Skip to main content

Vindictive act: Cuba is not a state sponsor of terrorism, says Noam Chomsky

By Noam Chomsky, Vijay Prashad 
Cuba, a country of eleven million people, has been under an illegal embargo by the United States government for over six decades.
Despite this embargo, Cuba’s people have been able to transcend the indignities of hunger, ill-health, and illiteracy, all three being social plagues that continue to trouble much of the world.
Due to its innovations in health care delivery, for instance, Cuba has been able to send its medical workers to other countries, including during the pandemic, to provide vital assistance. Cuba exports its medical workers, not terrorism.
In the last days of the Trump administration, the US government returned Cuba to its State Sponsor of Terrorism list.
This was a vindictive act. Trump said it was because Cuba played host to guerrilla groups from Colombia, which was actually part of Cuba’s role as host of the peace talks.
Cuba played a key role in bringing peace in Colombia, a country that has been wracked by a terrible civil war since 1948 that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. For two years, the Biden administration has maintained Trump’s vindictive policy, one that punishes Cuba not for terrorism but for the promotion of peace.
Biden can remove Cuba from this list with a stroke of his pen. It’s as simple as that. When he was running for the presidency, Biden said he would even reverse the harsher of Trump’s sanctions. But he has not done so. He must do so now.
---
Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad are the authors of The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power. Noam Chomsky is a linguist, philosopher, and political activist. Vijay Prashad is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is the chief editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

Comments

Post a Comment

NOTE: Hateful, abusive comments won't be published. -- Editor

TRENDING

The farmer's burden: How oil, war, and climate are rewriting the price of food

By Vikas Meshram   The scorching flames of the Middle East conflict are now slowly reaching the kitchens of ordinary people. The true price of this war is paid in daily markets, vegetable shops, and in the shattered minds of farmers. Expensive crude oil, skyrocketing fertilizer prices, and rising agricultural costs are together creating the conditions for global food inflation — and this crisis is directly tied to what people eat and drink every day.
Post a Comment
»

Economic nationalism under strain as Indian corporates turn to America

By Sandeep Pandey*  U.S. federal prosecutors withdrew a criminal case involving allegations that Gautam Adani had bribed officials in India to secure solar energy projects, stating that they lacked sufficient evidence. Gautam Adani and his nephew Sagar Adani also settled a civil fraud case with the Securities and Exchange Commission by paying a fine of around ₹180 crore without admitting wrongdoing. In addition, Adani Enterprises reportedly deposited around ₹2,750 crore into the U.S. Treasury to resolve allegations that it had violated U.S. sanctions on Iran through purchases of Iranian liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). 
Post a Comment
»

India’s heatwave crisis: How concrete cities are fueling climate emergency

By Rajkumar Sinha*  According to recent studies, urban areas are witnessing a much sharper rise in temperatures than rural regions. The planet is currently heading toward an additional 1.9°C of warming — far beyond the target envisioned under the Paris Agreement . A team of climate scientists associated with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has noted that India’s average temperature increased by nearly 0.9°C during the decade between 2015 and 2024 compared to the early twentieth century (1901–1930). In western and northeastern India, the hottest day of the year has already become 1.5°C to 2°C warmer since the 1950s.
Post a Comment
»