The New York Times, the Castro regime, and Fake News

"The leader of pro-Castro opinion in the United States is Herbert L. Matthews , a member of the editorial staff of the New York Times. He did more than any other single man to bring Fidel Castro to power." - William F. Buckley Jr.,  Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations

Yesterday, blogged about the latest example of The New York Times bending over backwards to present the Castro dictatorship in a positive light. However, it is important to provide some historical context.

Beginning in 1957 editorial staff member and journalist Herbert Matthews built up Fidel Castro's image both inside and outside of Cuba with a series of misleading articles in The New York Times. In July 1959 Matthews reported: "[t]his is not a Communist Revolution in any sense of the term. Fidel Castro is not only not a Communist, he is decidedly anti-Communist." 

Anthony De Palma wrote an important book in 2006 on Herbert Matthews titled, "The Man Who Invented Fidel" that describes how Matthews's heroic portrayal of Fidel Castro influenced the fall of the Batista government and the consolidation of the future dictator as a national figure.

Fidel Castro's July 26th Movement successfully lobbied Washington to impose an arms embargo on the Batista regime on March 14, 1958, and the old dictator seeing that Washington was siding with Castro made the decision to abandon power on December 31, 1958.
  
William F. Buckley Jr. in an article in the March 1961 issue of The American Legion magazine outlined the impact of Mr. Matthews on the imposition of communism in Cuba and placed it in a larger context: 

"The leader of pro-Castro opinion in the United States is Herbert L. Matthews , a member of the editorial staff of the New York Times. He did more than any other single man to bring Fidel Castro to power. It could be said - with a little license - that Matthews was to Castro what Owen Lattimore was to Red China, and that the New York Times was Matthews's Institute of Pacific Relations: stressing this important difference, that no one has publicly developed against Matthews anything like the evidence subsequently turned up against Lattimore tending to show, in the words of a Senate investigating committee, that Lattimore was 'a conscious, articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy.'"

This was not the first time that The New York Times had a journalist who covered up communist crimes or attempted to portray a communist regime in a positive light.

Nearly ninety years ago Walter Duranty, an employee of The New York Times assisted in covering up the crimes of Josef Stalin. He was the newspaper's man in Moscow, and he repeated Stalinist propaganda and downplayed the atrocities taking place there. Duranty received the Pulitzer Prize in 1932 and decades later the world finally learned that more than 10 million people had died in a genocide in the Ukraine, despite the efforts of the New York Times reporter covering it up. Although Stalin's surviving victims sought to have the prize revoked, the Pulitzer Prize board refused to do it.

Over the next six decades, with a few notable exceptions, The New York Times would continue the tradition established with Herbert Matthews of giving positive coverage to the Castro dictatorship regardless what the facts are on the ground.

When one wonders why less people trust journalists the growing phenomenon of fake news should be looked at as a factor.

Truth Matters: When Fidel Castro asked and got the United States to place an embargo on Fulgencio Batista

Castro's July 26th movement successfully lobbied the U.S. to place arms embargo on Batista regime.

Fidel Castro in 1958 interrogating a "bandit."

Castro regime officials and agents have been active on social media on the 60th anniversary of the dictatorship and observing historical dates. Yesterday, March 10th was the anniversary of the coup led by Fulgencio Batista that ended Cuban democracy in 1952.

However, although they claim truth matters, important facts of have been left out or falsehoods repeated. Nevertheless, because the truth does matter and we too have memory, a few facts will be set straight.

First, the United States did not back the coup against Carlos Prio in 1952, and diplomatic communications following Batista's take over indicate this. In a Memorandum of Conversation, by the Ambassador in Cuba (Beaulac) with Dr. Miguel Angel de la Campa, Minister of State datelined Habana, March 22, 1952 and marked secret The American Ambassador indicated that according to Dr. Campa:

 “ Cuba intended to restore normal relations with countries toward which the former Cuban Government had had an attitude of hostility. He mentioned Spain and the Dominican Republic in particular. He said he thought the United States should recognize promptly; that it was in our interest that the situation should develop in an orderly way. I reminded Dr. Campa that our Government had not been consulted about the coup d'etat and that Cuba could not expect automatic recognition from us.” 

State Department had concerns about Batista's previous flirtations with communists in the 1940s, but recognized that he had control of the country following the coup, and that delaying recognition any further would damage relations with Cuba. The coup had taken place on March 10th and recognition was granted by President Truman, seventeen days later, on March 27, 1952. (By comparison Fidel Castro's revolutionary regime was recognized six days after Batista fled on January 7, 1959).

Secondly, the United States did back Fidel Castro and undermined the rule of Fulgencio Batista.
In January of 1958 the United States was pressuring Batista to restore Constitutional guarantees in exchange for the sale of arms.

On March 14, 1958 the State Department in a telegram to the U.S. Embassy in Cuba  requested that the export license for 1,950 M-1 rifles for the Cuban Army awaiting shipment be suspended. This was done because State felt that the Cuban government had failed to "create conditions for fair elections."

On March 17, 1958 Fidel Castro's candidate for provisional president Manuel Urrutia, along with a delegation of other supporters in exile of the future Cuban dictator's July 26th movement, met with officials at the State Department. They lobbied the U.S. government and argued that arms shipments to Cuba were for hemispheric defense, and they claimed that Batista using them against Cuban nationals was in violation of the conditions agreed to between the two countries.

"President" Manuel Urrutia and Fidel Castro in 1959

On the same day the Cuban Government presented to the U.S. Embassy in Havana a formal note protesting the delay in the shipment of M-1 rifles to the Cuban Army, and warned that it would weaken  the Cuban government and lead to its possible downfall.  
On March 26, 1958 in another telegram from the State Department to the U.S. Embassy in Havana the view was expressed how the arms embargo could lead to the fall of Batista's regime:

“Department has considered possibility its actions could have an adverse psychological effect GOC and could unintentionally contribute to or accelerate eventual Batista downfall. On other hand, shipment US combat arms at this time would probably invite increased resentment against US and associate it with Batista strong arm methods, especially following so closely on heels of following developments:

1. Government publicly desisted from peace efforts.
2. Government suspended guarantees again.
3. Batista expressed confidence Government will win elections with his candidate and insists they will be held despite suspension guarantees but has made no real effort to satisfy public opinion on their fairness and effectiveness as possible means achieve fair and acceptable solution.
4. Batista announced would increase size arms and informed you he would again undertake mass population shift Oriente, and otherwise acted in manner to discourage those who supported or could be brought to support peaceful settlement by constructive negotiations. "

News of the arms embargo on the Batista regime broke in The New York Times on April 3, 1958, the psychological blow was delivered and the days of the Batista regime were numbered.

Twenty one years later as another Marxist Leninist regime took power in Nicaragua, the former U.S. ambassador to Cuba in 1958, Earl E. T. Smith wrote a letter to the editor published in The New York Times were he addressed the myth that the U.S. had been a steadfast supporter of the Batista dictatorship:

"To the contrary, Castro could not have seized power in Cuba without the aid of the United States. American Government agencies and the United States press played a major role in bringing Castro to power. I so testified before a Senate committee. As the U.S. Ambassador to Cuba during the Castro‐Communist revolution 1957‐59, I had first‐hand knowledge of the facts which brought about the rise of Fidel Castro."

Because of my briefing in Washington, my sympathies leaned toward Castro when I first arrived in Cuba. After a few months as chief of mission, it became more and more obvious to me that the Castro‐led 26th of July movement embraced every element of radical political thought and terrorist inclination In Cuba. The State Department consistently intervened ‐ positively, negatively and by innuendo to bring about the downfall of President Fulgencio Batista, thereby making It possible for Fidel Castro to take over the Government of Cuba.

The final coup in favor of Castro came on Dec. 17, 1958. On that date, in accordance with my instructions from the State Department, I personally conveyed to President Batista that the Department of State would view with skepticism any plan on his part, or any intention on his part, to remain in Cuba indefinitely. I had dealt him a mortal blow. He said in substance: “You have intervened in behalf of the Castros, but I know it is not your doing and that you are only following out your instructions.” Fourteen days later, on Jan. 1, 1959, the Government of Cuba fell.

The historical truth matters, and must not be left to the Castro regime and its agents of influence to rewrite the past with lies and half truths. The fact of the matter is that the United States did not approve of the 1952 coup against a democratic Cuba, and was working behind the scenes to pressure the Batista regime to restore Cuba's democratic order. Fidel Castro promised Cubans and the world that he would restore the old democratic order, but he lied and installed a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship instead.

The New York Times reports that Cuban doctors are tired of being slaves

Cuban doctors, like most Cubans, are tired of being enslaved.

Cuban doctors trafficked and exploited by the Castro regime

 Just yesterday I was justifiably calling The New York Times to task for a terrible piece on Communist China's record on women and in passing highlighted the paper's shameful past of covering up Josef Stalin's genocide in Ukraine and assisting Fidel Castro's rise to power in Cuba. Today Ernesto Londoño, the modern descendant of Herbert Matthews, managed to somewhat surprise me with an article titled "Cuban Doctors Revolt: ‘You Get Tired of Being a Slave’" with an introductory paragraph that indicted the Castro regime and reflected internal dissent:

"In a rare act of collective defiance, scores of Cuban doctors working overseas to make money for their families and their country are suing to break ranks with the Cuban government, demanding to be released from what one judge called a “form of slave labor.” Thousands of Cuban doctors work abroad under contracts with the Cuban authorities. Countries like Brazil pay the island’s Communist government millions of dollars every month to provide the medical services, effectively making the doctors Cuba’s most valuable export."

This is news because it is being reported in The New York Times, that for decades has sought to spin a pro-regime narrative in its pages. In 2008 The Miami Herald reported that "more than 31,000 Cuban health workers -- most of them doctors -- who toil in 71 countries brought in $2.3 billion last year, ..., more than any other industry, including tourism. Most of them are paid $150 to $375 a month, a small percentage of the cash or trade benefits the Cuban government pockets in exchange for their work." 

Juan Alfonso, a Cuban doctor, living and practicing medicine in Chile, was interviewed by the PanamPost on October 15, 2015 and explained why he had to flee his homeland, "I will tell you something: I would have liked to stay in Cuba. I left because I could barely afford to buy a single egg to eat a day." The New York Times Editorial Board in 2014 was trying to spin that Cuban doctors were fleeing to the United States because of the Cuban Adjustment Act and a special immigration program that sought to exacerbate a brain drain in Cuba.

Londoño repeats the argument in this article to soften the cruel reality that "President Barack Obama in January [2017] ended the program, which had allowed Cuban doctors stationed in other countries to get permanent residency visas for the United States."

Londoño's article focuses on Cuban doctors in Brazil, appealing to the courts for the right to stay there, and Brazilian judges who view their treatment as modern day slavery. These professionals are spread around the world, but there have also been other cases of Cuban workers in brutal conditions not mentioned in Mr. Londoño's article.

In 2006 the case of Cuban workers forced to work 112 hours a week for 3 cents an hour in Curaçao made the news. The workers had been unpaid; their compensation was deducted from Cuba’s debt to the Curaçao Drydock Company. Three workers sued the company accusing  "Curaçao Drydock Company of subjecting them to forced labour in a lawsuit in US federal court under the Alien Tort Claims Act and other laws.  They alleged that the company conspired with the Cuban Government to traffic them and other workers to Curaçao to work for Curaçao Drydock Company as part of a forced labour programme."

Unfortunately in the drive to normalize relations with the Castro regime the previous Administration also watered down its report on human trafficking in Cuba, giving the Cuban dictatorship a pass. This drive was aided and abetted by The New York Times and Mr Londoño the fruits of which we are seeing now with over 20 diplomats badly injured in mysterious attacks and the U.S. Embassy in Havana effectively shutttered.

The New York Times article on the Cuban medical doctors revolt gives me some hope that the paper may finally be changing its ways, but the past 85 years also tells me to remain skeptical.

The New York Times and the Castro brothers: A long romance

 "The leader of pro-Castro opinion in the United States is Herbert L. Matthews , a member of the editorial staff of the New York Times. He did more than any other single man to bring Fidel Castro to power." - William F. Buckley Jr.,  Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations

“I got my job through the New York Times.”

The New York Times is at it again, advocating on its editorial page for the foreign policy goals of the Castro regime. On December 21, 2015 it was calling for the repeal of the Cuban Adjustment Act. This echoed not only the sentiments of Raul Castro but his ideological ally in Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega who has precipitated the current crisis in Central America with Cuban refugees. It is a coordinated media campaign with The New York Times leading the charge and when it comes to the Castro regime the Grey Lady has been at it for 57 years to the detriment of free Cubans and U.S. national interests. The Cuban Adjustment Act is a humanitarian law that if repealed will not end the exodus of Cubans fleeing the Castro nightmare, and the dictatorship continues to set Cuba apart from other countries in the hemisphere justifying the policy.


Marie Sanz is a senior correspondent with the Agence France Presse (AFP),  who has authored a paper "The Persistent Advocate: The New York Times' Editorials and the Normalization of U.S. Ties with Cuba" that although filled with "conventional main stream elite" opinion demonstrated the agenda of The New York Times first to promote Fidel Castro's rise to power in the 1950s, secondly to defend the Castro regime from efforts to overthrow it in the early 1960s, and a steadfast advocate for normalizing relations with the dictatorship through to the present day.

The New York Times has had a long time bias in favor of dictatorships and making glaring omissions that predate Cuba. The paper has had reporters such as Walter Duranty who ignored a genocide in Ukraine in the 1930s while providing a sympathetic portrayal of the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin.

Beginning in 1957 Herbert Matthews built up Fidel Castro's image both inside and outside of Cuba with a series of misleading articles in The New York Times. In July of 1959 Matthews reported: "[t]his is not a Communist Revolution in any sense of the term. Fidel Castro is not only not a Communist, he is decidedly anti-Communist." Anthony De Palma has written a book on Herbert Matthews titled, "The Man Who Invented Fidel" and describes how his heroic portrayal of Fidel Castro influenced the fall of the Batista dictatorship and the consolidation of the future dictator as a national figure.
 
William F. Buckley Jr. in an article in the March 1961 issue of The American Legion magazine outlined the impact of Mr. Matthews on the imposition of communism in Cuba and placed it in a larger context: 

"The leader of pro-Castro opinion in the United States is Herbert L. Matthews , a member of the editorial staff of the New York Times. He did more than any other single man to bring Fidel Castro to power. It could be said - with a little license - that Matthews was to Castro what Owen Lattimore was to Red China, and that the New York Times was Matthews's Institute of Pacific Relations: stressing this important difference, that no one has publicly developed against Matthews anything like the evidence subsequently turned up against Lattimore tending to show, in the words of a Senate investigating committee, that Lattimore was 'a conscious, articulate instrument of the Soviet conspiracy.'"

Marie Sanz in her paper describes the unprecedented series of editorials written by Ernesto Londoño but does not address the factual inaccuracies in his work. For example in his August 24, 2015 opinion piece The New York Times journalist presented a skewed vision of the opposition.

Londoño quotes some of the dissidents who met with Secretary Kerry at an informal cocktail following the official event to which they were not invited.  He fails to mention the presence of Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet, who is a former prisoner of conscience who has been the subject of an hour long documentary "Oscar's Cuba" and 2007 Medal of Freedom Recipient. U2's Bono also gave a shout out to Dr. Biscet during their 2011 tour. This is a high profile and internationally recognized pro-democracy activist but he supports U.S. sanctions on the Castro regime and over twitter the day after meeting Secretary Kerry called the normalization of relations a violation of law:

Diplomatic links between USA and Cuba violates Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (Libertad) Act of 1996 (Helms-Burton): Title II, Section 201(13-14); 202; 203; 204; ; 205 and 206.

Is this not newsworthy? Or the fact that on August 24, 2015 state security (G2) detained Oscar Elías Biscet and released him 20 km from his home in order to prevent him giving the presentation: Why is it that U.S. - Cuba relations violate the Libertad Act?

Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet

Even among those The New York Times reporter chooses to quote he fails to provide context. For example, he quotes Yoani Sanchez and 14 y Medio but fails to mention how she took him to task on December 6, 2014 for his editorials in The New York Times describing them as "really pitiful."  Miriam Celaya, raised a question in the same article that many Cubans who read his editorials asked themselves:

What is going on with these editorials? They are still giving prominence to a distorted, biased view, composed of half-truths and lies about what the Cuban reality is. They are still giving prominence to what a government says, and Cuba is not a government. Cuba's government today is a small group of old men, and when I say "old" it's because of their way of thinking, of individuals who have remained anchored in discourse rooted in a cold war and belligerence. The Cuban people are not represented in that government.

Both Yoani Sanchez and Miriam Celaya are Cuban dissidents who are advocates of lifting sanctions but even they have publicly questioned the work of Mr. Londoño because it does not reflect the reality in Cuba.

Finally, in the Cuban diaspora there are five Cuban American congressman and three Cuban American U.S. Senators currently in office and all of them support maintaining the embargo on Cuba and have been sharply critical of the Obama administration's Cuba policy.  

Why such sharp criticism? Because the policy has marginalized the democratic opposition while raising up narrow economic interests at the expense of the freedom of the Cuban people; it has led to a worsening human rights situation in Cuba; and the extrajudicial killings of prominent opposition leaders who were viewed as a threat by the regime because they could oversee a democratic transition. On the international front the Obama administration's policies will further endanger democracy in Latin America and U.S. national security. 

Inside of Cuba, a large number of opposition leaders support maintaining sanctions on the dictatorship. Unlike the anti-embargo lobby fair minded democrats recognize that there is a legitimate difference of opinion on this topic, but not on the underlying nature of the dictatorship and the need for real change. This is something that Mr. Londoño does not reflect in his reporting.
The New York Times editorial board on November 30, 2015  was at it again providing advice to the dictatorship in Cuba on how to prolong its existence this time by achieving its long term political goal of lifting the embargo through partnering with a technology firm to overwhelm congressional opposition:

"Partnering with Google, which has enormous lobbying clout in Washington, could advance Havana’s goal of building enough political support in Congress to repeal the embargo and would make it harder for a future president to dial back the restoration of diplomatic ties that Mr. Obama set in motion last year."

 The New York Times omits and distorts key facts such as the circumstances surrounding Cuba plugging into the global cable network in 2013 enabling high-speed connections that have not reached the average Cuban. First it was President Obama who on April 13, 2009 directed the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce to take the needed steps to:

• Authorize U.S. telecommunications network providers to enter into agreements to establish fiber-optic cable and satellite telecommunications facilities linking the United States and Cuba.
• License U.S. telecommunications service providers to enter into roaming service agreements with Cuba’s telecommunications service providers.
• License U.S. satellite radio and satellite television service providers to engage in transactions necessary to provide services to customers in Cuba.
• License persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction to activate and pay U.S. and third-country service providers for telecommunications, satellite radio and satellite television services provided to individuals in Cuba.
• Authorize the donation of certain consumer telecommunication devices without a license.

Despite this unilateral liberalization by the Obama administration, it was the Castro regime that showed no interest in a fiber-optic cable linking the United States and Cuba from Key West in 2009 not the Cuban embargo. Instead the Cuban dictatorship went with a fiber-optic cable linking Cuba and Venezuela that required a much longer distance of cable to link the two countries. This was completed in 2013, but high speed internet access has not reached the average Cuban in 2015.
 The New York Times has been defending the interests of the Castro regime for 57 years on its Editorial pages.

Politically motivated extrajudicial killings by State Security

 At the same time it has remained silent before the critiques of the democratic opposition in the island.  For example, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas speaking on behalf of the Christian Liberation Movement in Havana on March 30, 2012 bravely denounced the fraudulent change that was then taking shape and that is being carried out today with the Obama administration's Cuba policy and The New York Times active support:

Our Movement denounces the regime's attempt to impose a fraudulent change, i.e. change without rights and the inclusion of many interests in this change that sidesteps democracy and the sovereignty of the people of Cuba. The attempt to link the Diaspora in this fraudulent change is to make victims participate in their own oppression. The Diaspora does not have to "assume attitudes and policies in entering the social activity of the island." The Diaspora is a Diaspora because they are Cuban exiles to which the regime denied rights as it denies them to all Cubans. It is not in that part of oppression, without rights, and transparency that the Diaspora has to be inserted, that would be part of a fraudulent change.

 The escalating violence and repression by the Castro regime throughout this normalization process has been omitted by The New York Times because it does not fit their narrative. Rising levels of violence against  nonviolent activists and the suspicious deaths of human rights defenders: Orlando Zapata Tamayo (February 23, 2010), Daisy Talavera de las Mercedes Lopez (January 31, 2011) , Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia (May 8, 2011), Laura Inés Pollán Toledo (October 14, 2011), Wilman Villar Mendoza (January 19, 2012), Sergio Diaz Larrastegui (April 19, 2012), Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas (July 22, 2012) and  Harold Cepero Escalante (July 22, 2012). Both Laura Pollán and Oswaldo Payá each had the international recognition and ability to head an authentic democratic transition in Cuba. Oswaldo Payá had forced the dictatorship to change the constitution in 2002 because of Project Varela, a citizen initiative demanding legal reforms within the existing system, and Laura  Pollán through constant street demonstrations achieved the freedom of scores of Cuban prisoners of conscience. It is important to remember that the deaths of these high profile human rights defenders happened on President Obama's watch as he loosened sanctions in a series of unilateral concessions that began in 2009. To understand what is really going on in Cuba one should read the editorial pages of The Wall Street Journal or The Washington Post.

National Review early on had a clearer understanding on the nature of the Castro regime and the role of The New York Times in bringing the communist dictator to power in Cuba. This is why they had a cartoon of Fidel Castro with the caption “I got my job through the New York Times.” This is a decades long romance that has been at the expense of free Cubans.

The New York Times editorial board gives the Castro regime advice on how to lobby Congress

 Technology is neutral, and repressive regimes with the help of Western companies have used it to hang on to power.

The New York Times editorial board today is at it again providing advice to the dictatorship in Cuba on how to prolong its existence this time by achieving its long term political goal of lifting the embargo through partnering with a technology firm to overwhelm congressional opposition:

"Partnering with Google, which has enormous lobbying clout in Washington, could advance Havana’s goal of building enough political support in Congress to repeal the embargo and would make it harder for a future president to dial back the restoration of diplomatic ties that Mr. Obama set in motion last year."

 As has occurred before The New York Times omits and distorts key facts such as the circumstances surrounding Cuba plugging into the global cable network in 2013 enabling high-speed connections that have not reached the average Cuban. First it was President Obama who on April 13, 2009 directed the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Commerce to take the needed steps to:

• Authorize U.S. telecommunications network providers to enter into agreements to establish fiber-optic cable and satellite telecommunications facilities linking the United States and Cuba.
• License U.S. telecommunications service providers to enter into roaming service agreements with Cuba’s telecommunications service providers.
• License U.S. satellite radio and satellite television service providers to engage in transactions necessary to provide services to customers in Cuba.
• License persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction to activate and pay U.S. and third-country service providers for telecommunications, satellite radio and satellite television services provided to individuals in Cuba.
• Authorize the donation of certain consumer telecommunication devices without a license.

Despite this unilateral liberalization by the Obama administration, tt was the Castro regime that showed no interest in a fiber-optic cable linking the United States and Cuba from Key West in 2009 not the Cuban embargo. Instead the Cuban dictatorship went with a fiber-optic cable linking Cuba and Venezuela that required a much longer distance of cable to link the two countries. This was completed in 2013, but high speed internet access has not reached the average Cuban in 2015.

The regime may now have to abandon the its chief strategy of denying Cubans access to internet in order to pursue opportunities to enrich the dictatorship. However the Cuban government still has at least nine other tactics used by other repressive regimes to limit the internet's liberating potential: web blocking, precision censorship, infrastructure control, cyber attacks on exile run sites, malware attacks, internet kill switches, detaining bloggers, violence against online journalists, and criminalizing uncensored access to internet.

 Unfortunately, US technology firms such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Sun Micro Systems and others have shown in markets such as mainland China a willingness to cooperate with totalitarian regimes and use technology to modernize their repressive system. It is up to human rights defenders and democrats to hold them accountable and expose them when they do wrong while at the same time encouraging them to pursue approaches that live up to the liberating potential of the internet.

Sadly, the visit of a Google executive to Cuba in 2014 did not inspire much confidence. Executive chairman of Google Eric Schmidt already had past associations with Sun Microsystems, the company that played an important role in erecting the Great Firewall in China that the Google executive now condemns and also Google's own past assistance of Chinese censorship both of which were condemned by Amnesty International.

Even more disturbing was the Google executive's reflections on his Cuba visit that made clear the Cubans had been effective at selling their Potemkin Village fiction as fact with such passages:

The two most successful parts of the Revolution, as they call it, is the universal health care free for all citizens with very good doctors, and the clear majority of women in the executive and managerial ranks in the country.  Almost all the leaders we met with were female, and one joked with us that the Revolution promised equality, the macho men didn’t like it but “they got used to it”, with a broad smile.

First the health care system in Cuba during the years of massive Soviet subsidies may have been something else, but the present one is a disaster. Even the public health infrastructure is a mess as the ongoing cholera outbreak is but one high profile example.

For a more complete overview that places the island's current reality into a historical context Schmidt would be well served to read Health, Politics, and Revolution in Cuba Since 1898 by Katherine Hirschfeld, an anthropologist who spent a lot of time in Cuba that describes how her idealistic preconceptions were dashed by 'discrepancies between rhetoric and reality,' she observed a repressive, bureaucratized and secretive system, long on 'militarization' and short on patients' rights.

However, that was not as shocking as Schmidt's second claim that another "successful" part of the Revolution is that: "Women are in the executive and managerial ranks." Mr Schmidt should take a closer look at the history of violence visited upon women who dissent and speak their minds in Cuba.

On May 24, 2015 Sirley Ávila León was the victim of a machete attack

The New York Times has not reported on the plight of reformer turned opposition figure Sirley Ávila León, an ex-delegate of the People’s Assembly (Poder Popular) of Majibacoa who joined the democratic opposition after efforts to keep a school open in her community. Official channels ignored Sirley's requests and when she went to the international media she was removed from office. Following escalating acts of repression by state security the mother of two, Sirley Ávila León, age 56, was gravely wounded in a machete attack on May 24, 2015 at 3:00pm by Osmany Carrión who had been "sent by state security thugs" and that the aggression "was politically motivated." She suffered deep cuts to her neck and knees, lost her left hand and remains completely incapacitated.

Remaining silent before these ongoing atrocities while engaging in "happy talk" on how a Stalinist regime can collaborate with U.S. technology firms to overcome economic sanctions which limit its ability to make mischief will not assist a democratic transition in Cuba, but do just the opposite - prolong the life of a totalitarian dictatorship.

This has been seen elsewhere, and apparently The New York Times would like to repeat it in Cuba. Technology is neutral, and repressive regimes have contracted Western companies to place draconian controls on the internet that are used to target activists. Amnesty International identified "Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Nortel Networks, Websense and Sun Microsystems" as having "provided technology used to censor and control the use of the Internet in China." These repressive applications of new technologies have been transferred to other dictatorships and now with the help of the The New York Times editorial board arriving in Cuba.

This should not be surprising considering the history of The New York Times with regards to left wing totalitarian regimes and propaganda role that assisted in empowering Fidel Castro in the 1950s and presently using a former Cuban intelligence agent, who remains an apologist for the Castro regime as a source. However it is important to highlight the facts and confront the omissions, and inaccuracies of what is supposed to be the newspaper of record.

The New York Times: A Propaganda Rag?

 Some of the news that they refused to print.

Since 1851 there have been lapses in journalistic ethics

Until now this blog has not addressed the eruption of New York Times editorials regarding Cuba and U.S. policy out of sheer weariness over treading once again over well trodden ground on the sanctions debate, but two items have necessitated a response. The call by The New York Times to release Cuban spies imprisoned for their crimes including the murder of U.S. citizens.

The ten members of the Cuban "WASP" spy network arrested in 1998 used coded material on computer disks to communicate with other members of the spy network of which the FBI was able to obtain 1,300 pages taken from those diskettes translated and used during the spy trial. The documents demonstrate the criminal nature of the Cuban regime's operation in South Florida including their primary objective of penetrating and obtaining information on a U.S. naval station. Furthermore intelligence operatives communicated about burning down a warehouse and sabotaging Brothers to the Rescue equipment. The Cuban government requested that the spies attempt to identify who would be flying at certain times.  What is left out of The New York Times reporting is that in the documents the operatives discuss plans to prepare a "book bomb" that evades post office security while at the same time phoning death threats to a man they describe as a CIA agent in order to terrorize him and then killing him with the mail bomb.

The seriousness of these planned action items would be confirmed by the February 24, 1996 shoot down where two MiGs hunted Brothers to the Rescue planes in international airspace and used air to air missiles to destroy two of the planes killing two pilots and two passengers based on intelligence supplied by the WASP network.

Cover of 2014 article on KGB plans to eliminate MLK

 The second item was the publication of the full letter sent to Martin Luther King Jr. on November 11, 1964  to provoke his suicide and/or silence in The New York Times Magazine article by Barbara Gage titled "What an Uncensored Letter to M.L.K. Reveals" pointing to the FBI as the guilty party. However, at no time does the article mention that the KGB also had a campaign of active measures in place to destroy Martin Luther King Jr. that is well documented.

Letter sent to MLK in 1964 published by The New York Times

The New York Times has had a long time bias in favor of dictatorships and making glaring omissions. The paper has had reporters such as Walter Duranty who ignored a genocide in Ukraine in the 1930s while providing a sympathetic portrayal of the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin. Beginning in 1957 Herbert Matthews built up Fidel Castro's image both inside and outside of Cuba with a series of misleading articles in The New York Times. In July of 1959 Matthews reported: "[t]his is not a Communist Revolution in any sense of the term. Fidel Castro is not only not a Communist, he is decidedly anti-Communist." Anthony De Palma has written a book on Herbert Matthews titled, "The Man Who Invented Fidel" and describes how his heroic portrayal of Fidel Castro influenced the fall of the Batista dictatorship and the consolidation of the future dictator as a national figure.

Considering that the Castro dictatorship in Cuba, that The New York Times assisted in putting into power, has five decades of engaging and sponsoring international terrorism along with a terrible human rights record at home one would think that the Grey Lady would be more cautious in its reporting. Unfortunately what should be the paper of record has too often become a propaganda rag especially when the topic has been Cuba.

The case for maintaining and improving US sanctions on the Castro dictatorship

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” - John Adams

Claims and Facts About Economic Sanctions in Cuba

In the midst of a human rights crackdown in Cuba there is an effort underway to obtain the unilateral lifting of economic sanctions on the Castro dictatorship. United States Senator Marco Rubio has expressed concern "that U.S. officials reportedly met with Cuban representatives in Bali to discuss the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba."Coincidentally, at the same time academics, ideologues and The New York Times over the past few days, have trotted out their old arguments. Their argument can be broken down into seven claims. Sadly, they fail to take into account some inconvenient facts in order to refine their case and improve the public debate:

CLAIM #1: Castro brothers have used the embargo as an excuse of their disastrous misrule in Havana.

FACTS: One of the policy objectives of the Castro regime both internally and internationally is to portray itself as David against Goliath. Despite having normal trade relations, Hugo Chavez has undertaken the same kind of campaign in Venezuela without an economic sanctions in place. Often times the U.S. State Department has fallen short of explaining the sanctions policy fully or for that matter defending it in a vigorous manner at international forums. This has allowed the Cuban government a free hand in a sustained campaign to portray itself as a victim blaming all of its economic woes on the American blockade on Cuba. To believe that the regime would not continue its Anti-American campaign of blame with new grievances is naive.

CLAIM #2: The embargo has hurt the Cuban people.

FACT:
According to both the Council on Foreign Relations and Global Edge remittances play a major role in the Cuban economy and have for some time.  Reliable sources peg remittances total from $800 million to $1.5 billion per year, with most coming from families in the United States. During the Obama Administration regulations have been furthered loosened which means that this number may now be substantially higher. Medical equipment and pharmaceuticals can also be sold to the Cuban regime with the limitation that the goods don't go to the Cuban military or biotechnology industry and are not used for torture or re-export. During the Bush Administration the United States was Cuba's fifth leading trade partner and now is seventh in the world.

CLAIM #3: The embargo has failed to remove the Castro brothers from power.

FACTS: The embargo was not instituted to remove the Castro brothers from power. Due to the Bay of Pigs debacle that consolidated Castro's rule and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that ruled out a direct U.S. invasion, economic sanctions were put in place not to eliminate the Castro regime but limit its ability to expand into the rest of the hemisphere and to force the Soviet Union to expend large sums in keeping the Castro regime afloat which ended up contributing to the USSR's demise in 1991 due to the economic dissatisfaction and hardship suffered by Russians.  The Kennedy brothers sought other means to end the Castro regime in Operation Mongoose that were shutdown after Robert Kennedy left the White House in 1964.

CLAIM #4:  The embargo harms U.S. businesses and farmers

FACTS: Since 2000 U.S. businesses and farmers have sold  $4,318,906.00 worth of goods to the Castro regime.  Meanwhile countries that do not have sanctions in place, which includes restrictions on granting credits such as Russia, Venezuela, China, Japan, Spain, Argentina, France, Romania, Brazil, Italy, and Mexico are owed billions of dollars. Russia is forgiving $29 billion dollars of debt that the Castro regime owed it and Mexico is waiving 487 million dollars of debt owed by the regime in Havana.

CLAIM #5: Castro never assassinated or tried to assassinate a US official.

FACTS: Cuban spy network broken up by the FBI in 1998 planned terrorist actions on U.S.soil including the murder of a U.S. intelligence official in Florida.

There is plenty of circumstantial evidence that the Castro regime had President John F. Kennedy assassinated in retaliation for attempts to have Fidel Castro assassinated by the Kennedy Administration. Not to mention the threat made to an AP journalist against the Kennedy brothers by Fidel Castro weeks prior to JFK's assassination: “Let Kennedy and his brother Robert take care of themselves since they too can be the victims of an attempt which will cause their death.”
   
CLAIM #6: The embargo limits the civil liberties of Americans to travel to Cuba.

FACTS: The U.S. Supreme Court on two occasion first in Zemel v. Rusk, 381 U.S. 1 (1965) in a 6-3 decision and secondly in Regan v. Wald - 468 U.S. 222 (1984) in a 5-4 decision affirmed that the State Department and the President can restrict travel under certain circumstances and does in fact limit the civil liberties of Americans.
 
CLAIM #7: Cato in 2005 cited a 1998 report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency that concluded, “Cuba does not pose a significant military threat to the U.S. or to other countries in the region.” The report declared Cuba’s military forces “residual” and “defensive.”

FACTS:  In 2012 Cuban, Iranian and Venezuelan officials met in Mexico to discuss cyber attacks on U.S. soil allegedly seeking information about nuclear power plants in the United States. In 2013 it was revealed that the Castro regime was providing weapons and ammunition to North Korea in violation of international sanctions. The weapons and ammunition were intercepted in Panama when they tried to smuggle them through. Finally, the 1998 report, cited by Cato in 2005, and circulated over twitter today that claims that Cuba does not pose a threat to the United States was prepared by Ana Belen Montes, an agent of the Castro regime who successfully penetrated he highest levels of the U.S. intelligence apparatus and who was implicated in providing information that led to the death of an American soldier.

 Room for improvement

U.S. sanctions policy with regards to the dictatorship in Cuba was about containment of the exportation of the Cuban model throughout the hemisphere, and during the Cold War having Cuba serve as a drain on Soviet resources that contributed to its eventual bankruptcy. In the post Cold War years it shifted once again with a focus on human rights. The failure of the United States to do this in China, Cambodia, Venezuela and Vietnam with their deteriorating human rights situation is regrettable. The policies in these other countries are profoundly immoral and ignore human rights concerns. Instead policies in China, Cambodia, Venezuela and Vietnam favor of short-term corporate economic interests that run counter to the interests of the majority of  U.S. citizens not to mention the long term economic well-being of the United States.

However, there are always opportunities for improving policies- in the case of Cuba- seeking out approaches that make the people, and not the dictatorship, the priority. For example on August 4, 2011 the Obama Administration announced a ban on visas for people who the State Department finds have been involved in human rights violations. Unfortunately, since then we have seen that human rights violators of the Castro regime are immigrating to the United States. If this ban were applied vigorously to the hardline elements of the Cuban regime it would be positive step that would protect dissidents by holding abusers accountable and providing a penalty, but this ban also needs to be expanded to follow the path taken by the European Union when dealing with the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Banning the relatives of the hard line elements of the dictatorship from visiting the United States would create greater pressures on the regime for change.

Unfortunately, what has gone on in practice is that the children and relatives of the hard liners have an easy time obtaining visas to the United States while the families of dissidents have a more difficult time. That needs to change for their to be hope that the President's Cuba policy have a positive outcome. Policy makers should take a closer look at Burma were a principled policy that included sanctions moved things in a positive direction.

Easing Restraints on Castro Dictatorship Has Meant More Repression

Laura Inés Pollán Toledo and Aung San Suu Kyi

Damien Cave of The New York Times has written an article titled "Easing of Restraints in Cuba Renews Debate on U.S. Embargo" The essence of the anti-sanctions position in the story is made by Carlos Saladrigas:

“Maintaining this embargo, maintaining this hostility, all it does is strengthen and embolden the hard-liners,” said Carlos Saladrigas, a Cuban exile and co-chairman of the Cuba Study Group in Washington, which advocates engagement with Cuba. “What we should be doing is helping the reformers.” 

 The thesis put forth by Mr. Saladrigas is that lifting sanctions would weaken and dissuade hardliners while helping reformers. Over the past four years the Obama Administration has loosened economic sanctions in Cuba. If  Mr. Saladrigas's argument is correct then one should see that reformist elements in the regime are asserting themselves and winning policy discussions. That has not been the case. On the human rights front the situation has deteriorated.

Furthermore looking beyond Cuba to China, Vietnam and Burma one is presented with a cautionary tale on lifting sanctions unconditionally. In China and Vietnam the United States lifted sanctions unconditionally and have de-linked human rights considerations from economic considerations. The result has been a deterioration of human rights standards in both countries. On the other hand in Burma where sanctions were maintained the military junta, after years of trying to manipulate its way out from under them has had to recognize the political opposition and provide a space for them in Burma's parliament. Things are still far from perfect but there is hope that serious and permanent reforms are underway. The ability of Aung San Suu Kyi to travel in and out of her country and run for public office is a positive sign. The ability for an independent press to begin to operate in Burma following decades of systematic censorship and control is another positive sign.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been clear about the importance of sanctions and of confronting those that would engage the dictatorship of Burma at the expense of the human rights of the Burmese people:

Investment that only goes to enrich an already wealthy elite bent on monopolizing both economic and political power cannot contribute toward égalité and justice — the foundation stones for a sound democracy. I would therefore like to call upon those who have an interest in expanding their capacity for promoting intellectual freedom and humanitarian ideals to take a principled stand against companies that are doing business with the Burmese military regime. Please use your liberty to promote ours.

What have we witnessed in Cuba over the past four years? The death under suspicious circumstances of national opposition figures such as Laura Inés Pollán Toledo on October 14, 2011 and Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas on July 22, 2012. Increased violence and detentions of nonviolent activists. An American citizen arrested and sentenced to 15 years in a Cuban prison for attempting to provide internet access to the local Jewish community in Cuba. The Obama Administration has continued its policy of extending a hand to the Cuban regime and has little to show for it except more repression and the deaths of high profile activists. There is no reason to suppose that further unilateral concessions will lead to a different outcome.

Prominent Cuban American businessmen have spoken out against unconditionally lifting sanctions in Cuba stating "that, absent the dismantling of the totalitarian apparatus on the island, along with the unconditional release of all political prisoners and the restoration of fundamental human rights, there should be no U.S. unilateral concessions to the Castro regime." They share the same position as Aung San Suu Kyi which is that it is unprincipled for companies to do business with a dictatorship. Things are improving in Burma on the human rights front while worsening in China and Vietnam. Linking human rights with economic engagement has been a winning formula in Burma and can be so as well in Cuba.