Thread by @AlanRMacLeod

[Thread] US documents suggest that they had a hand in the protests in Cuba 🇨🇺 earlier this week.

My new investigation for @MintPressNews

mintpressnews.com/documents-poin…

1) Marco Rubio celebrated the protests as being "started by artists, not politicians."

What he doesn't say is that US agencies have been funding those very same art/music communities for years, with CIA fronts, the NED and USAID plowing $$$ into them in in hopes of regime change

2) Cuban hip-hop stars immediately endorsed and even led the demos.

Yet the NED's most recent report notes that it is grooming rappers to become anti-communist leaders.

ned.org/region/latin-a…

3) A ton of big outlets have noted that rapper Yotuel and his song "Patria y Vida" have been crucial in igniting the protests.

4) But a currently live NED grant offer for up to $2 million directly references "Patria y Vida" and suggests that's exactly the same thing they'd like to sponsor.

drive.google.com/file/d/1tvel7R…

5) The US House appropriations budget has just alloted $20 million to "democracy" projects in Cuba. What they mean by "democracy" is made clear when they say that not one penny can be used to help the Cuban government.

govinfo.gov/bulkdata/BILLS…

6) The US gov & the corporate media were so eager to push this protest that they even used pics of pro-government demos or gatherings in Miami to illustrate how well-attended the anti-government protests were 🤦

7) There was also a TON of blatant bot spamming re:protests, which pushed it to trend for more than 24 hours on Twitter.

8) The first account to use #SOSCuba was not from Cuba, but from Spain. This account posted almost 1300 tweets that day. Twitter has since suspended the account for inauthentic behavior. But it let the obvious bot farming continue for days.

telesurenglish.net/news/Fake-Soci…

9) This is a failed color revolution @BenjaminNorton told me on the @MintPressNews livestream yesterday.

It was a really great conversation. Check it out (and subscribe) (also available as a podcast).

10) While the protest may have begun organically, the way in which it became worldwide news was not.

Yet, despite all the attention and endorsements from celebs and politicians, they could only muster a handful of smallish protests.

Ultimately, this was the US' Bay of Tweets.

On another note, did you know that Cuba trains American doctors for free if they promise to go back home and serve the poor in their communities?

I interviewed a number of American doctors who were studying/have studied in Havana for this article:

mintpressnews.com/meet-americans…