It’s the genocide, stupid
Business motives don’t explain the right-wing turn of the Washington Post and CBS. Billionaire ideology does.
‘You can’t say ‘genocide’’: How US media sanitized Israel’s destruction of Gaza
Sanders, Lee move to rein in super PACs amid growing billionaire grip on US elections
Cuba denounces ‘cruel and ruthless aggression’ of US as White House indicts Raúl Castro
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on May 20, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
As the US Justice Department indicted former Cuban President Raúl Castro on Wednesday in what could be a prelude to military action, the Cuban government denounced the US for “cruel and ruthless aggression.”
The 94-year-old Castro, who served as Cuba’s leader until 2021 after taking over for his brother Fidel in 2008, was indicted on one count of conspiracy to kill US nationals for his alleged role in the shooting down of planes operated by the anti-Castro Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue in 1996, which resulted in the deaths of four Cuban Americans.
“For nearly 30 years, the families of four murdered Americans have waited for justice,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said as he announced the charges at Miami’s Freedom Tower. “My message today is clear: The United States and President Trump does not and will not forget its citizens.”
While Blanche described the four men as “unarmed civilians,” the Cuban government said the group had repeatedly violated its sovereign airspace and that it had warned the US government before shooting down the plane.
Declassified documents from a month before the incident show that officials in the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) viewed the Brothers’ activities as “taunting” and feared the Cuban government might shoot a plane down.
“Is a sovereign state like Cuba obligated to tolerate illegal and continuous incursions into its territory? Under no circumstances,” the Cuban embassy in the US said in a statement published on Wednesday on social media. “International law and global civil aviation conventions protect the sovereignty of nations over their airspace.”
“When formal warnings to the [International Civil