The once powerful Staffs offices are located in the Palace of the Revolution (Palacio de la Revolución). Image: Panoramio

The once powerful Coordination and Support Staff's offices were located in the Palace of the Revolution (Palacio de la Revolución). Image: Panoramio

“Sources of utmost credibility” have informed Penúltimos Días blog that at the beginning of the week, Fidel Castro’s Grupo de Coordinación y Apoyo al Comandante en Jefe (Coordination and Support Staff — GCA) was dissolved.

According to the blog, several members of the Staff have been reassigned to new posts within the government.

GCA was a parallel structure of government that has been,  from its inception, Fidel Castro’s executive staff implementing and executing his policy initiatives for the country.

Most notable Staff members have been recently sacked Carlos Lage (Vice-President) and Felipe Pérez Roque (Foreign Minister), whom respectively served as chief.

For further research on the GCA’s historical and political development,  see my paper presented at the 2001 Annual Meeting of Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy (ASCE).

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The lack of posts the last couple of weeks is due in part to the migration of this weblog  to a new hosting company.  It has been a frustrating process, to say the least, as numerous files have been corrupted in the migration causing  posts/pages to display incomplete text and images.

Thank you for your patience, and rest assured, new posts will be published soon.

n Audience of Russian generals and colonels and members of the NATO Mobile Education Training Team at the General Staff Academy in Moscow listens to lectures. Image: NATO

An audience of Russian generals and colonels and members of the NATO Mobile Education Training Team at the General Staff Academy in Moscow listens to lectures. Image: NATO

A recent flurry of activities from the Russian Federation, its armed forces and Cuba, i.e. Russian strategic bombers possibly using Cuban airfields and the possible reactivation of the Lourdes SIGINT facility, leads to a further inquiry on the Cuban military leadership

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La Nueva Cuba’s lead story today informs of reports the newspaper received from within the island that “Russian personnel has been in Cuba for several months working on modernizing SIGINT operations in the old Lourdes surveillance and monitoring facility south of Havana,” (complex is center right in Google Map above) which was closed in 2001 by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The report goes on to say, “both Cuba and Venezuela will benefit with access to some of the information obtained from Moscow…Some of the monitoring operations has been activated and work is underway to modernize the installation with the most advanced Russian technology available. The amplification and improvement of these installations operated by Russia are part of a project of rearming and modernization of Russian armed forces and the goal of completion by 2011.”

Furthermore, “The new operations could include military sections dedicated to hacking or computer systems espionage with a capacity to neutralize U.S. military networks in the case of emergency and sensitive situations emerging from a military conflict or political necessity to pressure a weakened United States susceptible to political pressure.”

Developing…

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Coup plotters? Felipe Perez Roque and Carlos Lage receive Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at Jose Marti International Airport in Havana on June 16, 2008. (Image: AFP)

Coup plotters? Felipe Perez Roque and Carlos Lage greet Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez at Jose Marti International Airport in Havana on June 16, 2008. (Image: AFP)

Jorge Casta

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Maj. General Anatoly Zhikharev, Chief of Staff of the Russian Air Force has told Interfax-AVN military news agency that Russia could use air bases for its strategic bombers in Cuba and Venezuela.

He said: “There are four or five airfields in Cuba with 4,000-meter-long runways, which absolutely suit us.”

San Antonio de Los Ba

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