Cuba, Obama and the New Terrorism

The Islamic State has produced a deplorable innovation in the methods of the very long history of terrorism. The executions of yesteryear, carried out to set an example and with few first-hand witnesses, are now broadcast over the Internet in real time, and their horrendous impact reaches all corners of the globe. But this change does not mask the primitive nature of the method, decapitation, used by very different cultures since time immemorial.

World public opinion is shaken and shocked before this new example of brutality, reinforcing the Satanization of Islam and, by contrast, exalting the humanist values of the (very) improperly named “Western and Christian civilization,” the same one that remained indifferent to Hitler’s crematoria, to cite just one example out of the many that could be used in this matter.

It was not shaken either by the state terrorism perpetrated by Israel with calculated savagery in Gaza, correctly characterized as the world’s largest open-air prison. Perhaps because its victims were Palestinian, or Arabs, and therefore their lives were not worth as much as those of the American journalists or the British hostage who were executed recently; or because the indiscriminate bombardment of civilians has already been assimilated, and as a great American scholar in these matters, Chalmers Johnson, said, we are flooded with euphemisms that cover up the crimes with words such as “collateral damage” or “regime change” to avoid talking about subversion, or “contractors” to avoid saying they are mercenaries, or “embargo” to avoid talking about a blockade.*

But not long ago, a new form of terrorism appeared, more subtle than the dagger and scimitar, but whose victims number in the millions: financial terrorism. Its main proponent and representative is not the repugnant Islamic executioner dressed in black, but a mild-mannered man of African descent, who was awarded an unusual Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, and who holds the presidency of the United States. It turns out that this individual has launched a furious offensive to achieve “regime change” in Cuba — that is, to subvert the constitutional and social order of the island, replacing the revolutionary government with an American protectorate to close the parenthesis (according to the imperial right) opened on Jan. 1, 1959.

For the attainment of such an ignoble end, he now resorts to financial terrorism, dwarfing in this arena what was done by his unworthy predecessor, George W. Bush. Not only has he maintained the illegal, immoral and criminal blockade against Cuba, a case unique in world history by its duration and intensity, but in the last few months he has also doubled his pathological aggression by imposing harsh sanctions against banks from third countries for the unpardonable sin of participating in commercial negotiations or transactions originating in, or destined for, the Caribbean island.

The terrorist objective of this effort is to inflict a brutal punishment on an entire group, Cuban society, so that it kneels before its executioners. There is no dagger or scimitar, but the objective is the same and the casualties, many of them deadly, of this new terrorism can be counted in the hundreds, or thousands, depending on the case. Confirming by the facts that the United States is an empire, and that its laws, like those of the Roman Empire, are applied across the world, it has turned the extraterritoriality of its legislation into a powerful instrument of domination.

Applying the Torricelli and Helms-Burton Acts, Washington recently decided to sanction the BNP Paribas bank with an $8.834 billion fine for its participation in various transactions carried out by the governments of Cuba, Sudan and Iran, which are characterized as enemies and included in the list of countries that promote, harbor or protect “terrorism.”

As a result of this colossal sanction — without precedent given its amount — the bank canceled all its operations with Cuban organizations and entities, an example that was quickly followed by numerous banking institutions around the world, who were also frightened by this new demonstration of imperial arrogance, which was illegal to the bone, but which Obama executes with an impunity that vastly exceeds that displayed by the jihadi executioner.

According to a report released by the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations, in the period between January 2009 and June 2, 2014 — that is, before the mega fine against BNP Paribas — the American Nobel winner applied sanctions against 36 U.S. and foreign entities for an amount of nearly $2.6 billion for the “crime of trading with Cuba and other countries.”

Such an act of financial terrorism is based on the above-mentioned laws, the last of which was conceived by two troglodytes who survived the late Paleolithic: the ultraconservative Republican senator from South Carolina, Jesse Helms, a major homophobic fascist from the new American evangelical right, and the Republican representative from Indiana, Dan Burton, a tea party member, lover of firearms and staunch opponent of mandatory vaccination established by federal law because, according to this eminent tribune, vaccines “produce autism” in children and adolescents.

It goes without saying that among so many aberrations these two cavemen — who have already dived into the filthy sewers of the history of world reaction — are characterized by their ardent anticommunism too, which led them to draft the law that bears their names. This piece of legislation is called the “Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act,” another one of the euphemisms denounced by Johnson. Its real name should be “Act for the Destruction of the Cuban Revolution, By Any Means.”

However, Obama’s financial terrorism is effective, in the present case, due to the cowardice of the governments that consent to the extraterritoriality of American legislation. If small and weak nations have no option other than to resign themselves before imperial arrogance, the same is not true of France, whose president, François Hollande, showed not only that he has no socialist left in him, but that he lacks the most basic political guts needed to be not even president of that country, but to be the humble mayor of any third-world city. He begged the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate to intercede in favor of the French bank, to which Obama replied that this was an exclusively legal matter and that there was nothing he could do about it — the same reply as that on the “vulture fund” offensive against the Argentinean economy.

The United States creates a legal norm, which is political to the core, and later applies it strictly, hiding behind the supposed righteousness and “apolitical” character of it. If Hollande had possessed one thousandth of the courage displayed by his compatriots of the Paris Commune (or, in a closer example, Charles de Gaulle), he would have told Obama that he couldn’t care less about legislation approved by the U.S. Congress, and that it has no applicability in France, just like the laws approved by his country’s National Assembly do not apply in the U.S. But the moral decomposition of French socialism is hopeless. This is also demonstrated by the attitude of its finance minister, Michel Sapin, who said that the measure applied by Washington was “disproportionate” — not that it was illegal, immoral and illegitimate — and that he trusted that BNP Paribas could “finance economic activity in satisfactory conditions,” surely aware that the fine in question represents about 80 percent of the bank’s earnings in 2013. But what is left of the “grandeur de la France” after this fiasco? Napoleon and de Gaulle would turn in their graves if they knew their beloved country’s descent to the condition of an undignified Yankee colony, which made the bank declare itself guilty of the two criminal counts of which it was accused by the American authorities: the falsification of financial reports and conspiring against the U.S.

Not only that: Abandoned by its own government, BNP Paribas also accepted the ban imposed by the American justice system on carrying out certain transactions in dollars for a year, from Jan. 1, 2015, and, lastly, the order to dismiss 13 bank employees for their participation in the different transactions that were the subject of the penalty. In other words, the White House occupant has the power to commit all these outrages that violate international law from A to Z, and then declares himself unable to give a pardon to the three Cuban anti-terrorist fighters who are still imprisoned in the imperial dungeons.

Omnipotence on the one hand, enough to go to the extreme of demanding that a foreign banking institution dismiss 13 employees, and powerlessness on the other, when it is time to give a well-earned pardon to three innocent people who have spent 16 years in prison?

Conclusion: we are in the presence of a new form of terrorism, as lethal or worse than the primitive one and with a much wider reach. A terrorism that responds to the recommendations of theorists and strategists such as Joseph Nye Jr., when he advises Washington to navigate the turbulent waters of the international system using a proper combination of the “hard power” of the military and the “soft power” of ideology and the cultural industry.

The synthesis of both would be “smart power,” which is more effective than that which is only supported by the eloquence of weapons. Financial harassment would be, according to this line of thinking, an expression of that “smart power” that subjugates and oppresses using resources that are not conventional, but which, we say, are just as terrifying. Except that the crimes of financial terrorism are not shown as such by the immense media apparatus of the world right, but it is made to appear as a technical legal question, one of honoring contracts and the law, even if it is the law of an imperial state who imposes it with arrogance over the rest of the planet. A concealed but lethal terrorism that, contrary to the jihadi executioner, does not offend — at the moment, as Commander Hugo Chavez said! — the universal conscience of our time. But sooner rather than later, it will be repudiated by the vast majority of countries that make up this troubled planet. Have no doubt about that.

* Author’s Note: See his excellent “Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope” (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2010), pp. 99-103.