Nearly 50 years after a botched US-directed invasion of Cuba, the communist nation said on Saturday it would hold a military exercise this week to boost preparedness against any future US attack.
“It is a necessity of the first order given the political-military situation that now defines relations between Cuba and the empire,” Major General Leonardo Andollo said, referring to the US.
He told the official Granma newspaper that the “Bastion-2009” exercises will “raise the deterrent capacity to prevent a military confrontation, under the principle that there is no better way to win a war than by avoiding it.”
The military exercise, Cuba’s largest in five years and the first since US President Barack Obama’s inauguration in January, will be held on Thursday through Saturday, followed by Sunday’s armed forces day to be marked nationwide.
The government of Cuban President Raul Castro, a longtime defense chief, expects that as many as 4 million Cubans may take part in Sunday’s events, in the country of 11 million, the Americas’ only one-party communist regime.
Major General Ermio Hernandez, head of the military’s directorate, said the exercise would involve tactical maneuvers, command of ground troops, artillery practice and military flights.
Washington quickly recognized the new Fidel Castro government after the 1959 Cuban revolution, but by 1961 the US broke ties with Havana.
In April that year, a 1,400-strong force of CIA-trained Cuban exiles invaded Cuba’s Bay of Pigs — a disastrous venture fatally compromised by leaky intelligence and poor execution.
In its aftermath the CIA hatched many failed plots to remove the elder Cuban leader, now 83 and still head of the Cuban Communist Party.
A US trade embargo on Cuba begun in 1962 remains in place despite calls by every country in the Americas to have it lifted.
Obama has largely abandoned the confrontational rhetoric with Havana that marked past administrations, and has sought to allow unlimited family travel and financial remittances from the US to Cuba.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in