Cuba Is Almost Certainly Not Responsible for the Ailments
Published at 16:33 on 15 June 2018
Back in January, I wrote here about how the claim that the US Embassy workers who were falling ill were the victim of “Cuban attacks” just didn’t pass the smell test. Well, last April a bunch of Canadian diplomats went home sick from Cuba, showing pretty much the same symptoms.
This really doesn’t pass the smell test for a deliberate, Cuban-government-sponsored, attack. Cuba has had diplomatic relations with Canada for decades. The whole business of a trade embargo? Not for Canada; you can easily buy Cuban rum and Cuban cigars there. Many American fans of one or the other know this, make trips to Canada, and smuggle such goods back across the border.
Why would the Cubans want to deep-six their generally good relations with Canada? That makes even less sense than them wanting to sabotage good relations with the USA, as the relations with Canada have not proven harmful in the least to the regime. Quite the contrary; Canada has been a good market for Cuban products.
Now mystery symptoms are showing up in diplomats serving in China. Who knows what the real cause is, but the Cuban state seems way, way, way down any such list of potential culprits.
My best guess remains that no government is responsible as an act of deliberate commission. It’s some other previously-known (yet obscure) ailment, which is just attracting a measure of undue attention because it’s happened to strike a bunch of employees working at some select high-profile outlets at once. The symptoms being reported in China may well be from a completely different cause than the ones in Cuba.