🇺🇲 Creative Associates International (CAI): It’s Not Exactly the CIA, But Close Enough

A Nicaraguan man poses at a USAID event about LGBT issues in 2018. Source | CAI

By Alan Macleod

You have likely not heard of them, but Creative Associates International (CAI) is one of the largest and most powerful non-governmental organizations operating anywhere in the world. A pillar of soft U.S. power, the group has been an architect in privatizing the Iraqi education system, designed messenger apps meant to overthrow the government of Cuba, served as a front group for the infamous Blackwater mercenary force (now rebranded as Academi), and liaised with Contra death squads in Nicaragua. As such, it has functioned as “both as an instrument of foreign policy and as a manifestation of a broader imperial project,” in the words of Professor Kenneth Saltman of the University of Illinois, Chicago.

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👉🏽 If the US 🇺🇲 really cared about freedom in 🇨🇺 Cuba, it would end its punishing sanctions

‘Cuba’s critics blame the government for the daily hardships Cubans face, dismissing US sanctions as an excuse.’ The Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel. Photograph: Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters

By Helen Yaffe

The violent protests that erupted in Cuba in early July were the first serious social disturbances since the “Maleconazo” of 1994, 27 years ago. Both these periods were characterised by deep economic crises. I was living in Havana in the mid-90s and witnessed the conditions that triggered the uprising: empty food markets, shops and pharmacy shelves, regular electricity cuts, production and transport ground to a halt. Such were the consequences of the collapse of the socialist bloc, which accounted for about 90% of the island’s trade.

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$1 million up for grabs for Cuba projects

By Treace Eaton

The State Department is offering up to $1 million for programs that would boost “civil, political, religious, and labor rights in Cuba.”

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🇺🇲 U.S. offers 💲2 million for human rights in Cuba 🇨🇺

The State Department is offering up to $2 million to organizations that will promote human rights in Cuba.

An award announcement stated:

“Proposals should offer a specific vision for contributing to change while acknowledging and developing contingencies for challenges to program implementation.”

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