Predictable pattern of media/govt propaganda
Excerpt, minor edit by Carolyn Bennett
Historian Piero Gleijeses today on Democracy Now! Author of Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington,
Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991.
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| Cuba |
Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman:
“Piero Gleijeses, what do you make of the furor right now … the
significance of the handshake between President [Barack] Obama and President
Raúl Castro right there at the Soweto stadium at the memorial service for
Nelson Mandela?’
Author Piero Gleijeses:
“I think it is pathetic and reflects the ethics of the
United States and the policy of the United States.
“…President Obama was received with applause in South Africa
when he spoke, etc., because he is the first black president of the United
States; but the role of the United States as a country, as a government, past
governments, in the struggle for liberation of South Africa is a shameful role.
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| South Africa |
“In general, we [the U.S.] were on the side of the apartheid
government. And the role of Cuba is a splendid role in favor of the liberation.
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| Saudi Arabia |
“This handshake—going beyond this particular issue − was long overdue. The [U.S.] embargo is absurd, is immoral.
“And we have here a president who bowed to the king … of
Saudi Arabia, which is certainly no democracy.
“Even Obama should know it; so it is an absurd situation.
“The problem with Obama is that his speeches are good, his
gestures are good; but there is no follow-up…; unfortunately, it is just a
gesture, a long-overdue gesture that does not change a shameful U.S. policy.”
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B
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orn 1944 in Venice, Italy, Piero Gleijeses is a professor of
United States foreign policy at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University.
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| Unspeakable cruelty Poverty South Africa |
Gleijeses is reportedly the only foreign scholar to have been
allowed access to the Cuba’s Castro-era government archives and is known for his
scholarly studies on Cuban foreign policy under President Fidel Castro and for several
works on U.S. intervention in Latin America.
Sources and notes
Among Piero Gleijeses’ books
Visions of Freedom:
Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976–1991
(2013)
The Cuban Drumbeat:
Castro's Worldview (2009)
Conflicting Missions:
Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959–1976 (2002)
Shattered Hope: The
Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954 (1992)
Politics and Culture
in Guatemala (1988)
Tilting at Windmills:
Reagan in Central America (1982)
The Dominican Crisis:
The 1965 Constitutionalist Revolt and American Intervention (1978)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_Gleijeses
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| By Piero Gleijeses |
Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the
Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991 by Piero Gleijeses
Publisher clip: “During the final fifteen years of the Cold
War, southern Africa underwent a period of upheaval, with dramatic twists and
turns in relations between the superpowers.
“Americans, Cubans, Soviets, and Africans fought over the
future of Angola, where tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers were stationed, and
over the decolonization of Namibia, Africa’s last colony. Beyond lay the great
prize: South Africa.
“Piero Gleijeses uses archival sources, particularly from
the United States, South Africa, and the closed Cuban archives, to provide an
unprecedented international history of this important theater of the late Cold
War.
“These sources all point to one conclusion:
…by humiliating the United States
and defying the Soviet Union, Fidel Castro changed the course of history in
southern Africa.
It was Cuba’s victory in Angola in
1988 that forced Pretoria to set Namibia free and helped break the back of
apartheid South Africa. In the words of Nelson Mandela, the Cubans ‘destroyed
the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor . . . [and] inspired the fighting
masses of South Africa.’ http://uncpress.unc.edu/browse/book_detail?title_id=3458
“The Secret
History of How Cuba Helped End Apartheid in South Africa,” December 11, 2013,
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/12/11/the_secret_history_of_how_cuba
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