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Menard:
CIA agent and Liar
Without Frontiers
•
Under the pretext of fighting for press freedom,
Reporters Without Frontiers has
been transformed into a tool of Washington and its
Interests Section in Havana • In order to try and
undermine the Cuban Revolution, Robert Menard,
leader of this organization, is purchases the
services of pseudo-reporters to fuel the fascist,
annexationist and Batista-loving Miami press
BY
JEAN-GUY ALLARD — Special for Granma
International —
PLAGIARIZING
the name of credible international organizations was
not that difficult for neo-reactionary Robert Menard
- pseudo-journalist, fraudster and CIA agent – in
order to make a space for himself in the
communications world. Nor was it difficult to find
funds for his projects of misinformation: the CIA,
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the
United States Agency for International Development
(USAID) are offering the bread and butter.
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One of
Robert Menard’s protégés, journalist
Néstor Baguer, was president of the
Association of Independent Cuban
Journalists...until it became known, during
the trial of those mercenaries of
misinformation, that he was State Security
agent Octavio. Menard also lent his support
to Aleida Godínez, journalist with Lux
magazine, an alleged trade union publication
from the electricity industry, printed in
Miami and distributed by USIS. Above,
Néstor Baguer in a "journalists"
meeting held in the U.S. Interests Section.
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Following
the arrest in Cuba of those individuals who actively
collaborated with the U.S. Special Interests Section
and its plans to destabilize the Cuban Revolution, Reporters
Sans Frontičres (Reporters Without
Frontiers-RWF-), Menard’s NGO (that’s not that
non-governmental) in support of "independent
journalists" (who are not exactly journalists
or independent), has thrown itself into an
hysterical anti-Cuba campaign worthy of
counterrevolutionaries in Miami.
For
several years now, Menard and the RWF organization
have managed to penetrate the editorial offices of
several French and international media agencies,
disguised as imperialist-style human rights
activists, demanding the right to interfere in the
internal affairs of individual nations and
justifying the military interventions of their
bosses.
A
recent, sensationalist publicity stunt by RWF was to
make a scandalous parallel of the human rights
situation in Baghdad - where U.S. fascism has just
carried out a massacre - with Cuba, where the
Revolution exercises the right to defend itself from
brazen foreign intervention.
In a
press conference on April 9, Cuban Foreign Minister
Felipe Pérez Roque recalled that there is an
abundance of financial sources which groups like
Menard’s – obsessed with Cuba and supposedly
"humanitarian" - have access to.
The
balance sheet is, quite simply, indecent.
RAINING
BUCKS
In
2002, the International Republican Institute in the
United States received the sum of $1,674,462 USD in
order to "help create bases of international
support to provide material, moral and ideological
aid to activists in Cuba."
On
December 27, Adolfo Franco (a member of the
so-called Miami Connection and one of more than 20
Cuban-Americans to have penetrated the upper
echelons of the Bush administration), the USAID
administrator for the Latin American and Caribbean
region (get this!) openly stated before the House of
Representatives Foreign Affairs Sub-Committee that
the US foreign aid agency had invested $22 million
USD in materials, propaganda and other items for
Cuba, including 7,000 radios "to listen to
Radio Martí."
It is
worth mentioning that the very same Radio Martí
receives $25 million USD from Voice of America
funds, of which it is a simple subsidiary... In the
same way every year, from the many sources created
by the government in Washington to supply
mercenaries, tens and tens of millions of dollars
rain on those who collaborate with imperialism, as
much in Paris or Havana as in Miami.
The
self-same James Cason - a CIA agent and head of USIS
– who was commissioned by George W. Bush’s
government to intensify the subversive campaign
against Cuba, announced on Miami television that he
would meet at every possible opportunity with the
Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), an
organization created, sustained and directed by the
CIA, servant of the NED and USAID, and identified by
terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, currently imprisoned
in Panama, as his principal financial source.
Cason
also acknowledged his immoral and active
relationship with the paramilitary version of CANF,
the Cuban Liberty Council, an organization run by
terrorist couple Ninoska Lucrecia Pérez Castellon
and Roberto Martí Pérez, the proven organizer and
financier of multiple acts of terrorism committed
against Cuba.
In his
eagerness to "liberate Cuba" and
"support press freedom", and with the
anti-communist venom he has been unable to hide,
Menard has not only hired out his organization but
has transformed it into a misinformation agency and
a mechanism for distributing funds to
counterrevolutionaries, one that also provides false
material for all the neo-fascistic and
Batista-supporting media channels in South Florida:
a French version of CIA-operative Frank Calson’s
Freedom House, which also devotes itself to
distributing payment funds.
"WE
GAVE THEM $50 USD A MONTH"
Some
years ago, Menard implicitly confessed to his
participation in the distribution of money to an
important number of "collaborators" who
were carrying out work for the USIS.
"We
gave around 20 journalists $50 USD per month each to
survive," Menard confirmed to Hernando Calvo
Ospina and Katiijn Declercq, authors of żDisidentes
o mercenarios? (Dissidents or Mercenaries).
In
fact, the way in which these funds - of
"undetermined" origin – were distributed
by Menard and his organization correspond with the
methods used by various organizations in the United
States openly connected to the NED and USAID and
reveal the relationship between RWF and the CIA;
like the destination of the supposed
"information" circulated by the
counterrevolutionary "agencies".
This
material, systematically directed at undermining and
damaging the Revolution’s image, is destined for
publications characterized by their alignment to
Washington. In such a way that RWF is not just
fulfilling its mission to locate, recruit, direct
and financially support a series of mercenaries, but
also to fuel media channels controlled by a stew of
Batista-loving personalities such as El Diario de
las Américas, El Nuevo Herald, Radio
Mambí and Radio Martí, each of them
with clear neo-fascist, annexationist tendencies.
By
behaving in this way, Menard is aligning his
supposedly humanitarian organization with the vision
of Cuba held by the "Pontiff" of Radio
Martí, Alberto Pérez-Roura. This individual is the
head of a loathsome channel that constantly
expresses its support for the bloodiest terrorism,
represented by Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada
Carriles.
A
clear collaborator with the blockade in respect of
information, Menard has always abstained from
condemning the tremendously repressive policies of
numerous "regimes" associated with the
United States. Nor does he attack the empire that
generates them, preferring instead to get his funds
from those in the European Union and various
business people suspiciously interested in the cause
of information.
Significantly,
Menard’s organization is one of three similar
organizations provided with large budgets and
saturating the global market of the defense of press
freedom in its monopolistic version. Curiously
enough, the other two are U.S. organizations: CPJ of
New York and Miami’s Inter American Press.
Some
months ago, Menard let his mask slip in Venezuela,
by rushing to the aid of the putschist press, that
of multimillionaire Gustavo Cisneros and others like
him, whilst ignoring the fate of journalists from
the community press, those in favor of the immense
popular support enjoyed by President Hugo Chávez.
In the
same way, he has always ignored the brutal attacks
on and detentions of reporters connected to the
anti-globalization campaigns (most notably those
from the Indymedia network) and the large-scale
protests that have taken place since 1999 against
the World Trade Organization in Washington.
A
self-proclaimed freedom fighter, he has embarked on
his new crusade whilst George W. Bush sets off on
his, with admirable simultaneity.
In the
same way that George W. Bush and his regime use the
issue of human rights as their defense in crushing
them - either through the Patriot Act or cluster
bombs - Robert Menard uses it to finish off with
information. Dreaming of one America...without
frontiers.
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