By Randy Alonso Falcon on December 3, 2024
The moral rottenness of the empire is increasingly visible. Orgies in the elite, judicial scandals, political circuses. Little decency is left in Washington.
Immorality reaches the top. President Joe Biden is leaving office, in addition to his legendary lapses, along with a string of last-minute ethical gaffes.
A few days ago, the imperial leader pardoned from all present and future criminal charges his son Hunter Biden, a self-confessed drug addict who had been indicted on nine counts of tax evasion and illegal possession of weapons. This is the first time in the history of the empire that a president has pardoned an immediate relative.
Hunter Biden is also suspected, although not legally charged, of influence peddling during his father’s tenure as Vice President, when he obtained, in 2014, a paid position in the Ukrainian company Burisma Holdings, dedicated to oil and gas extraction.
As if the blunder were not enough on December 1 Joe Biden sealed with his signature the legalization of foreign trademark theft by giving presidential assent to congressional legislation pushed by the most retrograde forces in the U.S. Capitol.
The U.S. president signed into law HR 1505, the “Stolen Trademarks Disrespect Act of 2023”, which “modifies the prohibition for U.S. courts to recognize certain rights related to certain trademarks, trade names or trade denominations”, whose main promoter and financier is Bacardi, the transnational liquor company created in Cuba and based in Puerto Rico and Bermuda since before 1959.
The Bacardi-scented traces of the plans against the Cuban Revolution range from the participation in the failed mercenary invasion defeated at Playa Giron in April 1961, through the financing of missions to bomb Cuban oil refineries and the creation and support of the terrorist organization Cuban Representation in Exile (RECE), to the more than five million dollars spent in the 1990s on anti-Cuban lobbyists and corrupt politicians such as former House Representative Tom DeLay or the ultra-right-wing Jesse Helms, the arming of the illegal Section 211 and the financing of various subversive plans against Cuba.
Bacardi, fearful of the steady growth of Habana Club International in the world beverage market, has tried every possible way to block Habana Club’s access to the U.S. market.
It did so first by drafting and financing part of the so-called Helms Burton Act, which codifies the blockade against Cuba, and then by trying in court to block the registration of the trademark by the Cuban-French joint venture.
Now Bacardi has invested no less than 690,000 dollars to buy the necessary congressional will to sponsor and push through legislation that violates international trade rules and sponsors the blatant theft of a recognized trademark.
The new law passed by Biden, was initially pushed in 2023 by two corrupt politicians and habitual liars, Bob Menendez and Marco Rubio.
“Any confiscation or seizure of assets by the Cuban regime is and always will be a criminal act that should not be rewarded by the U.S. government,” Senator Menendez said in introducing the pamphlet more than a year ago. “This legislation would codify into law the longstanding U.S. policy of supporting the rightful owners of stolen property by ensuring that U.S. courts and the executive branch only recognize the rights of those whose trademarks were illegally taken by the Cuban government.”
“There is bipartisan support for protecting Americans whose property was stolen by the Cuban regime. For years, the Cuban dictatorship has profited from property confiscation. We must ensure that federal agencies and U.S. courts do not recognize or validate any trademark rights that the Cuban regime has illegally stolen from their rightful owners,” said Marco Rubio.
Bacardi never owned the Habana Club brand, created by the Arrechabala family, who abandoned the brand after leaving Cuba and was re-registered by Cubaexport in the 1970s, when any legal impediment to the use of the brand had already expired.
“The real intention of this maneuver is to prevent the renewal of the Havana Club trademark in the United States, which should occur in 2026, and to strip Cubaexport of its rights as holder of the registration before the U.S. Trademark and Patent Office,” denounced Johana Tablada de la Torre, deputy director general of the U.S. Directorate of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday.
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English