The Goal Is Still Regime Change

Last week, when the story came out of USAID's failed “color revolution” in Cuba - using “Serbian music promoters” no less - I thought its airing was just another effort at perception management. For one thing, it was an old story: the initial revelations were made in April. Then there was the fact that everyone was talking about the CIA torture report, so airing this was the perfect way to deflect attention from it, while also ensuring that nobody will pay too much attention to the Cuba fiasco as well.

Instead, the story was a trial balloon for Wednesday's announcement that Washington would lift the embargo on Cuba first imposed during the Kennedy administration.

That's good, right? Uh, not so fast. Consider the phrasing of Obama's announcement: “We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interest.”

Outdated? Why, then, is Washington using the very same approach against Russia, Iran, and other places? Because the US policymakers believe that in those cases, the “sanctions” are working. Just look at the maniacal glee with which Russophobes in the US media are cackling over the manipulated oil price and the equally orchestrated attack on the ruble. Which is, by the way, still a fundamentally stronger currency than the dollar.

So, the blockade wasn't lifted on grounds of the tactic being morally unacceptable for Washington, but because it didn't achieve the desired result (“failed to advance our interest”). That result, however, hasn't changed a bit: it's still “regime change” - in Cuba, in Russia, in any country that continues to believe it is sovereign, free and independent of Washington's commands.

If this all sounds too much like the attitude of the Hunger Games' Capitol towards the rebellious and disenfranchised Districts... well, decide for yourselves whether the resemblance is purely accidental.

"Serbian Music Promoters" and the Failed USAID Revolution in Cuba

Many Americans skeptical of the government give no second thought to USAID. The agency may be spending taxpayers' money overseas, they figure, but at least it's for the purpose of buying the world's goodwill with American kindness and generosity, right?

Little do they know that USAID also produces threatening political ads, and tries to subvert governments through pop culture. Recent reports by AP (see here) indicate the U.S. agency has tried to foment a coup in Cuba by infiltrating the Cuban hip-hop scene. This was part of a broader scheme involving a knockoff of Twitter, some details of which emerged earlier this year. Though some U.S. government officials (e.g. Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy) are blasting the venture as "reckless and stupid," USAID is claiming it was only "developing civil society."

It is certainly interesting that the original round of revelations about the project, supposedly discontinued in 2012, were leaked to the media as everyone was paying attention to the political meltdown in Ukraine this spring - and this story comes while everyone is focusing on the CIA torture report. The best time to "to take out the trash" is when the public's attention is elsewhere...

Notice also that only one person has been identified by name in the whole scandal: one Rajko Bozic, called "a Serbian contractor," though Western media indicate he wasn't the only Serbian "music promoter" working the gig. Turns out Bozic isn't an ordinary music promoter - Serbian papers reveal he was "involved in projects in Tunisia, Ukraine, Lebanon and Zimbabwe." So he is really one of those professional revolutionary types, who go around the world spreading the Imperial gospel of "democracy" and "human rights." This particular lot was chosen because of their role in the Exit Festival, a drugs-and-alcohol-addled extravaganza started in 2000 as part of the campaign to overthrow the government, and continued every year since, at Serbian taxpayers' expense.

But don't believe for a second their "outing" as Serbian is an accident, or an irrelevant detail. Back in 2011, when a damning documentary appeared linking these professional putschists to the so-called "Arab Spring" upheavals in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria, I wrote:

"Branding [them] as Serbian is no accident. Few in the world would be inclined to suspect a Serb of working for the Empire, after everything that happened in the Balkans in the 1990s... Merely defeating and conquering Serbia would not do. The Serbs had to be turned into the Empire’s most dedicated servants: when even a people like that can be so thoroughly crushed, resistance to the Empire must surely be futile."

And while every place that's been touched by these "activists" bears the scars of their involvement, Serbia is actually run by them, and has been for the past 14 years. So great has this "democratic democracy" been, ordinary Serbians are now worse off than during the era of sanctions and war. That ought to tell you everything about the kind of bliss these people - and their paymasters - truly stand for.