October 4, 2023

It’s already out of the headlines. But its message still holds. We’re discussing the incendiary devices terrorists threw at the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C.

The message is obvious: There is something off-kilter if the world’s most dangerous rogue state −− headquartered in Washington −− can put Cuba on the list of “terrorist” countries, since Cuba extends more humanitarian solidarity per capita to the rest of the world than any other country.

This contradiction is a point to ponder, especially for anyone who dwells within the belly of the beast. Those who do live in the U.S. are subject to a Niagara of pro-imperialist propaganda, fogging their vision, depriving them of air to breathe and room to think. They might miss the point.

So those who got the message have the duty to repeat it, to share it with others.

No one representing socialist Cuba has done anything that in any way resembles a terrorist act, that is, an armed assault against civilians to achieve a political goal.

Socialist Cuba does offer trained and dedicated medical volunteers who have served in all corners of the world where disasters have occurred, sometimes at the risk of their own lives. Cuban medical workers have treated nuclear poisoning at Chernobyl, rescued victims of earthquakes and floods in Pakistan and Haiti and assisted with care for COVID-19 patients in many countries including Italy, in Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa.

They have saved the lives of thousands. With cataract operations they have restored the sight of more people throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.

Compare this with the acts of the U.S. government, working through the Pentagon and the CIA. This regime has invaded or terror bombed, without provocation, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya −− in chronological order, tearing these countries apart, killing millions and sowing misery and chaos. And this is but a partial list.

Then, because despite its declining power, this same rogue state not only blockades Cuba, it has the unmitigated gall to place Cuba on a list that prevents other countries from trading with Cuba, thus making ordinary Cubans suffer.

It’s a crime that firebombs can be thrown against the Cuban Embassy. It is an admission of official U.S. participation in this crime that no one has been caught. But it’s hardly the worst crime U.S. imperialism has committed against the Cuban people. To blockade the Cuban economy, to slander Cuba as “terrorist” is a far worse crime.

Last year when the United Nations General Assembly voted on whether to lift the blockade of Cuba, lifting the blockade won, by 185-2. Only Israel joined the U.S. to vote against Cuba. Two rogue states. And the governments in the other 185 countries are convinced that it’s nonsense to call Cuba a terrorist state.

So if the attack on the Cuban Embassy has brought wider attention to the blatant lie used to make Cuban people suffer, let’s use that attention to mobilize to get Cuba taken off the list. There is already a petition to demand just that. It has gotten more than a third of the way towards the goal of one million signatures.

To sign and learn more of the effort, visit letcubalive.info.