Telesur English: US Planned to Use Biological Warfare Against Cuba

The US has over the past few days released thousands of previously classified documents relating to JFK. I think this has mostly been of interested to that part of the parapolitics/ conspiracy theory crowd, who are skeptical of the official explanation of Kennedy’s assassination. But there’s also been some very disturbing revelations about America’s strategy for dealing with Cuba after Fidel Castro’s revelation overthrew the corrupt and brutal Bautista dictatorship.

This clip from Telesur English is less than a minute long. But it reveals that the Americans were at one time considering using biological weapons – that’s germ warfare to you and me – against Cuba’s crops. This would have caused mass starvation. In the end the plan was dropped because they feared that it could spread to America, and were also afraid of their scheme being traced back to the American government.

This is just one of long line of plots and schemes the Americans devised over the decades for trying to oust Castro and overthrow the Communist regime in Cuba. The video states that this plan was thought up when the Cuban regime was trying to improve conditions in the country for everyone. There are serious human rights issues in Cuba, but roughly, that’s correct. Conditions for ordinary, working Cubans have been improved immensely by the Communists, despite decades of being blockaded by the Americans.

This is in very stark contrast to the Bautista regime, which kept the majority of Cubans in grinding poverty for the benefit of the big plantation owners and industrialists with the support of Washington.

The attempts of the American government to overthrow Castro and reintroduce capitalism into Cuba are yet just another part of America’s long campaign in Latin America and elsewhere to overthrow liberal and left-wing regimes, which may not even have been Communist or even Socialist, if they threatened American corporate power. The only difference is that while they were successful in British Guiana, Guatemala, Chile and much of the rest of the Continent, Cuba successfully resisted them with the aid of the Soviets.

Mark Twain: American Anti-Imperialist

Mark Twain is truly one of the giants of American literature. Millions of children throughout the world have been brought up on Tow Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, though he wrote much, much more, all with his warm, dry wit. I can remember reading his travel book, The Innocents Abroad, at college, which describes his adventures touring Europe, with its wry observations of the countries, ships and hotels he journey through. His folksy style has become one of the fundamental characteristics of America’s image. Way back in the 1980s, for example, the cartoon strip, Bloom County, had two of its characters, Milo and Owen Wendelle Jones lying down, looking up at the night’s sky and arguing whether the universe was created or ‘just made’, just like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

What is less well known is that Twain was a fierce critic of American imperialism. At the end of the 19th century the doctrine of ‘Manifest Destiny’ led America into a war with Spain for the remains of the latter’s possessions in the New World. Spain was defeated, and a victorious America took over the former colonies of Guam, Cuban, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. These conquered territories were not colonies, however, but designated as ‘protectorates’.

Twain was appalled at his country’s transformation into an imperial power, and formed the Anti-Imperialist League of the United States to protest this. He used his characteristic dry wit to satirise the US’ new status of imperial overlord and oppressor. Of the changes to be made to the Philippine flag, he said

it is easily managed. We can have a special one – our states do it: we can just have our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.

There’s an attitude in parts of the American Right that sees any criticism of America and its global imperial power as coming from a deep-seated hatred of America, ignoring the fact that some of the greatest figures of American history and literature, like Twain, have been sharply critical of such policies.