Recent Appearances...

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Recent Appearances...

Government Corruption

Hakeem Jeffries implicated in the Diddy Trial

2025-05-16

[PUBLISH.TWITTER]

Hakeem Jeffries implicated in the Diddy Trial:

According to testimony, Jeffries was a recurring guest of honor at covert "Communist Party Freak Offs," themed around exaggerated communist nostalgia.

Sources familiar with the investigation say the parties began with theatrical,… pic.twitter.com/mAJiciLNwO
— AmericanPapaBear (@AmericaPapaBear) May 15, 2025

…began with theatrical, and controversial acts, including staged flag burning performances meant to lampoon Cold War hysteria. Diddy claimed Jeffries often insisted on the presence of young Hispanic male performers costumed as flamboyant versions of Fidel Castro, complete with glitter covered fatigues and choreographed cigar routines.

This is going to get way more crazy before it’s all over!

Source: Newsmax
True or false, don't expect anything to ever come of it.

Who knew Dollar Tree Obama was a P Diddy diddler? pic.twitter.com/sspMJ8tudG
— Mike Engleman🇺🇲 (@RealHickory) May 15, 2025

Link

Africa Subsaharan

Africa's Gold: Why There Were 50 Attempts on the Pro-Russian President

2025-04-28

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Leonid Tsukanov

[REGNUM] Recently, Burkina Faso's intelligence services uncovered a major plot against the country's leader, Ibrahim Traore. According to their data, the "engine" of the planned coup was to be former soldiers and officers of the Burkinabe army who had fled to Côte d'Ivoire and had not accepted Traore's power.

The thwarted coup is interesting not so much for the attempt to liquidate the country's transitional president (who, in terms of the number of assassination attempts he has survived, is gradually approaching Fidel Castro's record), but for its hidden motives.

In fact, the hunt for Traore is part of the struggle for the country's main resource - gold, in terms of production volumes of which Burkina Faso is considered the leader.

And both internal and external forces are involved in the matter.

A SLAP IN THE FACE TO THE FRENCH
Burkina Faso is one of the top five gold miners on the continent and produces, according to various estimates, from 70 to 90 tons of precious metals per year.

The gold mining industry accounts for a fifth of government revenue and about 75% of exports, making it a constant battleground for foreign powers.

Before the 2022 coup, most of the gold mining market was divided between Western players, with the largest assets controlled by British, French-Canadian and Australian firms.

France, although not actively operating mines directly (except for cooperation with Canada's Societe Semafo and Britain's Endeavour Mining), had extensive subcontracts to supply mining companies with goods and services. Players such as Bolloré, Total and Orange collaborated with almost all foreign firms.

In addition, Paris actively took advantage of the previous government of Roque Kaboré's focus on the Elysee Palace and had a virtual monopoly on services in the field of geological exploration.

The French were informed in advance about all the promising mining sites and could choose which sites to offer to competitors (through official Ouagadougou) and which to hold on to until better times.

Thus, even without having direct control over many mines, it was France that determined the vector of development of the gold mining industry in Burkina Faso.

However, after the military government led by Ibrahim Traore came to power, the influence of French business in the country was shaken.

The new authorities completely broke the old production chains, leaving French contractors out of work.

In addition, by the beginning of 2025, some major mines (including Boungou and Wahgnion, which Paris had long had its eye on) were nationalized, and the country's first refinery was founded.

Thanks to the latter, the Burkina Faso authorities were able to process gold ore at home without sending it abroad in its “raw” form.

By the way, the localization of refining production became another slap in the face for France: now its factories (through which gold mined by Canadians and the British in Burkina Faso passed) were less in demand.

The remaining foreign players in the country's gold market were forced to comply with the new rules in order to preserve their assets. However, as subsequent events showed, not everyone was ready to put up with the course of the Traore government.

ASSASSINATION FROM THE PAST
At the beginning of the outgoing week, an urgent news report was broadcast on central television in Burkina Faso.

The transitional government's authorized security minister, Mahamadou Sana, said that an attempted military coup had been foiled in the country. According to Sana, the conspirators were a group of current and former soldiers who worked together with "terrorist leaders" and were preparing an assassination attempt on Traore.

The news of the assassination attempt itself was not unexpected: over the past three years, the transitional leader has survived at least a dozen coups and about fifty assassination attempts (if the local press is to be believed). Of these, barely half have been reliably confirmed.

The foreign trail of the latest assassination attempt led to Côte d'Ivoire, considered one of France's last outposts in Africa. And so Burkina Faso public opinion quickly linked the failed rebellion with the revenge of foreign industrialists offended by the reforms.

They also remembered the first leader of the anti-French rebellion of 2022, the “black lieutenant colonel” Paul-Henri Sandago Damiba, whom Traoré and his supporters accused of secret ties to the Elysee Palace and removed a few months after the victory of the putschists.

After the defeat, Damimba fled to Togo, and from there (according to some sources) moved to Côte d'Ivoire, where he established contacts with Burkina Faso's émigré circles, including pro-French forces. With his return to the political scene, favorable prospects opened up for them.

Given that one of the points of Damimba's presidential program was the restructuring of the gold mining sector with tighter controls on foreign mine owners (but without revising the powers of contractors, which would have left part of the market under French control), he looked like a more advantageous party for the Elysee Palace than Traore, who had established himself in power.

In fact, the Elysee Palace was given a chance to hide the violent redistribution of the Burkina Faso gold market under the guise of an apparatus struggle within the anti-French junta.

BENEFIT FOR THE CHINESE
The obvious “French flair” of the exposed conspiracy hits the reputation of not only France, but also all Western players in the gold mining industry of Burkina Faso, prompting the Burkinabe intelligence services to take a closer look at them.

Against this backdrop, Chinese business, which until 2022 had almost no assets in the country’s gold market, feels extremely comfortable.

Now, Chinese giants (like Daqing SARL, which operates in the Central African Republic), taking advantage of the confusion of their competitors, are gradually looking at promising gold mining areas and promoting their vision of restructuring the industry.

Beijing's reputation as the "main partner" of African countries is also playing in its favor. Chinese companies have already firmly established themselves in the markets of other countries in the "anti-French belt" (Mali, Niger), where they enjoy the support of the transitional authorities.

Their full-fledged entry into the markets of Burkina Faso is, rather, a matter of time.

Link

Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Disposal of satellites. Will Kyiv repeat the fate of Saigon and Kabul

2025-03-16

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Artemy Sharapov

[REGNUM] In just one week, the new White House team has changed its attitude towards its junior partners from Kiev twice. For now, the Donald Trump administration has changed its anger to mercy, once again “opening the tap” of arms and intelligence supplies. But many things now indicate that the presumption of impunity for the current Kiev regime no longer works. It seems that military support will be provided only for “defensive purposes.” Speeches about support until the “complete liberation of Ukraine” have been put on the back burner.

This somersault in Washington-Kiev relations has caused a stir in the world. Thus, the example of Ukraine was used in his recent address by the official representative of the Ansar Allah movement (an organization of Yemeni Houthis), Yahya Sari, addressing Saudi Arabia, which is in conflict with the Houthis. "Learn a lesson from the fate of Ukraine and do not rely on the United States," Sari warned, implying that in the future the United States may leave not only Kiev without support, but also its partners in the Middle East.

However, the example of Ukraine is not something special. On the contrary, over the past decades, the United States has proven itself to be a very unreliable ally. And if tomorrow the States demand, for example, the resignation of Volodymyr Zelensky or even his arrest, there is nothing surprising about it. Because Washington does not like "junior partners" who start to think too much about themselves.

THE GENERALISSIMO WHO WAS LUCKY
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, led to the United States entering World War II. At first, the United States did not intervene in the European theater of war, focusing its efforts entirely on the war in Asia. Here, America decided to rely on the government of the Republic of China, led by the nationalist Kuomintang party under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek.

At one time, Chiang Kai-shek had established himself as a consistent anti-communist, and his armed forces were waging war against the Japanese army. Therefore, the United States launched a program of supplying weapons to the National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomintang and training officers. With the end of World War II and the deterioration of relations between the former allies of the United States and the USSR, the United States placed a special bet on Chiang Kai-shek, seeking to prevent the communist Mao Zedong from coming to power in China.

In 1946, a mission of American military advisers was deployed in China. The United States armed and trained more than 500,000 soldiers and officers of Chiang Kai-shek's army.

The Pentagon provided the Kuomintang with thousands of tanks, fighter jets, and even strategic bombers, often piloted by American pilots in Chinese uniforms. According to official data, the cost of American aid to Chiang Kai-shek’s government from 1946 to 1949 is estimated at $4.4 billion — a monstrous sum at the time, equivalent to $72 billion today (for comparison, the volume of US military aid to Ukraine during Joe Biden’s entire presidency was $62 billion).

The Chiang Kai-shek regime sanctioned the establishment of American military bases on Chinese territory, including on the island of Taiwan.

However, the Communists ultimately won the Chinese Civil War. Why did this happen? On the one hand, the answer is obvious: the Communists turned out to be better soldiers than the Kuomintang. But the conflict between the Generalissimo and the United States is also cited as one of the reasons for Chiang Kai-shek's fall.

By 1947, the Chinese leader realized that he was being relegated to a secondary role in the global confrontation with the USSR. Washington practically demanded that command over the Chinese troops be handed over to the American military. Chiang Kai-shek tried to argue with his senior partners and paid the price. The US government was not impressed by the junior partners' demarche and began to recall its advisers from China, and the civil war front predictably collapsed. In 1949, Chiang Kai-shek's government was forced to flee to Taiwan.

At the same time, US President Harry Truman publicly stated on January 5, 1950 that American troops would not intervene if the Chinese communists decided to land on Taiwan to finally defeat the Kuomintang forces. Washington decided to reconsider its attitude to the situation only because of the outbreak of the Korean War. The US Navy's Seventh Fleet was sent to the Taiwan Strait, which essentially saved Chiang Kai-shek, who later headed the "Chinese Republic" until 1975.

ELIMINATING THE UNRELIABLE LEE SEUNG
Less fortunate was another friend of the United States, the first president of South Korea, Lee Seung-man.

He took over the Republic of Korea in 1949. With what was essentially dictatorial powers, the president suppressed the communist opposition and sanctioned the deployment of a group of American “instructors” in the country. At first, there was talk of 200–300 American troops, but at its peak, the American contingent numbered 30–50 thousand people. Despite the fact that the United States supported South Korea in the war against the DPRK, directly intervening in the conflict, Seoul gained nothing from this support.

Syngman Rhee's attempts to pursue an independent policy led to the United States accusing the president of political repression (which had previously been overlooked) in 1960. Then, externally initiated events began in the country, known as the "April Revolution". Syngman Rhee was overthrown and fled the country.

However, the most obvious example of US cynicism in foreign policy is, of course, South Vietnam.

"THE US HAS NO ESTABLISHED POINT OF VIEW"
In 1954, local politician Ngo Dinh Diem became the first president of the Republic of Vietnam. As in China and Korea before that, in Vietnam the United States primarily focused on training local armed forces to confront the communists. American advisers implemented a program to create a Vietnamese army of 100,000 troops and 150,000 reservists. By the end of 1955, the number of American military advisers in the South Vietnamese army reached 350 people. By 1960, the mission of American advisers increased to 700 people, and a year later, South Vietnam became the largest recipient of American military aid.

In particular, the United States provided the Vietnamese army with hundreds of military aircraft and helicopters, making the Air Force of the Republic of Vietnam the sixth in the world in terms of the number of modern aircraft. In 1962, the authorized strength of the South Vietnamese army was again increased to 200,000 people.

But Ngo Dinh Diem turned out to be too inconvenient a figure for the United States. The president sought to pursue an independent policy for the country and, worst of all, proposed to resolve the conflict with communist North Vietnam by political means. Therefore, the United States decided to support one of the president’s opponents, General Duong Vang Minh. On the morning of November 1, 1963, a military coup took place in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City). Rebel soldiers surrounded the government residence. Ngo Dinh Diem managed to call the American embassy and ask for help. In response, the ambassador stated that “it is now 4:30 a.m. in Washington and the U.S. government has not yet formed a point of view on this issue.” The president tried to escape, but was arrested and killed.

The subsequent decade of South Vietnam's history was marked by a series of military coups that took place with the direct participation of the United States. Ultimately, the state, which had become a direct puppet of Washington, was unable to cope with the ideologically motivated communists. In March 1975, the Republic of Vietnam ceased to exist.

The list of politicians "written off" by the United States includes, for example, the President of the Philippines Ferdinand Marcos, who started out as the "best friend of the United States" and was then overthrown as a result of the "color revolution" in 1986. The United States did not help either the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista or the Iranian Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi - one was overthrown by Fidel Castro's guerrillas in 1959, the other - during the Islamic Revolution of 1979. But these are old stories. Surely, it is impossible for the United States to abandon its allies in the 21st century?

DOGS MORE IMPORTANT THAN AFGHAN DEMOCRACY
Here, the very recent events in Afghanistan come to mind. It all started out quite standardly. In 2001, the United States launched Operation Enduring Freedom, which ended with the fall of the Taliban government* and the creation of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, de facto under an American protectorate. A large group of the US army was deployed in Afghanistan, and the Americans also actively approached the formation of local armed forces. By 2020, the number of armed forces in Afghanistan was estimated at 200 thousand people.

The US paid for the production and delivery of about a hundred Mi-8/17 helicopters, and also transferred dozens of UH-60 and MD-530F helicopters to the Afghan Air Force. Throughout the operation in Afghanistan, Washington emphasized the importance of cooperation with Kabul in the field of security and the fight against terrorism. Films and commercials were shot glorifying American support for the Afghan people.

However, circumstances then changed and the US decided that it was no longer worth supporting its dear allies. In February 2020, an agreement was reached between the US government and the Taliban*, under which Washington committed to withdrawing its troops from the country by May 1, 2021.

The events that followed became widely known thanks to media coverage and social media. The withdrawal of American troops led to the collapse of the Afghan government of Ashraf Ghani, who, however, managed to escape from Kabul in time. But the thousands of ordinary Afghans who had worked for the US military for many years were less fortunate - there was not even a place for them on American military aircraft. Instead, the Pentagon flew out service dogs. Subsequently, a wave of murders and reprisals against former military personnel swept across Afghanistan, primarily special forces officers who were most closely associated with the US.

Although the US has not abandoned its support for Ukraine, it is becoming obvious that Washington will no longer invest in the "promotion" of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The wording "maintain defense capability" translated from American means "not to let it finally fold." At the same time, historical practice shows that the leader of the country, who was yesterday the best friend and partner, tomorrow can be forgotten, written off or simply shot.

On the other hand, experience also shows that active military cooperation with the United States does not always guarantee victory in a confrontation with external enemies. And even on the contrary: today's successes achieved with American weapons may turn into betrayal and defeat tomorrow.

Link

-Short Attention Span Theater-

Dreaming of My Fidel Castro's Birthday in Chicago

2025-03-07

[JOHNKASSNEWS - article by Pat Hickey]

Yep, I seem to recall the bearded presence of the future dictator of Red Cuba, when my uncle Bart brought him home to meet the family on November 8, 1959. I had just turned seven at 10 AM and my Dad was at one of his three jobs ( Illinois Medicals Psychiatric Center, The Beverly Theatre, or Home for the Blind) – Ike was about to part the White House, the White Sox won the American League Pennant, but the LA Dodgers took the Series, I was in second grade, JFK was a Catholic running for President and Castro visited the US.in 1959. Castro went to zoos and ranches in NYC, DC, Texas and Canada and generally hung around with Chicago Tribune's Latin Affairs Correspondent Jules Dubois.

Dubois had been a Panama suit and hat reporter in Panama and later became an Army spook during WWII. After the war, Dubois worked to overthrow governments in Central America and also hated Cuban dictator and Mafia puppet Batista.

Bart S. Hickey was a magnificent man.

My Uncle Bart was the tallest of my dad's six brothers and as Mary Garvey once said, ‘That Bart is strictly MGM.' Bart had been a Buck Sergeant in the Marines during the Korean War and afterward worked as a Stationary Engineer. I am given to understand that during one of his not too infrequent visits to Mr. Kelly's that Uncle Bart pal-ed up with Col. Jules Dubois.

The Colonel and Bart hit it off and met up for beers periodically. A few weeks after the Sox lost the World Series, the two ran into one another and met for steaks at Stockyard Inn. Dubois told Bart about the guy who had kicked Batista and The Outfit out of Cuba in January and had charmed the britches off of the Manhattan swells and the likes of Lenny Bernstein. Castro had visited the States on his own, in full beard and Army fatigues many times. He was quietly encamped at The Blackstone Hotel.

Uncle Bart cried Bullshit.

The Colonel protested, "On the Square, Batty. Want to meet him?"

It was arranged. On November 8th, 1959, Fidel Castro wiped his feet on the mud mat in the hall of the Hickey Manse on Marshfield, right here in Chicago.

My Granny, Nora Hickey, was ministering to the "shower of bastards." This was two scores of cousins all of baby boom. Granny welcomed her son and his friends and presented the trio with tea and Lorna Doone cookies, in the living room. The place was generally off-limits to kids who were trooped in the dining room, kitchen or the back basement.

All of my cousins were there but Eddie who was a freshman football player at Notre Dame and it was my birthday; besides, which meant cake. The cake was from the bakery on 79th & Laflin, and it was okay but for the coconut flakes, which I have hated with a generous passion – Lo these many years. Cutting off perfectly good frosting because of coconut flakes is just wrong. Most of the cousins did not seem to mind and swallowed the stuff without so much as a blink.

In walked Uncle Bart and two guys – one a geezer and the other dressed in Army clothes and beards. In the left hand of future dictator and sworn enemy of America was brown paper bag full of beards and paper Army hats, purchased by Uncle Bart at Riley's Trick Shop at 79th and Carpenter. Marine Sgt. Hickey intoned, "Split-tails and goofs, quiet down. This is Col. Jules Dubois and he's a pal and this is his pal, Fidel. Fellas, this is my brother Pat's boy –Patsheen -he's what? Sixteen?"

"Seven, Uncle Bart," I corrected.

"Did I ask you, wise guy? Close your hole and give your ears a chance until you're talked to . . . it's his Birthday, Chief. What did you bring for the kid?"

Into the excitement and up from the basement came FATHER – Grandpa Hickey, formerly of Crinnie Hill, Castleisland County Kerry, a founder of Engineers Local 399, father of seven boys and six girls and a pioneering rage-aholic and unfiltered vocalist. " Bateen, who's your pals, so? I heard ye come in the front door when the back way is good enough for Monsignor McMahon and most Christians. Hello, I'm Lawrence Hickey, Bart's father, like the shtory."

Like what story?

A Kerry man pronounces Bart as Bayart, said fast and says ‘Like the Shhtory' for no good reason. BTW – Bat is short for Bart, which is short for Bartholomew, and it's diminutive in Irish would be Bat-een, like I am Padsheen, or Patsheen. The Hickey clan from Crinnie also known as the Batty-Lars, due to the fact that our tribe always names two male off-spring Larry, or Bart.

Grandpa took in a full eyeful of Fidel Castro.

"Fwhat are you doing here in my living room dressed up like Tom Barry's Flying Column?" quizzed the original Crinnie Rage-aholic.

Uncle Bart answered, " He's Castro, Father (with undiminished irony) – the guy on Time Magazine from Cuba."

"That's near Florida, so?"

It was agreed.

Hands were shook all around and Fidel Castro was seated at the dining room table next to our Chicago Pater Familias – " How's things with that crook Batista off in the jungles somewhere?"

Col. Jules Dubois translated for the English challenged revolutionist – Castro lit up like one of his virgin-thigh rolled cheroots – " Ah Bueno, Senor Hickey! Muy bien! Las personas que saquearon mi pueblo para este año madres Mañana no será bienvenido en Cuba. Al igual que los Medias Blancas y la Sra. Rigné, Ha, ha, ha! "

" So, that's the way of it." A County Kerry declarative/interrogative sentence answer.

On it went, I suppose, in this manner, until the large brown paper bag was opened with my birthday present from the liberator and future dictator of Cuba.

We all got beards and imitation Army caps made like those paper painter's caps.

Some haul, huh?

Uncle Bart decided to put El Jefe on the spot,

"That's all you got for the Kid? It's his birthday for Crissakes. Dig, Fidel, and come up with some folding money for the little guy." This was dutifully translated by Col. Dubois.

Castro feigned a smile of resignation and oiled these words in his native tongue through his gums and whiskers, "What is this? A Capitalist trap? You Yankees! Very Well, here is five Gringo dollars for your homely nephew with the gapped teeth. I am out of here! Say good-bye to your foul tempered Irish father. Basta Ya! Yanquis!"

Within a few months, Time Magazine's Boy, Castro, was locked in an embrace with Soviet Communism that still breathes lustily today. Alas, Fidel shed his mortal husk.

I got to tickle the real whiskers of Castro and pocket a 1959 value 5-$pot from a Commie and never really caught the desire to cut sugar cane.

Hey, it could have happened. Ask Uncle Bart and Jules Dubois. Oh, yeah. They're passed. So is Castro from what I hear.

Just a fun little read.

Link

Government Corruption

USAID has funded an organization that employs the daughter of Fidel Castro's intelligence chief

2025-02-13

[X]

.@USAID has funded an organization that employs the daughter of Fidel Castro's intelligence chief Manuel Piñeiro Losado. Her husband is Washington Post reporter Nick Miroff. @SecRubio @DOGE h/t to @JorgeDPL @LatAmFr https://t.co/Seh390kS74 pic.twitter.com/gy3jtZSNTa
— J Michael Waller (@JMichaelWaller) February 3, 2025

Link

Government Corruption

CIA declassified plan to carry out terrorist attacks against Americans

2025-01-28

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[Regnum] The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has declassified the Northwoods plan, which contains information about organizing terrorist attacks against Americans to justify the war against Cuba in the early 1960s. This was written about by the American publication Daily Mail.

"A 12-page report signed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 details a secret plan to carry out terrorist attacks against American citizens to justify war with Cuba in the 1960s," the publication states.

The Northwoods plan would have accused Cuba of carrying out terrorist attacks against the American people, followed by a war to overthrow the communist regime of Fidel Castro. The document described terrorist attacks against civilians in Florida or the bombing of an American warship at Guantanamo Bay.

"The plan included everything from spreading rumors to landing friendly Cubans in military uniforms, holding protests at military bases, and detonating ordnance inside facilities. The list also included a device to set planes on fire at an air base and sink a ship at the entrance to an unspecified base's harbor, then holding funerals for the supposed victims," the article also noted.

The publication specifies that then US President John Kennedy refused to carry out such an operation and was soon liquidated. And now, when the current US President Donald Trump demanded that the CIA data on Kennedy's assassination be declassified, new details of his mysterious murder have emerged.

As reported by the Regnum news agency, on January 26, the CIA also stated that the most likely cause of the COVID-19 pandemic was a leak in a research laboratory in Wuhan, China. At the same time, one of the reasons for the lack of a confirmed and clear position on the issue of origin could be possible retaliatory steps from China, which the United States does not want to face.

Link

Caribbean-Latin America

Elderly Tyrant Raul Castro Pounds Table in Anger at Cuban Communists' Incompetence

2024-12-21

No shoes I guess.
[Breitbart] Nonagenarian communist dictator of Cuba Raúl Castro appeared visibly upset at a recent Communist Party meeting, slamming his fist on a table in frustration at his officials’ incompetence, Cuban-focused outlets reported on Thursday.

Castro – who in reality continues to be the true dictator of Cuba since 2016 following the death of his brother, murderous dictator Fidel Castro – “retired” from politics in 2021, installing Miguel Díaz-Canel as the figurehead “president” of Cuba. The “retired” nonagenarian dictator was then “elected” to occupy a seat in the National Assembly in the regime’s sham March 2023 election.

Videos circulating on social media show Castro, 93, participating alongside other lawmakers in a new legislative session of the communist parliament centered around finding “solutions” to the problems caused by more than six decades of disastrous communist policies, which have pushed Cuba to the brink of complete ruin.

In the videos, the visibly upset dictator slammed a table that was in front of him as he ordered his regime underlings, with “hand high and standing, and fists clenched, to face the problems with depth.”

Cuban outlets reported on Thursday that Castro has increased his number of public appearances after rumors circulated in recent months that his health was waning or that he had died. Thursday’s reports suggest that Castro’s increased participation in official events alongside other members of his regime’s top brass seeks to send a “message of continuity and stability” as Cuba’s Communist Party undergoes a grave crisis.

In addition to his participation at the Cuban parliament, Castro reportedly attended other public events throughout the week, including a meeting with the “Cuban Five,” a group of spies who infiltrated the Cuban exile community in the United States and are widely considered responsible for providing information to the Castro regime that led to its killing of four Americans in 1996.

The meeting between the Cuban dictator and the communist spies occurred as the Castro regime celebrated the tenth anniversary of the return of the spies to Cuba within the framework of the “Cuban Thaw,” a series of policies enacted by former U.S. President Barack Obama granting significant concessions to the Cuban communists.

During his participation at the communist parliamentary sessions, Cuban Prime Minister Manuel Marrero stated that it is “shameful” that Cuba — a sugarcane powerhouse before communism ruined its flagship industry — now has to import sugar. He did not, however, attribute any responsibility for the decline of Cuba’s sugarcane industry to the disastrous policies of the Castro regime.

“The army general [Raul Castro] told us that it would be a shame to have to import sugar, and we are going through that shame,” Marrero said, admitting difficulties in the current harvest season due to persisting “structural problems,” which hinder any possibility of immediate recovery.

“It is true that the lack of electricity and fuel has a very big impact on the process. However, a group of indications have been given to straighten out this harvest and maximize the results,” he continued.

According to Cuban state media, the communist lawmakers will wrap up the week-long parliamentary sessions on Friday before the Castro regime holds a “march of the combatant people” in front of the U.S. embassy in Havana in the afternoon to demand the United States end its “embargo” on Cuba and Cuba’s removal from the United States’ list of States Sponsors of Terrorism.

While the nonagenarian communist dictator is reportedly slated to participate in Friday’s parliamentary session, it remains unclear at press time if he will participate in his regime’s anti-U.S. rally.

Link

Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia

Leonid Ilyich's Mistake: How to Make the US President Resign

2024-08-10

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

by Dmitry Bavyrin
"There are people who hope that the President of the United States will give in to pressure and step down, but we are glad to note that you are not going to give them that satisfaction." With these words, conveyed in a 1974 letter through the ambassador, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev tried to support Richard Milhous Nixon, who was being pushed to resign by the Watergate scandal.

The General Secretary valued his American counterpart as a co-author of "détente": Nixon, like himself, was sincerely afraid of bringing the Cold War to a hot Third World War. They talked a lot, drank together, almost trusted each other - there was a "spark" between them, regardless of the General Secretary's famous kisses. But Brezhnev miscalculated: Nixon was "left" after all.

Leonid Ilyich’s mistake is forgivable because it is common.

Few believed that one of the most popular, successful and powerful US presidents in history could be brought to heel. But in just a few months, Nixon had become a despised bigwig and antagonist who is still casually kicked around at home and who was only spared jail by a pardon from his successor.

Many colossi in history have fallen from conspiracies - sometimes exposed, more often suspected.

Behind the first and so far last voluntary resignation of a US president, which happened exactly 50 years ago, there still seems to loom the world government, the Masonic lodge, the powerful handful and other “real masters of America” who overthrew Nixon either for “détente” or for withdrawing troops from Vietnam.

But the thread in any case stretches back to unscrupulous toilet paper manufacturers who left their mark back in the distant forties.

While the Soviets were trying to stop the Nazi advance on Moscow, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission was working on another problem: Was the Red Cross brand of toilet paper intentionally misleading consumers into believing that its product was affiliated with the same Red Cross that helps the wounded? U.S. law prohibits that.

A young, ambitious official named Mark Felt was tasked with clarifying this issue.

After speaking with hundreds of consumers, he says he came to three conclusions. First, most Americans used toilet paper. Second, most Americans didn't like being asked questions about toilet paper. Third, he—a J.D. and former senator aide—was doing something wrong with his life.

With the Pipifax plot unsolved, Felt decided to change his life and applied to the FBI, where he was assigned to catch German spies.

He made a brilliant career, entered the inner circle of the Bureau's creator and the most influential person in the United States, Edgar Hoover, at some point even becoming his right hand. This allowed Felt, after the death of the patriarch, to become the heir to his files with compromising information on the Washington regional committee and the first deputy director of the FBI. However, he was not the director.

But Felt became a secret informant for The Washington Post, hiding for years under the pseudonym Deep Throat, thanks to whom a minor incident in the Watergate hotel complex became a national scandal and Richard Nixon's "Koschei needle."

He later explained this as an impulse of a lover of truth, which few people believe.

According to a more widespread version, Felt was taking resentful revenge for himself and for his father Hoover, who had a hostile relationship with Nixon, and the president took advantage of the director’s death to appoint his own man to head the Bureau, rather than Felt’s actual leader and ready-made successor.

The second version sounds logical, but there is a nuance.

Nixon appointee Louis Patrick Gray deliberately covered for Felt, who was in charge of internal security at the FBI and was looking for the source of the leak, that is, catching himself.

Moreover, Gray himself was ready to become Deep Throat for another newspaper, The New York Times, but the material about this was mysteriously not published.

At the same time, certain forces manipulated public opinion, successfully convincing Americans that they cared about what happened in Watergate.

But they didn't care: despite the scandal, Nixon was re-elected for a second term with an overall result of more than 60% and a clear victory in 49 states out of 50. This record has not been broken since then.

About six months before the election, a security guard at the Watergate office of the opposition Democratic Party called the police and reported a break-in for the purpose of robbery. For some reason, it was not the police who responded to the call, but FBI agents who, after searching the office, found a group of men with wiretapping equipment.

Hacking is a criminal offense, and two of the five arrested had ties to the Nixon campaign. But at first, the incident did not seem outrageous.

First, no one was hurt. Second, politics is known to be a dirty and spy-intensive business. Third, many believed that Nixon's opponent and Democratic candidate George McGovern was a crypto-communist who needed to be watched 24 hours a day.

But then the arrested men were allegedly identified as two of the three vagabonds - almost folklore characters who were seen near the site of Kennedy's assassination.

This version, which "took the covers off" the main political assassination in the United States in the 20th century, has been repeatedly refuted, but it riveted the nation's attention to the seemingly boring trial of the Watergate burglars. And Deep Throat's benefit performance began.

Then a former communications officer who handled the White House-CIA liaison testified that Nixon personally ordered Langley to wiretap Democrats. That was probably a lie, but the CIA is prohibited from engaging in domestic operations even at the president's direction, so Congress launched its own investigation.

By that time, Nixon was already a proven liar with the manners of a godfather, and the entire country was watching the trial of his consigliere, capos and soldiers.

Everyone knew that a special department of daring people had been created at the presidential election headquarters to "solve issues" in defiance of the law. These people had imagination and had huge plans, for example, to turn some Democratic party event into an orgy with the help of bribed prostitutes.

In the public mind, Nixon was like the fat spider at the center of this mafia web.

The real Nixon, wherever he was in reality, did not need all these tricks: he easily won the election in any scenario. A successful and powerful workaholic president, who rose from the bottom and traveled all over America - against the dull and too liberal pacifist McGovern, who was known as the Whiner and All-Winner and took as his running mate (as a vice-presidential candidate) a man with a tendency to manic depression.

Half a century has passed, and it is still unclear what benefit spying on losers could have brought to the presidential team, what the goals of this action were, what the calculation was.

The closest analogy to what happened in Watergate is the Soviet comedy Operation Y. They say about such performers that "drug addicts were recruited from an ad."

They couldn't install the primitive device the first time and sealed the bolt of the lock on one of the office doors with tape - so that it wouldn't slam shut. The tape was noticed and removed by a security guard, thinking it was a cleaning lady, but that same night the same bolt was sealed with the same tape a second time.

After this, the police received a request to arrest the robbers, but instead of the robbers, the FBI agents arrested the all-powerful Nixon's special group for especially dirty deeds, which went down in history as the "White House plumbers."

The head of the group was George Gordon Liddy, another student of Papa Hoover, a brilliant FBI agent in the past. He personally arrested especially dangerous criminals and organized the fight against the mafia in hopeless places in this regard, until he decided to go first into politics, and then to become Nixon's "plumbers".

Nixon himself called Liddy "the most dangerous man in America," but his first deputy, Howard Hunt, seemed even more dangerous.

Hunt served in the CIA for more than twenty years, was part of the Langley elite, and specialized in changing undesirable regimes. Sometimes it worked, as in Guatemala, sometimes it was disastrous, as in the case of the famous landing in the Bay of Pigs to overthrow Fidel Castro. The failure in Cuba cost the careers of both Hunt and his boss, the CIA director, "that same" Allen Dulles, who had a bad plan or no plan at all.

Both "plumbers" were brave, smart, experienced and even literary, only one worked as a "literary ghostwriter" for the FBI director, and the other for the CIA director. But fate brought them to Nixon's campaign headquarters as a kind of toilet paper, to plant McGovern's propaganda materials at crime scenes and to break into psychiatrists' apartments in search of dirt on their patients - the enemies of the "godfather".

The choice, then, is limited: either believe that a team of real James Bonds got screwed over by a piece of scotch tape, or believe what American conspiracy theorists believe - a plot that brought down Nixon when he began to take too much and give too little.

Conspiracy theorists seem like more sensible people in this situation, but there is a nuance - the chaos of everything that happened around Watergate.

The American elite is often accused of using the tactics of “controlled chaos,” but the chaos of Watergate would have been too difficult to manage. Nixon himself tried, but what began as a misunderstanding over duct tape became one of the greatest political disasters in Washington history as the president became involved in protecting “his boys.”

The Watergate scandal bore little resemblance to the subtle mechanism of a seasoned intriguer. Rather, it resembled the planting of a bomb that, when it exploded, naturally scattered everyone and everything around it, including the planters themselves.

Twenty-five influential people, including the Prosecutor General and the head of the presidential administration, went to prison because of their boss.

The vain Felt narrowly escaped their fate - he was identified, forced to leave "quietly", and then persecuted for his own dirty deeds in the FBI. The man who inherited Papa Hoover's archive with the secrets of the American elite squandered this inheritance, failing to extract any visible benefit from it, except for a pardon from President Ronald Reagan.

Liddy and Hunt are among those who saw the checkered sky - one for 52 months, the other for 33, but in the end both lived to be 90 years old each. This is, albeit indirect, but important evidence that there was no general conspiracy - the "pawns" of real conspirators do not live long.

Just before his death, Hunt, allegedly mistaken for a vagrant at the scene of President Kennedy's assassination, confessed to his two sons that he was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.

True, by that time he was sick with Parkinson's disease, and those two were the "black sheep" in a large family - all of Hunt's other children and relatives accused them of wanting to hype (become famous and make money) on their father's fading age.

This example, even more than the toilet paper story, makes us think about how political life in the United States is actually organized.

Like a puppet theater, where unknown people pull the strings or even cut them, like ancient Greek goddesses of fate? Like a brain center of cunning intrigues, producing everything planned at the click of a finger - wars, revolutions, impeachments?

Or as a banal terrarium of like-minded people?

Outwardly, it is an almost diligent system, but inside, driven by pride, greed and other sins, ordinary people drown and set each other up, making unimaginable and expensive mistakes for everyone because of the belief in their undervaluation and exclusivity.

There is no consensus on Richard Nixon's America. But Joe Biden's America is definitely the third option.

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Home Front: Politix

Major General Higginbotham (Ret) Editorial: Kamala Harris' Background

2024-07-28

[The Americanist] ✪ Here is a timely editorial that exposes the hidden background of Kamala Harris from the Combat Veterans for Congress Political Action Committee. The CVFC PAC supports theelection of US military combat veterans to the US Senate & House Of Representatives...

Kamala Harris’ father was an avowed Marxist professor in the Economics Department at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA. Both of Harris’ parents were active in the Berkeley based Afro-American Association; Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were the heroes of the Afro-American Association.

The group’s leader, Donald Warden (aka Khalid al-Mansour), mentored two young Afro-American Association members, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale; they created the Maoist inspired Black Panther Party which gained strong support from Communist China; the Black Panther Party served as the model for creation of the Black Lives Matter Marxist organization. Khalid al-Mansour subsequently went on to arrange financing and facilitated for Barack Hussein Obama to be accepted as a student to matriculate at Harvard Law School.

Following her graduation from college, Harris returned to California and subsequently became the mistress of the 60- year-old married Speaker of the California Assembly, Willie Brown, Jr. Brown’s political campaigns were supported and funded by Dr. Carlton Goodlett, the owner of The Sun Reporter and several other pro-Communist newspapers.

Brown was elected as Mayor of San Francisco, and strongly endorsed Harris’ Marxist political philosophy; he guided Harris’ political rise in California politics, leading to her election as California’s Attorney General. Willie Brown, Jr. is a well-known long-time Communist sympathizer. Willie Brown, Jr. was initially elected to public office with substantial help of the Communist Party USA. Today, Willie Brown is widely regarded as one of the Chinese Communist Party’s best friends in the San Francisco Bay Area.

While serving as San Francisco District Attorney, Kamala Harris mentored a young San Francisco Radical Maoist activist, Lateefah Simon, who was a member of the STORM Revolutionary Movement; Simon currently chairs the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Board. Simon has always been close friends with the founder of Black Lives Matter Marxist domestic terrorists, Alicia Garza, as well as STORM member and avowed Communist, Van Jones. Harris has been openly and aggressively supporting Black Lives Matter Marxists; Kamala Harris is still closely associated with Maoist Lateefah Simon and Marxist Alicia Garza. Kamala Harris’s sister Maya Harris was a student activist at Stanford University. She was a closely associated with Steve Phillips, one of the leading Marxist-Leninists on campus and a long-time affiliate with the League of Revolutionary Struggle, a pro-Chinese Communist group.

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Caribbean-Latin America

Russia Plans to Build ~~Oil Refinery~~ Fuel Cache in Cuba

2024-07-24

[Breitbart] The regimes of Russia and Cuba held discussions for the construction of an oil refinery in Cuba following Russian lawmakers’ visit to the island, the Russian state news agency Tass reported on Monday.

The prospective Russian refinery, if built, would become Cuba’s fifth, joining the nation’s four other rundown refineries.

A delegation of Russian lawmakers that Duma Speaker Viacheslav Volodin led traveled to Cuba in July. During the visit, the delegation held meetings with the communist regime’s figurehead president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and the head of the Cuban parliament, Esteban Lazo Hernández.

Volodin landed in Havana after a brief visit to Nicaragua, where he participated as a special guest in celebrations of the forty-fifth anniversary of the Sandinista revolution in which dictator Daniel Ortega made public calls for the “disappearance” of the United States.

“Bidens, they come and go. While Cuba exists and will into the future,” Volodin said in reference to U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to drop from the 2024 presidential race.

Duma Deputy Speaker Alexander Babakov, who was part of the Russian delegation, told Tass that the construction of the oil refinery was one of the subjects touched upon during the Russian lawmakers’ whirlwind visit to Havana.

“Cuba has crude oil, it is logical not to import oil products, but to produce them here,” Babakov said. “The largest Russian companies could participate here.”

“In this regard, a possible next step is deeper processing of oil products and including the creation of fertilizers,” he continued.

In recent years, the Castro regime has begun seeking an increased amount of aid from Russia, as Cuba suffers through a severe economic and humanitarian crisis — a direct consequence of more than six decades of communist rule.

Russia, a top financier of the Castro regime during the times of the Soviet Union, resumed its oil shipments to the island nation in late March after a year-long hiatus. The oil shipments seek to help Cuba ease its severe fuel shortages and run its dilapidated power plants, whose failures are causing near-endless power blackouts nationwide. Cubans are reportedly living through some of the most inhumane conditions since the 1959 communist coup.

The increase in Russian oil shipments also seeks to offset the diminishing number of heavily subsidized oil shipments that Cuba receives from the socialist regime in Venezuela, Cuba’s top oil supplier.

Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba have dropped significantly in recent years, as the collapse of socialism in Venezuela and more than two decades of socialist mismanagement greatly diminished the country’s oil output capabilities.

In recent years, the Castro regime has sought foreign investment to help it locate and drill oil offshore on its northern coast with little to no success.

Cuba presently has four run-down refineries, three of which were built by American capital entrepreneurship before Fidel Castro’s coup in the late 1950s. A fourth one, located in the province of Cienfuegos, was built in the 1980s using Soviet technology. While the Cienfuegos refinery was opened in 1991, it was closed down in 1995 after it failed to properly operate.

Venezuela’s socialist regime, under the rule of late dictator Hugo Chávez, helped its ideological mentors by funding the $83 million renovation works of the Cienfuegos refinery through a joint Cuba-Venezuela venture established in 2006. The refinery was reopened in 2007, but it has reportedly endured “ups and downs” throughout the years and required a series of repairs that concluded in November.

In 2008, Venezuela planned to have its state oil company PDVSA build a new refinery in Cuba, providing the $4.3 billion investment required. Construction works for the refinery were slated to conclude in 2015, but the collapse of Venezuela under socialism left the plans on hold.

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-Land of the Free

The Return of 1948

2024-02-05

[The American Mind] n Serbia and Belarus, the people demonstrated against fraudulent elections. In Brazil, the people swarmed into government buildings after a fraudulent election. In America, the people swarmed into Congress after a fraudulent election. In Sri Lanka, the people swarmed into Temple Trees—the Prime Minister’s residence—over a mismanaged economy. In Holland, farmers revolted over the government’s plan to destroy agriculture. In Germany, the farmers revolted when the government targeted them. In France, farmers sprayed manure onto government buildings. In France, the offices of Blackrock were breached and trashed. In Iceland, it was the Pots and Pans revolt.

It’s beginning to look like people are realizing that their government is their enemy, and starting to resemble 1848, when the peoples of Europe suddenly decided that they were tired of their oppressive, arrogant elites, and rose up in revolt.

The uprising began in January in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (neither Italy nor Germany were unified at this time) where the king pacified the revolutionaries with a constitution. France was next in February, where the monarchy was once again overthrown and a republic established, this time without the previous Terror. There was a feeling of déjà vu among the rest of the European aristocrats, but no Napoleon emerged. What did emerge were revolutions within their own domains.

In March, revolution broke out in Bavaria, Piedmont, Austria, Baden, Denmark, Prussia, Lombardy, Hungary, Venice, and Poland. In April, it spread to Saxony, Transylvania, and other states.

The uprisings in some cases were successful in that the king abdicated, a hated minister resigned (e.g., Guizot, Metternich), and/or the people obtained rights and constitutions while in other states they were crushed, either through the military or from foreign intervention, after loss of life. In most cases, reforms were agreed upon, whereupon the assurances (or the reforms) were withdrawn once the revolutionary fervor was spent, and the inevitable bickering divided the reformers.

Perhaps it is wishful thinking, but it feels like there is presently the making of another 1848. People are getting fed up with the arrogant multinational elites ramming an unpopular ideology down their throats, trying to erase their national and religious identity while expecting the people quietly to submit. Specifically, they aim to promote homosexuality and transgenderism among children, impose total censorship, persecute Christians and suppress the Christian religion, crush dissent, impose control of the population, promote racism against white people, erase national boundaries, eliminate national/cultural identities, aid and abet illegal immigration from rape cultures, falsify history, eliminate humor and comedy, raze monuments, indoctrinate children, the police, and the military, and promote anti-Semitism. In short, it is a multifaceted totalitarian movement by the elites, from the top down.

It’s not hard to identify the indicators of repression and hatred of the native European population. In Holland, an elected parliamentarian was prosecuted for pointing out facts unpalatable to the elites. In Finland, a group of Muslim "refugees" raped underage girls. One of the victims committed suicide. When this came to light, the Finnish police made sure to inform the population that "there is no phenomenon of sexual offenses in which foreigners go rape in the streets. These just happened at the same time," and stressed that "not all people with foreign backgrounds are dishonest or criminals." The rapists were sentenced to no more than four years of incarceration. The Finnish Supreme Court declared that having sex with a ten year old girl was not rape.

In Germany, a nine-person gang rape of a teenaged German girl resulted in the perpetrators receiving probation. In Portugal, the Senegal-born head of an anti-hate group spoke on the necessity of killing white people at a conference called, "Racism and the Advancement of Hate Speech in the World." In Sweden, state-run television produced a documentary where the original Swedes were shown to be black. Criticizing Islam on Facebook in Sweden will land one in jail.

In Scotland, a war memorial commemorating a regiment of men who rescued people being besieged in an Indian city was changed because of the taint of imperialism. In England, a man with the English flag was told that the flag was racist and to leave a rally where Palestinian flags were waving and the participators were calling for Jewish genocide. Meanwhile, Britain continues to import hundreds of thousands of people from South Asia and Africa.

In Germany, the newly formed AfD Party, a populist movement called fascist by the elites, has been under attack, physically and with propaganda.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leye, has urged the European countries to admit even more Afghan "refugees."

Throughout Western Europe, Christian churches are being vandalized and desecrated by illegal migrants from Muslim countries. In Britain, a man quietly standing with a sign stating, "The right to openly discuss ideas must be defended," was called "Nazi scum," and assaulted by Antifa members and the leader of Black Lives Matter UK. The European Union passed a law imposing internet censorship. In Italy, the island of Lampedusa was suddenly overwhelmed by thousands of African illegal invaders, vastly outnumbering the inhabitants.

In France, assaults of French people by migrants have become commonplace, as they have in Germany, Italy, and Scandinavia, from rapes to riots to murder, including one instance of a foiled attempt at cannibalism. The governments encourage more invaders to enter the country.

As with other European countries, the elites in Ireland have welcomed the invaders into their country, thereby diluting the citizens’ national and ethnic identity. In fact, Dublin’s City Council decided to fly the Palestinian flag. When a Muslim emigre stabbed a woman and three children, the citizens rioted. Irish elites were not outraged by the stabbings, saving their consternation for a Dublin graffiti that read "Irish Lives Matter," which was denounced as hate speech. In fact, this outrage was even voiced in Northern Ireland. The Irish prime minister was so outraged that he is pushing for even more censorship.

In Switzerland, a man was sent to jail for calling a fat lesbian a fat lesbian. In Scotland, parents who try to prevent their children from being sexually mutilated can be put in prison for seven years.

In America, the FBI is being used as a weapon of political persecution.

In Canada, Justin Trudeau, who has voiced his admiration for the Chinese Communist Party and is rumored to be the son of Fidel Castro, has ordered streaming online venues to register with the government so that they can be "regulated."

Free speech has become criminalized everywhere in Canada.

In America, Donald Trump was removed from the 2024 presidential race ballot in several states by local Democrats, who stated that in order to save democracy, they would not let the people vote for their candidate. The global elites have clearly stated that Trump’s election victory would be a threat to them.

Organized waves and waves of illegal immigrants, counted in the millions, are shipped to enter the southern border of the United States, aided and abetted by the very same government that is supposed to secure the border from invasion. When Texas finally started to prevent the invasion, the federal government blocked it.

There are numerous demands from liberals that the U.S. Constitution be trashed, because it is an obstacle to them achieving total power. In America, liberals are advocating concentration camps for MAGA supports. Others just want mass executions.

In British Columbia, a law has been proposed that would jail any doctor giving professional advice that contradicts the government. In North America and Britain, financial institutions debank people whose politics are contrary to the elites.

Democracy does exist in the West, though it is unclear that it matters much. There is little difference between the different established political parties, which just take turns at the trough. Occasionally something comes up that momentarily differentiates them, like Brexit, but they soon coalesce again into the Uniparty.

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Caribbean-Latin America

The Cuban spying case that has shocked the US government

2024-01-09

[BBC] When the former US ambassador to Bolivia, Manuel Rocha, was arrested in Miami recently and charged by his previous employer - the US government - with having spent more than 40 years as a Cuban agent, it amounted to one of the biggest spying scandals involving the communist-run island this century.

The US Attorney General, Merrick Garland, called Mr Rocha's alleged crimes "one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the US government by a foreign agent".

While Manuel Rocha is yet to enter a plea, many observers remain baffled as to how he could have risen so high in the US diplomatic service while evading detection for so long, apparently honing a reputation as a hard-nosed conservative while secretly harbouring a deep-seated allegiance to the Cuban Revolution.

Evidence recorded by an undercover FBI officer, posing as a Cuban government contact, appears to show him describing the United States as the "enemy", praising the late Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, and boasting about having successfully maintained his dual identity for decades.

One man who was not entirely surprised, though, was James Olson, the former head of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He has years of first-hand experience of Cuba's intelligence service, the General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI).

"I would rank them as probably the most aggravating intelligence service I've ever worked against," he says. "That's not just because they're so devious and so ruthless, but because they're so good."

Former CIA agent Olson says the idea that Cuba allegedly "ran" Rocha for four decades is part of their modus operandi, especially with ideological spies as opposed to mercenary ones.

"They also ran our other major Cuban losses for many, many years," he explains, referring to a number of US citizens who were discovered to have spied for Cuba.

"They ran Ana Montes for 16 years, Philip Agee for 15 years, the Myers couple for 26 years." The Rocha case, he says, is in keeping with their work.

'THEY BEAT US'
Mr Olson says there is a common misconception that the DGI became blunted after the fall of the Berlin Wall once the KGB stepped back from the island.

Not so, he argues. In fact, he believes they are more sophisticated than ever.

"I consider the Cubans more disciplined and more effective pound-for-pound than the KGB ever was. The fact that the KGB - or the SVR, as it is today - maybe sponsoring them less than it had in the past, I don't think has affected their ability to carry out operations in any way."

"They've surpassed the KGB in terms of tradecraft and motivation and resistance to penetration," he says.

It's a point which came home to James Olson in June 1987, when a Cuban spy, Florentino Aspillaga, walked into the US Embassy in Vienna and defected. The testimony he gave to the Americans shocked US intelligence chiefs and revealed the extent and calibre of Fidel Castro's spying network.

"Aspillaga told me some very disturbing things", recalls Mr Olson. "He said that the Cuban DGI had successfully run 38 double agents against us. So every agent that we thought we'd recruited on the island was, in fact, being controlled by the DGI."

It still rankles the retired CIA man that, by his own admission, the Cubans got the better of him.

"They owned us. They beat us. That's one of the reasons I have this personal grudge against the Cuban intelligence service because they have been so successful in operating against us."

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