Cuba accuses Reuters journalist of collaborating with US intelligence

[Judi Lynn]

Cuba accuses Reuters journalist of collaborating with US intelligence
By Associated Press,
Monday, April 4, 11:18 PM

HAVANA — Cuban state-television on Monday accused a former bureau chief for the Reuters international news agency of arranging a meeting on a darkened Havana street between an undercover Cuban agent and a U.S. diplomat who the program claimed was really a CIA operative.

The program, dedicated to uncovering supposed plots against Cuba, featured a professor and little-known dissident named Raul Capote, who described himself as “Agent Daniel,” the Cuban intelligence agent who purportedly took part in the meeting.

Capote said he attended a reception with Reuters’ then bureau chief, Anthony Boadle, at the German Embassy, without giving a date. The two left the party by foot two hours later, walking through the quiet Havana night, he said.

“We walked I don’t know how many blocks, until we arrived at a dark place where a car was parked. There was a shadow inside, a man,” Capote said. He said it was Mark Sullivan, a diplomat at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana in 2006-2008 who the program accused of being a CIA agent.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/cuba-accuses-reuters-journalist-of-collaborating-with-us-intelligence/2011/04/04/AFlkSRgC_story.html

[flamingdem]

1. The plot thickens nt

[Mika]

2. Shouldn't the headline be: "Fidel accuses Reuters journalist of collaborating with US intelligence"

Oh.... wait....

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[Judi Lynn]

5. Even though dying many times, according to Miami, he still reigns with an iron grip. Sob. n/t

[Peace Patriot]

3. I commented on the strange convergence of the Associated Pukes, the Washington Psst and Rotters

in this article, at the other thread on this topic.

Comment #13, here
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4801139

Just want to add here that Castro probably got some exposure in the corpo-fascist press for his remarks on this matter because of rivalry among the monotonously, nauseatingly similar corpo-fascist propaganda outlets involved. The Associated Pukes bit, republished by the Psst, probably had them laughing in Puke and Psst offices, at Rotters' discomfiture. But they're all the same really--all three copy and pasting the latest "talking points" out of Langley.

A pox on their corporate houses!

[Judi Lynn]

4. For sure, it comes from our own government. That presence has hovered in and around our news

since at least the overthrown of Jacob Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. They even hired a PR guy, Edward Bernays, to head anti-Arbenz propaganda in order to con the public into supporting the overthrow.

Here's info. for people who haven't heard too much about him:

Edward Louis Bernays (November 22, 1891 – March 9, 1995), was an American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda along with Ivy Lee, referred to in his obituary as "the father of public relations".<1> Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Dr. Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public opinion using the subconscious.

He felt this manipulation was necessary in society, which he regarded as irrational and dangerous as a result of the 'herd instinct' that Trotter had described. Adam Curtis's award-winning 2002 documentary for the BBC, The Century of the Self, pinpoints Bernays as the originator of modern public relations, and Bernays was named one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century by Life magazine.<2>

~snip~
Overthrow of government of GuatemalaBernays' most extreme political propaganda activities were said to be conducted on behalf of the multinational corporation United Fruit Company (today's Chiquita Brands International) and the U.S. government to facilitate the successful overthrow (see Operation PBSUCCESS) of the democratically elected president of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Bernays' propaganda (documented in the BBC documentary, The Century of the Self), branding Arbenz as communist, was published in major U.S. media. According to a book review by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton of Larry Tye's biography, "The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays & The Birth of PR",term 'banana republic' actually originated in reference to United Fruit's domination of corrupt governments in Guatemala and other Central American countries. The company brutally exploited virtual slave labor in order to produce cheap bananas for the lucrative U.S. market."

Chilean poet Pablo Neruda would later denounce the dominance of foreign-owned banana producers in the politics of several Latin American countries in a poem titled "La United Fruit Co.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays#Overthrow_of_government_of_Guatemala

[Peace Patriot]

6. Thanks for all this riveting info, Judi Lynn! You are a wonder! Didn't know about the...

...Bernays/Arbenz connection. The words "pure evil" spring to mind. There is NOTHING WORSE, in my view, than interfering with the process of democracy by means of brainwashing and disinformation. Evil can never be prevented. But evil can be compensated, mitigated and corrected, if "the people" have INFORMATION.

Today we have the ENTIRE press corps in the service of corporate/war profiteer propaganda and brainwashing, and I suppose what is amazing is how smart people are--and how persistent are most people's progressive views and desires--in spite of it all. I'm still blown away by research I did in late-2002/early 2003, about U.S. views of the Iraq War and torturing prisoners. Nearly 60% opposed the war. Nearly 65% opposed torture "under any circumstances." I was astonished at the persistence of progressive views despite all the propaganda (and the Nazi-like 'Reichstag' tricks).

But today I think we have a teetering monarchy in the corpo-fascist 'news' establishment. That's why the corpo-fascists have resorted to 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines. Their "narrative" of lies and disinformation has become so thin. I don't know why, but this is especially obvious to me in the Christian Science Monitor--maybe because I have academic training and know all the "tricks" of the academic trade. The Christian Science Muddle tries to emulate academic writing. They are kind of like NPR in having a snooty veneer over their propagandistic purposes. I have equal contempt for the New York Slimes, actually, because they, too, have incredibly slimy "upper class" pretensions (never more evident than in Slimin' Romero's columns on Latin America--very similar to the Christian Science Muddle--i.e., flabby-brained 'intellectuality').

This corpo-fascist "narrative" became paper thin during the Bush Junta. In fact, the whole corpo-fascist regime has become paper thin. And I hope and pray that our society--which I am convinced is full of mostly really good people--survives the rips and tears in the false "reality" that the corpo-fascists have created. I think we are very like Europe/England round about the 15th Century, when the lies and pervasive multinational dominion of the Roman Catholic Church began to unravel. Can society lose its lies and remain viable--or rather get better? There is precedent in history for a "yes" answer to that--but it is never easy and does not occur without very difficult struggles. Our Corporate Rulers are hauntingly similar to the Church and its reign of propagandistic darkness during the Medieval period.