Cuban News Agency

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The Cuban daily says that a letter sent by the US Department to the
Congress, revealed by the Miami-based Nuevo Herald, requests the
allocation of the funds to be managed this fiscal year by the Latin
America and Caribbean regional office of the U.S. Agency for International
Development (USAID), the Bureau of Democracy Human Rights and Labor (DRL),
and the Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau (WHA).

The US State Department’s letter was released two days after the countries
with the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our Americas (ALBA)
decided to expel USAID bureaus from their territories, for considering
them disruptive of the sovereignty and political stability in these nations.

The Communist Party newspaper denounces that the use of such funds is not
aimed at benefiting the Cuban people, but at providing some individuals in
Cuba with access to technologies in an effort to back what they call
“regime-change” policy.

The initiative includes the delivery of PCs, DVD equipment, USBs, cell
phones, the Nuevo Herald said as citing a US Congress employee that knows
about the case.

The Western Hemisphere Affairs Bureau was allocated 2.53 million dollars
to implement a “distance training program on basic I.T. skills,” the
Democracy Human Rights and Labor Bureau got 1.05 millions to provide
equipment and software programs to collect information on alleged human
rights violations, which are not double-checked by any other entity.
Meanwhile, the Latin America and Caribbean Regional Office was given 2.9
million dollars for “humanitarian support” to “ politically marginalized
persons,” meaning the funding by a foreign government of individuals
grouped in “opposition factions,” an action severely punished in the
United States, Granma newspaper notes.

Under Obama and in an effort to destabilize Cuba, the US government has
resorted to a combination of traditional and new subversive methods, since
some 20 million dollars were destined to launch subversive programs
through the USAID and the State Department, both in fiscal 2009 and 2010.

A feature marking this subversive policy includes new attempts to
influence Cuban society, by prioritizing a modality of the so-called
“Track II,” a less confrontation-oriented rhetoric.
The potential of new technologies is used by the White House to keep
imposing its agenda on the media and to negatively influence the Cuban
population, adding to this the fabrication of alleged “leaders.”

Evident examples of this phenomenon are the so-called “cyber-dissidents”
and “independent journalists,” who attend weekly teleconferences at the US
Interest Section in Havana, and whose careers are promoted through big
media campaigns or by granting them significant international prizes,
Granma newspaper denounces.

Political and ideological subversion has turned into a crucial instrument
of the US anti-Cuba policy over the past years, as it seems to increase in
importance, following the evident failure of the international political
and diplomatic isolation strategy and the increasingly unsustainable
economic blockade against the island, the Cuban Communist Party’s
newspaper concludes.