Vol. 81/No. 39 October 23, 2017
US gov’t uses pretext of ‘mystery illness’ to attack Cuba
While admitting Washington has no evidence that Cuba had anything to do with any reported medical conditions, Tillerson claimed the decision was made “due to Cuba’s failure to take appropriate steps to protect our diplomats.”
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez responded to the U.S. action and slanders the same day. “Cuba has never perpetrated nor will it perpetrate attacks of any kind against diplomatic officials nor their families, without exception,” he said. “Nor has it permitted nor will it permit its territories to be used by third parties for this purpose.”
Regardless of the depth of the political differences between the workers and farmers of revolutionary Cuba and the propertied capitalist rulers in the U.S., and the brutal economic war Washington wages against the Cuban people, the Cuban government has always fought for normal diplomatic relations between the two countries. Washington broke off such relations in 1961 and only began steps to re-establish them in 2015.
Tillerson has said the U.S. government will “continue to maintain diplomatic relations with Cuba and will continue to cooperate with Cuba.” But with the U.S. Embassy down to just “emergency personnel,” the State Department announced it had ceased honoring a 1994 agreement with Havana to grant visas to some 20,000 Cubans a year who want to emigrate to the United States.
The U.S. government claims that the first “incident” took place last November and the most recent one in August this year. In its first reports on the alleged attacks, the State Department said that one of the “victims” had a serious blood disorder. As late as Sept. 22 it said some had “concussions.” But by Sept. 29 the only symptoms the department listed were “ear complaints, hearing loss, dizziness, headache, fatigue, cognitive issues, and difficulty sleeping,” reported by 21 embassy personnel.
A covert weapon ‘that doesn’t exist’
The New York Times Aug. 11, in the first public report of the State Department allegations, wrote — with not a shred of evidence — that the illnesses “appeared to be caused by some kind of sonic wave machine.”
The Verge, a webzine dedicated to examining “how technology will change life in the future,” decided to look into the charge. After State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said that no “piece of equipment” that might be causing the symptoms had been discovered, the Verge pointed out Sept. 16, “That could be because a weapon that covertly uses sound energy to injure people, doesn’t actually exist.”
Noting that the Cuban government would have no reason to attack U.S. diplomats, the Washington Post came up with its own theories of who could be behind such attacks, from a “rogue faction” in Cuba to North Korea. “Perhaps Moscow is trying to drive a wedge between communist Cuba and the West?” it asked. “Or, most unsatisfying: Maybe it’s no one at all.”
Whatever the reason, the U.S. government and the media that promote its foreign policy is using the allegations as an excuse to step up attacks against the Cuban Revolution.
Twisting reality on its head
Lack of evidence didn’t stop the Post from running an editorial titled, “Cuba Plays Dumb in Attacks on American Diplomats.” Twisting reality on its head, the Post editors state that “it begs disbelief that Cuba does not know what is going on. … If Cuba sincerely wants better relations with the United States, it could start by revealing who did this.”
At a State Department “background briefing” Oct. 3, the Post’s Carol Morello asked if they had ruled out the view of some physicians that the symptoms could reflect “some degree of psychosomatic mass hysteria going on.”
The answer? “The symptoms that we’ve previously described are occurring.”
“So if you don’t know what caused it, who did it, and the symptoms are different among victims,” asked CNN reporter Michelle Kosinski, “why are you calling it an attack?”
“There’s no other conclusion that we could draw,” answered the State Department official.
Despite the bizarre nature of the charges, the Cuban government has patiently and repeatedly offered to cooperate “seriously, expertly and immediately.” For the first time in more than 50 years, it allowed the FBI to come to Havana and conduct investigations. It has implemented extra measures to protect U.S. Embassy personnel and their families.
U.S. officials have refused to cooperate. They wouldn’t allow Cuban investigators to visit residences where most of the incidents allegedly occurred.
And the State Department has not allowed Cuban doctors to examine any of the alleged victims or even talk directly to the doctors who treated them, Rodríguez said.
Unlike the alleged illnesses of U.S. diplomats in Havana, there is nothing mysterious about the long history of U.S. attacks on Cuba’s workers and farmers ever since they overthrew the U.S.-backed Batista dictatorship in 1959. From the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion to assassination attempts on Fidel Castro to the ongoing U.S. economic war against Cuba and occupation of Guantánamo, Washington has never given up hope that it can overthrow the Cuban Revolution.
Nonetheless, Cuban workers and farmers continue to favor “a respectful road based on sovereign equality to deal with our differences and to coexist in a civilized manner to the benefit of both peoples and countries,” Rodríguez said.
Related articles:
Revolution in Cuba shows road forward for workers
‘Cuban Revolution will never yield sovereignty, principles’
Díaz-Canel: ‘Che says you can’t trust imperialism’
‘Cuba’s revolution acts with the will of the entire people’
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