The Cuban Connection

On a trip to Cuba, I picked up a book in the Havana "Revolutionary Museum", entitled
"Biological Warfare Against Cuba", by Ariel Alonso Pérez.

Cuba may be a poor country (partly due to abuse from the United States), but it is
a well-educated country and respected in the areas of medicine and microbiology.

The right-wing Republican diplomat, John Robert Bolton, fretted that Cuba might
use biological warfare against the United States.

The viciously homophobic North Carolina Republican Senator Jesse Helms once
endorsed Bolton: "John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand
at Armageddon."  

With government figures like Helms and Bolton in high positions, "Armageddon"
is always a more distinct likelihood, owing to their own crackpot attitudes and
deep reservoirs of hatred and brutality.

Helms was also one of staunchest supporters on Capitol Hill for
the Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet, who killed thousands of opponents and
anyone left-of-center, sometimes throwing them from airplanes without parachutes.

A book by Peter Kornbluh, a contributor to "The Nation" magazine, cowrote a book,
endorsed by President Jimmy Carter, called "Back Channel to Cuba", which mentioned
Bolton's  paranoid allegation that Cuban  microbiologists might engage in biological terrorism
against the United States.  Yet that book does not mention a word about the lengthy
and long-standing Cuban allegations concerning U.S. biological warfare against Cuba.
This glaring and inexplicable omission shows the ignorance (or cowardice) even of
American authors who supposedly are representing "the Left".

Fidel Castro and the communist regime had not been a friend to gays, initially,
to say the least.  The French existentialist, Jean Paul Sartre, who once called
guerilla leader Che Guevara "one of the most complete persons" of their time,
objected to Cuban treatment of gays, and referred to gays as "the Jews of Cuba".

Castro, at least, has acknowledged the historical mistreatment of gays, which is
more than can be said for most American conservatives.

Fidel Castro is also one who agreed that AIDS represented a product of
biological warfare.

Castro should know, since as it said in Ed Haslam's book, "Dr. Mary's Monkey",
it was Fidel Castro who was a target of the virus that was being created in
New Orleans, in the era preceding the Kennedy assassination.  It is documented
history that the CIA engaged in multiple plans to assassinate Castro, including by
poison, and including cooperation enlisted from American Mafia.

The book by Mr. Peréz lays out a detailed case of evidence, including:

     * testimony in a New York court by an agent who confessed to being paid
    to spread a virus to infect Cuban turkeys (New York City Federal
    Court, P. 21898, 1984, file 2 FBI NY 185 - 1009)

  * acknowledgment by the U.S. that a crop-dusting plane had violated
    Cuban airspace and was spraying a substance.   The U.S. claimed that
    the plane was sending a "smoke signal" as a "standard procedure".
    Cubans cited that there was no such "standard procedure" in American
    aviation regulations.  What Cubans found when they investigated the
    spraying site was Trips Palmi, an insect used as a biological agent,
    never seen before on the island, and intended to harm to agriculture.

  * An unnatural, simultaneous outbreak in 3 widely separated parts of the
    island, of a disease not found in any neighboring countries and not
    seen before in Cuba.  At once, in the east, the west and middle of
    the island, as if intended to spark a sudden, widespread outbreak.
    As a poor country, foreign travel was not common among the Cuban
    general population.  Cuban epidemiologists would have the data on
    who had traveled to what destinations.


    Other outbreaks followed a similar pattern: never seen before in
    Cuba, yet existing in no surrounding countries.

  * Church Committee revelations concerning CIA efforts for covert use
    botulin toxin, including for the attempted assassination of Cuban leaders. 

Among the biological agents allegedly used were Hemorragic dengue, tobacco blue mold, sugar cane rust, Thrips palmi,
Newcastle virus and swine fever.

At one point, the spreading of swine fever was even theorized wrongly as precipitating the AIDS epidemic.
The real story, though, is the role played by irresponsible research and covert activities involving many
biological agents, of which  "swine fever" was only one of the lesser examples, providing context
for the more serious covert programs.

In one of the Cuban incidents, the alleged means of spreading a disease was by way of vaccines
"helpfully" administered to Cubans at the U.S.-controlled Guantanamo base.  The book by Mr. Peréz
mentions this without reference at all to the corroborating information concerning the U.S. gay "vaccine"
connection, or the similar, alleged African vaccine connections.  Nor does it mention the corroboration
of Ed Haslam's revelations concerning the biological warfare research that was aimed at Castro.

It is this author's opinion that it would be naive to imagine that U.S. intelligence would develop
a virus aimed simply at a single human being like Fidel Castro.  A project of such a scope would be hugely
expensive and not much "bang for the buck" if intended for such a limited target, compared to alternatives
such as assassinating by simply by rifle or bomb.  More likely the claim of simply "killing Castro" was
a story and a cover told to anti-Castro researchers and project participants, to make them feel
comfortable with what they were doing, when the real intent was to kill a great many people.

If you are beginning to see the picture, please wish this author luck in trying to persuade these other
authors that there more puzzle pieces that need to be tied together.

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