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    How Russian and Chinese Interference Could Affect the 2024 Election

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    The stakes for Russia in the presidential vote are large. Other adversaries also might try to deepen divisions among American voters.The U.S. government is preparing for its adversaries to intensify efforts to influence American voters next year. Russia has huge stakes in the presidential election. China seems poised to back a more aggressive campaign. Other countries, like Iran, might again try to sow division in the United States.As Washington looks ahead to the 2024 vote, U.S. intelligence agencies last week released a report on the 2022 midterm elections — a document that gives us some hints about what might be to come.Spy agencies concluded Russia favored Trump in 2016. What about in 2024?Russia appears to be paying close attention to the election, as its war in Ukraine is soon to enter a third year.Former President Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican candidate, has expressed skepticism about Ukraine funding. President Biden has argued that assisting Ukraine is in America’s interest.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      n South Florida, Voters Ponder Trump

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      The complicated feelings among some residents about Mr. Trump and the case against him reflect the complicated politics of the state. As a registered voter in Palm Beach County, Fla., Bette Anne Starkey knows there is a possibility she could be chosen to serve on a jury in the federal criminal case against former President Donald J. Trump. But even though she is a two-time Trump voter, she cannot really say how she would lean as a juror weighing the case.Echoing Mr. Trump himself, Ms. Starkey, an 81-year-old bookkeeper, used the phrase “witch hunt” in an interview to describe the federal indictment against the former president, which accuses him of knowingly removing classified documents from the White House. But she also struggles to understand why Mr. Trump did not simply return the documents when asked for them, part of her simmering irritation with the 45th president.“I’m sick of hearing about all of his shenanigans,” she said.Her comments reflect the complicated feelings that Mr. Trump can elicit these days even among Republicans who voted for him. But Ms. Starkey is also a reflection of the equally complicated, volatile politics of South Florida, Mr. Trump’s home turf, and the jury pool it offers.It is in diverse, densely populated South Florida that a jury of Mr. Trump’s peers will be called upon to judge his innocence or guilt if the case ever goes to trial, although the exact trial location and jury pool have not been determined.Supporters of the former president gathered near Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Sunday.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesThe case was filed in the West Palm Beach court division of the Southern District of Florida, meaning the jury may be selected from registered voters in Palm Beach County, home to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where he has lived since leaving the White House. Mr. Trump lost Palm Beach County to President Biden by nearly 13 percentage points in 2020.But a jury pool made up of Miami-Dade County voters, to the south of Palm Beach, is also a possibility, particularly if it is determined that the federal courthouse in Miami, where Mr. Trump is expected to make an initial appearance on Tuesday, is best equipped to accommodate what will likely be one of the highest-profile criminal trials in American history.Mr. Trump lost Miami-Dade by only about seven points in the last election, getting strong support from Hispanic voters in particular; more than two-thirds of the county’s residents identify as Hispanic, according to census data.Both counties, however, have grown more Republican in recent years, and Republican candidates have had significant success in statewide races. Mr. Trump won Florida in both 2016 and 2020, and the state has twice elected Gov. Ron DeSantis, currently Mr. Trump’s main rival for the Republican presidential nomination.All of this should offer some comfort to members of Mr. Trump’s defense team, who know it takes only one vote to result in a hung jury. And many South Floridians, like Americans elsewhere in the country, believe that Mr. Trump is a victim of unfair treatment by powerful forces on the political left.George Cadman, 54, is a real estate agent and father of two who said he has not been following the news closely over the last few months. He said he had not heard about the federal charges against Mr. Trump — making him, in some sense, a good candidate for jury service.The case was filed in the West Palm Beach division of the Southern District of Florida, meaning the jury may be selected from registered voters in Palm Beach County, home to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesBut Mr. Cadman, who lives in southern Miami-Dade County, also said he supports Trump “100 percent” and that he believes previous investigations of Mr. Trump were politically motivated. Adding that he believes Russia’s 2016 election interference and the scandal about Mr. Trump and Ukraine were hoaxes, he said, “I would be very leery on making a decision on what I think about it,” he said, referring to the new case against Mr. Trump.(In a subsequent phone call, Mr. Cadman said that as much as he loved Mr. Trump, he planned to vote for President Biden in 2024, because rising property values had been good for his job as a real estate agent.)Many of South Florida’s Cuban Americans learned the hard way, during and after the Cuban Revolution, about the impact of politics on even apolitical lives. And for some of the conservatives among them, like Modesto Estrada, a retired businessman who arrived in Miami 18 years ago, Mr. Trump is worth supporting as a powerful brake on Democrats and liberal policies that Mr. Estrada said were “ruining the country” by discouraging people from working.Mr. Estrada, 71, noted that Mr. Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence had also been found to have sensitive government documents in their possession. Like many people interviewed, he said he would have a hard time being an impartial juror in the case.“From my personal perspective, up till now, they don’t have anything on him,” he said of Mr. Trump. “And nothing’s going to happen to him. He’s not going to jail. The case is going to fall apart and that’s what I’m hoping.”Just as Mr. Estrada said his experience with a left-wing dictatorship has colored his hope that Mr. Trump is found not guilty, Viviana Dominguez, 63, referred to her own experience in her native Argentina, which was ruled by a right-wing military dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, as she expressed her dislike of Mr. Trump.Modesto Estrada supports Mr. Trump. “The case is going to fall apart and that’s what I’m hoping,” he said about the charges.Saul Martinez for The New York TimesMs. Dominguez, an art conservator who has lived in Miami for 13 years, called Mr. Trump an “embarrassment,” adding, “I think he’s going to go to jail, but I don’t know if that’s wishful thinking.”She described the documents case, and Mr. Trump’s still-considerable base of support, in terms of an unsettling loosening of civic standards. “We saw all that in my own country, when the lies kept getting bigger and bigger,” she said. “The margin of tolerance kept getting wider and wider, so that you never saw the limit. They would talk of morality and of the family, but they would be the most corrupt, the most obscene people anywhere. It’s like a state of madness.”Roderick Clelland, a 78-year-old Vietnam veteran from West Palm Beach, the most populous city in Palm Beach County, said he was worried about the international implications of what he saw as Mr. Trump’s lax attitude toward sensitive national secrets.“The whole world is watching us.” Mr. Clelland said. “And some of those documents about other countries — are they going to trust us? People have been locked up for less than that. So you can’t just violate the law and get away with it. So I hope there is a penalty.”Mr. Clelland was careful to note that he did not hate Mr. Trump. “But I don’t like his behavior and his attitude,” he said.Despite voting for Mr. Trump twice, Ms. Starkey, the bookkeeper, said she has never been a big fan. But in both 2016 and 2020, she could not bring herself to support the more liberal candidate. These days, she is thinking about voting for Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and Republican governor of South Carolina.Still, Ms. Starkey said the indictment of Mr. Trump seemed like a partisan move at a time when American politics is lacking much of the comity between the two parties that she remembers fondly from the past. It was one reason, she said, that she would have a hard time if she were picked for an eventual jury in the case: “Do you trust that you’re getting all the facts for and against?” she wondered.She said she was exasperated with the drama surrounding the indictment — and knew there were many others like her.“I just want it to go away,” she said.@Verónica Soledad Zaragovia contributed reporting from Palm Beach County, Fla. More

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      in US Politics

      Elián González poised to be top Cuban lawmaker decades after Florida deportation

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      Elián González poised to be top Cuban lawmaker decades after Florida deportationBoy at center of Clinton-era US-Cuba feud called ‘most worthy of Cuban youth’ by government newspaper When he was six, his terrified face – photographed during a raid by armed immigration officers on his family’s Miami home – became one of the most memorable images of cold war tensions between the US and Cuba.Now 29, and more than two decades after he was forcibly deported from Florida to his homeland at the direction of the US supreme court, Elián González is poised to become one of Cuba’s most senior lawmakers.His nomination for a seat in the 470-member national assembly, announced in the Caribbean island’s government newspaper Granma on Tuesday, is seen as a high honor at a young age for González, who has long been critical of US policy towards Cuba.Elián González: from international tug-of-war victim to model citizenRead moreHailed by the outlet as “representing the most worthy of the Cuban youth”, González will join the members who meet several times a year to discuss and set laws for the island’s communist regime.The months-long custody battle over González began in 1999, when he survived the sinking of a ship bringing Cuban refugees to Florida. His mother died, and the child was looked after by relatives, including his great uncle Lazaro, at their house in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood.The tug-of-war between the boy’s father – still in Cuba – and his relatives in Florida for custody soon evolved into a full-scale diplomatic faceoff, with the communist dictator Fidel Castro bombastically threatening to dispatch guerilla squads to snatch Elián back.The tense situation created a headache for the Bill Clinton White House. Clinton’s attorney general, Janet Reno, became a pariah among Miami’s influential Cuban expat community for siding with the father and ordering the early morning seizure of the boy at gunpoint. His angry relatives said Reno had tricked them by ordering the military-style raid while they believed they were negotiating a voluntary handover.González was treated like a hero on his return to Havana, and he was used frequently as a prop by the Castro regime as it sought to capitalize on the episode.Castro himself attended González’s seventh birthday party. And for years his family in Cuba was surrounded by government bodyguards.As he grew older, González made it clear that he welcomed Castro’s embrace, joining the Young Communist Union of Cuba and entering military service at 15. He rejected claims by his Miami relatives that he had been brainwashed.In a 2017 interview with CNN, the year after he graduated from a military academy with an industrial engineering degree, González said that if he had been made to stay in Miami he would have been “used” by the expat population there.“I think I would have become the poster boy for that group of Cubans in Miami that tries to destroy the revolution, that try to make Cuba look bad,” he said.“Fidel put many things in my hands. Fidel told me if I wanted to be an athlete, he supported that; if I wanted to be a swimmer, he supported that. If I wanted to be an artist, he supported that – and he did.”In Miami, the house from which González was seized became something of a shrine, remaining as it was on the day of the raid there in April 2000 and operated as a museum for several years by another of his great-uncles, Delfin González, who died in 2016.TopicsElián GonzalezUS politicsMiamiCubanewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Biden finally heads to border as critics condemn his migrant crackdown

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      Biden finally heads to border as critics condemn his migrant crackdown Advocates attack president’s failure to uphold campaign pledges ahead of first visit to southern border since he took officeUnder pressure to address a surge of migrants at the US-Mexico border, Joe Biden announced a far-reaching crackdown on migrants seeking asylum last week, expanding the use of a controversial public health measure known as Title 42 to restrict people from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela from illegally entering the US, while offering those legally seeking relief a new pathway to America.Before the president’s first trip to the US-Mexico border since he took office in 2020, immigration advocates condemned the Biden administration’s decision to expand Title 42 as disheartening and a failure to uphold his campaign promises. They took some solace in the creation of a legal pathway to asylum for those in four countries, but still, for them, Biden’s actions were not enough – they leave out other migrants, and the parole program is beset by requirements that impose significant barriers to migrants without access to resources, perpetuating inequities within the US immigration system.In other words, immigration advocates say, the cost of expanded expulsion of migrants under the guise of public health without a clear path to asylum outweighs the promise of expanded refugee access and a legal outlet for asylum. “For a lot of us working in immigration justice, at the start of the administration, there was incredible hope that Title 42 would end and push forward to re-establish access to asylum,” the director of the American Immigration Council’s Immigration Justice Campaign, Alex Miller, said. “We’ve been disappointed.”The Biden administration’s so-called “carrot and stick” approach aims to deter the historic-high millions of migrants fleeing persecution from their home countries and seeking US asylum from entering the country illegally. Federal figures from the 2022 fiscal year show that US border agents stopped migrants more than 2m times along the southern border, setting an all-time record. They turned migrants away under the Title 42 provision more than 1m times.“The problem is the carrot is not universally accessible,” Miller added. “Legal access to asylum will be limited to those who are the right nationalities, have the right means and support, to apply for parole … The sticks they are offering are restricting access, and that’s not a fair trade.”Under the Biden administration’s new policy, if migrants from those countries pass background checks, buy a plane ticket, obtain financial sponsorship, and meet other requirements, they would be allowed to legally enter under the “parole program”. They would be authorized to live and work in the US for two years.But immigration advocates worry about the Department of Homeland Security’s proposed rule – which they say is similar to the Donald Trump White House’s “transit ban” – because it would make migrants seeking asylum ineligible if they failed to seek protection in a third country before reaching the US and if they “circumvent available, established pathways to lawful migration,” as homeland security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week.They also worried that the parole program’s requirements – modeled after the administration’s approach to refugees fleeing Afghanistan, Venezuela, and Ukraine – impose barriers to migrants who lack the resources to buy flights and find a financial sponsor.On Twitter, United We Dream, an immigrant youth-led rights group, slammed Biden’s new policy “a racist and classist attack” on migrants. United We Dream’s deputy director of federal advocacy, Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, said in a statement that the Biden administration’s expansion of Title 42 would hurt “the same people seeking asylum that they purport to protect”.The American Civil Liberties Union’s director of border strategies, Jonathan Blazer, said in a statement that the Biden administration’s “knee-jerk expansion of Title 42 will put more lives in grave danger”, adding that his plan “ties his administration to the poisonous anti-immigrant policies of the Trump era instead of restoring fair access to asylum protections”.“His commitments to people seeking safety will ring utterly hollow if he moves forward in substituting one illegal anti-asylum Trump policy for another,” Blazer said.Miller told the Guardian that the administration’s new proposals include allowing asylum seekers to use an app in English and Spanish to schedule appointments. That, the administration argues, will reduce “wait times and crowds at the US port of entry and allow for safe, orderly, and humane processing”. Miller said that effort makes the legal asylum seeking process harder for migrants who lack technological access and speak indigenous dialects beyond Spanish as well as for those who cannot obtain legal representation to help them navigate the process.Biden has said that Congress needs to enact a more comprehensive immigration reform. In the interim, the administration’s new parole process, which he described as “safe, orderly” and humane, would “make things better but will not fix the border problem completely”.The National Immigration Law Center’s vice-president of law and policy, Lisa Graybill, told the Guardian that while the administration’s creation of the asylum that gives 30,000 people access is better than nothing, its overall approach reflects seeing immigration enforcement and creating outlets for asylum as a “zero-sum game”. It’s a mistake presidents and politicians have made before, she said.She added that Biden had been “following an old playbook that does not work” by allocating resources toward enforcement rather than creating a “humane and orderly processing system that is built around recognizing the right to asylum instead of violating it”. Instead, the parole program as designed, she said, will hurt impoverished migrants and those who fled their countries in haste without meeting all requirements, acting as barriers to even those who have legitimate asylum claims while helping middle and higher income migrants with access to resources.The chief adviser for policy and partnerships at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Angela Kelley, said that Biden’s creation of the parole program was “smart” and reflected an attempt to use the “tools in his toolbox and use them in more creative ways”. She pointed out that the Biden administration aimed to triple the number of refugees resettled seeking asylum from Latin American and Caribbean countries. Yet, she added, the outdated US immigration laws have not kept up with who qualifies for asylum, such as those fleeing the damaging effects of climate change.“That’s the difference maker: under Trump, it was all about kicking out people – they were systematic in dismantling the refugee program, legal immigration channels of people coming for employment for families, for students. That’s not the approach of the Biden administration,” Kelley said, noting that it will take time to see the effects Biden’s actions will take on the migration system. “They’re restoring all of that. The unfortunate continued reliance on Title 42 is a monkey on their back that they have to figure out how to shake and use the resources you have … to try [to] manage the migration of people the best you can.”Title 42’s future is uncertain as the US supreme court in December stopped Biden’s administration from ending the program to give the justices more time to weigh in on whether states have the legal grounds to intervene in an ongoing case over the program.Kelley, who had previously done immigration work for Biden and the Barack Obama White House, saw the expansion of its Title 42 program as “worrisome” for vulnerable migrants who would be sent back to dangerous conditions in Mexico. She noted that by creating legal pathways to asylum, the administration is trying to “to ease the pressures” at the US border in the hope that they wouldn’t need the pandemic program any longer.“What is heartbreaking is that in an effort to limit the number of people who are coming, you are turning away asylum seekers, who are the migrants you want to protect,” Kelley said.Immigration advocates and Biden agree that long-term changes needed to come from Congress – a questionable prospect given that the Republican-controlled House struggled to elect its speaker, and past bipartisan efforts at immigration reform had also failed.Even so, some advocates say now it’s a question of where resources are sent: They called for more resources to be directed toward assisting nonprofits and NGO groups working with asylum seekers at the border, hiring more asylum officers and more immigration judges, and investing in more legal assistance for migrants unable to afford private attorneys.“For three years under Title 42, access to asylum has been undermined,” Miller said. “All of the documented evidence of kidnapping, rape, and extortion of migrants in Mexico, in particular at the border – it’s incredibly troubling that we’re expanding the expulsions of migrants to Mexico.“These are not just numbers, these are people with individual stories with their own lives they’re trying to defend. It’s really easy to get lost in the big picture. We’re talking about people here.”TopicsUS immigrationUS politicsUS-Mexico borderVenezuelaHaitiCubaNicaraguanewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      George Santos, the Falsehoods and the Facts

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      More from our inbox:Sam Bankman-Fried’s Release on BondHarmful Stereotypes About AfricaWhy Fewer Women Become TeachersCuba’s DepopulationPhoto illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Caroline Brehman/EPA, via ShutterstockTo the Editor:Re “Santos Admits to a Long List of Falsehoods” (front page, Dec. 27):Representative-elect George Santos told The New York Post that he was “embellishing my résumé.” No. They were lies!As a constituent of the Third Congressional District, I don’t want Mr. Santos representing me. We don’t need a deadbeat liar who has not answered where the $700,000 donation that he made to his campaign came from. We need to see the paperwork. We don’t need another politician who promises to release his return after the audit.He’s worse than a joke. Have we no respect for the truth and a little integrity?Robert DetorPort Washington, N.Y.To the Editor:I am grateful to George Santos for redefining lying as a “poor choice of words.” For the past few years, I’d been confined to explaining eye-opening statements as “alternate facts.” I can finally bid farewell to Kellyanne Conway’s creativity and move on to the new standard for political opportunism without consequences.Michael EmmerBrooklynTo the Editor:Re “How Opposition Research Really Works,” by Tyson Brody (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 26), about opposition research on George Santos:After 40 years of working with my late husband, who delved into the background of dozens of high-level candidates, I do know this: It’s a serious job that requires diligent work and professional skills.The real work is in following up. It’s the legwork — hours searching paper land records, visiting residences, interviewing people — that makes the real difference. A candidate cannot simply rely on computer research or popular websites to get the job done.Once the information is found the opposition researcher works directly with reporters with whom they have developed a relationship and whom they trust. Reporters often don’t have time or resources to do all the legwork. Nor can a candidate rely on political party committees.Persistence, attention to detail, legwork, and an honest relationship with the press and professional campaign staff are often the key to winning an election.Otherwise, the voters may have the kind of buyer’s remorse that so many of Mr. Santos’s new constituents are now experiencing.Sandy CheitenNew YorkTo the Editor:Tyson Brody describes the process behind the Democrats’ failure to expose George Santos’s multiple misrepresentations about his life. He explains that “a junior researcher” documented some of the issues, which appeared “in small sections interspersed through a nearly 90-page document.”As a corporate investigator who has spent more than 30 years supervising hundreds of researchers producing thousands of reports, I always insist on executive summaries covering the key points in the report. I have, on countless occasions, repeated the admonition, “Don’t bury the lede.”Ernest BrodNew YorkThe writer is president of Brod Global Intelligence.Sam Bankman-Fried’s Release on BondSam Bankman-Fried, founder of the crypto firm FTX, leaving Federal District Court in Manhattan after being released on a $250 million bond.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Disgraced FTX Co-Founder Freed on $250 Million Bond” (Business, Dec. 23):So, Sam Bankman-Fried, the Bernie Madoff of his generation, is freed on bond less than two weeks after his arrest at a luxury apartment complex in the Bahamas. How lovely for him that his parents were willing and able to secure this bond, risking their own home — and perhaps, their reputations — in the process.It took years of vigorous advocacy for New York State to enact some form of cash bail reform for nonviolent offenders who so often languished at Rikers Island because they couldn’t raise even the minimal funds they needed to be released pending trial.It strikes me as obscene that Mr. Bankman-Fried, whose treachery and cheating have ruined so many lives, spent virtually no time in jail. Even with a firmly affixed ankle bracelet, he will clearly be living a pretty comfortable life safely ensconced in his parents’ home.One can only hope that he will eventually receive the punishment he so richly deserves.Carol NadellNew YorkHarmful Stereotypes About AfricaMauricio Lima for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Putin Wants Loyalty, and He’s Found It in Africa” (front page, Dec. 25):I was disappointed in The Times’s portrayal of Russian involvement in the Central African Republic. On what basis is the relationship between Russia and the Central African Republic characterized as one of African fealty and passive subjugation — of “master” and “vassal”?African states, and countries in the Global South more generally, continue to be inaccurately portrayed as lacking agency in how they conduct their foreign relations. We can certainly debate and inquire into the motives of the leaders of the Central African Republic in partnering with Russia. We can also debate the wisdom of this decision or how likely Russia is to be a good partner to smaller, weaker countries (just as we can question how good of a partner the West is to these same countries).However, it perpetuates harmful stereotypes to presume that the leaders and citizens of African states are merely passive recipients of the desires of foreign actors or to suggest that Western governments know what is best for them.Katherine BeallPrinceton, N.J.The writer is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Niehaus Center for Globalization and Governance at Princeton University.Why Fewer Women Become TeachersCalla Kessler/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “There’s a Reason There Aren’t Enough Teachers in America. Many Reasons, Actually,” by Thomas B. Edsall (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Dec. 14):The enormous drop in the number of college students graduating with degrees in education (from 176,307 in 1970-71 to 104,008 in 2010-11) coincides perfectly with the rise of the feminist movement, which gave women a far greater range of employment opportunities than earlier, when teacher, nurse and secretary were the predominant jobs for female college graduates.Without denigrating the many excellent K-12 teachers, I think it is safe to say that many women who would have been teachers a generation earlier chose different career paths with higher salaries and, often, prestige.Ellen T. BrownSt. Paul, Minn.Cuba’s DepopulationEliana Aponte Tobar for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Largest Exodus Imperils Future of Ailing Cuba” (front page, Dec. 11):Cuba has had many mass migrations since 1959. In fact, the exodus has never stopped, only waxed and waned as the government alternatively cracked down on or encouraged emigration, or as the means to escape became more, or less, easy.In the nearly 64 years of communist rule, one of every six Cubans has left the island. More than 10,000 have drowned or disappeared in the Florida Straits, trying to reach the freedom of the U.S. Scores have been murdered by the regime’s security forces trying to escape.This depopulation is not because of U.S. sanctions; it is because of political repression and Marxist economics. Fidel Castro himself, while alive and the sole ruler, ridiculed the embargo, because he was receiving ample economic aid from the Soviets. It was only when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 that Castro began blaming the U.S. for the problems communism had created.Otto J. ReichFalls Church, Va.The writer is the president of the Center for a Free Cuba and a former diplomat in the Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations. More

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      in World Politics

      Time for the US to Rethink Its Failed Cuba Policy

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      in US Politics

      Havana syndrome has ‘dramatically hurt’ morale, US diplomats say

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      Havana syndrome has ‘dramatically hurt’ morale, US diplomats sayAmerican Foreign Service Association chief Eric Rubin says syndrome, which remains a mystery, has affected recruitment The spread of Havana syndrome has “dramatically hurt” morale in the US diplomatic corps and affected recruitment, according to the head of the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA).Eric Rubin, whose association represents nearly 17,000 current and former diplomats and foreign aid workers, said it was getting harder to find young people to work abroad, because of concerns about Havana syndrome – and about whether the government would look after them if they got sick.Havana Syndrome could be caused by pulsed energy devices – US expert reportRead more“People have suffered real trauma and real injury, and it has dramatically hurt our morale, our readiness, our ability to recruit new members in the foreign service,” Rubin told the first medical symposium on the syndrome since it began affecting US diplomats and intelligence officers in 2016, organised by the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.The cause of the syndrome, which involves long-term loss of balance and cognitive function, remains a mystery. A report by a US intelligence panel of experts last week found that pulsed electromagnetic energy and ultrasound were plausible causes in at least some cases.A CIA assessment made public last month however determined that the majority of the thousand possible cases reported were most likely not the result of a global campaign by a foreign power, while in some two dozen incidents the cause could not be explained.Rubin did not speculate over the cause, but said that the syndrome was having a potentially serious effect on US diplomacy.“It is getting harder when we recruit people,” the AFSA president said. “I’ve had young members of the cohort that’s coming into the foreign service ask me: ‘If I do this, what am I getting into? And is this going to get worse? Is this going to get solved? If I get attacked and if I get injured, who’s gonna be there for me?’“We’ve got to address that,” Rubin said.Microwave weapons that could cause Havana Syndrome exist, experts sayRead moreRubin said that care was improving for US officials who have been affected, but that the AFSA was still encountering bureaucratic resistance.“We pushed really hard,” he said. “We did succeed, but it’s still case-by-case.”Kenneth Dekleva, a former state department medical officer and psychiatrist who is leading an effort at UT Southwestern to coordinate research on Havana syndrome, said that psychogenic explanations for the spread of the symptoms were not convincing.“Most diplomats – I would say 99% – want to be overseas, they want to serve their country with dignity and honor, and they want to be healthy,” Dekleva told the Guardian. “They don’t want to assume a patient role. And there’s no gain from it. The burden of illness and suffering is very real for the people. And I find that compelling.”TopicsUS foreign policyCubaAmericasUS politicsnewsReuse this content More