US Lectures Cuba on Human Rights Across From Own Torture Dungeon

By Tony Cartalucci

US President Barrack Obama paid what the Western media hailed as a “historic” visit to Cuba, after decades of isolation imposed upon the island nation by the US and its Western allies.

While many claimed it was a sign of hope for US-Cuban relations, it could equally be equated with similar feigned rapprochements with nations like Syria and Libya, both of which were first offered false peace deals before betrayal and both of which have now been destroyed by years of US-backed proxy war, with Libya’s government being overthrown and its leader along with three generations of his family virtually exterminated by US-NATO military operations.

And as if to prove President Obama’s advocates wrong, the US president used this “historic” visit to publicly humiliate Cuban President Raul Castro regarding alleged human rights abuses the US claims are regularly carried out against “political prisoners.”

Image: The US lectures Cuban President Raul Castro regarding human rights in Havana, while on the other side of the island nation, the US maintains a torture dungeon where detainees are imprisoned and tortured for years without charges or trials.

In reality, the US is referring to US government-funded agitators, traitors, and provocateurs who are attempting to overthrow the Cuban government, as US proxies have attempted to do all over the world – including in Syria and Libya.

In Politico’s article, “How Obama set a trap for Raul Castro,” it claims:

President Barack Obama jokes that he likes news conferences and wants to do more of them, and let them go on longer. That tends to be less the case at the White House than abroad, when Obama’s trying to make a point about a repressive regime by turning to the news media.

He did it in China in 2013 by giving a New York Times reporter a question to President Xi Jinping right after the government in Beijing had kicked out a reporter from the newspaper. He did it in Ethiopia last year, when he forced the journalist-jailing prime minister to stand next to him for a long news conference during which Obama talked about the country’s record on human rights and held forth on American politics.

Monday afternoon here in Havana, he did it to Raúl Castro, right in the Revolutionary Palace, letting him be pressed with questions for the first time — ever — and joining in himself. And not just that: He had to answer for the political prisoners whom the government rounds up almost daily — yet denies even exist.

Of course, a US president lecturing the president of a nation he is a guest in regarding the arrest of US-backed agitators, while the US maintains a literal torture dungeon just on the other side of the island he is on, couldn’t be any more ironic or hypocritical.

The US naval base at Guantanamo Bay hosts a “detention camp,” where prisoners are held, without charge or trial for years, are admittedly tortured through food and sleep deprivation as well as waterboarding – the practice of nearly drowning a victim repeatedly to extract information or false confessions.

It is indeed for all intents and purposes a modern-day torture dungeon – only one of many the US maintains globally. There was also the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq where US military personnel tortured, raped, and murdered prisoners, as well as the Bagram prison in Afghanistan where detainees were also murdered in custody.

There are also many other “black sites” that have been and may still be in use by the US Central Intelligence Agency around the world where similar activity has been exposed. But the Guantanamo Bay detention camp is by far the most ironic – located in a nation the US berates regularly regarding human rights, while America’s only presence on the island is a monument to human cruelty.

Cubans, both supporters and opponents of the current government in Havana, should take this unparalleled hypocrisy by the US as a warning of where this “rapprochement” process appears to be heading – a Cuba no one will want to live in with a future no Cuban will benefit from. Whatever problems the people of Cuba have with one another, they should see the US not as a potential “friend” or advocate, but as a common threat.

Tony Cartalucci’s articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at Land Destroyer Report, Alternative Thai News Network and LocalOrg.