Cuban Debate

[winchable]

http://www.cubadebate.cu/index.php?tpl=especiales-show&noticiaid=3200&noticiafecha=2004-08-30

This links not much better as far as credibility in some ppls eyes is concerned.
I've been waiting to hear from the American board members on this one.

Nothing about this is untrue Bruce believe me. Reporters *rarely* ouright make up facts.
So you get through the chaff to the facts.
FACT, Carriles admitted to bombing a cuban passenger jet, FACT, Carriles and the three others were found with 30 pounds of plastics explosives with the intent of killing Castro AND 100's of university students in Panama.
FACT, Carriles and the three others were pardoned by the outgoing Panamanian president.
FACT Carriles disappeared, and the three others now live in Miami amongst the Cuban dissident community, right under the American Governments nose.
It's all well and good to say "CASTRO WAS A COMMUNIST HE DESERVED IT."
As I'm sure someone will. Fine fine fine.
But, the passengers on the airplanes had families and didn't deserve that, and had the bombing in the university worked out, the university students wouldn't have "Deserved" it.

The idea that an enemy of and enemy is a friend...didn't work out too well with Bin Laden, so why is it impossible to assume that Carriles and the others will feel the same one day? Foresight, foresight foresight.

I'm certain most people are going going to completely skip over this because it's not from Cnn or BBC.
But if one was already inclined, they wouldn't listen to me anyhow so enjoy the facts through the flak that these writers/websites put on the stories and you'll see the Hipocrisy and arrogance with which every American government from the 19th century onward has dealt with Latin America manifesting itself in a single issue.

Send all the humanitarian aid they want, etc, etc, but if they're going to let people like this walk the streets of Miami than it's not worth the envelope it's mailed in.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

Che,
You misunderstood my meaning of "this one stinks"
I'm with you when I made that statement.

 

[winchable]

Ahh..so it wasn't I who was stinking.

 

[Bruce Monkhouse]

http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/237020p-203507c.html

Che, I thought this one was worth bringing over also.Sorry for stealing your site.

Terrorists welcome
- if they're anti-Castro

Let's see if we can make sense out of this: On Tuesday, Washington denied visas to a number of Cuban scholars - I repeat, scholars - who had been invited to participate in an academic conference in Las Vegas.
Yet, in what amounted to a suspension of the war on terror, a few weeks ago, Pedro Remón, Guillermo Novo Sampol and Gaspar Jiménez - three Cuban-Americans with long and proven ties to terrorist activities in this country and abroad - were given a celebrity welcome to the U.S.

Terrorists yes, scholars no? It doesn't make any sense.

On Sept. 28, the U.S. Interests Section in Havana informed the Cuban authorities that they had turned down the requested visas of every single one of 61 Cuban scholars who were supposed to take part in the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) convention in Las Vegas Oct 7-10.

Such action was based on Section 212, an executive order issued during the Reagan administration that allows denial of visas on the grounds that it is not in the interests of the U.S. to grant visas to persons who are employees of the Cuban government and/or members of the Cuban Communist Party.

"In short," said Michael Erisman, a political science professor at Indiana State University and a member of LASA, "it is a blanket authorization to deny visas, since practically all Cubans, and certainly all Cuban academics, are government employees, just as those of us in the U.S. who work at public institutions are government employees."

Yet Remón, Novo and Jiménez, who along with former CIA operative Luis Posada Carriles had been in a Panamanian prison, accused of plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro at a summit of Latin American leaders in 2000, had no problems with federal authorities.

The fact that, according to the charges, they were planning to use 33 pounds of explosives to assassinate Castro at the University of Panama did not raise any red flags with immigration authorities. Those authorities happily looked the other way when the three men returned to the U.S. through the Opa-Locka airport in Florida.

Officials in Washington did not seem to mind that the explosives the men intended to use were enough to destroy an armored car, damage everything within 220 yards and kill not only Castro but dozens of Panamanian university students as well. Recently, the men had been sentenced to seven to eight years in prison for endangering public safety.

But on Aug. 28, they were pardoned by outgoing Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso, who many believe was pressured to do so by Washington. And, outrageously enough, the trio arrived in Florida to great fanfare just in time to commemorate the third anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on American soil. It seems that for all its rhetoric about democracy, what really scares this administration the most is a free exchange of ideas.

"We expected some casualties, but never a blanket denial of visas," said Erisman. "This case is, at least to the best of my knowledge, the most extreme application - and abuse - of the Section 212 provisions in terms of the size of the group that has been denied visas."

Terrorists yes, scholars no. Whatever happened to the war on terror? Call it opportunism or call it hypocrisy - it doesn't make much difference. The fact is that this is an election year and Florida must be won. And candidate Bush seems willing to go very far to woo the ultraconservative Cuban-American vote. Last time I looked, this was called hypocrisy.

 

[winchable]

That's the better of the two I think.
I've met Mr Ruiz and he is not a Pro-Castro reporter, he is pro-Cuba.

The Cuban exile community in Miami is quite scary.
I have a great deal of sympathy for political dissidents living in Cuba, but the exiles in Miami are mostly just pissed off former land and slave owners.
There was a conference similar to the one being held this year, held in Halifax in the late 80's.
The conference chairmen was threatened to the point where he had to seperate his family for their own protection. Not two days before the conference he was given an address in Montreal where he recieved an anonymous phone call: "A large supply of firearms and explosives are being held with the intention of severely disrupting the conference being held in Halifax."
Sure enough the RCMP investigated and found the cache, they could never get solid links, but it was always suspected it had been funded by Cuban Exiles.