Cuban-American National Foundation
The Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to overthrowing the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. Established in Florida in 1981 by Jorge Mas Canosa and Raul Masvidal, CANF is the largest Cuban organization in exile, with thousands of members in the United States and other countries. Following the death of its founder in 1997, CANF began to lose its ideological cohesion provided by Mas Canosa, which led its hard-liners to split and form the Cuban Liberty Council in 2001. CANF has since drifted a considerable amount from its traditional alliance with the Republican Party.
CANF has offices in Miami, Washington, D.C. and New Jersey and chapters in Los Angeles, the greater New York area, Chicago, several cities in Florida, Puerto Rico, New Orleans, and Texas.
As the foremost Cuban exile organization in the United States, CANF has acted as the principal Cuban-American lobby in Washington, D.C. For two decades CANF has worked to create a bipartisan consensus on U.S. policy that is opposed to the current Cuban government. Between 1990 and 1992, it received a quarter million dollars from the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization financed by the US government.
Alleged terrorist actions by CANF operatives
It has been alleged that CANF is connected to terrorist acts against Cuban businesses, government and ordinary citizens. Luis Posada Carriles admitted in a 1998 New York Times interview that he received financial backing from CANF for a 1997 bombing campaign in Cuba [1]. CANF has strongly denied Posada's statement. Posada, however, describes long term relationships with CANF figures in his autobiography. Declassified CIA and FBI documents allege that Posada was one of the "engineer[s]" of the 1976 terrorist bombing of Cubana Airlines flight 455 that killed 73 passengers. [2] The administration of President George W. Bush refused to extradite Posada to Venezuela, where he is wanted for this crime.
answers.com
=============
The China Lobbys Campaign for
Two-Way Trade with China
by Robert Weissman
BEIJING -- With Republicans in the U.S. Senate preparing to show how China sought to exercise illegal and improper influence over U.S. politics, the activities of the real -- and far more powerful -- China Lobby have gone unexamined.
Made up of the largest U.S. corporations, the China Lobby is dedicated to unfettered trade with China. It wants to ensure that the U.S. market is open to Chinese imports -- including, most importantly, goods manufactured by the U.S. companies' subsidiaries, contractors or partners in China. And, it is increasingly oriented to ensuring that the Chinese market is open to U.S. investment.
The principal vehicle of the China Lobby is the United States-China Business Council, a grouping of more than 300 firms including Boeing, Philip Morris and AT&T. A host of public relations firms, lobby shops, think tanks and consulting firms -- including the notorious Kissinger Associates of former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger -- supplement the efforts of the U.S.-China Business Council.
Fresh from another victory on the extension of most-favored-nation (MFN) treatment to China, the China Lobby is now orienting itself to obtain much more sweeping change: it wants to bring China into the World Trade Organization, on terms set by U.S. corporations.
multinationalmonitor.org
========
The Vast Power of the Saudi Lobby
by John R. MacArthur
Somehow, though, I can’t shake the idea that the Israel lobby, no matter how powerful, isn’t all it is cracked up to be, particularly where it concerns the Bush administrations past and present. Indeed, when I think of pernicious foreign lobbies with disproportionate sway over American politics, I can’t see past Saudi Arabia and its royal house, led by King Abdullah.
The long and corrupt history of American-Saudi relations centers around the kingdom’s vast reserves of easily extractable oil, of course. Ever since President Franklin D. Roosevelt met aboard ship in 1945 with King Ibn Saud, the special relationship with the desert kingdom has only grown stronger. The House of Saud is usually happy to sell us oil at a consistent and reasonable price — and then increase production if unseemly market forces drive the world price of a barrel too high for U.S. consumers.
In exchange we arm the Saudis to the teeth and turn a blind eye to their medieval approach to crime and punishment.
Even during the Saudi-led oil embargo of 1973-74, an exceedingly hostile action against the United States supposedly justified by Washington’s support of Israel in the Yom Kippur War, the Nixon administration treaded very softly. Despite the illegality of the embargo — it arguably violated international law as well as a bilateral commercial agreement between the United States and Saudi Arabia — the White House and the State Department could hardly have been more diplomatic toward their Bedouin friends.
commondreams.org
========
So strong was the hold of pro-Iraq lobby on the Republican administration of President Reagan that it succeeded in getting the White House frustrate the Senate's attempt to penalize Baghdad for violating the Geneva Protocol on Chemical Weapons, which it had signed. This led Saddam to believe that Washington was firmly on his side, a conclusion that paved the way for his invasion of Kuwait and the 1991 Gulf War.
counterpunch.org
=======
Arab Lobby (Groups)
The Arab lobby consists of those groups and individuals that directly and indirectly seek to influence American policy to support Arab interests both in the U.S. and abroad. While focusing on Arab concerns, by no means is this lobby composed exclusively of Arabs. The lobby is defined by its ideology, not the ethnicity of its active constituents. That ideology tends to be pro-Arab on the one hand, and anti-Israel on the other. The Arab lobby in America generally seeks to promote its agendas by characterizing them as beneficial to U.S. national interests; conversely, it depicts pro-Israel policies as harmful to those interests.
The roots of the Arab lobby in America can be traced back to 1951, when King Saud of Saudi Arabia asked U.S. diplomats to finance a pro-Arab lobby to serve as a counterweight to the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs (later renamed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC).
discoverthenetworks.org |
