In mid-May, news spread that the US State Department proposed to remove Cuba from the list of countries that «do not fully cooperate» in the fight against terrorism. The note: «on 15 May, Secretary of State Antony Blinken determined and certified under Section 40A of the Arms Export Control Act that four countries – North Korea, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela – did not fully cooperate with U.S. counterterrorism efforts in 2023». The circumstances justifying Havana’s continued listing changed from 2022 to 2023.

The Cuban government, in the ironic voice of Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, immediately responded: «The United States has just admitted that Cuba fully cooperates against terrorism».

However, this decision rests with the US Congress and not with the State Department. The paradox of the half-measure is that not only does it have to be endorsed by Congress, but it does not imply the removal of Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism. A list that was articulated since 1982 by Ronald Reagan, who initiated the Star Wars to contain and dismantle socialism.

The gibberish of the Biden administration is that Cuba has already stopped «not cooperating fully» in the fight against terrorism, but, at the same time, it is a nation sponsoring terrorism. As Bruno Rodríguez pointed out, «this measure does not imply the removal of Cuba from the list of nations sponsoring terrorism and this is what should be done, the rest is political manipulation».

Lists have been created throughout US history to suit the dominance criteria of the moment: communism, terrorism, drug warfare, various forms of recourse to national security doctrine, counter-intelligence or counter-insurgency.

The practical effect of the list to which we refer is to indicate that the United States cannot sell arms to Cuba or to other countries that promote terrorism. In the Cuban case, it is obvious that, due to the blockade (or embargo, as the Yankees call it), not only can they not sell arms to Cuba, but also medicines, food, computers, bicycles and absolutely nothing else. The Torricelli and Helms-Burton laws, billed in the 1990s, are extraterritorial and prohibit all countries in the world from trading with Cuba, under threat of US sanctions.

US citizens themselves are forbidden to buy Cuban products, to travel to Cuba, to write to Cuba. The Mexican government has even sued US companies that produce and sell arms, hundreds of thousands of which enter illegally for drug traffickers – isn’t that promoting terrorism from the US?

Obama made a miniscule attempt to open the spaces, in 2015 he removed Cuba from the terrorist list. In 2021 Trump included it again and his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, announced that «the Castro regime must end its support for international terrorism and subversion of American justice». The accusation was that Cuba had refused to extradite, as requested by the United States, members of the National Liberation Army accused by them of bombing a police academy in Bogotá in 2019.

Cuba refused extradition because at the time it was mediating and hosting Colombia’s Peace Dialogues. We wonder who should apply justice, the Colombian government or the US government? Why do the Americans believe that they are the ones who should and can judge Colombian fighters?

Was it a mechanism to disrupt the Peace Dialogues, and would the dialogues succeed in stopping the rampant US arms shipments to Colombia?

Pompeo also accused Cuba of having given refuge to Black Power fighter Assata Shakur (Joanne Chesimard), convicted in 1973, 51 years ago! Finally, he added that Venezuela survived and Maduro remained in power thanks to Cuba, and that was already intolerable for good consciences. All of these are lies that they declare with total impunity in this contemporary world, in which the United States, France, England and Germany supply tons of all kinds of weapons to Israel to murder thousands of women, children, men, young people, journalists, aid workers of international organisations and members of the UN in Palestine every day… and this is clearly not terrorism.

They remain silent when Israel violates the mandates of the UN and the International Court, as well as all rules for the preservation of the civilian population. These governments know that Cuba has never supported or carried out any terrorist act; on the contrary, it has been the victim of constant harassment with all kinds of measures, from bombings, kidnappings, assassinations, plagues, to the inhuman blockade.

The eternal fury against Cuba, that bitterness, rancour, fury, hatred, animosity, resentment, resentment, anger, bitterness, ferocity, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity that seeks to overshadow, cloud, poison, corrode, attack, assault, attack, beat, beat, threaten, intimidate…, but with all this they have not managed either to break Cuba or to put an end to it. With great cost, resistance and heroism, the Cuban people have faced this string of arbitrariness.

(Taken from La Jornada)