US-funded cultural counter-revolution in Cuba: How CIA cutouts use musicians to stir unrest
Moderate Rebels
Moderate Rebels
4.7 • 673 Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2021
⏱️ 50 minutes
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Summary
Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton discuss how the US government laid the groundwork for unrest in Cuba, the Biden administration's escalation of the economic war, and how CIA cutouts like USAID and the NED have cultivated a counter-revolutionary cultural network of rappers, artists, and social media influencers to push propaganda.
We had planned on speaking with Havana-based journalist Cristina Escobar, but at the last minute when we started recording she unfortunately was unable to join us.
Read Max's report "Cuba’s cultural counter-revolution: US gov’t-backed rappers, artists gain fame as ‘catalyst for current unrest’" here: https://thegrayzone.com/2021/07/25/cubas-cultural-counter-revolution-us-govt-rappers-artists-catalyst
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The sand queen said, I'm in an underground bunker in Nicaragua, which I can neither |
| 0:08.8 | confirm nor deny contractually. |
| 0:11.9 | Ben, more light on your face. |
| 0:13.9 | I don't know. |
| 0:14.3 | Do we really want more light on Ben's? |
| 0:16.6 | No. |
| 0:18.1 | It's kind of mysterious. |
| 0:19.2 | I actually like it. |
| 0:20.0 | More backlit. |
| 0:20.9 | Got the red light back here. |
| 0:23.0 | Yeah, you're like, it's like when you're in witness protection. |
| 0:28.2 | You're giving an interview to 60 minutes. |
| 0:31.0 | You should just lower your voice a few octaves. |
| 0:34.3 | The empire. |
| 0:36.4 | But anyway, so yeah, we were going to talk about Cuba I talked about it a lot |
| 0:41.1 | on my rock fin stream but you know I I again was hoping to have Christina Escobar on |
| 0:49.1 | she is one of the I think one of the most impressive journalists in the Western Hemisphere. |
| 0:56.0 | She's on one of the most widely watched people on Cuban broadcast media. |
| 1:01.0 | She's on state TV, but she has been a critic of her government and her analysis of the protests that took place, I thought, was very lucid and helped me understand |
| 1:15.5 | what was happening in my piece on Cuba's counter-revolution, which Ben really relates to a lot |
| 1:24.5 | of what you've written about, first of all, with these sort of pseudo-left movements |
| 1:29.9 | that are cropping up across Latin America backed by the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID, |
... |
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