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Former US Secretary of State John Kerry in Paris, France on June 8, 2024. [Mustafa Yalçın – Anadolu Agency]
Former US Secretary of State John Kerry said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had repeatedly urged US administrations to carry out military strikes on Iran, but previous presidents declined, Anadolu reports.
Speaking in an interview on The Briefing with Jen Psaki on Friday, Kerry said he had participated in multiple discussions with Netanyahu, noting: “He wanted us to strike.”
He said the Israeli premier presented the proposal directly to former President Barack Obama, adding: “President Obama refused. President Joe Biden refused. President George W. Bush refused.”
Kerry said: “The only president who has agreed to this, obviously, is President Trump.”
Referring to recent reporting, Kerry said Netanyahu made a detailed case for military action, describing it as “a four-point pitch.”
He said the proposal included claims that such a strike could “kill the leadership,” “incite a change of regime,” and “destroy the military.”
Kerry said the reporting on the discussions appeared credible, noting it “seemed like good reporting.”
He also indicated that Netanyahu had presented these arguments in meetings involving senior officials, where different views were considered.
The US and Israel launched an offensive against Iran on Feb. 28, killing then Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and many other senior political and military leaders.
Tehran retaliated with drone and missile strikes targeting Israel as well as Jordan, Iraq and Gulf countries hosting US military assets. Iran also restricted the movement of ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
Pakistan, together with Turkiye, China, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, managed to secure a two-week ceasefire on Wednesday between Washington and Tehran, 40 days after the war began.
As part of the deal, the two sides agreed to meet in Islamabad for talks to negotiate a lasting peace.
Donald Trump calls for help from NATO allies in securing the Straight of Hormuz despite saying on 7 March 2026 that they don’t need people to join wars after they’ve already won. He’s challenged with the claim that he lies as much as the IDF.Orcas discuss Genocide-supporting and complicit Zionists. Donald Trump, Keith Starmer, David Lammy, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting are acknowledged as evil genocide-complicit and supporting cnuts.
Cuba is in the midst of an ongoing humanitarian crisis, and October’s widespread power outages are only adding to the Cuban people’s troubles. For the last six decades, Cuba has been on the receiving end of myriad sanctions by the United States government. This blockade has proved devastating to human life.
Reporting on Cuba’s blackouts have either omitted or paid brief lip-service to the effects of US sanctions on the Cuban economy, and how those sanctions have created the conditions for the crisis. Instead, media have focused on the inefficient and authoritarian Communist government as the cause of the island’s troubles.
Pulping the economy
Michael Galant (The Hill, 1/5/24): “Businesses and financial institutions, including many from outside the United States, often elect to sever all connections to Cuba rather than risk being sanctioned themselves for association with ‘a sponsor of terror.’”
One of President Donald Trump’s final acts in office was to re-designate Cuba as a State Sponsor of Terrorism, after President Barack Obama had removed them from the list in 2015 as a part of his Cuban thaw. Inclusion on the list subjects a country to restrictions on US foreign aid and financing, but, more importantly, the SSoT list encourages third-party over-compliance with sanctions. “Businesses and financial institutions, including many from outside the United States, often elect to sever all connections to Cuba rather than risk being sanctioned themselves,” The Hill (1/5/24) reported.
Trump reportedly added Cuba to the list for harboring members of FARC and ELN, two left-wing Colombian armed movements. However, Colombian President Gustavo Petro later “noted that Colombia itself, in cooperation with the Obama administration, had asked Cuba to host the FARC and ELN members as part of peace talks,” the Intercept (12/14/23) wrote. Indeed, if Cuba deported the dissidents, they would have been in violation of the protocols of the peace talks, which they were bound to by international law (The Nation, 2/24/23).
President Joe Biden has not begun the process of reviewing Cuba’s inclusion on the list, despite his campaign promises to the contrary.
The terror designation, plus the many other sanctions imposed by Trump and continued by Biden, are no small potatoes. Ed Augustin wrote at Drop Site (10/1/24) that
the terror designation, together with more than 200 sanctions enacted against the island since Obama left office, has pulped the Cuban economy by cutting revenue to the struggling Cuban state…. The combined annual cost of the Trump/Biden sanctions, [economists] say, amounts to billions of dollars a year.
Augustin argued that the economic warfare regime is a root cause of the rolling blackouts, water shortages and mass emigration that have plagued Cuba in recent years. Even imports that are ostensibly exempt from sanctions, like medication, are caught in the dragnet as multinational companies scramble to cut ties with the island. Banks are so reluctant to run afoul of US sanctions, Augustin wrote, “that often, even when the state can find the money to buy, and a provider willing to sell, there’s simply no way of making the payment.”
Cuba’s pariah status as a SSoT has put a stranglehold on its economy, and its government’s ability to administer public services. However, US restrictions on Cuba are almost never mentioned in US coverage, and reporting on the recent blackouts is no exception.
Cash-strapped Communists
Reuters (10/10/19): “Tougher US sanctions against Cuba have led international banks to avoid transactions involving the island, while prospective overseas investors put plans on hold.”
Coverage has emphasized the inability of Cuba’s government to pay for necessary fuel imports. The New York Times (10/19/24) reported “the strapped Communist government could barely afford” to pay for fuel. Elsewhere, the Times (10/18/24) claimed “a severe economic crisis and the cash crunch it produced made it harder for Cuba to pay for those fuel imports.”
The Washington Post (10/18/24) made broadly similar arguments, chalking the blackouts up to “a shortage of imported oil and the cash-strapped government’s insufficient maintenance of the creaky grid.”
The “cash crunch” referenced by the Times is not just the result of an abstract economic crisis, as is implied. Instead, it is a direct effect of US sanctions on financial institutions. During the Obama administration, European banks, including ING and BNP Paribas, were fined to the tune of over $10 billion for transacting with Cuba (Jacobin, 3/27/22). Even before Cuba was choked further as a result of their SSoT designation, reporting by Reuters (10/10/19) showed the extent to which banks were terminating operations with Cuba and Cuban entities:
Many Western banks have long refused Cuba-related business for fear of running afoul of US sanctions and facing hefty fines.… Panama’s Multibank shut down numerous Cuba-related accounts this year and European banks are restricting clients associated with Cuba to their own nationals, if that.…
Businessmen and diplomats said large French banks, including Societe Generale, no longer want anything to do with Cuba, and some are stopping payments to pensioners living on the Caribbean island.… For the first time in years, the island has had problems financing the upcoming sugar harvest. Various joint venture projects, from golf resorts to alternative energy, are finding it nearly impossible to obtain private credit.
This de-risking by financial institutions manufactures a cash-scarce economy. Cuba’s inability to procure cash for imports is not a function of financial mismanagement, or a lack of credit-worthiness. Instead, it is a deliberate effect of American foreign policy. By omitting the actions of the most powerful government on earth, mainstream coverage allows only that only Cuban failures could be the cause of a shortage of cash.
‘Terrorism’ cuts off tourism
Britain’s ambassador to Cuba told the Telegraph (11/6/23), “Those who come are profoundly shocked at what the SSOT designation is doing to the people here.”
Cuba has historically used tourism as a way of bringing money into the economy, but lately the Cuban tourism industry has been severely depressed. The explanation employed by corporate media for the decline of this industry is to blame the extended effects of the pandemic recession (New York Times, 10/19/24; Washington Post, 10/18/24).
This explanation, however, is incomplete. Cuba has indeed had a lackluster rebound in their tourism industry, but the Times and the Post fail to explain why Cuba has faltered while other Caribbean islands have more than re-achieved their pre-pandemic tourist numbers.
Travelers from Britain, Australia, Japan and 37 other countries do not need to procure a visa for travel to the United States. Instead, they can use ESTA, an electronic visa waiver. This greatly reduces the cost and the annoyance of obtaining permission to visit the US. However, since Cuba’s 2021 listing as a SSoT, any visit to the country by an ESTA passport-holder revokes the visa waiver, for life (Telegraph, 11/6/23). In other words, any Brit (or Kiwi, or Korean, and so on) who visits Cuba must, for the rest of their lives, visit a US embassy and pay $180 before being able to enter the United States. US policy, not a Covid hangover, is hamstringing any possibility of a resurgence in tourism to Cuba.
Blame game
During Cuba’s most recent energy crisis, the New York Times published three stories describing the blackouts. Two of these stories mention the US blockade only as something that the Cuban government blames for the crisis.
The New York Times (10/21/24) presented the idea that the US is punishing Cuba’s economy as a Communist allegation: “The Cuban government blames the power crisis on the US trade embargo, and sanctions that were ramped up by the Trump administration.”
The headline on the Times website (10/21/24) read: “A Nationwide Blackout, Now a Hurricane. How Much Can Cuba Endure?” The paper was right to report on the humanitarian crisis ongoing in Cuba, but it chose to downplay the most important root cause: the decades-long US blockade on Cuba’s economy and its people.
That same story described Cuba as “a Communist country long accustomed to shortages of all kinds and spotty electrical service.” Why is the country so used to shortages? Eleven paragraphs later, the Times gave an explanation, or at least, Cuba’s explanation:
The Cuban government blames the power crisis on the US trade embargo, and sanctions that were ramped up by the Trump administration, which severely restricts the Cuban government’s cash flow. The US Department of the Treasury blocks tankers that have delivered oil to Cuba, which drives up the island’s fuel costs, because Cuba has a limited pool of suppliers available to it.
Earlier coverage by the Times (10/18/24) similarly couched the effects of the blockade as merely a claim by Cuba. The Washington Post (10/22/24) also situated the blockade as something that “the Cuban government and its allies blame” for the ongoing crisis.
To report that Cuban officials blame the US sanctions for the energy crisis is a bit like reporting that fishermen blame the moon for the rising tide. It is of course factual that US trade restrictions–which affect not just US businesses, but also multinational businesses based in other countries–are a blunt weapon, with impact against not just a government, but an entire people.
At the very least, it is incumbent upon journalists to do at least minimal investigation and explanation of the facts concerning the subject of their reporting. None of the coverage in either major paper bothered to investigate whether this was a fair explanation, or even to report generally the effects a 60-year blockade might have on an economy.
Brief—and buried
“Cuban economists and foreign analysts blamed the crisis on several factors,” the New York Times (10/19/24) reported; 18 paragraphs later, the story gets around to mentioning US sanctions.
On October 19, the Times gave its most complete explanation of the relationship between the US sanctions regime and the Cuban blackouts:
Cuba’s economy enjoyed a brief honeymoon with the United States during the Obama administration, which sought to normalize relations after decades of hostility, while keeping a longstanding economic embargo in place. President Donald J. Trump reversed course, leading to renewed restrictions on tourism, visas, remittances, investments and commerce.
This explanation can be found in the 31st paragraph of the 37-paragraph story. Only once the Times has painted a picture of all the ways the Communist government has gone wrong can there be a brief mention of the role of US sanctions. And how brief it is; the Times chose not to detail the extent of blockade against Cuba, nor how Cuba was wrongfully placed on the SSoT list, nor the failure of Biden to reevaluate Cuba’s status as he promised on the campaign trail.
Describing the US starvation of Cuba’s economy in abstract terms like “economic crisis” provides cover for deliberate policy decisions by the US government. By reporting on the embargo only as something that the Cuban government claims, it is easy for readers to dismiss that explanation as simply a Communist excuse. Instead of asking why the United States is choosing to enforce a crippling sanctions regime on another country, outlets like the New York Times find it easier to repeat the line that Cuba’s government has only itself to blame for its problems.
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Why did Jack Straw try to make it illegal for children at childrens’ homes to speak out about abuse? Was Jack Straw influenced by the fact that some of his friends and fellow politicians were paedophiles? Was this a desperate attempt to stop the truth coming out not only that Labour politiicans are paedophiles but highest level politicians of ALL parties?
Up to 50 nuclear power stations could be built under plans being looked at by the government. The remarkable figure – 10 times the number the government is openly discussing – is revealed in documents submitted to the Department of Energy and Climate Change by one of its own advisory bodies.
The documents are likely to raise questions as to what extent the government’s energy policy is weighted in favour of nuclear and away from renewables such as wind turbines. It comes as Brussels begins an investigation into whether Britain is providing up to £17bn of potentially illegal public guarantees for the first nuclear power plant in a generation, Hinkley Point C in Somerset, which aims to provide 7% of the country’s electricity.
More details of people and institutions targeted by UK and US surveillance have been published by The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel.
The papers say that the list of around 1,000 targets includes a European Union commissioner, humanitarian organisations and an Israeli PM.
…
The Guardian writes that GCHQ targeted the UN development programme, Unicef, German government buildings and the EU Competition Commissioner, Joaquin Almunia.
Just hours after receiving a report from his hand-picked advisory panel on National Security Agency surveillance operations, President Barack Obama used his end of the year press conference Friday to deliver an Orwellian defense of unrestrained US spying both at home and abroad.
“I have confidence that the NSA is not engaging in domestic surveillance and snooping around,” Obama said, despite the cascade of revelations proving just the opposite. These revelations, including the latest from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, have established that the agency is collecting and storing billions of files recording the phone calls, text messages, emails, Internet searches and even the daily movements of virtually ever US citizen, not to mention those of hundreds of millions of people abroad.
“The United States is a country that abides by rule of law[!], that cares deeply about privacy[!], that cares deeply about civil liberties[!],” he added. Who, at this late juncture, does the American president think he’s fooling? One only has to read the ruling by a Washington, DC Federal District Court judge—which was then stayed in the interest of “national security”—finding the surveillance methods of the NSA to be “almost Orwellian,” and its activities unconstitutional, i.e., criminal.
The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has abandoned its promise to carry out an independent inquiry into Britain’s involvement in “extraordinary rendition”, detention”and torture carried out by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Instead, the inquiry will be undertaken by Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), whose record is one of covering up the activities of the intelligence services.
Only last month, the ISC questioned the head of the internal security service MI5, Andrew Parker; the director of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Sir Iain Lobban; and Sir John Sawers, head of the foreign intelligence department MI6. The hearing was meant to demonstrate unprecedented openness and accountability to Parliament of the secret state apparatus, after revelations by US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden that the UK agencies worked with the US to monitor the Internet and phone activity of most of the world’s citizens.
…
Clare Algar, executive director of the human rights organisation Reprieve, criticised the decision to hand the investigation to the ISC: “If the government takes this course, it will be breaking its promise to hold a genuine, independent inquiry into the UK’s involvement in torture.
The father of one of the 270 victims of the Lockerbie bombing has asked mourners to pray for the “innocent family” of the only person convicted of the worst mass murder in British history, as the nation marked its 25th anniversary.
In his address to a memorial service at Westminster Abbey yesterday evening attended by relatives of the victims, Dr Jim Swire also accused the British government of failing to tell “all the truth they know about this terrible tragedy”.
Before the service, the UK, US and Libyan governments in a joint statement promised to work together to “reveal the full facts of the case”, saying that they wanted “all those responsible for this most brutal act of terrorism brought to justice, and to understand why it was committed”. [BS: positive identification]
