Obama State Department designated Castro regime a terror sponsor for sound reasons

"There's no good reason for Cuba to be listed by the US as a state sponsor of terrorism." - Jeffrey Goldberg , on Twitter, January 17, 2012

"Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with each other, can bring America to its knees." ... "The U.S. regime is very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up."
- Fidel Castro, University of Tehran, May 10, 2001 quoted in the Agence France Presse

"Our positions, versions, interpretations are alike, very close. We have been good friends, we are and will be, and we will be together forever. Long live Cuba! - Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Havana, Cuba, January 12, 2012

Raul Castro and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

State Department designated Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism in 2011

The Obama State Department has designated the Castro regime a state sponsor of terrorism. The actions of the Cuban government under the Castro brothers both in the past and present provides a pile of evidence that the designation is accurate. Nevertheless Cuba "experts" such as Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic claim otherwise writing in Bloomberg on Monday: Don't lump Cuba with Iran on terror list.

Less than a week after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's visit to Cuba and just a week and a day after a Venezuelan counsel was expelled from the United States for sitting in on meetings with Cuban and Iranian officials to plot cyber attacks on the America. The evidence says otherwise.

Cuba and Iran think alike

When the leader of Iran states that Cuba and Iran think alike, he speaks the truth. Both regimes have used terrorism both domestically and internationally to advance political objectives. For example, Fidel Castro ordered a premeditated attack on July 13, 1994 that led to the deaths of 37 men, women, and children. Five days later on July 18, 1994 a bomb exploded and destroyed 7-story Jewish-Argentine Mutual Association (AMIA) community centre in Buenos Aires killing 85 men, women and children. This terrorist attack was linked to Iran but the individuals responsible have yet to be prosecuted.

Fidel Castro and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

The Past: Prior to being on the list of terror sponsors

The Castro brothers hosted and organized beginning in 1966 Tricontinental Conferences where "Cuba and Latin American Marxist Leninist terrorist groups began their collaboration with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), and other radical Arab groups in the training and arming of terrorists."

One of the outcomes of the Conference was that the Cuban government published the "Mini Manual for Revolutionaries" in the official Latin American Solidarity Organization (LASO) publication Tricontinental, written by Brazilian urban terrorist Carlos Marighella, which gives precise instructions in terror tactics, kidnappings, etc. and translated into numerous languages which were distributed worldwide by the Cuban dictatorship. There is a chapter on terrorism. An online copy of the book is displayed on the website of fugitive Assata Shakur who fled to Cuba in 1984 for the murder of a police officer and unlike the average Cuban is able to maintain a web site from Cuba.

Fidel Castro and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Why was the Castro regime placed on the list of state sponsors of terrorism

On March 1, 1982 the Cuban dictatorship was placed on the list of state sponsors of terrorism. less than three months after the US State Department confirmed that the Castro regime was using a narcotics ring to funnel both arms and cash to the Colombian M19 terrorist group then battling to overthrow Colombia’s democratic government.

The Present: What does Wikileaks say about Cuban links to terrorism today?

Wikileaks leaked a February 27, 2009 cable published in its entirety in the Spanish socialist publication, El País which states that the US Interests Section in Havana has evidence that Cuba continues to be a safe haven for terrorists.

Why are the "experts" so consistently wrong?

Jeffrey Goldberg and Julia Sweig with Fidel Castro*

Jeffrey Goldberg in his Monday essay cites Julia Sweig as a source to discount that the Castro dictatorship is a sponsor of terrorism and makes a reference to Norway but fails to mention that self-confessed Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik published a lengthy manifesto where over the course of 1,500 pages repeated three times a quote by Fidel Castro that inspired him.

Elsa Montera Maldonado and Jose Gomez Abad expelled for plotting terrorist attack in New York City in 1962 assisted Julia Sweig in writing her 2002 book on Cuba.*

On page XIV of the acknowledgements of her May 2002 book Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground Julia Sweig lists a number of people who assisted her in writing the book. Two names stand out: Elsa Montera Maldonado and Jose Gomez Abad who Sweig described as championing the project. This husband and wife team were working as Cuban diplomats at the Cuba Mission in New York City but were in reality State Security agents. Both were expelled for their role in a planned terrorist attack on the Friday after Thanksgiving in 1962 with the objective of detonating 500 kilos of explosives inside Macy’s, Gimbel’s, Bloomingdale’s and Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal.

No doubt Sweig and Goldberg mean well, but before they return to Cuba to continue their respective academic and journalistic pursuits they should consider reading Paul Hollander's Political Pilgrims: Western Intellectuals in Search of the Good Society. This sociology text analyzes how totalitarian regimes, such as the one in Cuba, are able to disguise the horrors taking place in their systems presenting it in a positive light to visitors.


*New York Times 1962 image and photo of Goldberg and Sweig taken from Babalu Blog