Cuba and Venezuela are not the Middle East

by Javier Salado
Rebellion

Recent events in the Middle East, characterized by popular revolts that occurred in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, with participation of the Special Services of the Western world in Libya and Syria, infiltrating provocateurs, weapons, means and money, much money, in each country, have encouraged the hopes of the planners of U.S. policy toward Venezuela and Cuba.

The fall of the governments of Yemen and Egypt, the relentless attacks of NATO against Libya, protected by a Security Council resolution, which the United Nations did not take long in breaking, have cost tens of thousands of innocent lives. The same protection-which peaked with the consequent disappearance of the Lebanese government, have aroused the greed to employ similar tactics in warm Caribbean waters.

There has been an especially hot spring and summer on the world stage. Not only in these countries, but in others, those others where the Western press say the riots are not riots, even though the protesters are in the hundreds of thousands and the police have to use large numbers uniformed troops with riot gear like aliens, accompanied by anti-riot vehicles, water, gas, batons and bullets.

London, Madrid, Athens, Santiago de Chile and other capitals of the Western world have been or are convulsive, are called "outraged," students, and other groups, all have one common denominator: they protest against government action and the status quo. They are submitted to and face terrible violence and death takes its toll. Even in Israel, listed by an American president as "the only durable and reliable partner that the Western world has in the Middle East," there were huge protests.

But for the mainstream media, the only disturbance occurred and the only governments that exercised violence are mentioned above. Bombing Libya off the face of the earth killing thousands of innocents, is a democratic mission. Destabilizing Syria, apply the same formula as in Libya, trying to topple the government, at a time when international opinion was accustomed to the situation in the region, is another democratic mission.

Such a situation makes some hawks in the U.S. think, this is the time to get rid of the Cuban Revolution by creating conditions for organizing riots and protests to justify actions against the "repression of Castro."

It was recently posted on the Internet a page calling for protests, calling for action and a UN resolution against Cuba like that of Libya, by the "savage repression and violence faced by dissident activists."

Moreover, the so-called Ladies in White, given the lackluster Sakharov Prize in 2005 - are a small group that emerged among the wives and relatives of prisoners in Cuban jails for activities against the security and stability in the country.

The vast majority were released to their families, thanks to the mediation by the Catholic church. They have no reason to continue with their actions, their ranks increased by attracting money to a small number of women with the worst record, some of which have family jailed for common criminal activities, adding to the "ladies of support."

The Ladies in White then considered there was an opportunity for public disorder in towns in the provinces of Santiago de Cuba and Havana, accusing the authorities of starting a "wave of political repression."

The Western media filled their spaces with this news, highlighting the police repression against peaceful and defenseless women fighting for their rights and the freedom of their relatives. They only reached a dozen demonstrators. The authorities repress them only in a way to protect them from popular indignation so that nobody would put a finger on them.

Such actions were a result of funding received from the United States. This was not reflected in the media. Nor has the information provided by the government of Cuba been reported to at least give a fair and objective view. The silence of accomplices.

It is understandable that some women argue and act to secure the release of their husbands in prison, even if they were legally tried and convicted. It's a natural reaction and a right of every woman to defend her husband.

What is impossible to share is to see them convert their pain, which is human and also comes with the mothers of the criminals that society tries to reform in prison-into a business, a cheap commerce of buying and selling, "You can pay so much for so many marches, protests, or so much for so many statements .... " They commodify their pain, sold to a bidder. Especially when there is no motivational cause.

Other attempts at micro-disturbances have tried to organize riots in recent weeks in Cuba with the participation of so-called "dissidents." The important thing is to build the hype with the foreign media.

Everything comes together in the line of trying to convulse a stable society that is struggling to move forward and improve every day.

Another-with much of its own characteristics is in Venezuela, where the effort to destabilize the country using various and multiple ways does not lose sight of the brother country's oil resources. Also there are employed a group of women, who call themselves, in the image and likeness of the Cubans Women in Black (Yes, indeed, they are not very imaginative), who maintained a micro-protest in affluent eastern Caracas for two weeks.

The opposition media stepped up its campaign, the Bolivarian military are attacked. Women who hold responsibilities as leaders in the revolutionary process are denigrated. Calls are made daily to mount "guarimbas" (protests) for the most varied reasons anywhere the country, blaming their violence and the crime rate on a revolution which does not stop working to uproot the inequalities and social exclusion that results from unbridled capitalism and neoliberalism that Venezuelan society was submitted to for decades. They go so far as to bet on a supposed lack of governance due to the illness of President Chavez.

Hawks of the empire, and their local accomplices, think it is possible to achieve the goal of the end of the Bolivarian Revolution through achieving social upheaval. In a perfidious way they try to create "evidence" of the "sinister" character of the people's government in Venezuela.

They try to identify it as being involved in drug trafficking for which recently the U.S. Treasury Department charged four pro-Chavez officials of having links to terrorism and drug trafficking. (Another "remake" of what was used against Cuba).

The script is dictated, the staging is to achieve the collapse of the revolutionary process in Cuba and Venezuela. On Monday, the 12th of September, the U.S. president at a meeting developed at the White House with a group of Hispanic journalists compared the situation in Cuba with what is currently happening in the Middle East, where he said, the aspirations of citizens for democracy triumphed, with the result being the fall of authoritarian regimes.

Behind these actions and after the statements of Barak Obama, we have no alternative but to confirm that imperialism has always despised us, it has never understood us and demonstrates their ignorance by their people wanting to evaluate us through the crystal with which they look at themselves.

They do not know the Latin American people, they are not familiar with the material that makes the Cuban people and forget that Venezuela is deeply rooted in the lineage of Bolivar.

That is lamentable. Again, "gentlemen" hawks will be left with the bitter taste of what could have been but was not.

* The author is an analyst and International correspondent with Summary Latinoamericano, La Habana

Translated from the Spanish version by:

Lisa Karpova

Pravda.Ru