Cuba’s request for USSR protection from U.S. imperialist interventions was not unfounded. Only the year before, in April 1961, the U.S. had suffered a spectacular defeat at the Bay of Pigs, when the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-funded paramilitary operation to overthrow Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution was thwarted in less than 72 hours and 1,200 mercenaries were taken prisoner by the Cubans.

The plan was carried out by the Kennedy administration, although concocted by the CIA during the Eisenhower administration. Following the U.S. defeat, Kennedy proposed social and economic aid for Latin America under the Alliance for Progress programme – a plan which the U.S. hoped would bring the region under increased dependence on Washington and possibly prevent other socialist revolutions in Latin America.

As Fidel stated in his autobiography, “He [Kennedy] realized that social and economic factors in the region could well lead to a radical revolution across the continent. There could be a second Cuban Revolution, but on a continent-wide scale, and perhaps even more radical.”

Fidel’s acceptance of having medium-range missiles in Cuba was, in his words, “a measure meant to protect Cuba from a direct attack and simultaneously strengthen the Soviet Union and the Socialist camp.

The missiles were detected by the UN on the night between the 14^th and the 15^th of October 1962, with the then U.S. President John F. Kennedy  warning that the Soviet Union should withdraw the missiles or face a nuclear war. Kennedy also imposed a naval blockade on Cuba, preventing the installation of further missiles on the island.

A declassified U.S. document following the discovery of the missiles on Cuban soil warned, “I assume you will recall that President Kennedy said a year and a half ago that only two points were non-negotiable between the Western Hemisphere and Cuba – the Soviet tie and aggressive actions in Latin America.”

The U.S. threat was renewed on September 13 by Kennedy: “If at any time the Communist build-up in Cuba were to endanger or interfere with our security in any way… or if Cuba should ever… become an offensive military base of significant capacity for the Soviet Union, then this country will do whatever must be done to protect its own security and that of its allies.”

On October 25, the U.S. proposed withdrawing its missiles from Turkey, which posed a threat to the Soviet Union, in return for the Soviet Union’s withdrawal of their missiles from Cuba. Notably, the removal of U.S. missiles from Turkey was kept secret, in an attempt to twist the outcome as a U.S. victory over the USSR during the Cold War.

Fidel considered the compromise as diverting attention away from the issue of Cuba’s sovereignty and the right to defend itself against U.S. imperialist interventions. One major reason for the political discord on behalf of Fidel would have been the agreement being reached without consulting the Cuban government.

For his part, Nikita Khrushchev wrote to Kennedy reiterating that the Soviet Union’s installation of missiles on Cuban territory was done “because Cuba and the Cuban people were constantly under the continuous threat of an invasion of Cuba.” Khrushchev also outlined that the Soviet Union’s actions were defensive not offensive – the latter being the U.S.’s misrepresentation.

Letters exchanged between Khrushchev and Fidel indicate that the Soviet Union sought guarantees that the U.S. “not only will not invade Cuba with their own forces, but will not allow their allies to do so.” However, Khrushchev warned, “Since an agreement is in sight, the Pentagon is looking for a pretext to thwart it.”

A reversal of roles in the current scenario between Russia and Ukraine has NATO and its allies escalating hostile diplomacy. On what grounds is guarding a nation’s borders from NATO violence a security threat?

By Dan COHEN

Two weeks after the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, the specter of U.S. military intervention looms large over the island nation. While the Biden administration has rebuffed a request for intervention made by Claude Joseph – a longtime NED asset whom Washington briefly backed as prime minister in the immediate aftermath of the killing – it has not completely ruled out the possibility.

​In the days immediately following Moïse’s grisly machine-gun murder on July 7 by U.S.-trained Colombian mercenaries, the Washington Post editorial board published a call for a “swift and muscular intervention” — what would be the fourth U.S. military invasion of Haiti since 1915, when U.S. Marines first occupied the hemisphere’s second independent nation.

WaPo Editorial Board’s call for UN intervention in Haiti is dripping with colonial condescension and implies Haitians are incapable of running their country. It never mentions the revolutionary fervor gripping the streets, only warns of possible “anarchy.” https://t.co/lf0dKUVhXH

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) July 8, 2021

On July 13, as the Biden administration signaled its reluctance to launch a full-scale invasion of Haiti, the Post editorial board published a second call for U.S. military intervention, suggesting that it was the least bad option.

WaPo Editorial Board’s call for UN intervention in Haiti is dripping with colonial condescension and implies Haitians are incapable of running their country. It never mentions the revolutionary fervor gripping the streets, only warns of possible “anarchy.” https://t.co/lf0dKUVhXH

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) July 8, 2021

The same day, Post columnist and neoconservative writer Max Boot published an op-ed asserting that Haitians actually desire a U.S. invasion, entitled “Sorry, Haiti. The world’s policeman is officially off duty.”

WaPo Editorial Board’s call for UN intervention in Haiti is dripping with colonial condescension and implies Haitians are incapable of running their country. It never mentions the revolutionary fervor gripping the streets, only warns of possible “anarchy.” https://t.co/lf0dKUVhXH

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) July 8, 2021

Even the ostensibly progressive lawmaker Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) refused to take a clear position against an intervention, saying that she opposed it “right now” and “without any sort of plan.”

WaPo Editorial Board’s call for UN intervention in Haiti is dripping with colonial condescension and implies Haitians are incapable of running their country. It never mentions the revolutionary fervor gripping the streets, only warns of possible “anarchy.” https://t.co/lf0dKUVhXH

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) July 8, 2021

While the Washington consensus is firmly in support of U.S. military deployment in Haiti, MintPress News traveled to Port-au-Prince to ask random Haitians in the street what they thought of a possible intervention.

​“We don’t want a military intervention,” Adrien Willien told MintPress. “We are for Haitians putting their heads together.”

​“We don’t want any foreign intervention to come resolve our problems for us,” echoed Ernst C. Denoir. “On the contrary, that would be pouring gas on the fire, making the situation worse.”

Contrary to the claims of self-appointed spokesman for the Haitain people Max Boot and his fellow neoconservative ideologues at The Washington Post, not a single Haitian with whom MintPress News spoke agreed. In fact, many were outraged at the suggestion and hold the United States responsible for the current violence and dysfunction plaguing Haiti.

“The insecurity you see here is programmed by the oligarchy and the imperialists,” thundered Denoir.

Meanwhile, thousands of Haitians turned out on Friday, July 23 for Moïse’s state funeral in Cap Haïtien, the capital of the northern department where he was raised. Many hurled curses at the U.S. delegation — which included U.S. Ambassador to Haiti Michele Sison, and was headed by U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield — as it approached the funeral’s stage. The U.S. delegation fled the ceremony before it was over, when police fired warning shots and tear-gas to repel angry crowds wanting to enter the ceremony or stop it until the intellectual authors of the assassination are found.

​Despite its claims to have no plans “for now” to invade Haiti, the U.S. has appointed a Special Envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, and will begin advising the Haitian National Police (PNH) in “anti-gang fighting,” Haitilibre reported July 24.

​U.S. troops, backed by those from France and Canada, last invaded Haiti immediately following the February 29, 2004 coup d’état against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. As was done after their 1994 intervention, they handed the ensuing military occupation of Haiti over to a United Nations “peace-keeping” force after three months. UN forces occupied Haiti for the next 15 years.

​The troop deployment violated Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which specifies that the Security Council can use force only “to maintain or restore international peace and security” (i.e., in a conflict between two states), not to meddle in an internal political conflict. The Haitian Constitution also forbids foreign troops on Haitian soil.

​The 2004 intervention began on February 28 when a SEAL team, led by U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Louis Moreno, surrounded Aristide’s home, then threatened and browbeat the president into boarding an unmarked jet, which whisked him away to Africa. Aristide later called the abduction a “modern kidnapping.”

​“We remember that the U.S. came and took our charismatic leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide,” in 2004, recalled Willien. “That coup d’état is the cause of the state we are in today.”

“The U.S. betrayed the Haitian people when it kidnapped Aristide,” Willien concluded.

The bitter taste of past military interventions and occupations informs the almost universal Haitian public opinion against another U.S. incursion.

mintpressnews.com

By Vijay PRASHAD

In 1963, the Trinidadian writer CLR James released a second edition of his classic 1938 study of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution.

For the new edition, James wrote an appendix with the suggestive title “From Toussaint L’Ouverture to Fidel Castro.” In the opening page of the appendix, he located the twin revolutions of Haiti (1804) and Cuba (1959) in the context of the West Indian islands:

“The people who made them, the problems and the attempts to solve them, are peculiarly West Indian, the product of a peculiar origin and a peculiar history.”

Thrice James uses the word “peculiar,” which emerges from the Latin peculiaris for “private property” (pecu is the Latin word for “cattle,” the essence of ancient property).

Property is at the heart of the origin and history of the modern West Indies. By the end of the 17th century, the European conquistadors and colonialists had massacred the inhabitants of the West Indies. On St. Kitts in 1626, English and French colonialists massacred between 2,000 and 4,000 Caribs — including Chief Tegremond — in the Kalinago genocide, which Jean-Baptiste Du Tertre wrote about in 1654.

Having annihilated the island’s native people, the Europeans brought in African men and women who had been captured and enslaved. What unites the West Indian islands is not language and culture, but the wretchedness of slavery, rooted in an oppressive plantation economy. Both Haiti and Cuba are products of this “peculiarity,” the one being bold enough to break the shackles in 1804 and the other able to follow a century and a half later.

Osmond Watson, Jamaica, “City Life,” 1968.

Today, crisis is the hour in the Caribbean.

On July 7, just outside of Haiti’s capital of Port-au-Prince, gunmen broke into the home of President Jovenel Moïse, assassinated him in cold blood, and then fled. The country — already wracked by social upheaval sparked by the late president’s policies — has now plunged even deeper into crisis.

Already, Moïse had forcefully extended his presidential mandate beyond his term as the country struggled with the burdens of being dependent on international agencies, trapped by a century-long economic crisis and struck hard by the pandemic. Protests had become commonplace across Haiti as the prices of everything skyrocketed and as no effective government came to the aid of a population in despair.

But Moïse was not killed because of this proximate crisis. More mysterious forces are at work: U.S.-based Haitian religious leaders, narco-traffickers and Colombian mercenaries. This is a saga that is best written as a fictional thriller.

Four days after Moïse’s assassination, Cuba experienced a set of protests from people expressing their frustration with shortages of goods and a recent spike of Covid-19 infections. Within hours of receiving the news that the protests had emerged, Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel went to the streets of San Antonio de los Baños, south of Havana, to march with the protestors.

Díaz-Canel and his government reminded the 11 million Cubans that the country has suffered greatly from the six-decade-long illegal U.S. blockade, that it is in the grip of former U.S. President Donald Trump’s 243 additional “coercive measures” and that it will fight off the twin problems of Covid-19 and a debt crisis with its characteristic resolve.

Nonetheless, a malicious social media campaign attempted to use these protests as a sign that the government of Díaz-Canel and the Cuban Revolution should be overthrown.

It was clarified a few days later that this campaign was run from Miami. And from Washington, D.C., the drums of regime change sounded loudly. But they have not found find much of an echo in Cuba. Cuba has its own revolutionary rhythms.

Eduardo Abela, Cuba, “Los Guajiros,” 1938.

In 1804, the Haitian Revolution — a rebellion of the plantation proletariat who struck against the agricultural factories that produced sugar and profit — sent up a flare of freedom across the colonized world. A century and a half later, the Cubans fired their own flare.

The response to each of these revolutions from the fossilized magnates of Paris and Washington was the same: suffocate the stirrings of freedom by indemnities and blockades.

In 1825, the French demanded through force that the Haitians pay 150 million francs for the loss of property (namely human beings). Alone in the Caribbean, the Haitians felt that they had no choice but to pay up, which they did to France (until 1893) and then to the United States (until 1947). The total bill over the 122 years amounts to $21 billion. When Haiti’s President Jean-Bertrand Aristide tried to recover those billions from France in 2003, he was removed from office by a coup d’état.

After the United States occupied Cuba in 1898, it ran the island like a gangster’s playground. Any attempt by the Cubans to exercise their sovereignty was squashed with terrible force, including invasions by U.S. forces in 1906-1909, 1912, 1917-1922 and 1933.

The United States backed General Fulgencio Batista (1940-1944 and 1952-1959) despite all the evidence of his brutality. After all, Batista protected U.S. interests and U.S. firms owned two-thirds of the country’s sugar industry and almost its entire service sector.

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 stands against this wretched history — a history of slavery and imperial domination.

How did the U.S. react? By imposing an economic blockade on the country from Oct. 19, 1960, that lasts to this day and has targeted everything from access to medical supplies, food and financing to barring Cuban imports and coercing third-party countries to do the same. It is a vindictive attack against a people who — like the Haitians — are trying to exercise their sovereignty.

Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez reported that between April 2019 and December 2020, the government lost $9.1 billion due to the blockade ($436 million per month). “At current prices,” he said, “the accumulated damages in six decades amount to over $147.8 billion, and against the price of gold, it amounts to over $1.3 trillion.”

None of this information would be available without the presence of media outlets such as Peoples Dispatch, which celebrates its three-year anniversary this week. We send our warmest greetings to the team and hope that you will bookmark their page to visit it several times a day for world news rooted in people’s struggles.

Bernadette Persaud, Guyana, “Gentlemen Under the Sky (Gulf War),” 1991.

On July 17, tens of thousands of Cubans took to the streets to defend their revolution and demand an end to the U.S. blockade. President Díaz-Canel said that the Cuba of “love, peace, unity, [and] solidarity” had asserted itself.

A few weeks before the most recent attack on Cuba and the assassination in Haiti, the United States armed forces conducted a major military exercise in Guyana called Tradewinds 2021 and another exercise in Panama called Panamax 2021.

Under the authority of the United States, a set of European militaries (France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom) — each with colonies in the region — joined Brazil and Canada to conduct Tradewinds with seven Caribbean countries (The Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, Dominican Republic, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago). In a show of force, the U.S. demanded that Iran cancel the movement of its ships to Venezuela in June ahead of the U.S.-sponsored military exercise.

The United States is eager to turn the Caribbean into its sea, subordinating the sovereignty of the islands. It was curious that Guyana’s Prime Minister Mark Phillips said that these U.S.-led war games strengthen the “Caribbean regional security system.” What they do, as our recent dossier on U.S. and French military bases in Africa shows, is to subordinate the Caribbean states to U.S. interests. The U.S. is using its increased military presence in Colombia and Guyana to increase pressure on Venezuela.

Elsa Gramcko, Venezuela, “El ojo de la cerradura” or “The Keyhole,” 1964.

Sovereign regionalism is not alien to the Caribbean, which has made four attempts to build a platform: the West Indian Federation (1958-1962), Caribbean Free Trade Association (1965-1973), Caribbean Community (1973-1989), and CARICOM (1989 to the present). What began as an anti-imperialist union has now devolved into a trade association that attempts to better integrate the region into world trade. The politics of the Caribbean are increasingly being drawn into orbit of the U.S. In 2010, the U.S. created the Caribbean Basic Security Initiative, whose agenda is shaped by Washington.

In 2011, our old friend Shridath Ramphal, Guyana’s foreign minister from 1972 to 1975, repeated the words of the great Grenadian radical T. A. Marryshow: “The West Indies must be West Indian’. In his article “Is the West Indies West Indian?,” he insisted that the conscious spelling of ‘The West Indies” with a capitalized “T” in “The” aims to signify the unity of the region. Without unity, the old imperialist pressures will prevail as they often do.

In 1975, the Cuban poet Nancy Morejón published a landmark poem called “Mujer Negra” or “Black Woman.” The poem opens with the terrible trade of human beings by the European colonialists, touches on the war of independence and then settles on the remarkable Cuban Revolution of 1959:

I came down from the Sierra

to put an end to capital and usurer,
to generals and to the bourgeoisie.
Now I exist: only today do we own, do we create.
Nothing is alien to us.
The land is ours.
Ours are the sea and sky,
the magic and vision.
My fellow people, here I see you dance
around the tree we are planting for communism.
Its prodigal wood already resounds.

The land is ours. Sovereignty is ours too. Our destiny is not to live as the subordinate beings of others. That is the message of Morejón and of the Cuban people who are building their sovereign lives, and it is the message of the Haitian people who want to advance their great Revolution of 1804.

Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research via consortiumnews.com

By Dan COHEN

As shock grips the Caribbean island nation of Haiti following the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, the Haitian government has carried out a campaign to arrest suspects it alleges are responsible for the murder.

Haitian Director of National Police Leon Charles announced at a press conference that the assassination squad that killed Moise is comprised of 28 foreigners, including two Haitian-Americans and 26 Colombian nationals. Fifteen of those Colombians have been detained while three were killed in a gun battle and eight remain fugitives. Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano has admitted that some of the Colombians are retired military personnel. Among them are at least one highly decorated soldier who received training from the United States and another who has been implicated in the murder of Colombian civilians.

Ties to oligarchs

The Haitian-Americans have been identified as James Solages, 35, and Joseph Vincent, 55. Solages lives in Fort Lauderdale where he is the CEO of EJS Maintenance & Repair and runs a nonprofit group, the website of which has since been scrubbed of information. Prior to relocating to Florida, he lived in the southern Haitian coastal city of Jacmel.

According to The Washington Post, Solages’ Facebook profile, which has since been removed, listed him as the chief commander of bodyguards for the Canadian Embassy in Haiti. The Canadaian Embassy confirmed that Solages previously worked as a security guard. While in Florida, Solages was an “avid and vocal supporter of former President Michel Martelly,” the founder of Moïse’s Haitian Baldheaded Party (PHTK), according to Tony Jean-Thénor, leader of the Veye Yo popular organization in Miami, founded by the late Father Gérard Jean-Juste.

Photos of James Solages and an armored military vehicle that he posted to his now-removed Facebook page

The Haitian Times reported Solages also used to work as a security guard for both Reginald Boulos and Dimitri Vorbe, two prominent members of Haiti’s tiny bourgeoisie. Although initially friendly to him, they both became bitter opponents of Moïse. Boulos was also a prominent supporter of previous coups in 1991 and 2004 against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

The Boulos family is one of the wealthiest in Haiti and owns a pharmaceutical company that, in 1996, was responsible for poisoning scores of children with its tainted fever medicine, some fatally. Since the July 6-8, 2018 national uprising against the IMF-dictated hike of fuel prices, Boulos has attempted to recast himself as a popular and progressive figure (after one of his stores was burned and looted), heading a political party called the Third Way Movement (MTV).

Vorbe is the executive director and vice president of Société Générale d’Énergie SA, one of the largest private energy companies in Haiti which had a sweet-heart deal providing power to the energy grid that Moïse sought to renegotiate after the collapse of the PetroCaribe program, under which Venezuela provided Haiti with cheap oil and credit from 2008 to 2018.

Many believe Boulos is the intellectual author and financial backer of Moïse’s murder.

“Solage’s employment by Boulos and centrality to the operation appears to confirm the growing popular consensus in Haiti that this controversial merchant-turned-politician was the principal backer of Moïse’s assassination,” explained journalist Kim Ives, continuing:

A lot of factors have been pointing to his involvement: The arrival of the mercenaries in nine brand new Nissan Patrol vehicles without license plates suggests that they were vehicles coming from the Nissan dealership owned by Reginald Boulos. The Haitian people have already concluded that Boulous was behind the assassination and have dechoukéed [uprooted] the dealership, Automeca, that he owned.”

Colombian assassin trained by the U.S.

While the Haitian-Americans reportedly served as translators, the muscle of the assassination squad came from Colombia, the U.S.’s top regional ally, which serves as a platform for destabilization and regime change plots in the region, from Venezuela to Ecuador – and now apparently Haiti.

The most prominent member of the hit squad is Manuel Antonio Grosso Guarín, a 41-year-old former special operations commando who retired from the military as a member of the Simón Bolívar No. 1 infantry battalion on December 31, 2019. According to the Colombian newspaper La Semana, Grosso “had several special combat courses, had been a member of the special forces and anti-guerrilla squads, and was known for being a skilled paratrooper who flew through the air without fear.”

Grosso is pictured in the rear (blue jeans) being moved following a press in Port-au-Prince, July 8, 2021. Joseph Odelyn | AP

In 2013, Grosso was assigned to the Urban Anti-Terrorist Special Force group, a secretive elite military detachment dedicated to counter-terrorism operations and carrying out kidnappings and assassinations (euphemistically known as ‘high value target acquisition and elimination’). This branch of the military is also tasked with providing security to VIP figures from the Colombian president to U.S. presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush.

“He was one of the most prepared,” a source remarked to La Semana.

Among Grosso’s preparations was special command instruction from the United States military, which supplies training and weapons to the Colombia military, one of the most repressive armed forces in the region and one that works to secure international corporate interests and drug trafficking routes.

“How many false positives (see the following paragraph), how many social leaders, how many signers of the peace accord, will be on this man?” left-wing Colombian Senator Gustavo Bolivar commented on Twitter.

#VerguenzaMundial
Este es Manuel Antonio Grosso Guarín, uno de los exmilitares colombianos del equipo de mercenarios que según autoridades de Haití habría asesinado al Presidente de ese país.

Pero la mala imagen de Colombia la generan los escritores. pic.twitter.com/Cnrm85mNyS

— Gustavo Bolívar (@GustavoBolivar) July 9, 2021

Grosso was joined by Francisco Eladio Uribe Ochoa, who had retired from the Colombian Army in 2019, according to the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo. Eladio Uribe’s wife told the newspaper that he had been investigated for participation in the execution of civilians — a practice known as “false positives,” in which the Colombian military lured at least 6,402 civilians, murdered them, and dressed them in guerrilla fatigues in order to inflate their kill numbers. This gruesome practice helped military commanders reach lofty kill-count quotas set by the United States and was incentivized with bonus pay and vacation time for soldiers who carried out the killings.

Though Eladio Uribe’s wife said that he had been exonerated, his name has appeared in a file of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a court formed out of the 2016 peace accord, which has investigated several thousand cases of false positives that the Colombian government had not previously admitted. Eladio Uribe is one of two soldiers accused in the 2008 murder of Luis Carlos Cárdenas in the village of Chorros Blancos in Antioquia region.

Other alleged members of the hit squad alleged to have killed Moïse include:

• Duberney Capador Giraldo, a retired Deputy First Sergeant (killed in a gun battle in Haiti)
• ​​Alejandro Giraldo Zapata
• John Jairo Ramírez Gómez
• Víctor Albeiro Piñera

Of the 28 total people who allegedly participated in the assassination, four of the Colombians arrived in Haiti on June 6, 2021. Grosso arrived in the Dominican city of Punta Cana and crossed the land border into Haiti two days later. Photos show him and other suspects at popular tourist sites in the Dominican Republic.

A photo of Grosso, left, along with some of the other suspects posing in Haiti posted to Grosso’s Facebook page

Unanswered questions and a growing consensus

Questions also remain about why Moïse’s security team failed to protect him, and if any of its members were complicit in the murder. Dimitri Herard, the head of the General Security Unit of the National Palace, is under investigation by the United States government for arms trafficking, according to the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). While there is no evidence (but many rumors) linking him to the murder, “Herard is one of the individuals most responsible for the safety of the president.”

While the Haitian government has identified what appear to be Moïse’s assassins, there is still no hard evidence — just circumstantial — linking them to Boulos and possibly even Vorbe. Nonetheless, “there is a growing consensus that Reginald Boulous, for whom an arrest warrant [was] issued last week, paid for the mercenaries,” according to Ives. “It appears to be becoming more and more evident that the sector of the Haitian bourgeois, with whom Jovenel Moïse was at war, are intimately linked to his assassination.”

As the investigation into Moïse’s murder unfolds, the U.S. appears to be preparing the groundwork to deploy troops to Haiti at the request of a figure whom it has spent decades grooming. According to The New York Times, Claude Joseph, who is in a struggle against Dr. Ariel Henry to head the Haitian state in the wake of Moïse’s assassination, requested the U.S. send military forces to guard key infrastructure, including the port, airport, and gasoline reserves. White House Spokeswoman Jen Psaki announced that the U.S. would reinforce U.S. personnel in Haiti with FBI and DHS deployments.

CIA’s NED created fake student movement GRAFNEH in #Haiti in the 2000s, which partnered with the bourgeoisie mafia to destabilize/destroy the nascent and promising democracy the poor majority fought to establish. Current de facto puppet PM Claude Joseph was one of NED’s minions. https://t.co/zgz6GCQxpU pic.twitter.com/w1Q83qIfN2

— Madame Boukman – Justice 4 Haiti (@madanboukman) July 4, 2021

Joseph is an asset of the United States and its regime-change arm, the National Endowment For Democracy. Wikileaks cables revealed that he first came to prominence in 2003 as the leader of a NED-spawned student front called GRAFNEH in the lead up to the coup against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He also founded another NED-funded anti-Aristide group Initiative Citoyenne (Citizens’ Initiative). He is reported by Haitian radio stations to have been, with prominent Haitian ex-Deputy Gary Bodeau, one of the principal assailants who severely beat the late Father Gérard Jean-Juste in a Pétionville church in 2005.

Jean-Juste, perhaps the most prominent supporter and surrogate of the then exiled-in-South-Africa President Aristide, had been falsely accused of involvement in the killing of his own cousin, Jacques Roche, a writer.

“Essentially, we have a U.S. puppet asking his puppeteer to invade Haiti for the fourth time in just over a century,” Ives concluded. “But both the region and, above all, the Haitian people are sick and tired of U.S. military interventions, which are largely responsible for the nation’s current debilitated, critical state both economically and politically. Much of the most oppressed neighborhoods are now heavily armed and have already announced a revolution against the likes of Boulos, so the U.S.-led invaders of 2021 are likely to face a resistance similar to that which emerged against the U.S. Marines in 1915 and UN ‘peace-keepers’ in 2004, only more ferocious.”

mintpressnews.com

The initiative was led by Chile and Costa Rica, laying the foundations for a human rights treaty at a regional level. In September 2018 under President Sebastian Pinera, Chile withdrew from the agreement, just three months after a Global Witness report noted that Latin America held the highest percentage of murdered environmental activists – a staggering 60 per cent.

Argentina recently voted to ratify the Escazu Agreement, joining Antigua and Barbuda, Ecuador, Bolivia, Panama, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Nicaragua, Guyana and Uruguay. The treaty needs one more country to become signatory, in order to be enforced in the region. While the window of opportunity for signing regionally has closed, countries can still ratify the agreement through the UN.

Chile, which helped to draft the treaty under former president Michelle Bachelet, has once again refused to sign the agreement, with Pinera calling it “inconvenient” due to the possibility of the country facing international legal action for environmental crimes and conflicts. Several environmental activists have been found dead in Chile following Pinera’s withdrawal from the agreement, raising suspicion that the individuals were targeted by state and multinational interests.

Argentina’s ratification is important for the region. The Italian fashion brand, Benetton, owns 2.2 million acres of land which is considered ancestral territory by the indigenous Mapuche people. The purchase took place in 1991, when the Argentinian government’s adoption of neoliberalism prompted privatisation of land. Since the late 19^th century, Mapuche territory had been targeted and the people expelled, thus initiating the imbalance of power between the state and the indigenous population.

Despite Argentinian law recognising the Mapuche people’s ancestral rights to land, the state and corporate interests hold sway over such rights. As happens elsewhere in Latin America, the complicity between states and multinational companies has resulted in militarisation and securitisation of indigenous land, the criminalisation of indigenous resistance, as well as the targeting of environmental and indigenous activists; Argentina having been heavily scrutinised for the killing and disappearance of Santiago Maldonado. Maldonado had been involved in protests against Benetton in which the Mapuche were demanding their ancestral rights to occupied land.

While the Escazu Agreement seeks more civilian participation in environmental decision-making, as well as protection for activists, a change in politics in imperative. The protection afforded to multinational companies, as well as influential lobby groups, such as agribusiness in Brazil and hydroelectric projects in Chile for example, has resulted in widespread impunity. If the Escazu Agreement is to reach its full potential, a political reckoning with human rights is unavoidable, not only by countries which have refused ratification, but also those which have signed and still operate with a discrepancy between protection and violation in the name of profit.

It is also impossible to negate the link between Latin America’s dictatorial past and the current impunity. Decades of dictatorships which ushered in the politics of neoliberalism have left the people exploited by governments whose main priority has been to utilise dictatorship tactics under democratic rule. Access to information on environmental matters, which is part of the Escazu Agreement, is anathema for governments relying upon the exploitation of land and corruption. Security for citizens is not what corrupt governance is seeking, hence the need to consider the Escazu Agreement within the context of local and regional politics, to prevent its aims from being overruled by lucrative ventures at the expense of civilians.

Setting up new a political power hub in Miami, expatriate Cuban who were supportive of the CIA- and Mafia-financed Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba, established a right-wing Cuban community known as “Little Havana” in Miami. The CIA used Cuban military veterans of Batista’s armed forces Miami to recruit mercenaries for “anti-Communist” operations in Central America, Bolivia, and the Caribbean region, including the abortive 1961 “Bay of Pigs” invasion of Cuba to unseat Fidel Castro from power and the 1980s “contra” war against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

After the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza was ousted by the leftist Sandinistas in the 1979 revolution, backers of Somoza moved to South Florida, where they congregated in Miami’s “Little Managua” and joined their Cuban fellow travelers in fomenting anti-progressive political movements throughout Latin America. After Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela in 1999, Venezuela’s European elite, fearful that political power was vested in the mixed indigenous-European population that promoted socialist policies, packed up their bank books and moved to South Florida and formed a tightly-knit community in Doral in Miami-Dade County, later known as “Little Caracas.” Smaller in numbers when compared to the Cubans and Venezuelans, exiled Colombians, many with money and some with drug cartel connections, settled in Little Havana and Little Caracas. The main reason for the Colombian immigration was to escape the violence in Colombia caused by the drug cartels that are supported by successive pro-U.S. governments in Colombia.

When Republicans talk of Donald Trump gaining support among Florida’s Hispanic community, the are referring to the mostly white European exiles of Miami-Dade. These so-called “Hispanics,” largely devoid of the indigenous native American or Afro-Caribbean ethnic roots of their socialism-supporting countrymen, support candidates like Trump because of their nostalgia for anti-democratic and fascist caudillos like Batista, Somoza, and Marcos Pérez Jiménez of Venezuela. In Little Havana, the most hated man after Fidel Castro is President John F. Kennedy, with Barack Obama in third place. Little Havana and its counterparts, Little Managua and Little Caracas are hotbeds for far-right politics and extremist politicians.

What goes largely unreported by the U.S. “news”/infotainment complex is the overwhelming support that the Biden-Kamala Harris ticket has among South Florida’s Caribbean community of Bahamians, Jamaicans, Haitians, and others from the English-, French-, and Creole-speaking Caribbean. Harris, whose father was Jamaican, has tapped into the wellspring of support from South Florida’s and the Houston, Texas region’s tightly-knit Caribbean communities.

Trump also has very little support among the Mexican-Americans of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California. They saw the Trump administration rip babies and youngsters from the arms of their asylum-seeking parents from southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. The Southwest U.S. Hispanic community will never forget the photographs of babies and young children of the mestizo and Mayan migrants being forced to live in cages in concentration camps established in the southern border region of the United States.

In many cases, it is incorrect to refer to Mayans and other indigenous asylum-seekers from southern Mexico and Central America as Latino, Latina, or Hispanic, since they are full-blooded Amerindians and only speak their native tribal tongues and are partly or totally non-conversant in the Spanish language, let alone English. What has forced these hapless people to the north and hopeful asylum are caudillo-run and CIA and drug lord-financed dictatorships in their home countries, particularly in the Northern Triangle of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.

Unlike the exiles in South Florida, who were gladly granted U.S. residency and citizenship, the mestizo and indigenous exiles of the U.S. Southwest had no country club memberships (including at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida), gated communities, and money-laundered bank accounts in Miami waiting for them in the United States. The average financially well-off migrant to Florida from Venezuela, Chile, Colombia, Panama, and Peru pays an average of around $450,000 for a four-bedroom home with large yards and swimming pools. That sort of affluence is certainly not the norm for immigrants in the American Southwest or Texas.

For many of the Hispanic Trump supporters in South Florida, they see Trump as serving in the Latin American tradition of caudillismo leadership, classism, and institutional racism, commonplace in the histories of their countries of origin but anathema to modern-era U.S. constitutional democracy and the rule of law.

Some 141 caudillos have occupied the presidential palaces of Latin American nations since their independence. Their kleptocratic and nepotistic rule, maintained by the power of the military and entrenched oligarchs, resulted in generations experiencing dictatorship rather than democratic rule. There was never a case of such a caudillo as president in the entire history of the United States, that is, until the inauguration of Trump.

The cultural traditions brought to the United States by wealthy white European exiles from Latin America has resulted in their largely being in lockstep when it comes to supporting right-wing Cuban-American Senators like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. The orders for Trump and Senators like Rubio and Cruz to push for sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua have come from the wealthy exiles in Little Havana, Little Managua, and Little Caracas in Florida. For them, it is simply the trading of their votes for a U.S. foreign policy that punishes Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

The threat posed by Trump and caudillismo politics is not lost on Florida’s Black West Indian diaspora community. The addition of Jamaican-American Kamala Harris on the Democratic ticket has electrified the West Indian community. Those Florida and Texas voters who have roots in Jamaica, Guyana, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, the Bahamas, Curacao, and Haiti know all-too-well what it is like to come from countries sharing land or maritime borders with Latin American nations ruled by menacing caudillos. They want no part of Trump or his caudillismo supporters in South Florida. The political traditions of West Indian Americans is one of Westminster parliamentary democracy, not one of succeeding military tyrants wearing chests full of medals, but of judges and barristers wearing the wigs seen in every British judicial court. Adding to the anti-Trump ranks in Florida are Puerto Rican residents of the state, many of whom are hurricane transplants who have witnessed their storm-ravaged U.S. commonwealth and its people repeatedly come under attack by Trump and his administration.

Working class Hispanics in Florida, unlike the wealthy Latin American expats, worry every time they hear Trump talking about serving unconstitutional third and fourth terms as president. Many of the poorer immigrants to the United States from Latin America fled dictators in their native countries and the last thing they want is to see Trump proclaiming himself as president-for-life.

Some Pacific islands are prohibiting human-to-human contact during aircraft refueling. In the case of the sparsely populated northern Cook Islands coral atolls of Penhryn, Pukapuka, Manihiki, Rakahanga, and Nassau, island authorities turned away the supply ship “Kwai,” which was carrying critical but perishable supplies. The islands were in fear they would be overwhelmed by the virus, which has already appeared in French Polynesia. As with a number of Caribbean islands, Pacific islands are taking no chances by allowing cruise ships to make port calls. As a result, cruise ships have been banned from, in addition to the Cook Islands, New Caledonia, Tonga, and Samoa.

At the time Aitutaki refused docking privileges to the cruise ship, hundreds of cruise ship passengers exposed to the coronavirus were being flown into or transported quarantine centers in the United States. Had the Trump administration ordered all the ships to remain in port and board no passengers inside or outside U.S. territory, the number of virus vectors might have been reduced. However, Trump and other Republican office holders receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in political contributions from deep-pocketed owners of cruise ship firms and related industries. Profit margins over public health rules the day inside the Trump White House.

Before being concerned about the health of American citizens, among Trump’s first priorities was a government financial bailout of the cruise, airline, and hotel industries. One of Trump’s major campaign donors is Israeli-American dual national Micky Arison, the chairman of Carnival Corporation, which owns both Carnival and Princess cruise lines. The Trump National Doral golf club is located very close to Carnival’s corporate headquarters in Miami. Carnival was also a corporate sponsor of Trump’s two cheesy reality TV shows, “The Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice.” In addition, one of Trump’s impeachment defense attorneys who appeared before the U.S. Senate, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, was registered as a lobbyist for Carnival North America prior to signing on as Trump’s attorney. Bandi’s sister-in-law, Tandy Bondi, has also served as registered lobbyist for Carnival North America.

It was aboard Princess cruise ships that the coronavirus spread among crew and passengers in Yokohama and off the coast of California like a wildfire. The American taxpayer was left holding the tab for quarantining ship passengers, transporting them to quarantine sites across the United States, and providing room, board, and medical services.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut said, “Cruise companies should immediately stop launching new voyages . . . if they won’t do it voluntarily, we should look at mandatory measures.”

Island nations that depend on tourism are being hit by a double whammy with the coronavirus. While they are losing precious tourism money that bolsters their economies, they are, at the same time, spending diminished treasury funds on preparation for the virus infecting their populations. Mark Brantley, the premier of Nevis, a Caribbean island that forms a federation with neighboring St. Kitts, wrote on Twitter that the coronavirus “is taking a terrible toll on the health and economic well-being of our Caribbean region. Even little Nevis that has no cases yet has suffered hotel cancellations.” St. Kitts and Nevis realize that when the virus strikes them, they will be largely on their own as larger and more powerful nations deal with their own emergency situations. Island nations, including those in the Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific are doing their best to cope with the virus. They are enhancing pre-emptive health screening at immigration controls, barring entry to nationals of countries impacted by the coronavirus,  requiring St. Kitts and Nevis nationals visiting coronavirus-infected countries within the virus’s 14-day incubation period to be medically screened upon return, and preparing their national health systems to detect, contain, and manage the pandemic when the virus arrives on their shores. The Caribbean islands are keeping abreast of the coronavirus situation by maintaining close links with the Caribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), the Pan American Health Organization, and the World Health Organization. On March 5, CARPHA upgraded the risk of transmission of COVID-19 to the Caribbean Region to “Very High.” The arrival of the first coronavirus cases in Jamaica, Martinique, Saint Barthelemy, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, St. Maarten, and Trinidad and Tobago has every Caribbean island on full public health alert.

Island states in the Indian Ocean attempted to forestall virus infections. However, in the case of the French territory of Reunion, the first four cases were imported from mainland France, including one patient who contracted the virus while on a cruise ship in the Bahamas. Up to 34 other Reunion residents participated in the same Bahamas cruise and were being sought out by public health authorities in Saint-Denis, the Reunion capital.

In Maldives, the entire island resort of Kuredu Island in the Lhaviyani Atoll was locked down after two staff members tested positive for COVID-19. All flights in and out of the island were halted. Four other resort islands, Vilamendhoo, Batalaa, Thinadhoo, and Kuramathi, were also placed under quarantine with transfers to and from the islands banned. The Maldives took the extraordinary step of creating a quarantine resort for coronavirus patients on the island of Villivaru in the Kaafu Atoll. Two French tourists showed coronavirus symptoms prior to the creation of the specially-designated resort for coronavirus patients.

Even islands with relatively advanced health care systems can take for granted that they will not be overwhelmed by overwhelming numbers of patients requiring intensive care and respiration. Security levels not seen since World War II are in effect for the Isle of Man, Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney, Faroe Islands, and Mauritius. The Seychelles, a popular tourist destination in the Indian Ocean, has postponed all official conferences scheduled until May of this year. As far as the enterprising tourist who has thought about the far-flung British Overseas Territories of St. Helena, Ascension, Tristan da Cunha, or the Falkland Islands, entry requirements are now so stringent in order to protect the local populations, they are effectively closed to tourists until further notice.

The coronavirus is the last type of “island fever” isolated patches of land scattered about the seven seas and having small populations need at the current time.

In a blatant attempt to unravel the bloc of Venezuela’s Caribbean allies formed nurtured by Venezuela’s late president, Hugo Chavez, Donald Trump and his foreign policy team of neo-conservative war hawks has accomplished to divide the 15-member Caribbean Community (CARICOM) to a degree not seen since 1983. That year saw President Ronald Reagan order the US invasion of CARICOM member Grenada, an event that saw CARICOM split on supporting the move. Among the CARICOM members, Bahamas, Belize, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago opposed the US invasion, while other states either participated in the military occupation of CARICOM member Grenada or voiced support for it.

Trump’s recent hosting of Prime Minister Allen Chastanet of Saint Lucia, President Danilo Medina from the Dominican Republic, Prime Minister Andrew Holness of Jamaica, President Jovenel Moise of Haiti, and Prime Minister Hubert Minnis of the Bahamas at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago billionaire’s club in Palm Beach, Florida had only one purpose: to peel away Venezuela’s supporters in the Caribbean region. Apart from the Dominican Republic, all the leaders at Mar-a-Lago are members of CARICOM. The Dominican Republic holds observer status in the organization. All five leaders who made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago support Juan Guaido, the unelected US pretender to the presidential palace in Venezuela.

Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, the Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, called the failure by the United States to only invite Saint Lucian Prime Minister Chastanet as the only representative of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States was “insulting.” Gonsalves also said that Chastanet, Holness, Moise, and Minnis, all leaders of CARICOM nations, would have to “answer to their countries.” Gaston Browne, the Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, said of the leaders who went to Mar-a-Lago, “I feel embarrassed for those weak-minded leaders, who allowed themselves to be used, by carrying out the agenda of others.”

In return for their invitation to Mar-a-Lago, the Caribbean Five took steps to bring their policies on Venezuela in line with those of Trump. The Bahamas rejected the credentials of the Maduro government’s ambassador to Nassau. Jamaica ordered the Venezuelan embassy in Kingston closed. Saint Lucia applied visa restrictions on visitors from Venezuela. The Trump administration is pushing for the Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia, and Haiti to sever all diplomatic and economic links with the Maduro government, particularly their involvement in Venezuela’s PetroCaribe energy and investment fund for the Caribbean states. Under pressure from Washington, in January of this year Jamaica bought back Venezuela’s 49 percent share in PetroJam, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company. Holness’s visit to Mar-a-Lago drew sharp repudiation from the opposition in Jamaica.

The leader of the Jamaican opposition People’s National Party, Dr. Peter Phillips, condemned the move by Holness, saying it betrayed an old friend of Jamaica. Before parliament, Phillips said, “The fact is, we have never expropriated the property of any investor in Jamaica before. It is a dangerous precedent for us to set. If we don’t behave honorably to our friends, we soon won’t have any friends.”

The current CARICOM chairman, Saint Kitts and Nevis Prime Minister Dr. Timothy Harris, wants the Caribbean region to remain a “zone of peace.” Harris, who was not invited to the Mar-a-Lago meeting, insists on CARICOM being of one voice on the Venezuela situation. It remains the intention of Trump and his two neocon chief meddlers in Caribbean and Latin American affairs – national security adviser John Bolton and Elliott Abrams, the “special envoy” for “regime change” in Venezuela – to pry away all of CARICOM’s allies of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Harris had his delegate to the Organization of American States (OAS) abstain on a US-sponsored resolution in support of the Guaido puppet government. In Trump world, there can be no abstentions and the Saint Kitts and Nevis abstention earned Harris a non-invitation, as both prime minister and CARICOM rotating chairman, to the Mar-a-Lago meeting. Also abstaining were Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Trinidad and Tobago. Rejecting the US resolution were Dominica, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Suriname. Particularly vexing to the Trump crowd is the fact that the CARICOM Secretariat in Georgetown, Guyana continues to accredit the observer mission from the Maduro government, rejecting an attempt by the Guaido rump regime to assume control of the observer mission.

Chastenet replied to the criticisms of his attendance at the Mar-a-Lago confab by saying that he felt no need to explain his decision to the other CARICOM leaders. Holness said he went to Mar-a-Lago in the belief that the Trump administration would increase investment in the region. If Trump’s decision to cut off all US assistance to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras is any indication, the “Caribbean Five,” who went “hat-in-hand” to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago throne room, will be sorely disappointed. Haiti’s Moise came in for heated criticism from his own nation, as well as from across the Caribbean. It was not long ago when Trump referred to Haiti as a “shit hole” country. That was followed by the arrest in Port-au-Prince, the Haitian capital, of armed US mercenaries with ties to the former Blackwater firm of Erik Prince, the brother of Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos.

In fact, the only Caribbean “investments” Trump understands are his own failed resort properties in some of the islands, including an abandoned hotel, casino, and golf resort on Canouan, one of the Grenadines that was once called “Trump Island”; the abandoned Cap Cana hotel and golf resort in the Dominican Republic; the bankrupt Trump International Golf Club in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico; the 70-floor Trump Ocean Club in Panama City, which shed its Trump brand after allegations of fraud lodged against the Trump Organization; and Trump’s unsold and largely unwanted Le Château des Palmiers villa in St. Martin.

Prime Ministers Gonsalves and Browne are well-aware of the pitfalls of negotiating any financial agreements with Donald Trump. They witnessed Trump’s mishandling of hurricane relief and reconstruction assistance for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. They and other CARICOM heads of government must have also shaken their heads over Saint Lucia’s Chastanet’s participation in the Mar-a-Lago meeting.

The last time Chastanet was in the United States was a hurried trip to Dallas in September 2018. A Saint Lucian national, 26-year-old Botham Shem Jean, was shot to death after a Dallas police officer entered his apartment, believing it was her own. Jean was an employee of the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers. His mother, Alison Jean, was a permanent secretary of Saint Lucia and participating as a delegate of her nation at a United Nations conference in New York at the time of her son’s murder. While in Dallas, Chastanet spoke out against the anti-immigrant fervor sweeping the United States, saying that many immigrants “entering the United States were fearful for their lives.” Yet, Chastanet, a former Tourism Minister and manager of his family’s Coco Palm Hotel, traveled to the Mar-a-Lago royal court of Trump to pay fealty to the man almost singularly responsible for the xenophobia sweeping the United States.

Chastanet’s support for the Guaido “government” and Trump has brought about political troubles at home. In January of this year, Chastanet survived a no confidence vote in the Saint Lucia parliament. Former Saint Lucian Foreign Minister Alva Baptiste, a member of the opposition Saint Lucia Labour Party, castigated Chastanet for aligning himself with the “Lima Group,” a right-wing bloc of nations intent on forcing Maduro from office. Baptiste, speaking in parliament, said that Chastanet was “making Saint Lucia a pappyshow.” Pappyshow is a Caribbean English colloquial term for “buffoon” or “fool.” Baptiste also reiterated that the OAS Charter specifically states that no member may “directly or indirectly for any reason whatsoever in the internal affairs of any other state.”

As far as the Lima Group is concerned, Baptiste said, “Saint Lucia should never be part or be a member of the renegade mongoose gang like the Lima Group.” Baptiste’s use of the term “mongoose gang” is particularly instructive. From 1970 to his ouster in a 1979 coup, Prime Minister Eric Gairy of Grenada was protected by his own thuggish private militia, called the “Mongoose Gang.” The right-wing and pro-US Gairy, who once asked the United Nations General Assembly to investigate the UFO phenomenon, was ousted by the Marxist-led government of Maurice Bishop, a government that remained in power until the 1983 US invasion. The people of the Caribbean have long memories and Baptiste’s reference to the mongoose gang regarding the anti-Venezuela Lima Group has important historical underpinnings.

In return for their invitation to Mar-a-Lago, the Caribbean Five took steps to bring their policies on Venezuela in line with those of Trump. The Bahamas rejected the credentials of the Maduro government’s ambassador to Nassau. Jamaica ordered the Venezuelan embassy in Kingston closed. Saint Lucia applied visa restrictions on visitors from Venezuela. The Trump administration is pushing for the Dominican Republic, Saint Lucia, and Haiti to sever all diplomatic and economic links with the Maduro government, particularly their involvement in Venezuela’s PetroCaribe energy and investment fund for the Caribbean states. Under pressure from Washington, in January of this year Jamaica bought back Venezuela’s 49 percent share in PetroJam, a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company. Holness’s visit to Mar-a-Lago drew sharp repudiation from the opposition in Jamaica.

The leader of the Jamaican opposition People’s National Party, Dr. Peter Phillips, condemned the move by Holness, saying it betrayed an old friend of Jamaica. Before parliament, Phillips said, “The fact is, we have never expropriated the property of any investor in Jamaica before. It is a dangerous precedent for us to set. If we don’t behave honorably to our friends, we soon won’t have any friends.”

Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley has been feuding with the US ambassador in Port-of-Spain, Joseph Mondello, a longtime Republican shady party operative from Levittown, New York and a Republican convention Trump delegate in 2016. Mondello has infuriated the Trinidad and Tobago government by working with the opposition United National Congress (UNC) and its leader, former Prime Minister Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, to press Rowley to join the Lima Group. Rowley responded to Mondello’s intervention in Trinidad and Tobago politics by pressing CARICOM to avoid being drawn into the Lima Group of reactionary right-wing regimes in backing regime change in Venezuela. The UNC, which largely represents the interests of Trinidad’s East Indian and corporate community, was always opposed to the Bolivarian Revolution of Chavez in Venezuela. Rowley wore his being uninvited to Mar-a-Lago by Trump as a badge of honor. He said, “We have nev­er stood taller or stood proud­er. If it is we’re be­ing blanked or snubbed for stead­fast­ly stand­ing for the prin­ci­ples of the Unit­ed Na­tions Char­ter, his­tory will ab­solve us.”

The Leader of the Opposition of the Bahamas, Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) Chairman Fred Mitchell, also criticized his prime minister, Hubert Minnis, for participating in the “regime change” summit in Mar-a-Lago. Mitchell, a former foreign minister, pointed out the hypocrisy of Minnis going to Mar-a-Lago, saying it defied logic that Minnis claims a policy of non-intervention, yet supports regime change in Venezuela.

The Trump administration has only accomplished one thing in fishing in the Caribbean for regime change allies. It has managed to drive a wedge between the member states of CARICOM and bring trauma and troubles to tropical waters.

Judging by the reaction to the Russian ‘White Swans’ being spotted outside of their natural habitats, you’d have thought that Russia had just organized a full-scale mobilization on the US border, similar to the way US-led NATO has nudged up to the Russia border ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union – and despite assurances given in 1990 to Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev by then Secretary of State James Baker that the military bloc would never move “one inch eastward.”

Since then, the alliance has tripled in size to 29 members and is double-parked on Russia’s lengthy border with Europe. In addition to US soldiers regularly conducting massive war games on the territory of many former Soviet republics, like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, there is also the very permanent US missile defense shield bolted down in Romania.

Yet a couple Russian bombers making a voyage to cash-strapped Venezuela elicits the most bombastic response from the United States.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sounded off on Twitter after the Russian aircraft completed their 10,000 km (6,200 miles) transatlantic journey, saying “The Russian and Venezuelan people should see this for what it is: two corrupt governments squandering public funds, and squelching liberty and freedom while their people suffer.”

That remark is rather laughable when it is considered that the US taxpayer must cough up over $700 billion annually to satisfy the thirst of the military-industrial complex and its global network of 800+ franchises. To put that amount into perspective, the US spends more on its military than China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, France, the UK and Japan combined. I’m no military expert, but I would guess that the United States would easily defend its territories on less than half of what it spends now. But that is precisely the point, since defending itself is not what this is all about. Rather, projecting American “hyper-power” – a term coinedin 1999 by French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine – around the world is the main objective. And since power is the most potent drug known to man, it has turned the country into the equivalent of a bully where governments that lack the wherewithal to defend themselves on the geopolitical playground (i.e. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria) are beat up solely on the basis of their weakness. The prospect of being on the receiving end of a US-regime change operation has made much of the world believe that the US is the main threat to global peace today.

It is not too difficult to imagine the sort of response there would be if Russia truly did attempt to do the exact thing that the US is doing today, and that is militarize those states in the near proximity of the US which have poor relations with Washington. We would almost certainly be forced to ponder the thermonuclear implications of a second ‘Cuban Missile Crisis’ as the hawks in Washington would screech in one voice about the “imperialistic ambitions” of Moscow, or some such nonsense. Yet somehow Americans fail to appreciate the hypocrisy that their own actions are having in Russia’s backyard. Aside from the US missile defense shield in Romania, the Trump administration has recently announced that it would withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which eliminated all nuclear and conventional missiles, as well as their launchers, within certain distances. Putin said Russia would retaliate if Trump walked away from the 1987 treaty, much as George W. Bush walked away from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty) in 2001, thereby forcing Russia to undertake a successful reorientation of its weapons research and development.

It is not very difficult to imagine a situation where Caracas, for example, which is experiencing very hostile relations with Washington, gives Russia the green light to use part of its territory for military purposes. In fact, such rumors have already been floated in the Russian media.  

Even though such a presence would most likely be limited in scope and more symbolic than anything, the fact that it would generate such a powerful reaction on the part of Washington says everything one needs to know about how the US perceives itself. It truly believes that it is the ‘indispensable nation’ – God Country, if you will – that alone has the right to flaunt its military assets around a shell-shocked planet, meting out a very dubious unilateral style of justice. However, in the same way that Russia cooled down America’s exaggerated sense of power and purpose in Syria, where Trump just announced a withdrawal of troops, the day may come when it does the same in America’s Caribbean backyard. Watching America hubris fall back to earth from the dizzying heights would alone be worth the price of admission to the blockbuster of the year.