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Although plans for regime change in Iraq and the restructuring of the middle east map was completed by the neo-cons by the end of the 70's, none of the following Presidents of the United States including George H. Bush, seriously contemplated this deranged delusion, until the presidential election of the year 2000. With the arrival of George W. Bush to the White House and most key administrative positions securely in the hands of neo-cons or their operatives, it was relatively easy to transform the 911 tragedy into a battle cry, demanding the head of the Iraqi government, although it was always clear they had nothing to do with this despicable act. With that in mind, they created an elaborate list of far reaching scare tactics that included the existence in Iraq of nuclear weapons, anthrax, long range missiles, mobile biological warfare laboratories or chemical weapons. They lied publicly to numerous international institutions and pressured the United Nations to legitimize this crime, by repeatedly presenting unfounded and bogus accusations by individuals that had earned world wide respect, until then. And yet, on November 8 for the 14th consecutive year, The general Assembly of that same United Nations voted overwhelmingly 182 against 4 ( the United States, Israel, Palau and the Marshall Islands) to rescind the crippling 44 year old embargo against Cuba, that have inflicted untold pain and suffering on 11 million innocent people in Cuba, who have done us no harm. Mr. John Bolton, the US representative to the UN declared this result "as an exercise in irrelevancy" and praised those who stood up with him in defense of democracy, although most of us have no idea where Palau or the Marshall islands are. |
| Shortly after taking off from Barbados International Airport on October 6, 1976, a Cubana airliner with 73 passengers on board, mostly youngsters from the Cuban national fencing team, was blown up in midair, killing all aboard. Twenty nine years after the most heinous terrorist act in our hemisphere took place, Luis Posada Carriles and Dr. Orlando Bosch, both masterminds of this and an endless string of other equally despicable crimes, have seen Dr. Bosch become a free man turned into a celebrity in Miami and Mr. Posada Carriles is on his way out of a Texas jail, where he was euphemistically accused of illegal entry into the United States, brutally ignoring the extradition request of the Venezuelan government, where he is a convicted fugitive of this and other crimes. Alleging unfounded accusations of fear of torture in Venezuela, the Justice and Immigration Departments are protecting a known murderer, who in his own book, "How I Placed The Bomb", is an embarrassment to President George W. Bush doctrine of War on Terror. If the United States Government fear of Mr. Posada being tortured in Venezuela was real and its fight against Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, al Zarqawi et. al was genuine, why are they reluctant to send these individuals to the International Court in The Hague, as they did with other mass murderers from the Balkans? Are we concerned about what Mr. Posada Carriles, a long time CIA operative with a revolting curriculum may disclose, while we hope for a timely heart attack or a convenient Harvey Oswald/Jack Ruby outcome? Either way, the world knows where the truth lies and nothing will ever exonerate these murderers, their protectors or the policies that made these horrendous deeds possible. |
| An article written by Mr. George Gedda and published on Sunday 10/2/05 in the News-Journal, describe Mr. Caleb McCarry as the new great hope of the administration of President George W. Bush, "to support a genuine transition" or more accurately, oversee -as Mr Bremmer in Iraq- regime change in Cuba. This idea was first explored by President Eisenhower in 1960 and the implementation attempted by President Kennedy with his now world renowned Bay of Pigs fiasco. Later, it was a string of terrorists attacks code named "Operation Mangoose," that was followed by President Nixon and his Cuban-American Sturmtruppe, who were willing to bomb and strafe Cuba or break into Watergate in Washington, closing this tragic period with President Ronald Reagan's bravado in Miami that sent shivers through Latin America. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and all other eastern bloc countries in 1989, Cuba lost overnight most of its sources of raw material and 65% of its import/export markets. With famine, sickness and death looming behind this unprecedented human disaster, Congressman Torricelli and Senator Helms/Burton found it fitting to present and enact two laws that further constricted the most vicious embargo that the world had ever seen. President George W. Bush was elected in the year 2000 under questionable circumstances for those unfamiliar with "Democratic Cuba" political practices prior to 1959, when votes were bought and sold on the open market, ballots were stuffed or stolen, opponents threatened and occasionally beaten-up or killed and voting cards of dead people were cast. For us, who lived through these processes, the finger prints were clear, indelible and irrefutable. In gratitude to the Cuban American National Foundation and to other bellicose/rabid groups in south Florida, President George W. Bush ordered then Secretary of State Colin Powell and Senator Mel Martinez, to prepare and present to him the most outrageous, neo-colonial 500 page document that has redefined the Cuban family by excluding Aunts and Uncle, curtailed our family remittances to $100.00 a month irrespective of the number of its members, limited our family visits to Cuba to once every three years, with prior request and granting of permission by the State Department. But before Mr. McCarry was chosen for this heinous post, other notables such as Mr. Hayes, Otto Reich, Noriega, Mas Canosa, Ros Lethinen, Diaz Balart, and hundreds of others preceded him. We especially note Mr. Luis Posada Carriles and Dr. Orlando Bosch, who blew up a Cuban airliner in midair in 1976 killing all 73 on board and are celebrities in south Florida, but sooner rather than later, all of them will occupy their well deserved slot in history, next to other monsters that preceeded them. |
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This column is in reaction to the following column
in the Florida Sun Sentinel: ______________________________________ Lies And Distortions Does Not Save Lives,
9/24/05 It is really sad and capable of exerting
catastrophic consequences on the lives of many, when irresponsible individuals like Mr. Orestes
Cuevas-Vega, who clearly
have never sat in a medical school
classroom, tries viciously to deny Cuba's irrefutable medical
accomplishments, that has been publicly recognized by the Pan
American Health Organization,
The World Health Organization and the American Medical
Association. In his
simplistic quest to revive the same stupidity that was coined by the ultra-right-wing
Cuban-American emigrant community in south Florida in the early
sixties, who successfully and with the full financial backing of
the CIA, State Department
and other governmental entities, lured over 50% of the 6000 predominantly upper class physicians existing in Cuba to
Miami, crippling the
Cuban Health Care system and causing indescribable pain and suffering to
the population, they are
now confronted with the fact of admitting that this institution
is now 20 times bigger and better. In
1962, the Cuban government introduced a massive educational health care program,
that they quickly labeled as "Mediquito de Fidel" who needed
only to climb the Pico Turquino -Cuba's highest elevation- three
times. The
results, irrespective of
Mr. Cuevas-Vega's and his masters opinion
is clear. Over 66,000
physicians have created in the most adverse
condition, the 2nd. lowest infant mortality rate in this
hemisphere, the highest physician/patient
per capita in the world, irradicated over 12 transmissible
diseases, vaccinated 100% of its children, contributed to a 75
year life expectancy and
provided the services of over 40,000 in nearly 60 countries, mostly for free. These
physicians, that this likely high school drop-out questions in his letter,
are all around south Florida to be tested.
These are also the same physicians,
that at the same time, have created a world class medical
research and biotechnology development that continues to amaze
the world scientific community. Finally,
Mr. Cuevas-Vegas' ignorance is self explanatory, when he expresses his
concerns about a few of these physicians, with far more experience in natural
disasters than their local counterparts, staying in the country accused around
the world of stealing "grey matter" and not so, with the
thousands of poor, illiterate, untrained emigrants entering this country
every day. |
| Researchers, especially biochemists will someday
isolate the enzyme that governs the expression of love, caring and
compassion in humans, which seems to be conspicuously absent in President
George W. Bush and in most of his closest advisers. When President Bush was informed about the tragic developments on 911, he sat petrified in front of schoolchildren, incapable of deciding what to do next. Then, presumably under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney, he decided to take a long flight, away from his office and from the crime scene. This behaviour, his monotonous, content-devoid speeches, lack of creativity and a propensity to resort to divine solutions for earthly problems, have lead many around the world to question his intellect. The unjustified, poorly planned, dismally executed and brutal toll of the the war in Iraq, have further added to and compounded the low esteem that millions have of his capabilities. Although hurricane Katrina's killer course provided a week advance notice of its potential landing site, the administration was caught woefully unprepared. And then, instead of rushing all available resource to the scene, everyone engaged in grandstanding speeches, news conferences and upbeat assessments. Most preferred to be in front of TV cameras than at their command center. President George W. Bush even choose to fly to the west coast, meet with soldiers -his only audience- giving a couple of speeches, designed to boost his dwindling poll. This monstrous dereliction of duty, that may have lead to the death of unquantifiable number of people trapped in their attics, roof tops or herded into the Astrodome and Convention Center without food, water or other basic means of survival, is in itself, a text book in ineptitude. And as tens of thousands of people in this monstrous disaster area are without clean drinking water, adequate food and an emergency healthcare system stretched to the breaking point brace for an onslaught of transmissible diseases, chronic ailments and accident related injuries and deaths, once again, in another irrational and arrogant behaviour that typifies President George W. Bush's inability to think, he first dragged his feet and later refused an offer of 1,100 physicians from Cuba, with no strings, cost or political inferences attached. Poor Victims!!! |
| On Monday, August 29, 2005 in El Paso Texas, a court will hold hearings on an incredibly reduced charge of immigration violation against Luis Posada Carriles, the worst Cuban terrorist in its 500 plus years history. Interestingly enough, a self imposed silence by some mainstream media and the administration of George W. Bush. have failed to obscure keep this issue and keep it out of the spotlight. This well known criminal that has been sought by 4 or 5 countries for a string of terrorist crimes committed in their countries or against citizens under their jurisdiction, showed up in Miami a few months ago, confident that his longstanding relations with various US intelligence institutions, to whom he had provided an endless amount of morally questionable services, would provide him the protection and impunity to live and enjoy the amenities of Florida, that have been historically awarded to others like him. Arriving in the US in the 60's from Cuba, this living monster was quickly recruited by the CIA, enlisted in the Bay of Pigs fiasco and later trained in intelligence, explosives and demolition at the infamous School of the Americas in the state of Georgia. After engaging in hundreds of bombings across 4 continents leaving behind a trail of death and destruction, he joined many repressive governmental institutions in Central and South America, torturing, murdering, and maiming thousands of innocent people in these countries. At the helm of the Venezuelan infamous DISIP, hundreds of citizens of that country disappeared without trail. Later he showed up in Central America, where he played a pivotal role in the criminal Iran-Contra re-supply project, that was lead by Col. Oliver North, Felix Rodriguez and others, who dumped tons of cocaine on our inner cities, with the tragic social results that are still with us, a quarter of a century after. Felix Rodriguez, who reached the pinnacle in his underworld career by carrying out the instructions for assassinating Che Guevara in Bolivia, is now actively calling on all of his old buddies and pulling every string in his longstanding personal Washington relations, hoping to save his comrade-in-arms. And yet, it is precisely this debt of gratitude of the United States government to him and its historical loyalty to dictators, torturers and conspirators at its service around the world, that lead him to believe, that he could slip into south Florida as his partner-in-crime, Dr. Orlando Bosch, who lives unhindered as a celebrity in Miami. Only after a tumultuous outcry within the Cuban-American community and other Latin American groups in the US and around the world, did the Federal Government through Homeland Security and Immigration and Naturalization Agency, decided to pick him up after a press conference, was not handcuffed, provided a pair of protective ear gears and took him on a golf cart ride to a waiting helicopter. What a difference with a misbehaving 5 year old girl in Tampa, that was readily handcuffed and placed in the back of a police squad car? Charged only with illegal entry into the US and none of the hosts of well documented crimes attributed to him, his hearings have been postponed over and over, while the US government searches in vain for a solution that will not allow him to be deported to Venezuela, Cuba or worst, to have him go on an international tribunal, where he would surely vomit years of heinous crimes, some committed with full knowledge and/or under orders of intelligence agencies of the United States. Whichever course they may choose to follow, the government of George W. Bush is in an untenable situation. A timely heart attack or another convenient Jack Ruby, would not put this incriminating criminal case to rest. It will only further engulf those who trained, financed, offered cover, instructed and directed him into the commission of some of this hemisphere worst human deranged behavior. |
| Although Luis Posada Carriles' propensity for violence was evident in his early teens when he shot and killed for no reason, a mule pulling a cart in his hometown in Cuba, upon his arrival in the United States in the early 60's, he was enlisted in the CIA and the Bay of Pigs invading forces, was trained in demolition at the infamous School of the Americas in the state of Georgia and became an active leader in tens of violent counterrevolutionary Cuban-American groups in south Florida, that left a tragic trail of death and destruction in Latin America, United States, Europe and Africa. Tens of Cuban embassies, consulates, business representatives, merchant marine and fishermen around the world, were bombed or murdered by this blood thirsty sadist. Many seaside resorts in Cuba were strafed by his henchmen in speed boats and a massive bombing spree in hotels in the late 90's, caused significant financial loss, the death of an Italian tourist and numerous injured including children. But this despicable monster, who was conceived, delivered, nurtured, trained, financed and directed by many in the U.S. administrations during the past 40 years, is best known around the world for his heinous crime of blowing-up a Cuban airliner in mid-air off the coast of Barbados in 1976, killing all 73 occupants, most of whom were youngsters returning from a sport competition. Yet, rather than helping the police departments of Barbados, Venezuela, Cuba and Trinidad and Tobago, all of whom were searching for the culprit of this horrendous crime that shattered the conscience of this hemisphere, the United States choose to force the governments of Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago to return the detainees to Venezuela, where a previous agreement with the US would ensure the safety and well being of the murderers. Years later, the Cuban American National Foundation, based in Miami, provided a hefty bribe to prison guards in Venezuela, enabling this assassin to walk through the prison gates disguised as a priest. He then resurfaced at the police intelligence department in Venezuela, where multiple cases of torture, murder and disappearances were attributed to his vicious police technique. Posada Carriles also became an important link in the Ileopango re-supply base in El Salvador, the Iran-Contra scandal and the introduction of tons of cocaine into the United States, under the watchful direction of Lt. Col Oliver North and others. Captured in Panama city with a couple of hundred pounds of the powerful C4 explosives that he planned to plant in the University auditorium where Fidel Castro was to address 2000 university students, Posada was sentenced and later released from jail by then outgoing President Mireya Moscoso, supposedly in exchange for 4 million dollars. In the early 90's and upon a request from now Governor Jeb Bush to his father President George H. Bush, Mr Posada's co-conspirator and mastermind in the horrendous airline crime, Dr. Orlando Bosch, was allowed to enter the United States where he now lives like a statesman and celebrity in Miami. This brief summary of the murky underpinnings between the ultra-rightwing Cuban American community, the most reactionary faction of the Republican party, and many fundamentalists religious groups in the US, makes it easy to understand why it was possible for Posada and his henchmen to enter illegally into the United States without the knowledge of over 180,000 Homeland Security employees, the FBI, CIA, State and Justice Departments and other relevant agencies charged with protecting the security of this country. And then, only after a deafening worldwide outcry to find and extradite this murderer to Venezuela where he was a convicted fugitive, was he gently picked-up on a golf cart, provided with protective ear pieces for his helicopter flight and was never handcuffed as they did with a 5 year old child in a daycare center in Tampa. Good, powerful and loyal friends allows all of the above to happen, while a frantic search for a safe heaven in another country is underway by the US State Department, notwithstanding President George W. Bush proclaimed axiom, "That those who harbor a terrorist, is a terrorist". |
| An unprecedented event took place on April 27, 2005, when over 700
Cuban-Americans from Alaska, California, Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Florida and many
other states in between, converged on Washington DC to express their outrage
and denounce the brutal Presidential decree resulting from the recommendations of the Commission For The Assistance To A Free Cuba, that was co-chaired
by Mr. Colin Powell and our own Senator Mel Martinez. This cruel, inhumane and barbaric decree has redefined the Cuban family by excluding aunts, uncles and cousins, drastically reducing family contacts by extending the once-a-year legal visit to Cuba to once every three years. It has severely curtailed our daily legal spending in Cuba to $50.00 per day and allows us to send only $100.00 month per household, irrespective of the number of family members. Just one year after this mean spirited measured was enacted, thousands of horror stories graphically describes its gruesome results. Urgently needed medical instruments or medicines for severely ill patients are extremely difficult to send. Deodorant, toothpaste and all other personal items are not allowed to be sent to family members, possibly in the hope that tooth decay and repulsive body odor will achieve the delusional Regime Change in Cuba that the administration dreams about. The viciousness of this measure is best exemplified by Sergeant Carlos Lazo, a Cuban-American paramedic with the United States Army in Iraq who took part in multiple military actions in Baghdad and Falluja. While on a two weeks leave in the US, he tried to visit his two teenage sons in Cuba but was denied the ability to do so by these regulations that have been written by people unwilling to put their lives, or the lives of their loved ones, on the line. Shamefully disregarding other people's culture, the administration's arrogance and omnipotence led them to commit a catastrophic blunder against the Cuban family values. Forty years of lies, distortions and aggressions against innocent people who have done us no harm have begun to unravel in front of us and there is nothing they can do about it. |
Self Serving Use of
Terrorism, 4/21/05
| The tragic events of 9/1/1, provided President George W. Bush with the basis for his ever-changing rationale to unleash two wars with disastrous consequences, one of which was mapped out 20 years ago by a group of neo-cons, all of whom occupies key positions in all departments and agencies of his administration, from where they can create, massage or distort important reports and policies. The massive destruction of the infrastructure in Iraq with tens of thousands of dead and maimed on both sides and a crippling financial burden with no visible exit strategy, have lead the President and his apologists to attempt to neutralize their critics by reiterating their buzz phrase of "If you harbor terrorists, you are a terrorist." Then suddenly, emerging on the streets of Miami from his hideout in El Salvador, was Luis Posada Cariles, the most vicious, murderous and violent terrorist in Cuba's history, who was a Bay of Pigs invader, CIA operative, has murdered people on three continents, placed more bombs than all Cuban-American terrorists combined and terrorized the citizens of Honduras, El Salvador, Panama and Venezuela. But, his most hideous crime took place in October 1976, when he blew-up in mid-air a Cuban airliner with 73 passengers on board, most of whom were teenagers from the national fencing team, shortly after taking off from Barbados International airport. How can the Bush administration reconcile its proclaimed War On Terror, by allowing this monster on our soil, have not detained or questioned this renowned terrorist and refuse to honor an extradition request from Venezuela, where he presumably built and placed the deadly bombs on the airliner? This is probably why most people have come to realize that the so called war on terror is a chimera that allows for broader financial interests. |
Selling the Human Rights Commission to the Highest Bidder,
4/14/05
| Until a few years ago, most people around the world did not have a clue that the United States had occupied since
1902 some 40 square miles of one of the world's best natural bays, turned it into a naval base and most recently, into the infamous Guantanamo Bay
Prison. Here hundreds of alleged terrorists that have been picked up across the
globe are blindfolded, shackled, and kept un-identified in isolation while multiple reports
suggest similar revolting abuses such as those committed in Abu Ghraib. And today, as a result of an extensive political and economical pressure, arm twisting or in exchange of political recognition from the United States, 21 countries against 17 supported a resolution presented by the United States in the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, in which Cuba was viciously accused of gross human rights violation for having incarcerated a year ago, 75 individuals disguised as independent journalists, independent unionists, independent librarians or independent everything else. There is a huge volume of audio, video and written documentation, some of it directly from the US government, which clearly establishes that all or most of these individuals were in fact agents of a foreign government and on the US State Department payroll, as well as that of US-AID, and numerous right wing foundations and front organizations, all devoted to training, directing and sending these individuals to spread rumors, create racial divisions, incite improper behavior and promote civil war, as called for in the 500 pages of the Commission for the Assistance to a Free Cuba report that was chaired by the macabre duet of Colin Powell and Mel Martinez Once again the voiceless, the ignored, the abused, will have to suffer in silence the horrible spectacle of seeing a powerful and unjust minority continue to side against the Spartacus, the Jesus or the Davids of the world. |
Losing the War on Moral
Authority, 3/29/05
|
Contrary to years past, this year the United Nations Human Rights Commission deliberations in Geneva, may come to a close with some notable distinctions, because the US State Department was unable to coerce any obscure, geographically difficult to find or politically compromised nation, to sponsor and present its repetitive, unsubstantiated, poorly choreographed resolution against countries deemed to be part of any of the many axis of evil. Prompting this failure, is the disastrous moral decay and official complicity in the Abu Ghraib, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay prisons widespread abuse, torture and resulting deaths, in well documented and profusely disseminated news reports around the world, that have turned the historical judge and jury, into a villain, sitting accused in front of world opinion. Another unthinkable milestone this year, is that for the first time ever, a number of non-governmental Cuban-American organizations from across the US, will be presenting a joint resolution to the UNHRC, that is extremely critical of the US government recently enacted regulation, that have redefined the Cuban family by excluding aunts, uncle and cousins, drastically reduced a once a year legal visit to family members in Cuba to a request/permission-approval from the State Department once every three years, which have turned many into liars and forced them to travel half away around the world, trying to escape persecution from Homeland Security officers. Less than a year after the implementation of the 500 pages of recommendations of the Commission For The Assistance to a Free Cuba, that was co-chaired by Mr. Colin Powell and Mr. Mel Martinez, hundreds of people have being denied the opportunity to visit gravely ill family members or to attend their funerals. Sending life-saving medicines to Cuba is near impossible and a Cuban-American sergeant serving with the US military in Iraq, have been forbidden to visit his children in Cuba. A well documented suicide in Miami of a distraught father, unable to take care of his mentally challenged son in Cuba, is yet another disastrous result of this ill-conceived delusion of a vindictive group of ultra-right-wing Cuban-Americans in south Florida, that exerts a never-before-seen grip and the Bush administration decision making process. |
A POLITICAL COMEDY IN IRAQ, 1/31/05
|
As a regular viewer
of such notable Sunday's political programs as Face the Nation, The
McLaughlin's, Stephanopolous, Wolffs, Foxx and others, it was a numbing
experience to see known pundits of the administration shuttling from
one TV station to another, spreading their glee, upbeat reports and
describing today's electoral results in Iraq, as a symbol of democracy in
action. This spectacle could have been laughable had it not have
such dire potential consequences. Never before in the
history of mankind, has an electoral suffrage taken place under such level
of bombings, shootings, widespread killings and an entire swat of
the country comprising 40% of the population refusing to participate,
presented to the world by Mr. Bush and Blair, as a victory of its people. It has been said,
history repeats itself as a comedy or tragedy. On November 4, 1958
in Cuba, a similar election was organized by the predecessors of today's
plotters and masterminds of this sham, which led to the election of a
Prime Minister who should replace General Fulgencio Batista -Our man in
Havana-, who ironically also had a striking physical similarity with Mr.
Allawi -Our man in Iraq-. Votes were bought and sold on the open
market, ballots box stuffed or stolen, electoral cards of the dead was
widely used and opposition voters were threatened and scared away by a
brutal military and paramilitary thugs. On January 1, 1959,
twenty seven days after what was described as a "democratic election
miracle"; as common thieves under the cover of darkness, Batista and
his closest allies fled to the United States and the Dominican Republic
with tens of suitcases, stuffed with hundreds of millions of dollars
depleted from government vaults and were received in both countries as
respectful ladies and gentlemen, where they continue to this day, enjoying
the wonders of life in south Florida and elsewhere. Only life will tell if Mr. Allawi's fortunes will differ from those of General Batista, Shah, Marcos, Somoza, Gary and others of his brothers in arms. |
Email: albertoj_AT_afrocubaweb.com [replace _AT_ with @]
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The Alberto Jones Column
VIII - 2005