Many Afghans die every day from America’s sore loser punishment for the Taliban defeating the world’s most powerful country.

The grief and misery pouring out of Afghanistan never reaches the American people. Our government and mainstream media have essentially erased America’s grotesque humanitarian crisis there from our consciousness. But 36 (out of 535) decent congresspersons recently sent Biden a letter stating “The U.S. confiscation of $9.4 billion in Afghanistan’s currency reserves is plunging Afghanistan deeper into economic and humanitarian crisis.”

President Biden is not doing everything in his power to return Mark Frerichs to his loved ones. He needs to drop America’s ghoulish and deadly revenge on the Taliban for their humiliating repudiation of our destruction of their country. That policy may wind up taking another American life, Mark Frerichs, to go with the thousands of just as innocent Afghan civilians being destroyed long after American’s exit from a 20 year war that should never have been fought.

Time for new American national bird?

Yesterday, for about the hundredth day in a row, the U.S. government announced an illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine could come ‘any day’. They have also begun saying Russia is planning a false flag operation using a propaganda video announcing a fake attack from Ukraine to justify the Russian invasion.

Of course, there is the possibility of a Russian invasion. Remember March, 2003, there was the possibility of a U.S. invasion of Iraq for no reason at all, and nothing happened. Wait, wait. The U.S. did launch an illegal, immoral and criminal invasion of Iraq. The country was shattered with several hundred thousand dead, including over 5,000 American soldiers and contractors. Nineteen years on, American soldiers still defile Iraq. So America knows a thing or two about senseless invasions of a non-hostile country.

Last week, State Dept. spokesman Ned Price told a press briefing we have solid proof of the Russian false flag operation. When pressed by the AP’s Matt Lee to display the proof, Price said “I just showed it to you”’.

What followed was priceless:

AP’s Matt Lee: “OK, but what evidence do you have that this is indeed the case?”

Ned Price: “Well that’s it – my ‘declassified’ claim that Russia is about to do it.”

Matt Lee: “Well, that’s not ‘declassified’ information, that’s just you claiming it. Surely you understand the difference. I mean, crisis actors, fake dead bodies – that’s Alex Jones territory.”

Ned Price: “You are a Russian propagandist.”

That exchange pretty much sums up U.S. prevarication on the Ukraine crisis.

While there still is the possibility of a Russian invasion, if America would drop the fearmongering and get down to serious negotiations of Russian security concerns, that possibility would likely dissipate.

U.S. talk of ‘imminent invasion is getting tiresome. Maybe we should replace the national bird, the Bald Eagle, with Chicken Little.

Rice for Supreme Court a bad suggestion to Biden

Louis Berardi’s suggestion to President Biden (Letters, Feb. 7) to nominate Condoleezza Rice as the black woman he’s promised to nominate to the Supreme Court could not be more inappropriate.

While her resume jobs titles of political scientist, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, professor, administrator are impressive, her record is horrendous. She was one of the chief architects and promoters of our immoral, senseless; indeed criminal Iraq war in 2003. Her work helped shatter Iraq into a still broken country with hundreds of thousands dead, millions forced to flee, and no stable government left in its wake. We still defile Iraq with a token force of soldiers two years after the Iraqi Parliament demanded we leave for the drone attack that killed 10 Iraqi and Iranian military officials.

Rice was key to selling the war with her widely trumpeted statement to justify the unjustifiable: “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud’.

In a just world Rice would be in criminal court to answer charges of war crimes, not on the Supreme Court deciding Constitutional Law.

New DC football team name not tough enough

It stands to reason the new Washington football team name Commanders would convey strength, even militarism.

Doug Williams, Commanders’ team legend and advisor to Commanders’ president Jason Wright, alluded to that when he said, “When you think about DC, you think about the Commander In Chief, the military, so Commanders represents Washington better than any name we could have chosen.”

I disagree. The Washington team didn’t go far enough in equating the violent sport of football with their namesake city. My pick is more alliterative and descriptive of the combative nature of Washington’s true claim to fame on the world stage: the Washington Warmongers.

Biden theft of starving Afghan’s treasure a humanitarian crime

The Afghan economy has crashed into ruin from 20 years of U.S. warfare. The UN’s World Food Program estimates 23 million of Afghanistan’s 40 million people face starvation. The economy is in freefall, putting Afghanistan into humanitarian crisis.

But the Biden administration is fueling Afghanistan’s descent into darkness by holding $7 billion in Afghan funds in the Federal Reserve. That represents the entire reserve of the Afghan central bank; cash desperately needed to restart the Afghan economy.

Instead of releasing those assets forthwith, Biden is committing outright theft of $3.5 billion to set aside for victims of the 911 attacks. The other half being withheld will go into a trust fund to be doled out for Afghan relief as the U.S. sees fit. Meanwhile Afghans die every day from lack of food and medicine.

Both actions are illegal and unconscionable. But the $3.5 billion set aside for 911 victims instead of Afghans represents a humanitarian crime.

The Biden administration, still suffering humiliation from losing a war that should never have been fought, seeks vengeance against the Taliban victors. Besides the withholding of $7 billion, we still impose sanctions on the Taliban government further crippling their ability to conduct trade with foreign governments and businesses unwilling to incur our wrath.

The chances U.S. theft of Afghan assets and continued sanctions have of overthrowing the Taliban government? Zero. The chances that policy will kill thousands of innocent Afghans? 100%.