October 8, 2013
WikiLeaks founder embraces Castro's Cuba
By Cliff Kincaid
Julian Assange is bracing for a new film, The Fifth Estate, which raises
the question of whether the founder of WikiLeaks is a "hero" or
"traitor." But the film, scheduled for release on October 18, has been
overtaken by events. Assange, supposedly an advocate of freedom of the
press, has made common cause with one of the worst violators of press
freedom in the world today – Castro's Cuba.
This alliance with Cuba proves that Assange is a traitor to the cause of
freedom of the press and a free society.
Operating from within the London embassy of the Marxist government of
Ecuador, where he has been living for over a year, Assange recently
participated in an on-line video conference with "journalists" from
Castro's Cuba, and wore a yellow ribbon in solidarity with the "Cuban
Five" who were sentenced to prison in the U.S. for spying for Castro.
Assange also used the occasion to denounce the U.S. economic embargo of
Cuba as "immoral."
The hypocrisy has caught the attention of Humberto Fontova, whose new
book The Longest Romance: The Mainstream Media and Fidel Castro has just
been released.
"According to the Paris-based 'Reporters Without Borders,' the Castro
regime – even today – jails and tortures the most journalists per-capita
on earth," Fontova told Accuracy in Media. "Stunningly, the total number
of journalists jailed by Cuba (population 11 million) is only slightly
behind that of China (population 1.4 billion)."
"His regime jailed more political prisoners than Stalin's did during the
Great Terror. Castro actually murdered more Cubans during his first
three years in power than Hitler killed Germans during his first six
years, and came closer than anyone in history to starting a worldwide
nuclear war. During the above process, this KGB-mentored gang converted
a nation with a higher per-capita income than half of Europe and a huge
influx of immigrants into one that repels Haitians and boasts the
highest suicide rate in the Hemisphere."
Before Obama brought "Obamacare" – now the object of increasing
controversy – to the U.S., Castro had supposedly produced "world class
healthcare" for the Cuban people, a complete lie that is part of
Castro's propaganda struggle, according to the Fontova book.
Assange, in Fontova's view, is only the latest figure to buy into the
propaganda. His book examines how such luminaries as Barbara Walters,
Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Barbara Walters have sold out the
truth in order to make Castro (or his henchman Che Guevara) look good.
For his part, Fidel Castro had declared that Assange brought the U.S.
"to its knees" through his disclosures of classified information leaked
to him by former Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning. Castro
called Assange a hero for his "challenge" to "the most powerful empire
ever," adding, "Ideas can be more powerful than nuclear weapons."
After his video conference, Assange was the subject of official stories
from Castro's "news" agencies about his online "conversation" with Cuban
"journalists, journalism students, and Cuban bloggers" during the event
conducted by the "Press Information Center" in the Cuban capital of Havana.
Sounding like a Marxist agitator, Assange said "he believed in the right
of these people to their struggle," in answer to a question about
Castro's spies.
His praise for the Castro regime and its spies should not come as too
much of a surprise. WikiLeaks has been serving the interests of
America's enemies since its inception, and has recently been acting in
the role of adviser to former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, now living
in Russia.
Castro has said about Snowden, who released classified information about
terrorist surveillance programs, "I admire the courageous and just
declarations of Snowden. In my opinion, he has rendered a service to the
world, having revealed the repugnantly dishonest policy of the powerful
empire that is lying and deceiving the world."
Assange's embrace of the Castro regime makes sense, in the context of
his receiving help from the Marxist Ecuadorean regime of Rafael Correa.
"Aside from the Castro brothers, there's nobody in the Western
Hemisphere who's trying harder to do away with freedom of the press than
Assange's putative champion, Ecuador's rambunctiously left-wing
president Rafael Correa," writes Glenn Garvin in the Miami Herald. "In
June, Correa pushed through a law establishing the crime of 'media
lynching,' defined as the 'dissemination of information' with 'the
purpose of discrediting' someone."
Assange is staying in the Ecuadorian embassy in London because he fears
British authorities will extradite him to Sweden to face sex crimes charges.
Garvin reported that Correa's lawsuits and threats against the news
media have closed many news outlets and sent other journalists "fleeing
into exile," to the point where Freedom House now lists Ecuador's media
as "not free."
Assange's embrace of the Castro regime and the "Cuban Five" raises
questions about whether he has been operating as a Communist agent all
along.
It would not be surprising if it turns out he was in the pay of the
Cuban intelligence service.
In recent years, a number of important Cuban spy cases have come to
light. They include:
A former State Department official and his wife, Walter Kendall Myers
and Gwendolyn Steingraber Myers, were arrested in 2009 "on charges of
serving as illegal agents of the Cuban government for nearly 30 years,
and conspiring to provide classified U.S. information to the Cuban
government," the Department of Justice reported. They pled guilty to
federal charges of providing classified U.S. national defense
information to Cuba.
Earlier this year Marta Rita Velazquez was charged with conspiracy to
commit espionage on behalf of Cuba. She and others were charged with
transmitting to the Cuban government and its agents "documents and
information relating to the U.S. national defense, with the intent that
they would be used to the injury of the United States and to the
advantage of the Cuban government," the Department of Justice says. As
part of the conspiracy, Velazquez allegedly helped the Cuban
intelligence service "spot, assess and recruit U.S. citizens who
occupied sensitive national security positions or had the potential of
occupying such positions in the future to serve as Cuban agents." One of
these agents was Ana Belen Montes, who worked at the Defense
Intelligence Agency. Montes pled guilty to these charges in 2002 and was
sentenced to 25 years in prison.
© Cliff Kincaid
Source: "WikiLeaks founder embraces Castro's Cuba" -
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/kincaid/131008
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