It's back to the future in The Homeland circa 2014. When the neocons and the dimwitted Obama administration are not actively poking the bear in Russia, for example the destabilization and overthrow of the democratically elected leader in Ukraine and hurling propaganda stink bombs at the Sochi Winter Olympic games they are still to this day trying to foment revolution in Cuba. Jesus Christ, have any of the lunatics who are running this great star-spangled asylum ever studied history? The government that Castro built - after kicking out mobsters and rapacious corporate interests, not that there is much if any difference - has endured for nearly sixty years and eleven US presidents. It would just have to be the ultimate narcissist, Barack Obama who thinks that he can be the one to finally stick a fork into it.
The latest example in an endless series of botched plots is that of ZunZuneo, or the "Cuban Twitter" that was revealed to be a covert attempt by the Obama regime to destabilize the government. Hell, we can't do anything rational such as to normalize relations and open Cuba to American investment and trade the proverbial rising tide that would lift all boats, if anything the ongoing debacle in Iran is proof of that, the dirty trick bag has to be opened and the Cuban government subverted in the finest of post WW II US foreign policy tradition. The story of this show of stupidity by Team Obama was broken by the Associated Press. I excerpt the following from the piece entitled "US SECRETLY CREATED 'CUBAN TWITTER' TO STIR UNREST":
In July 2010, Joe McSpedon, a U.S. government official, flew to Barcelona to put the final touches on a secret plan to build a social media project aimed at undermining Cuba's communist government.
McSpedon and his team of high-tech contractors had come in from Costa Rica and Nicaragua, Washington and Denver. Their mission: to launch a messaging network that could reach hundreds of thousands of Cubans. To hide the network from the Cuban government, they would set up a byzantine system of front companies using a Cayman Islands bank account, and recruit executives who would not be told of the company's ties to the U.S. government.
McSpedon didn't work for the CIA. This was a program paid for and run by the U.S. Agency for International Development, best known for overseeing billions of dollars in U.S. humanitarian aid.
According to documents obtained by The Associated Press and multiple interviews with people involved in the project, the plan was to develop a bare-bones "Cuban Twitter," using cellphone text messaging to evade Cuba's strict control of information and its stranglehold restrictions over the Internet. In a play on Twitter, it was called ZunZuneo — slang for a Cuban hummingbird's tweet.
Documents show the U.S. government planned to build a subscriber base through "non-controversial content": news messages on soccer, music and hurricane updates. Later when the network reached a critical mass of subscribers, perhaps hundreds of thousands, operators would introduce political content aimed at inspiring Cubans to organize "smart mobs" — mass gatherings called at a moment's notice that might trigger a Cuban Spring, or, as one USAID document put it, "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society."
So the cover is now blown on USAID as being just another front for the endless series of escapades by the US government and the NGO's which are really for the most part front groups in the meddling in the affairs of other countries. The Cold War may officially be over but the dead enders just never stop. Just look at the escalating mess in Ukraine where the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which took place of the more ostentatious CIA in doing the dirty work of toppling governments not sufficiently following the Washington line. Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland during a speech to predatory corporations looking to feast on the spoils of the carved up Ukraine boasted of the $5 billion that the US government had plowed into the country - hell, it's not like it could be used to actually do some investment in America. The NED's role in spreading "democracy" at gunpoint and beating the concept into all who refuse to go along with the corporate colonization in the torture chambers of the murderous despots that we the US taxpayers fund was already well established but USAID. at least had some semblance of legitimacy - good job Obama, there that one goes as well. Is it too late to get George W. Bush to come back?
The White House naturally denied that the Cuban Twitter plot was a covert operation but there are Congressional (yes those worthless bastards) probes forthcoming. With Senator Robert "whore chaser" Menendez already chiming in approvingly: "The whole purpose of our democracy programs, whether it be in Cuba or other parts of the world, is in part to create a free flow of information in closed societies" - the sheer hypocrisy is incredible, given that the New Jersey based kingpin of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee continue to be one of the most vocal advocates of the unconstitutional NSA Stasi mass domestic surveillance and data-mining programs. For further elaboration on the ZunZuneo operation as well as other more nefarious aspects of the collaborative program between the NSA and those Norsefire fascists across the pond at GCHQ Glenn Greenwald has just published a very good piece over at his new platform The Intercept entitled "The “Cuban Twitter” Scam Is a Drop in the Internet Propaganda Bucket", it like all of his work is strongly recommended reading.
So on and on it goes with this sick obsession with Cold War style skullduggery and an absolute refusal to become an honest partner in what is an increasingly globalized world where the US establishment as well as the deep state and shadow government that lie underneath continue with their wretched, dishonest and murderous ways. The one place that is so badly in need of one of those regime changes is right here in the US of A.
