Cuba and US clash at UN over release of militant

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

Published: 24/05/2007 12:00 AM (UAE)

Cuba and US clash at UN over release of militant
Reuters

United Nations: Cuba and Venezuela clashed with the United States in the UN Security Council over the release this month by a US judge of an anti-Castro militant wanted for bomb attacks against Cuba.

Cuban charge d'affaires Ileana Nunez Mordoche accused Washington of a bid to conceal details of Luis Posada Carriles's CIA past by permitting his May 8 release after the judge in El Paso, Texas, dismissed immigration fraud charges against him.

Posada Carriles, who was taken into US custody in May 2005 after he entered the country illegally, is wanted in Cuba and Venezuela, where he is accused of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people.

The Cuban denounced Washington's "complicity and absolute responsibility" for the release, aimed, she said, at stopping Posada Carriles revealing his "terrorist actions" against Cuba and Venezuela as an ex-Central Intelligence Agency operative.







Read more: http://www.gulfnews.com/world/United_Nations/10127367.html

[independentpiney]

1. So plotting to blow up a plane makes him a militant,not a terrorist?

word games are so much fun!

[acmavm]

2. As long as he's a CIA 'militant'. You know, one of Negroponte's

and bush I's buddies.

It is perfectly fine and dandy to blow up some people. Didn't you know that? Especially when they're (the blower uppers) agents of the US government. :sarcasm:

[Mika]

3. Not just plotting. Plotting AND blowing up a plane AND murdering 73 on board.

His terrorist activity was no word game. There are 73 families who's lives were devestated and forever changed because of this one US terror op alone.




We've ALWAYs been at war with Eurasia

[Judi Lynn]

4. Canadian Cuba story: Cuba to modernize its ethanol production despite Castro opposition to biofuel

Cuba to modernize its ethanol production despite Castro opposition to biofuel
Andrea Rodriguez, Canadian Press
Published: Wednesday, May 23, 2007

HAVANA (AP) - Cuba is quietly modernizing its ethanol-producing facilities, despite Fidel Castro's repeated assertions that making more of the biofuel could starve the world's poor.

The island plans to upgrade 11 of its 17 refineries, which produce up to 47 million gallons annually of ethanol from sugar cane, said Conrado Moreno, a member of Cuba's Academy of Sciences.

The refineries currently produce alcohol for use in rum and other spirits, as well as medications and cooking on the island. But the improvements will give Havana the capacity to one day produce fuel for cars, Moreno told reporters at a conference on renewable energy.

Ethanol produced in Cuba is not for cars now, but "in four or five years, we'll see," he said.

More:
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=3b9f7439-3b2d-4e66-b263-44e20bdfc59d&k=29638

[gratuitous]

5. Posada's a "militant"

But Meyerhoff, convicting of torching three unoccupied SUVs is a "terrorist." Gee, this game is fun!

[Judi Lynn]

6. Ah, ha ha ha ha. I can top that! After seeing your post, I looked for Posada + "dissident" in google

Of COURSE I found it!

Last Updated: Wednesday, 11 May, 2005, 10:36 GMT 11:36 UK

Cuba 'plane bomber' was CIA agent

Declassified US government documents show that a man suspected of involvement in the bombing of a Cuban passenger plane worked for the CIA.

Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born Venezuelan and anti-Castro dissident, was an agent and informer.
(snip)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4535661.stm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This fella not only is a "militant," after co-plotting the slaughter of 73 people, including children (sitting ducks in their airliner), and hiring the assassins, but he ALSO gets labeled a "dissident!" Harsh words, eh?

Sometimes it seems the liberal media is just so rough on right-wing terrorists.

[Judi Lynn]

7. More raw language toward Posada: Double standards:America's refusal to act against a Cuban dissiden

Double standards
America's refusal to act against a Cuban dissident accused of terrorism is a bizarre display of hypocrisy and political cowardice.
Ben Whitford

April 30, 2007 3:00 PM

On a sunny October afternoon in 1976, a bomb hidden in a tube of Colgate toothpaste brought down a Cubana Airlines plane off the coast of Barbados, killing all 73 people on board. The attack remains the worst of its kind in Latin American history - and earlier this month a court in New Orleans allowed the man widely suspected of masterminding the atrocity to go free.

It's not the first time Luis Posada Carriles, a frail 79-year-old Venezuelan of Cuban origin, has appeared to have gotten away with murder. The CIA-trained anti-Castro dissident, recently described by the LA Times as "the Zacarias Moussaoui of Havana and Caracas", bribed his way out of a Venezuelan jail in 1985 while awaiting trial for planning the Cubana attack. He was imprisoned in Panama for his part in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro, but soon received a pardon. And he has yet to face charges for his role in a lethal bombing spree that targeted Havana tourist haunts in the 1990s, despite boasting to journalists that he helped to orchestrate the attacks.

When Posada was arrested two years ago in Miami, it looked as though his luck might have run out. But in a bizarre display of hypocrisy and political cowardice, the Bush administration has so far declined to either detain him or try him on terror charges; Venezuela's repeated requests for his extradition under a 1922 treaty between the two countries have been ignored. Instead, Posada is to be tried, laughably, on a count of lying to immigration officials. A judge ruled that Posada posed no flight risk, so he was bailed, issued with an ankle-tag, and sent back to his wife's home in Miami to await trial.
(snip/...)

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/ben_whitford/2007/04/double_standards.html

[David__77]

8. "Dissident." So romantic...

The papers are so propagandistic, yet have such a pompous pretense of "objectivity."

[Judi Lynn]

9. Doesn't seem possible to hide the truth deeper than by going from the truth, which is "BOMBER/

mass murderer/terrorist" to "militant" and finally to passive, mild, helpless "dissident!"

It would make a maggot gag. We have been relying on these people for our actual information about our world. This is the kind of respect they have for us.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Posada Carriles, Child of Scorn

COHA: Posada Carriles, Child of Scorn
Tuesday, 22 May 2007, 10:54 am
Opinion: Council on Hemispheric Affairs


Council On Hemispheric Affairs
MONITORING POLITICAL, ECONOMIC AND DIPLOMATIC
ISSUES AFFECTING THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE
Wednesday, May 16th, 2007
Press Releases, Venezuela, Cuba, Front Page

Posada Carriles, Child of Scorn: Yet Another Example of the White House’s Denigration of its War on Terrorism, which Woefully Lacks Integrity, Coherence or Consistency

The case of Luis Posada Carriles is a prime example of the tentacle-like reach of Miami’s exile community into both the Washington foreign policy establishment and the U.S. judicial system. What is so instructive about the Posada case is how little secrecy actually surrounds it: few details are shrouded, and his dastardly crimes are not only publicly known, but even celebrated in select circles. This apathy and lack of moral rectitude is appalling, even under the Bush administration’s Olympic record for duplicity. Such openness has been fostered by a deep rooted culture of impunity that affects Washington – one that has existed for so long that it no longer sparks adequate debate or investigation.

A Killer Hailed as a Patriot

The facts of Luis Posada Carriles’ life are hardly disputed and can be traced through both declassified government documents and his own boasting. According to both CIA and FBI memos, Posada was born in Cienfuegos, Cuba in 1928, and resided on the island until 1961 when he emigrated to Miami, two years after Castro came to power. Thirty-three years old at the time, Posada quickly became involved in anti-Castro activities and was recruited to take part in the Bay of Pigs invasion. While he trained in both Florida and Guatemala for the landing, according to a CIA report, he did not actually participate in the attempted exercise.

Following the Bay of Pigs disaster, Posada received U.S. army training from 1963 to 1964 at Fort Benning, where he graduated as a Second Lieutenant and commanding officer in a Ranger Battalion. Posada, now armed with special training demolition skills, went on to become involved in an array of anti-Castro and other anti-communist activities, including clandestine training in guerrilla warfare at Polk City, Florida in 1964. By 1965, he was most likely on the CIA payroll as an asset if not as an operator, and was reportedly involved in schemes to overthrow the then Guatemalan government as well as blow up a Soviet and a Cuban ship in Veracruz, Mexico.

By 1967, Posada had become a naturalized citizen of Venezuela and was a member of its Cuban-exile dominated secret service, to which, according to Posada’s biography, the CIA had recommended him. Posada participated in Venezuela’s anti-guerrilla conflict as head of counterintelligence until 1974 when his politics and connections came into conflict with the incoming government of Carlos Andrés Pérez. For a few years, Posada and a handful of associates ran a private investigation service in Caracas, an experience which he notes was profitable, but without “glory.”

Posada seems to have been involved in such commercial endeavors until 1976 when he became involved with Orlando Bosch, who was well established by then as a virulent anti-Castro and anti-communist terrorist. Bosch had been released from prison in 1972 after serving a five out of a ten-year-sentence for a bazooka attack on a Polish ship en route to Cuba. Imprisonment did little to deter Bosch, who admitted in 1974 that he had sent mail bombs to a number of Cuban embassies. On June 11, 1976, both Posada and Bosch attended a meeting in Santo Domingo, where five anti-Castro exile organizations merged into an “umbrella” group known as the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU). It is believed that among CORU’s first projects was its participation in the September 21, 1976 car bomb assassination of Chilean human rights activist Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C.

More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0705/S00337.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Tho' it makes him sad to see the waaaay we live,
he'll always saaaay, "I forgiiiiiiiiiive......"
John Boehner weeps with overwhelming Republican concern for his fellow man/woman, May 24, 2007

Relive that moment in history:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/24/boehner-weeps-again