Worldwide support for Cuban Five grows
posted by F Espinoza | 02.09.2007 19:14 | Social Struggles | Terror War | Workers' Movements | London
The Cuban Five—Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González—were prosecuted for defending Cuba from U.S.-backed terrorists. They were arrested in Miami Sept. 12, 1998 by the FBI and charged with espionage conspiracy, murder conspiracy and failure to register as foreign agents—a total of 26 counts...
Rainbow solidarity for Cuban Five circles the globe
by Leslie Feinberg
Aug. 27, 2007
Reprinted from Workers World
A multinational, multilingual group of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) activists in the United States—the belly of the beast—issued a call in Spanish and English for Rainbow Solidarity for the Cuban Five in mid-January 2007.
The five political prisoners—Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González—are collectively serving four life sentences and 75 years in far-flung U.S. penitentiaries. The “crime” they were convicted of is having infiltrated CIA-backed fascist commando groups in order to halt terror attacks against Cuba from U.S. soil.
The Rainbow Solidarity call demands a new trial and freedom for these political prisoners, defense of Cuban sovereignty and self-determination, and a halt to the illegal U.S. acts of war against Cuba—including the economic blockade and CIA-trained, funded and armed attacks by mercenary “contra” armies operating from this country.
This initiative was consciously issued by LGBT and other activists battling oppression based on sexuality, gender expression and sex—one of the targeted progressive movements at whom the imperialist campaign to vilify Cuba had been aimed.
This was not the first act of solidarity with Cuba by left-wing LGBT activists in the United States—not by a long shot. But the response to the Rainbow Solidarity initiative—swift and dramatic—signals a new day for LGBT support worldwide for Cuba.
Within hours and days after the call went out over the Internet, hundreds of individuals and organizations signed on to the call, posted on the www.freethefiveny.org web site (look for the rainbow).
Most exciting was how many of the signers immediately began forwarding the call to their lists.
Volunteers from around the world translated the introduction and call for Rainbow Solidarity to free the Cuban Five into simplified and traditional Chinese, Tagalog, Farsi, Turkish, Greek, Croatian, Portuguese, Italian, Danish, Japanese, French and German. More translations in the works or planned include Swahili, Urdu, Indonesian, Arabic, Korean, Bengali and a streaming video in ASL (American Sign Language).
International endorsements flooded in from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, Mexico, Montenegro, New Zealand, occupied Palestine, Philippines, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Scotland, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Wales and other countries, and from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Individuals and groups from every state in the continental United States signed on as well—from southern Florida to the Pacific Northwest, Southern California to Maine.
All told, they form an extraordinary and broad arc of a united front. A frequently updated list of signers is posted at www.freethefiveny.org.
Many names on the growing list will be recognizable as well-known LGBT activists and others battling oppression based on sexuality, gender and sex, including women’s liberationists.
This roster also reveals that many of these activists are also some of the hardest-working organizers in movements here and around the world against imperialist war, neo-liberalism, neo-colonialism, national oppression, racism, police brutality, prisons and the death penalty, sweatshops and capitalist globalization.
These are also leading activists in the struggle for immigrant rights; women’s liberation, including reproductive rights; jobs; labor union, tenant and community organizing; education; health care and affordable housing; freedom for all U.S. political prisoners and for prisoner rights; liberation of oppressed nations; support for Cuba, and the revolutionary movement to overturn capitalism and build an economy based on planning to meet peoples’ needs.
Expansive political spectrum
Early signers include Teresa Gutierrez, a longtime leader in the struggle to free the Cuban Five; former political prisoner and leading prison abolitionist Angela Y. Davis; Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice; LeiLani Dowell, national coordinator of FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together); Stephen Funk, the U.S. Marine who was the first imprisoned Iraq War conscientious objector; Bev Tang, organizer for Anakbayan, the youth group of Bayan; Gerry Scoppettuolo, co-founder of GALLAN (Pride At Work, Boston); Lani Ka’ahumanu, BiNET USA; anti-imperialist activist Joo-hyun Kang; Atlanta community activist Pat Hussain; Camille Hopkins, director of NYTRO (New York Transgender Rights Organization) of Western New York; transgender activist Moonhawk River Stone; and Jesse Lokahi Heiwa, Queer People Of Color Action.
Rauda Morcos, general coordinator of Aswat-Palestinian Gay Women, signed on. The Puerto Rican Alliance of Los Angeles and its coordinator Lawrence Reyes have endorsed.
Activists Barbara Smith and Margo Okazawa-Rey signed on. The two were among the founders of the Combahee River Collective, a group of Black feminists of all sexualities who issued a historic 1977 statement against the “interlocking” system of “racial, sexual, heterosexual and class oppression.”
Former political prisoners Laura Whitehorn and Linda Evans added their names.
Louisville, Ky., filmmaker and activist Sonja de Vries, director of the documentary “Gay Cuba,” and Walter Lippmann, editor-in-chief of CubaNews, signed on. Other activists and organizations working in defense of Cuba added their weight to the call, including Cuba Education Tours, Vancouver, B.C., Canada; Fairness Campaign, Louisville, Ky.; Simon McGuinness, secretary of the Free the Miami Five Campaign, Ireland; Brigitte Oftner, coordinator of the Austrian Free the Five committee; Viktor Dedaj, webmaster of the Cuba Solidarity Project; the Cuba Edmonton Solidarity Committee in Alberta, Canada; the Swiss Cuba Association; Deutsche Kommunistische Partei Cuba Arbeitsgruppe, Germany; and No War on Cuba, Washington, D.C.
Also QueerToday.com and its founder, Mark Snyder; Gordene MacKenzie, GenderTalk Radio and director of Women’s Studies, Merrimack College, Beverly, Mass.
Organizations include the national organization Pro-Gay Philippines; Audre Lorde Project—a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit and Transgender People of Color center for community organizing, focusing on the New York City area; FIERCE!—a community organization for Transgender, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit, Queer, and Questioning (TLGBTSQQ) youth of color in New York City; QUIT! (Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism); LAGAI-Queer Insurrection; Stonewall Warriors, Boston; Greek Homosexual Community, Athens, Greece; Queertoday.com, Boston, Mass.; and Queers Without Borders, Hartford, Conn.
The Queer Caucus of the National Lawyers Guild; Stephen Whittle, professor of equalities law and the British organization Press for Change at the School of Law at Manchester Metropolitan University, endorsed. So did Barbara Findlay, co-chair of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Issues Section, BC Branch, Canadian Bar Association, and the law office of Lenore Rae Shefman, San Francisco, Calif.
Many transgender and transsexual organizations and individuals strengthened the initiative, including Trans Action Canada; three national Italian trans groups: Coordinamento Nazionale Trans FTM, Movimento Identità Transessuale and Crisalide Azione Trans; Matt/ilda a.k.a. Matt Bernstein Sycamore, editor “Nobody Passes,” San Francisco, Calif.; Cianán Russell, chair of the Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance; and the Winona Gender Mutiny Collective.
Endorsers include The National Lavender Green Caucus; Doug Barnes and the Freedom Socialist Party; Starlene Rankin, Green National Committee delegate of the Lavender Caucus of the Green Party of the United States; Orange County Peace & Freedom Party, Anaheim, Calif; and the LGBT Caucus of Workers World Party.
Among the signers are individuals and organizations whose activist work includes the struggle against women’s oppression: Brenda Stokely, a leader of the Million Worker March Movement and NYCLAW; transnational feminist theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty; Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center; Women’s Fightback Network, Boston, Mass.; Melinda Clark, local co-founder of Code Pink in Willits, Calif.; Welfare Warriors, Milwaukee, Wis.; League of Women Voters in Montenegro; and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) chapters in Washington, D.C.; Rome, Italy; and the Canadian Section in British Columbia.
Many labor activists have added their names and/or the endorsement of their unions, including Pride at Work/GALLAN Boston, Mass., AFL-CIO; Bus Riders Union/Labor Community Strategy Center, Los Angeles, Calif., and Guyanese-American Workers United, New York, N.Y. From Canada, Canadian Union Of Postal Workers, Calgary, Alberta; Canadian Union of Public Employees, Toronto, Ont.; and Hospital Employees’ Union, Burnaby, B.C.
There’s no end in sight to this rainbow.
Grassroots diplomacy
The Rainbow Solidarity for the Cuban Five initiative is also giving voice to individuals who, living in capitalist democracies, have little political input except to be asked to pull a lever for a big-business candidate.
The Rainbow Solidarity call has become a poll that reveals a new grassroots sentiment as signers eloquently register their outrage at the continued imprisonment of the five Cubans and at Washington’s economic and political blockade of Cuba and other illegal and covert acts of war.
Rebecca writes from San Diego, Calif., “Free the Cuban Five!! No more political prisoners!”
David from New York state stresses how biased the trial venue was for the Five: “Five Cubans who were trying to stop the ultra-right terrorist groups in Miami from carrying out violent actions against the people of Cuba. Miami is the one city in the U.S. where the Five certainly could not receive a fair trial.”
Paul says: “As a gay man in South Florida who calls for freedom for our brothers, the Five, I am delighted to see this initiative. THEY MUST BE FREE!”
Tighe supports the five as “those most important defenders of everyone’s right to live without fear of terrorism. The patriotic Cuban Five [are] illegally held political prisoners in a country with the most of its own people behind bars.” Barry, who grew up in Miami, adds the need to organize to close down the U.S. prison at Guantanamo and free all those held there.
“T.” from California, comments: “These five men, fighting against terrorism, have been imprisoned by the U.S. government—‘MY’ government! Jailing heroes and supporting terror, while pretending to do the opposite, is sadly all the public can count on from ‘our’ hypocritical, double-speaking, global corporate-run excuse for a ‘by and for the people’ government.”
Brian states from Newport, Ore.: “I am enraged by the hypocrisy of five innocent men being held in prison under harsh circumstances while known terrorist Luis Posada Carriles goes scot-free. While Bush and cronies spout off that no nation that harbors terrorists will be tolerated with one face, they set a convicted terrorist murderer of at least 73 innocents free with the other, while holding five innocent men in prison.”
Adela, from the Zig Zag Young Women’s Resource Centre Inc. in Queensland, Australia, states, “I want to express my solidarity with the Cuban Five and the Cuban people and Fidel.”
Richard, from Madera, Calif., says succinctly, “It’s way past time to change our policy toward Cuba and the Cuban people.”
Jerry, from Athletes United for Peace, U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities, Nicaragua Solidarity Committee, writes: “These people were trying to prevent an act of terrorism. The country that claims to lead the ‘War On Terror’ is imprisoning them.”
Marcos writes from Bielefeld, Germany, “Free the 5 Cubans now, stop the war on Cuba and the rest of the world!”
Richard, in Jacksonville, Ill., says, “Close Guantánamo, human rights are for humans everywhere.”
Ray from Farmington, Conn., suggests, “Put Cheney and Bush in jail instead of the Cuban Five.”
Yancy, from the LGBTQI Desk of Bayan USA, affirms: “Mabuhi ang panaghiusang international!!! Long live international solidarity!!”
Solidarity is not charity
Eric from Milwaukee reminds, “Ah, the things we gain from solidarity.”
By defending Cuba against imperialist warfare, LGBT activists and organizations in the U.S. and other imperialist countries are breaking with their own ruling classes and extending their own unilateral declaration of peace to a socialist country.
By rejecting anti-communism, the movement against sexual, gender and sex oppression is combating capitalist ideology—a giant step towards liberation.
Cuba has much to teach those who yearn for the right to live and love without fear or censure about what it takes to begin the process of literally eradicating white supremacy, patriarchy and prejudice against same-sex love and gender/sex diversity; what it takes to create a new woman, a new man, a new human being, and new forms of communist comradeship.
The Cuban people fought back against enslavement for half a millennium. For the last half century they have resisted the most powerful slave-master in history, just 90 miles from their shores.
The famous labor union song poses the question sharply: Which side are you on?
Rainbow Solidarity answers: “Cuba, we are with you. Cuba, estamos contigo.”
http://www.freethefiveny.org/
Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Original in: http://www.freethefive.org/updates/Solidarity/SLRainbow82707.htm
Worldwide support for Cuban Five grows
Third appeal brings hope, calls for justice
by Gloria La Riva
August 31, 2007
Reprinted from: pslweb.org
“I have been a judge 36 years of my life; for 21 years I have been a judge in two courts of appeals. If I had to rule in this case, I would rule as fast as I can in order to not have these five Cubans one day more in prison.”
Juan Guzmán, the Chilean judge who prosecuted dictator Augusto Pinochet, was one of many prominent attorneys and judges who filled the courtroom of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to witness the third oral argument of the five Cuban political prisoners held in U.S. prisons. Guzmán spoke at a press conference after the hearing.
International and U.S. jurists came to Atlanta to be observers in the Aug. 20 hearing. They represented thousands of other attorneys from their respective associations.
Case background
The Cuban Five—Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González—were prosecuted for defending Cuba from U.S.-backed terrorists. They were arrested in Miami Sept. 12, 1998 by the FBI and charged with espionage conspiracy, murder conspiracy and failure to register as foreign agents—a total of 26 counts.
They were in Miami to monitor and prevent the actions of anti-Cuba terrorist organizations operating there. They never engaged in any espionage on the U.S. government, nor did they conspire to do so.
A charge of conspiracy to commit murder against Gerardo Hernández came seven months after the Five’s arrest. The indictment falsely accused him of plotting with Cuba to shoot down two planes of the terrorist organization Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR) on Feb. 24, 1996.
BTTR, based in Miami, had invaded Cuban airspace numerous times in 1995 and 1996 despite repeated warnings from Cuba. Days before the shoot-down, on Jan. 13, 1996, BTTR leader José Basulto boasted publicly of his group’s role in dropping 500,000 leaflets over Havana.
He told the Miami Herald, "Let's just say we take responsibility for those leaflets. But I cannot give you any of the technical details of how we did it."
As BTTR prepared once again to invade Cuban airspace on Feb. 24, Basulto ignored warnings from various U.S. and Cuban authorities. The Cuban government called on the U.S. government to stop BTTR from flying into Cuban airspace to no avail. Two of the planes were shot down by Cuba’s air force as they entered Cuban airspace.
Gerardo Hernández was accused by the U.S. government of conspiring with Cuba to shoot down the planes in international waters, an outrageous claim since he had absolutely nothing to do with Cuba’s actions. Cuba’s act was a justified act of state, and yet Hernández was convicted of murder conspiracy. This was only possible because of a Miami jury trial.
He simply had received a message from Cuba to tell Cuban pilots who had infiltrated BTTR not to fly over a period of several days in February 1996. Even Richard Nuccio, advisor to President Clinton on Cuba matters, testified in the trial that he had warned Clinton on Feb. 23 that Cuba would take direct action against the invading aircraft.
The Miami trial
The trial of the Five began in December 2000. Despite numerous defense motions to move the trial out of Miami’s hostile, anti-Cuba environment, federal judge Joan Lenard denied a change of venue.
With a Miami jury, a conviction on all counts was guaranteed, despite the complete lack of evidence on the two conspiracy charges. The conviction came down on June 8, 2001. The Miami jury did not ask even one question in its deliberation, after a seven-month trial that generated 14,000 transcript pages.
In December 2001, three of the five, Labañino, Guerrero and Hernández, were sentenced to life in prison for the espionage conspiracy. Hernández was sentenced to a second life sentence for the murder conspiracy charge. Fernando González was sentenced to 19 years and René González to 15 years.
The Five won a major victory on Aug. 9, 2005, when a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously to overturn their convictions and grant a new trial. The decision was based on the issue of venue in Miami.
But the U.S. government appealed to the court’s full panel and the court accepted the appeal. Exactly one year later, on Aug. 9, 2006, the panel reversed the Five’s victory and ruled to uphold the trial judge’s refusal to move trial out of Miami.
Third oral argument in Atlanta
The 11th Circuit covers the jurisdiction of three southern states: Florida, Alabama and Georgia. About 75 percent of appeals before the court are decided by written briefs alone. The remaining 25 percent of cases are decided by the inclusion of oral arguments.
Leonard Weinglass, attorney for Antonio Guerrero, said he is not aware of any other case having three oral arguments.
The basis for the Aug. 20 hearing was nine unresolved issues of appeal being returned to the original three-judge panel for a ruling.
As the hearing convened at 3:00 p.m. before the full courtroom in downtown Atlanta, supporters of the Five listened intently to hear defense and prosecution give 30-minute presentations.
Before the attorneys began, Judge Stanley Birch made an announcement that the panel rejected the prosecution’s contention that the defense issue of prosecutorial misconduct was not properly before the court. This was a victory for the defense, which cited 28 instances of sustained objections due to the prosecution’s misconduct during the trial.
If the panel were to find that the government exercised repeated instances of misconduct, it would change the standard of review on the convictions of murder conspiracy and espionage conspiracy. Evidence on those charges would then have to be “overwhelming” for the convictions to stand.
As defense attorneys Richard Klugh and Brenda Bryn stated in the hearing, the government never claimed “overwhelming” nor even “strong” evidence on those two charges, which brought four life sentences against three of the Cuban Five. In fact, they said, there is no evidence on either conspiracy charge that the government presented, only “inference after inference.”
Early in the hearing, Birch also called on the prosecution to submit transcripts of an ex parte hearing that took place between the judge and prosecution during trial, where they discussed documents related to the case that the government had labeled classified under the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA). The defense has never been allowed to see those documents nor know the contents of them.
Under the repressive CIPA, all the possessions of the Five were confiscated when they were arrested and classified “secret.” This denied the Five the right to use their own documents in their defense, to prove that they were not involved in any conspiracy.
The whole hearing lasted one hour and 15 minutes. It is an extremely short time to present oral arguments in such a substantial and complicated appeal.
While those present were encouraged by the defense arguments and strength of the Five’s case in the hearing, justice will not be won by simple court proceedings.
The Cuban Five have been entangled for years in the technicalities of a judicial system whose government has carried out almost 50 years of aggression against Cuba.
The Five have endured nine years of imprisonment for peacefully defending Cuba from terrorism that is launched in Miami and financed by Washington. It will take the continued efforts of the worldwide movement to keep up the pressure until the Five are free.
In the days surrounding the Atlanta hearing, there was substantial media coverage in Associated Press, BBC, Reuters, and almost 100 daily newspapers in the United States.
Original in: http://www.freethefive.org/updates/USMedia/USMPSLweb83107.htm
The Cuban Five -- victims of national security justice
by Saul Landau
Aug. 23, 2007
Reprinted from Progreso Weekly
In 1953, a man I knew got busted for masturbating at a public urinal. A cop had hidden in the ceiling grate above him “to find perverts.” The lawyer, a friend of our family, charged him $5,000. “I gave $500 to the cop,” the lawyer explained, “bought the judge a present and paid two witnesses $250 each to testify that he was wearing a complicated truss and that’s what made it seem like an unnaturally long time for him to get adjusted after he went wee wee,” the defense lawyer explained to my father.
I have no idea if his behavior typified that era or remains a standard today. Comedian Lenny Bruce’s quipped: “In the Hall of Justice the only justice is in the hall,” where the payoffs occurred. Indeed, the poor, not the middle class and certainly not the rich, inhabit U.S. jails and prisons. Most Americans understand that equal justice for all means police will arrest a rich or poor man sleeping under the bridge or stealing a loaf of bread.
Those who can afford expensive lawyers usually get away with murder. Take the cases of Claus von Bulow, who overdosed his rich wife with insulin, or O. J. Simpson, a case where the Los Angeles police actually framed the right guy for wife and friend killing. The accused paid millions of dollars to top lawyers who skillfully placed seeds of doubt in the jurors’ minds. Public defenders often lack the resources, time and will to build minimum defenses for poor clients.
In some case, however, even the best defenders can’t buy justice, especially when the government cites “national security.” The Cuban Five case became victims of that phrase that usually means the government will not tell the public what it is doing or why. It reeks with imperial arrogance and often with vengeance as well.
The FBI busted five men (Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando Gonzáles, and René Gonzáles) in 1998 and a Miami jury convicted them in 2001 for conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit espionage and other serious offenses. The case illustrated the U.S. standard of justice for third world nations that disobey its dictates.
Since Washington had failed to punish Cuba adequately for its near half century of disobedience, the opportunity presented by the Cuban Five fell like a serendipitous apple onto the vengeful ground of the national security elite, the group that wages war and regularly infringes on citizens’ rights in order to “protect” the public. This bureaucratic posse inside executive agencies looks at the public as an obstacle to its imperial ambitions, to the notion of accountability as an irritant, the proverbial pimple on a sewer rat’s butt. The following story illustrates.
In 2004, John Negroponte, then UN Ambassador en route to becoming Ambassador to Iraq and then top U.S. spy, explained why the security elite would have to reject an offer from the Iranian government (under Khatami) to reopen the U.S. embassy and normalize diplomatic relations. “In the last decades, Vietnam, Cuba and Iran have humiliated the United States,” he explained to the diplomat -- a friend of mine -- who delivered the message from the Iranian government. “I suppose we’ve gotten even with the Vietnamese [4 million killed and 20 plus years of sanctions], but there’s no way we’re having relations with Iran or Cuba before they get what’s coming to them.” Since the elite will not wage war on Cuba -- Cubans will fight back -- they used the Cuban Five as surrogate punishment objects.
In the 1990s, these Cuban nationals infiltrated Florida-based anti-Castro terrorist groups and reported on the terrorists’ activities to Havana. In 1998, an FBI delegation traveled to Cuba. Cuban officials gave the FBI some 1,200 pages of material, along with video and audio tapes that incriminated groups and individuals -- their names, weapons they carried or stored and other details that the Justice Department could use to prosecute the terrorists.
The FBI told their Cuban counterparts they would respond in a month. The Cubans are still waiting, but the FBI did use the material. They arrested the Cuban Five. The Justice Department then charged them with felonies.
Irony accompanied injustice. The five admitted they entered the United States to access U.S.-based groups plotting terrorism against Cuba. In fact, U.S. law actually allows people to commit crimes out of a greater necessity, one that would prevent greater harm.
“It is a form of self-defense, extended to acts which will protect other parties,” argued Leonard Weinglass, attorney for Antonio Guerrero, one of the Five. Indeed, the Five’s lawyers presented this argument to trial judge Joan Lenard, but she refused to let the jury consider it.
Weinglass and the other attorneys argued their appeals this month claiming the judge had erred by not submitting the “‘defense of necessity’ claim to the jury, because the Five came to the United States to prevent additional violence, injury and harm to others.”
The U.S. government knew all about the terrorist “accomplishments” of Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, for examples. Both had boasted to reporters about their roles in terrorist acts, including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban commercial airliner -- they did this jointly -- in which 73 passengers and crew members perished. In 1998, Posada bragged about sabotaging Cuban tourist sites the previous year. In one bombing carried out by his paid agent, an Italian tourist died.
“We didn’t want to hurt anybody,” he told reporters Larry Rohter and Anne Bradach. “We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don’t come anymore. We don’t want any more foreign investment.” Posada said he wanted potential tourists to think Cuba was unstable “and to encourage internal opposition.”
Posada succeeded. Less tourists came to Cuba after the Italian died in the bombing. The Times reporters write that Posada “declared that he had a clear conscience, saying, ‘I sleep like a baby.’” Then he said: “That Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time.” (NY Times July 13, 1998)
The Five came here precisely to stop such activities, says Weinglass. “The Five’s activities were justified and necessary in order to save lives.” Weinglass had used this very argument to defend Amy Carter, when the President’s daughter “occupied a building, with other students, at the University of Massachusetts, in opposition to the CIA agents who came to the campus to recruit students into the CIA. She acknowledged that her occupation of the building was a crime but she argued that that was justified by the doctrine of necessity because the CIA was then engaged in an illegal war in Nicaragua.” The jury acquitted Amy and the other defendants.
Weinglass made a similar argument before a two-judge appeals court. In August 2005, this court initially heard the case and decided that the Five had not received a fair trial. The entire 12 judge panel of the 11th circuit reversed that decision despite massive evidence to show the Miami jurors had felt intimidated. From the window of the deliberation room they saw people taking photos of their license plates. Jurors had reason to fear serious retribution should they vote to acquit the Five.
The lawyers also appealed the conviction of Gerardo Hernandez for “conspiring” to commit murder. This charge arose from the February 1996 shoot-down by Cuban MIGs of two Brothers to the rescue planes that had violated Cuban airspace and were repeatedly warned of “grave consequences” should they enter Cuban territory without permission. At the trial, the Assistant U.S. Attorney acknowledged that he had no solid evidence to back up this charge.
Weinglass noted that the Gerardo conviction marked “the first time in history that an individual is being held liable for the action of a sovereign state in defending its airspace.” Indeed, Cuba had every reason and the right to maintain sovereignty over its air space. The prosecutor made outrageous claims to the jury without citing evidence and the judge let him. He argued without facts that Cuba had sent the men to attack the United States. For the first time in legal U.S. history, the U.S. Attorney’s office prosecuted a case without even referring to a single classified document.
The Five stole no secrets; unlike FBI Special Agent Robert Hansen, or the CIA’s Aldrich Ames who passed tens of thousands of “top secrets” to the Soviet enemy, but two of them like the real spies, got life imprisonment.
Was U.S. justice fairer when a lawyer could bribe a cop in a meaningless case and rich guys could buy their way out of murder raps -- as they still do? Not if one recalls the “national security” framing of Sacco and Vanzetti in the 1920s and the 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, even though FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover and President Dwight Eisenhower both knew they had not passed atomic secrets to the Soviets. The government had invoked “national security” under which no justice occurs, not even in the halls.
Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. His new book is A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD.
http://www.freethefive.org/updates/IntlMedia/IMProgreso82307.htm
See also:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CCdGdpeNps8 Video: "Mission against Terror"
Other websites related:
http://www.antiterroristas.cu
http://www.freethefive.org
http://www.familiesforjustice.cu/interface.en/design/home.tpl.html
http://www.fabiodicelmo.cu/home.asp
http://www.cubainformacion.tv
http://www.cubanradio.cu
http://www.wicuba.org
http://www.freethefiveny.org
http://www.freeforfive.org
http://www.freethecuban5.com
http://www.actionsf.org
http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage
http://www.cubasolidarity.com
http://www.cubasolidarity.net
http://www.cubasolidarity.net/solinumb.html
http://www.ifconews.org
http://18thcubacaravan.blogspot.com
http://www.granma.cu/miami5/ingles/index.html
http://www.cubacoop.com
http://www.cuba-humanidad.org
http://www.saludthefilm.net/ns/index.html
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=7055
In Great Britain, Wales, Ireland:
http://www.ratb.org.uk
http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk
http://www.blackpoolandfyldecsc.org.uk
http://www.cubasol-manch.org.uk
http://www.cymru-cuba.cjb.net
http://www.cubasupport.com
by Leslie Feinberg
Aug. 27, 2007
Reprinted from Workers World
A multinational, multilingual group of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) activists in the United States—the belly of the beast—issued a call in Spanish and English for Rainbow Solidarity for the Cuban Five in mid-January 2007.
The five political prisoners—Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González—are collectively serving four life sentences and 75 years in far-flung U.S. penitentiaries. The “crime” they were convicted of is having infiltrated CIA-backed fascist commando groups in order to halt terror attacks against Cuba from U.S. soil.
The Rainbow Solidarity call demands a new trial and freedom for these political prisoners, defense of Cuban sovereignty and self-determination, and a halt to the illegal U.S. acts of war against Cuba—including the economic blockade and CIA-trained, funded and armed attacks by mercenary “contra” armies operating from this country.
This initiative was consciously issued by LGBT and other activists battling oppression based on sexuality, gender expression and sex—one of the targeted progressive movements at whom the imperialist campaign to vilify Cuba had been aimed.
This was not the first act of solidarity with Cuba by left-wing LGBT activists in the United States—not by a long shot. But the response to the Rainbow Solidarity initiative—swift and dramatic—signals a new day for LGBT support worldwide for Cuba.
Within hours and days after the call went out over the Internet, hundreds of individuals and organizations signed on to the call, posted on the www.freethefiveny.org web site (look for the rainbow).
Most exciting was how many of the signers immediately began forwarding the call to their lists.
Volunteers from around the world translated the introduction and call for Rainbow Solidarity to free the Cuban Five into simplified and traditional Chinese, Tagalog, Farsi, Turkish, Greek, Croatian, Portuguese, Italian, Danish, Japanese, French and German. More translations in the works or planned include Swahili, Urdu, Indonesian, Arabic, Korean, Bengali and a streaming video in ASL (American Sign Language).
International endorsements flooded in from Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxemburg, Mexico, Montenegro, New Zealand, occupied Palestine, Philippines, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Scotland, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Wales and other countries, and from Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Individuals and groups from every state in the continental United States signed on as well—from southern Florida to the Pacific Northwest, Southern California to Maine.
All told, they form an extraordinary and broad arc of a united front. A frequently updated list of signers is posted at www.freethefiveny.org.
Many names on the growing list will be recognizable as well-known LGBT activists and others battling oppression based on sexuality, gender and sex, including women’s liberationists.
This roster also reveals that many of these activists are also some of the hardest-working organizers in movements here and around the world against imperialist war, neo-liberalism, neo-colonialism, national oppression, racism, police brutality, prisons and the death penalty, sweatshops and capitalist globalization.
These are also leading activists in the struggle for immigrant rights; women’s liberation, including reproductive rights; jobs; labor union, tenant and community organizing; education; health care and affordable housing; freedom for all U.S. political prisoners and for prisoner rights; liberation of oppressed nations; support for Cuba, and the revolutionary movement to overturn capitalism and build an economy based on planning to meet peoples’ needs.
Expansive political spectrum
Early signers include Teresa Gutierrez, a longtime leader in the struggle to free the Cuban Five; former political prisoner and leading prison abolitionist Angela Y. Davis; Leslie Cagan, national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice; LeiLani Dowell, national coordinator of FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together); Stephen Funk, the U.S. Marine who was the first imprisoned Iraq War conscientious objector; Bev Tang, organizer for Anakbayan, the youth group of Bayan; Gerry Scoppettuolo, co-founder of GALLAN (Pride At Work, Boston); Lani Ka’ahumanu, BiNET USA; anti-imperialist activist Joo-hyun Kang; Atlanta community activist Pat Hussain; Camille Hopkins, director of NYTRO (New York Transgender Rights Organization) of Western New York; transgender activist Moonhawk River Stone; and Jesse Lokahi Heiwa, Queer People Of Color Action.
Rauda Morcos, general coordinator of Aswat-Palestinian Gay Women, signed on. The Puerto Rican Alliance of Los Angeles and its coordinator Lawrence Reyes have endorsed.
Activists Barbara Smith and Margo Okazawa-Rey signed on. The two were among the founders of the Combahee River Collective, a group of Black feminists of all sexualities who issued a historic 1977 statement against the “interlocking” system of “racial, sexual, heterosexual and class oppression.”
Former political prisoners Laura Whitehorn and Linda Evans added their names.
Louisville, Ky., filmmaker and activist Sonja de Vries, director of the documentary “Gay Cuba,” and Walter Lippmann, editor-in-chief of CubaNews, signed on. Other activists and organizations working in defense of Cuba added their weight to the call, including Cuba Education Tours, Vancouver, B.C., Canada; Fairness Campaign, Louisville, Ky.; Simon McGuinness, secretary of the Free the Miami Five Campaign, Ireland; Brigitte Oftner, coordinator of the Austrian Free the Five committee; Viktor Dedaj, webmaster of the Cuba Solidarity Project; the Cuba Edmonton Solidarity Committee in Alberta, Canada; the Swiss Cuba Association; Deutsche Kommunistische Partei Cuba Arbeitsgruppe, Germany; and No War on Cuba, Washington, D.C.
Also QueerToday.com and its founder, Mark Snyder; Gordene MacKenzie, GenderTalk Radio and director of Women’s Studies, Merrimack College, Beverly, Mass.
Organizations include the national organization Pro-Gay Philippines; Audre Lorde Project—a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit and Transgender People of Color center for community organizing, focusing on the New York City area; FIERCE!—a community organization for Transgender, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit, Queer, and Questioning (TLGBTSQQ) youth of color in New York City; QUIT! (Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism); LAGAI-Queer Insurrection; Stonewall Warriors, Boston; Greek Homosexual Community, Athens, Greece; Queertoday.com, Boston, Mass.; and Queers Without Borders, Hartford, Conn.
The Queer Caucus of the National Lawyers Guild; Stephen Whittle, professor of equalities law and the British organization Press for Change at the School of Law at Manchester Metropolitan University, endorsed. So did Barbara Findlay, co-chair of the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender Issues Section, BC Branch, Canadian Bar Association, and the law office of Lenore Rae Shefman, San Francisco, Calif.
Many transgender and transsexual organizations and individuals strengthened the initiative, including Trans Action Canada; three national Italian trans groups: Coordinamento Nazionale Trans FTM, Movimento Identità Transessuale and Crisalide Azione Trans; Matt/ilda a.k.a. Matt Bernstein Sycamore, editor “Nobody Passes,” San Francisco, Calif.; Cianán Russell, chair of the Indiana Transgender Rights Advocacy Alliance; and the Winona Gender Mutiny Collective.
Endorsers include The National Lavender Green Caucus; Doug Barnes and the Freedom Socialist Party; Starlene Rankin, Green National Committee delegate of the Lavender Caucus of the Green Party of the United States; Orange County Peace & Freedom Party, Anaheim, Calif; and the LGBT Caucus of Workers World Party.
Among the signers are individuals and organizations whose activist work includes the struggle against women’s oppression: Brenda Stokely, a leader of the Million Worker March Movement and NYCLAW; transnational feminist theorist Chandra Talpade Mohanty; Sara Flounders, co-director of the International Action Center; Women’s Fightback Network, Boston, Mass.; Melinda Clark, local co-founder of Code Pink in Willits, Calif.; Welfare Warriors, Milwaukee, Wis.; League of Women Voters in Montenegro; and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) chapters in Washington, D.C.; Rome, Italy; and the Canadian Section in British Columbia.
Many labor activists have added their names and/or the endorsement of their unions, including Pride at Work/GALLAN Boston, Mass., AFL-CIO; Bus Riders Union/Labor Community Strategy Center, Los Angeles, Calif., and Guyanese-American Workers United, New York, N.Y. From Canada, Canadian Union Of Postal Workers, Calgary, Alberta; Canadian Union of Public Employees, Toronto, Ont.; and Hospital Employees’ Union, Burnaby, B.C.
There’s no end in sight to this rainbow.
Grassroots diplomacy
The Rainbow Solidarity for the Cuban Five initiative is also giving voice to individuals who, living in capitalist democracies, have little political input except to be asked to pull a lever for a big-business candidate.
The Rainbow Solidarity call has become a poll that reveals a new grassroots sentiment as signers eloquently register their outrage at the continued imprisonment of the five Cubans and at Washington’s economic and political blockade of Cuba and other illegal and covert acts of war.
Rebecca writes from San Diego, Calif., “Free the Cuban Five!! No more political prisoners!”
David from New York state stresses how biased the trial venue was for the Five: “Five Cubans who were trying to stop the ultra-right terrorist groups in Miami from carrying out violent actions against the people of Cuba. Miami is the one city in the U.S. where the Five certainly could not receive a fair trial.”
Paul says: “As a gay man in South Florida who calls for freedom for our brothers, the Five, I am delighted to see this initiative. THEY MUST BE FREE!”
Tighe supports the five as “those most important defenders of everyone’s right to live without fear of terrorism. The patriotic Cuban Five [are] illegally held political prisoners in a country with the most of its own people behind bars.” Barry, who grew up in Miami, adds the need to organize to close down the U.S. prison at Guantanamo and free all those held there.
“T.” from California, comments: “These five men, fighting against terrorism, have been imprisoned by the U.S. government—‘MY’ government! Jailing heroes and supporting terror, while pretending to do the opposite, is sadly all the public can count on from ‘our’ hypocritical, double-speaking, global corporate-run excuse for a ‘by and for the people’ government.”
Brian states from Newport, Ore.: “I am enraged by the hypocrisy of five innocent men being held in prison under harsh circumstances while known terrorist Luis Posada Carriles goes scot-free. While Bush and cronies spout off that no nation that harbors terrorists will be tolerated with one face, they set a convicted terrorist murderer of at least 73 innocents free with the other, while holding five innocent men in prison.”
Adela, from the Zig Zag Young Women’s Resource Centre Inc. in Queensland, Australia, states, “I want to express my solidarity with the Cuban Five and the Cuban people and Fidel.”
Richard, from Madera, Calif., says succinctly, “It’s way past time to change our policy toward Cuba and the Cuban people.”
Jerry, from Athletes United for Peace, U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities, Nicaragua Solidarity Committee, writes: “These people were trying to prevent an act of terrorism. The country that claims to lead the ‘War On Terror’ is imprisoning them.”
Marcos writes from Bielefeld, Germany, “Free the 5 Cubans now, stop the war on Cuba and the rest of the world!”
Richard, in Jacksonville, Ill., says, “Close Guantánamo, human rights are for humans everywhere.”
Ray from Farmington, Conn., suggests, “Put Cheney and Bush in jail instead of the Cuban Five.”
Yancy, from the LGBTQI Desk of Bayan USA, affirms: “Mabuhi ang panaghiusang international!!! Long live international solidarity!!”
Solidarity is not charity
Eric from Milwaukee reminds, “Ah, the things we gain from solidarity.”
By defending Cuba against imperialist warfare, LGBT activists and organizations in the U.S. and other imperialist countries are breaking with their own ruling classes and extending their own unilateral declaration of peace to a socialist country.
By rejecting anti-communism, the movement against sexual, gender and sex oppression is combating capitalist ideology—a giant step towards liberation.
Cuba has much to teach those who yearn for the right to live and love without fear or censure about what it takes to begin the process of literally eradicating white supremacy, patriarchy and prejudice against same-sex love and gender/sex diversity; what it takes to create a new woman, a new man, a new human being, and new forms of communist comradeship.
The Cuban people fought back against enslavement for half a millennium. For the last half century they have resisted the most powerful slave-master in history, just 90 miles from their shores.
The famous labor union song poses the question sharply: Which side are you on?
Rainbow Solidarity answers: “Cuba, we are with you. Cuba, estamos contigo.”
http://www.freethefiveny.org/ Articles copyright 1995-2007 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
Original in:
http://www.freethefive.org/updates/Solidarity/SLRainbow82707.htm Worldwide support for Cuban Five grows
Third appeal brings hope, calls for justice
by Gloria La Riva
August 31, 2007
Reprinted from: pslweb.org
“I have been a judge 36 years of my life; for 21 years I have been a judge in two courts of appeals. If I had to rule in this case, I would rule as fast as I can in order to not have these five Cubans one day more in prison.”
Juan Guzmán, the Chilean judge who prosecuted dictator Augusto Pinochet, was one of many prominent attorneys and judges who filled the courtroom of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta to witness the third oral argument of the five Cuban political prisoners held in U.S. prisons. Guzmán spoke at a press conference after the hearing.
International and U.S. jurists came to Atlanta to be observers in the Aug. 20 hearing. They represented thousands of other attorneys from their respective associations.
Case background
The Cuban Five—Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González—were prosecuted for defending Cuba from U.S.-backed terrorists. They were arrested in Miami Sept. 12, 1998 by the FBI and charged with espionage conspiracy, murder conspiracy and failure to register as foreign agents—a total of 26 counts.
They were in Miami to monitor and prevent the actions of anti-Cuba terrorist organizations operating there. They never engaged in any espionage on the U.S. government, nor did they conspire to do so.
A charge of conspiracy to commit murder against Gerardo Hernández came seven months after the Five’s arrest. The indictment falsely accused him of plotting with Cuba to shoot down two planes of the terrorist organization Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR) on Feb. 24, 1996.
BTTR, based in Miami, had invaded Cuban airspace numerous times in 1995 and 1996 despite repeated warnings from Cuba. Days before the shoot-down, on Jan. 13, 1996, BTTR leader José Basulto boasted publicly of his group’s role in dropping 500,000 leaflets over Havana.
He told the Miami Herald, "Let's just say we take responsibility for those leaflets. But I cannot give you any of the technical details of how we did it."
As BTTR prepared once again to invade Cuban airspace on Feb. 24, Basulto ignored warnings from various U.S. and Cuban authorities. The Cuban government called on the U.S. government to stop BTTR from flying into Cuban airspace to no avail. Two of the planes were shot down by Cuba’s air force as they entered Cuban airspace.
Gerardo Hernández was accused by the U.S. government of conspiring with Cuba to shoot down the planes in international waters, an outrageous claim since he had absolutely nothing to do with Cuba’s actions. Cuba’s act was a justified act of state, and yet Hernández was convicted of murder conspiracy. This was only possible because of a Miami jury trial.
He simply had received a message from Cuba to tell Cuban pilots who had infiltrated BTTR not to fly over a period of several days in February 1996. Even Richard Nuccio, advisor to President Clinton on Cuba matters, testified in the trial that he had warned Clinton on Feb. 23 that Cuba would take direct action against the invading aircraft.
The Miami trial
The trial of the Five began in December 2000. Despite numerous defense motions to move the trial out of Miami’s hostile, anti-Cuba environment, federal judge Joan Lenard denied a change of venue.
With a Miami jury, a conviction on all counts was guaranteed, despite the complete lack of evidence on the two conspiracy charges. The conviction came down on June 8, 2001. The Miami jury did not ask even one question in its deliberation, after a seven-month trial that generated 14,000 transcript pages.
In December 2001, three of the five, Labañino, Guerrero and Hernández, were sentenced to life in prison for the espionage conspiracy. Hernández was sentenced to a second life sentence for the murder conspiracy charge. Fernando González was sentenced to 19 years and René González to 15 years.
The Five won a major victory on Aug. 9, 2005, when a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously to overturn their convictions and grant a new trial. The decision was based on the issue of venue in Miami.
But the U.S. government appealed to the court’s full panel and the court accepted the appeal. Exactly one year later, on Aug. 9, 2006, the panel reversed the Five’s victory and ruled to uphold the trial judge’s refusal to move trial out of Miami.
Third oral argument in Atlanta
The 11th Circuit covers the jurisdiction of three southern states: Florida, Alabama and Georgia. About 75 percent of appeals before the court are decided by written briefs alone. The remaining 25 percent of cases are decided by the inclusion of oral arguments.
Leonard Weinglass, attorney for Antonio Guerrero, said he is not aware of any other case having three oral arguments.
The basis for the Aug. 20 hearing was nine unresolved issues of appeal being returned to the original three-judge panel for a ruling.
As the hearing convened at 3:00 p.m. before the full courtroom in downtown Atlanta, supporters of the Five listened intently to hear defense and prosecution give 30-minute presentations.
Before the attorneys began, Judge Stanley Birch made an announcement that the panel rejected the prosecution’s contention that the defense issue of prosecutorial misconduct was not properly before the court. This was a victory for the defense, which cited 28 instances of sustained objections due to the prosecution’s misconduct during the trial.
If the panel were to find that the government exercised repeated instances of misconduct, it would change the standard of review on the convictions of murder conspiracy and espionage conspiracy. Evidence on those charges would then have to be “overwhelming” for the convictions to stand.
As defense attorneys Richard Klugh and Brenda Bryn stated in the hearing, the government never claimed “overwhelming” nor even “strong” evidence on those two charges, which brought four life sentences against three of the Cuban Five. In fact, they said, there is no evidence on either conspiracy charge that the government presented, only “inference after inference.”
Early in the hearing, Birch also called on the prosecution to submit transcripts of an ex parte hearing that took place between the judge and prosecution during trial, where they discussed documents related to the case that the government had labeled classified under the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA). The defense has never been allowed to see those documents nor know the contents of them.
Under the repressive CIPA, all the possessions of the Five were confiscated when they were arrested and classified “secret.” This denied the Five the right to use their own documents in their defense, to prove that they were not involved in any conspiracy.
The whole hearing lasted one hour and 15 minutes. It is an extremely short time to present oral arguments in such a substantial and complicated appeal.
While those present were encouraged by the defense arguments and strength of the Five’s case in the hearing, justice will not be won by simple court proceedings.
The Cuban Five have been entangled for years in the technicalities of a judicial system whose government has carried out almost 50 years of aggression against Cuba.
The Five have endured nine years of imprisonment for peacefully defending Cuba from terrorism that is launched in Miami and financed by Washington. It will take the continued efforts of the worldwide movement to keep up the pressure until the Five are free.
In the days surrounding the Atlanta hearing, there was substantial media coverage in Associated Press, BBC, Reuters, and almost 100 daily newspapers in the United States.
Original in:
http://www.freethefive.org/updates/USMedia/USMPSLweb83107.htm The Cuban Five -- victims of national security justice
by Saul Landau
Aug. 23, 2007
Reprinted from Progreso Weekly
In 1953, a man I knew got busted for masturbating at a public urinal. A cop had hidden in the ceiling grate above him “to find perverts.” The lawyer, a friend of our family, charged him $5,000. “I gave $500 to the cop,” the lawyer explained, “bought the judge a present and paid two witnesses $250 each to testify that he was wearing a complicated truss and that’s what made it seem like an unnaturally long time for him to get adjusted after he went wee wee,” the defense lawyer explained to my father.
I have no idea if his behavior typified that era or remains a standard today. Comedian Lenny Bruce’s quipped: “In the Hall of Justice the only justice is in the hall,” where the payoffs occurred. Indeed, the poor, not the middle class and certainly not the rich, inhabit U.S. jails and prisons. Most Americans understand that equal justice for all means police will arrest a rich or poor man sleeping under the bridge or stealing a loaf of bread.
Those who can afford expensive lawyers usually get away with murder. Take the cases of Claus von Bulow, who overdosed his rich wife with insulin, or O. J. Simpson, a case where the Los Angeles police actually framed the right guy for wife and friend killing. The accused paid millions of dollars to top lawyers who skillfully placed seeds of doubt in the jurors’ minds. Public defenders often lack the resources, time and will to build minimum defenses for poor clients.
In some case, however, even the best defenders can’t buy justice, especially when the government cites “national security.” The Cuban Five case became victims of that phrase that usually means the government will not tell the public what it is doing or why. It reeks with imperial arrogance and often with vengeance as well.
The FBI busted five men (Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando Gonzáles, and René Gonzáles) in 1998 and a Miami jury convicted them in 2001 for conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit espionage and other serious offenses. The case illustrated the U.S. standard of justice for third world nations that disobey its dictates.
Since Washington had failed to punish Cuba adequately for its near half century of disobedience, the opportunity presented by the Cuban Five fell like a serendipitous apple onto the vengeful ground of the national security elite, the group that wages war and regularly infringes on citizens’ rights in order to “protect” the public. This bureaucratic posse inside executive agencies looks at the public as an obstacle to its imperial ambitions, to the notion of accountability as an irritant, the proverbial pimple on a sewer rat’s butt. The following story illustrates.
In 2004, John Negroponte, then UN Ambassador en route to becoming Ambassador to Iraq and then top U.S. spy, explained why the security elite would have to reject an offer from the Iranian government (under Khatami) to reopen the U.S. embassy and normalize diplomatic relations. “In the last decades, Vietnam, Cuba and Iran have humiliated the United States,” he explained to the diplomat -- a friend of mine -- who delivered the message from the Iranian government. “I suppose we’ve gotten even with the Vietnamese [4 million killed and 20 plus years of sanctions], but there’s no way we’re having relations with Iran or Cuba before they get what’s coming to them.” Since the elite will not wage war on Cuba -- Cubans will fight back -- they used the Cuban Five as surrogate punishment objects.
In the 1990s, these Cuban nationals infiltrated Florida-based anti-Castro terrorist groups and reported on the terrorists’ activities to Havana. In 1998, an FBI delegation traveled to Cuba. Cuban officials gave the FBI some 1,200 pages of material, along with video and audio tapes that incriminated groups and individuals -- their names, weapons they carried or stored and other details that the Justice Department could use to prosecute the terrorists.
The FBI told their Cuban counterparts they would respond in a month. The Cubans are still waiting, but the FBI did use the material. They arrested the Cuban Five. The Justice Department then charged them with felonies.
Irony accompanied injustice. The five admitted they entered the United States to access U.S.-based groups plotting terrorism against Cuba. In fact, U.S. law actually allows people to commit crimes out of a greater necessity, one that would prevent greater harm.
“It is a form of self-defense, extended to acts which will protect other parties,” argued Leonard Weinglass, attorney for Antonio Guerrero, one of the Five. Indeed, the Five’s lawyers presented this argument to trial judge Joan Lenard, but she refused to let the jury consider it.
Weinglass and the other attorneys argued their appeals this month claiming the judge had erred by not submitting the “‘defense of necessity’ claim to the jury, because the Five came to the United States to prevent additional violence, injury and harm to others.”
The U.S. government knew all about the terrorist “accomplishments” of Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, for examples. Both had boasted to reporters about their roles in terrorist acts, including the 1976 bombing of a Cuban commercial airliner -- they did this jointly -- in which 73 passengers and crew members perished. In 1998, Posada bragged about sabotaging Cuban tourist sites the previous year. In one bombing carried out by his paid agent, an Italian tourist died.
“We didn’t want to hurt anybody,” he told reporters Larry Rohter and Anne Bradach. “We just wanted to make a big scandal so that the tourists don’t come anymore. We don’t want any more foreign investment.” Posada said he wanted potential tourists to think Cuba was unstable “and to encourage internal opposition.”
Posada succeeded. Less tourists came to Cuba after the Italian died in the bombing. The Times reporters write that Posada “declared that he had a clear conscience, saying, ‘I sleep like a baby.’” Then he said: “That Italian was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time.” (NY Times July 13, 1998)
The Five came here precisely to stop such activities, says Weinglass. “The Five’s activities were justified and necessary in order to save lives.” Weinglass had used this very argument to defend Amy Carter, when the President’s daughter “occupied a building, with other students, at the University of Massachusetts, in opposition to the CIA agents who came to the campus to recruit students into the CIA. She acknowledged that her occupation of the building was a crime but she argued that that was justified by the doctrine of necessity because the CIA was then engaged in an illegal war in Nicaragua.” The jury acquitted Amy and the other defendants.
Weinglass made a similar argument before a two-judge appeals court. In August 2005, this court initially heard the case and decided that the Five had not received a fair trial. The entire 12 judge panel of the 11th circuit reversed that decision despite massive evidence to show the Miami jurors had felt intimidated. From the window of the deliberation room they saw people taking photos of their license plates. Jurors had reason to fear serious retribution should they vote to acquit the Five.
The lawyers also appealed the conviction of Gerardo Hernandez for “conspiring” to commit murder. This charge arose from the February 1996 shoot-down by Cuban MIGs of two Brothers to the rescue planes that had violated Cuban airspace and were repeatedly warned of “grave consequences” should they enter Cuban territory without permission. At the trial, the Assistant U.S. Attorney acknowledged that he had no solid evidence to back up this charge.
Weinglass noted that the Gerardo conviction marked “the first time in history that an individual is being held liable for the action of a sovereign state in defending its airspace.” Indeed, Cuba had every reason and the right to maintain sovereignty over its air space. The prosecutor made outrageous claims to the jury without citing evidence and the judge let him. He argued without facts that Cuba had sent the men to attack the United States. For the first time in legal U.S. history, the U.S. Attorney’s office prosecuted a case without even referring to a single classified document.
The Five stole no secrets; unlike FBI Special Agent Robert Hansen, or the CIA’s Aldrich Ames who passed tens of thousands of “top secrets” to the Soviet enemy, but two of them like the real spies, got life imprisonment.
Was U.S. justice fairer when a lawyer could bribe a cop in a meaningless case and rich guys could buy their way out of murder raps -- as they still do? Not if one recalls the “national security” framing of Sacco and Vanzetti in the 1920s and the 1953 execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, even though FBI Chief J. Edgar Hoover and President Dwight Eisenhower both knew they had not passed atomic secrets to the Soviets. The government had invoked “national security” under which no justice occurs, not even in the halls.
Saul Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies fellow. His new book is A BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD.
http://www.freethefive.org/updates/IntlMedia/IMProgreso82307.htm See also:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=CCdGdpeNps8 Video: "Mission against Terror" Other websites related:
http://www.antiterroristas.cu http://www.freethefive.org http://www.familiesforjustice.cu/interface.en/design/home.tpl.html http://www.fabiodicelmo.cu/home.asp http://www.cubainformacion.tv http://www.cubanradio.cu http://www.wicuba.org http://www.freethefiveny.org http://www.freeforfive.org http://www.freethecuban5.com http://www.actionsf.org http://answer.pephost.org/site/PageServer?pagename=ANS_homepage http://www.cubasolidarity.com http://www.cubasolidarity.net http://www.cubasolidarity.net/solinumb.html http://www.ifconews.org http://18thcubacaravan.blogspot.com http://www.granma.cu/miami5/ingles/index.html http://www.cubacoop.com http://www.cuba-humanidad.org http://www.saludthefilm.net/ns/index.html http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/ http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=7055 In Great Britain, Wales, Ireland:
http://www.ratb.org.uk http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk http://www.blackpoolandfyldecsc.org.uk http://www.cubasol-manch.org.uk http://www.cymru-cuba.cjb.net http://www.cubasupport.com
posted by F Espinoza
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BBC journalist booted out of Cuba.
03.09.2007 02:36
simon
Poor man...
03.09.2007 12:05
The Cuban Five Case in CNN' The Situation Room
They never were able to prove that there was a conspiracy to commit espionage
CNN TRANSCRIPTS
THE SITUATION ROOM
Aired August 29, 2007 - 19:00 ET
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
SEGMENT ON THE CUBAN FIVE
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR
I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM.
BLITZER: In our look around the world, right now depending on who's talking, there are either brave patriots who wanted to defend their country against terrorism or they're shady figures determined to inflict damage on the United States, five Cuban men in prison here in the United States, some serving life sentences. Some people are calling them the "Cuban Five". Their country holds them up as icons.
CNN's Morgan Neill explains from Havana -- Morgan.
MORGAN NEILL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, federal appeals judges in Atlanta are going over spy cases barely made the back pages of the paper. Here in Cuba the smallest details of the case are front-page news.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NEILL (voice-over): In Cuba they're known on a first-name basis, Gerardo, Ramon, Antonio, Fernando, and Rene.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
NEILL: They're called the Cinco Heros (ph), the five heroes, and they're the center of a long running government-sponsored campaign.
(SOUNDS)
NEILL: Their case doesn't provoke the passions of the Elian Gonzalez saga the Cuban boy at the center of an emotional cross-border custody battle in 2000, but even school kids on the island know the case of the Cinco inside and out.
(MUSIC)
NEILL: Eight years ago the five men were arrested in Miami on spying charges. All were convicted of acting as unregistered foreign agents and conspiracy to commit crimes against the United States. Three were also found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
NEILL: Cuba says the men weren't spying on the U.S. government, but on what Cuba calls terrorist organizations run by exiles out of Miami.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
NEILL: The president of Cuba's national assembly says they're heroes, in his words, whose only fault was to fight against terrorism. Cuba said it was impossible for them to get a fair trial in Miami, three of the five received life sentences, the other two, 15 and 19 years, now they await a new ruling on whether the evidence in their case supports their convictions.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
NEILL: We met with Olga Salanueva whose husband Rene Gonzalez is serving a 15-year sentence. She was deported from the United States two years after his arrest and has been denied a visa ever since.
OLGA SALANUEVA, WIFE OF CUBAN INMATE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
NEILL: The last time I saw Rene was the day I was detained, she says, August 16, 2000. It's been seven years since I saw him.
(MUSIC)
NEILL: When we arrived, Olga is at a reunion of her husband's flight school classmates.
(SOUNDS)
NEILL: Then her phone rings. It's her husband calling from prison.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
NEILL: She passes the phone so we can talk.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
NEILL: From the start it was a political show, Rene tells me. We were simply defending our country. To this point, the courts have not agreed.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NEILL: Now these men have been behind bars for some nine years, but they're definitely not forgotten here in Cuba. In fact they're so well known, billboards here read simply, they will return and everyone knows who "they" are -- Wolf.
BLITZER: Morgan Neill our reporter in Havana with some background on this story. Joining us now two guests, Leonard Weinglass is an attorney representing the so-called "Cuban Five" and Orlando Gutierrez is co-founder of the Cuban democratic director and he's joining us from Miami. Mr. Weinglass, these men were all convicting of conspiracy to commit espionage. Why should the U.S. government go easy on them?
LEONARD WEINGLASS, ATTORNEY FOR "THE CUBANS": Because they never were able to prove that there was a conspiracy to commit espionage. This was one of the longest trials in the United States at the time it occurred and the evidence fell short. These were men who came here to monitor the activities of groups in southern Florida who were leading attacks against their country in Cuba.
BLITZER: If they were never approved they're convicted, they're all serving lengthy jail sentences. Why are they serving jail sentences if they weren't convicted, if the evidence didn't prove it, at least before those courts?
WEINGLASS: The first federal appeals court that heard their case in August of 2005 concluded they never received a fair trial. That decision was set aside, but now in 2007 we are arguing for the first time, six years after their conviction, that the evidence failed to prove a conspiracy to commit espionage.
Wolf this, is the first case in our history where not a single page of classified document was introduced into evidence. The government conceded they didn't have it. Admirals testified. Generals testified for the defense, not for the prosecution. Even the presidential adviser, Ricardo Nuncio, the adviser to President Clinton testified on behalf of the defense. There has never been an espionage case like this one.
BLITZER: All right. Let's get the other side of the story from Orlando Gutierrez. Why do you think Mr. Weinglass is wrong?
ORLANDO GUTIERREZ, CUBAN DEMOCRATIC DIRECTOR: Mr. Weinglass is wrong because these men were not just convicted of espionage. They were also convicted of participating in the murder of U.S. citizens who were shot down of an unarmed aircraft over international wars. The purpose of the network was to infiltrate the United States. They infiltrated U.S. military insulations in Boca Chica and their purpose was to supply information on U.S. military installations to provide information on U.S. national security and also to spy upon and even attack in the case of the murdered members of the rescue to kill U.S. citizens who were somehow involved the promotion of human rights in Cuba. The fact is these men came to the U.S. at the behest of the longest dictatorship in Latin America to prevent non-violent, peaceful democratic change from taking place in Cuba.
BLITZER: All right. Mr. Weinglass, those are serious charges. Do you want to respond?
WEINGLASS: The attempt to change the government of Cuba could hardly be called non-violent. Over 3,000 people have died in 40 years. Tens of millions of dollars in damage was done. An Italian tourist was killed in a lobby and as for the charge of murder, that also is unprecedented. After 25 incursions over Cuban airspace by a group called Brothers to the Rescue, Cuba finally did what any country would do. It defended its airspace and it shot down two of the aircraft. Unfortunately, killing four people and that led to a charge against one, not the five, but against one of the conspiracy to commit murder. That charge the government conceded at the end of trial it failed to prove.
BLITZER: Mr. Gutierrez?
GUTIERREZ: The fact is that the movement for democracy in Cuba inside and outside the island is imminently nonviolent. Organizations like brothers to the rescue, publicly embraced nonviolent struggle based upon the principles of Gandhi and Martin Luther King and the fact is that the government of Cuba has incarcerated thousands of Cubans over 48 years simply for their beliefs and has executed thousands of Cubans, more than 10,000 Cubans have been executed by this regime which is a totalitarian state which controls all of the media and an extensive secret police network that spies on Cubans on a daily basis.
The fact is that these men came to the U.S. to penetrate the community, everybody from the chamber of commerce to humanitarians like Brothers to the Rescue and the Cuban democratic directorate with the purpose of perpetuating Castro's hold on power. During that time the dissident movement in Cuba, in spite of harassment and persecution brought a coalition to bring about peaceful change in Cuba. Castro needed to crush that movement and to top stop the exile movement from supporting them.
BLITZER: Mr. Weinglass, the argument is made that these five individuals were officers, were agents, represents of the Cuban intelligence community. They came to the United States in effect, under false pretenses. The U.S. government found out about them one way or another and arrested them and now they're serving a jail sentences.
The argument is made if the CIA set five individuals under false pretenses to Cuba and were caught, engaged in espionage or conspiracy to commit espionage. The Cuban government or any other government would arrest them as well. What's wrong, if anything, you think with that argument?
WEINGLASS: There were five Cuban men who came to the United States after groups from southern Florida had attacked Cuba. The airport was bombed. Hotels were bombed. An Italian tourist was killed. Busses were bombed. The Cuban government protested each and every one of those attacks. It was only when the United States failed to respond that five unarmed men came here without explosive, without weaponry, harmed no one, to monitor the activities of the groups that were attacking their country. That is recognized under international law as a legitimate response and even under American law, under the doctrine of necessity, having exhausted all efforts to peacefully resolve what was going on in Cuba, the Cuban government acted to protect its own people.
BLITZER: Let me get back to the question. If the Cuban government picked up five CIA officers who were clandestinely operating for whatever purpose in Cuba, you would expect them to arrest them as well, wouldn't you?
WEINGLASS: If there are CIA officers operating in over 80 countries around the world. They're trying to stop terrorist attacks against American targets. The international community has no complaint with that. But these were groups from southern Florida that were involved in terrorism. That was found in footnotes in the 93- page opinion of the federal appeals court. Three federal judges found that to be true and called these groups terrorists. So it's a far different scenario than the one that you're painting.
BLITZER: All right. Let me let Mr. Gutierrez respond to that. And the argument is made that these Cubans came to protect Cuba by trying to infiltrate, trying to observe what was happening in the exile, elements of the exile community in south Florida, Mr. Gutierrez. Similar to what CIA officer dos if they go to Pakistan, for example, or Afghanistan and are clandestinely looking for terrorists, Osama Bin Laden or others. That's the argument that the Cuban government has made. Mr. Weinglass has made that argument. I wonder if you want to respond to that argument.
GUTIERREZ: Well, first of all, CIA officers are defending a democracy. These men are defending a 48-year-old dictatorship which has killed and continues to kill people for their beliefs.
Number two, these men did not infiltrate terrorist groups. They infiltrated public human rights organizations based in Florida who were supporting dissidents in Cuba. Let's repeat that. These men were infiltrating organizations that were legitimate, public and engaged in human rights work and their purpose as found in the papers that were declassified during the trial, based on the communications that were intercepted by the FBI was that the purpose of these men was to infiltrate these groups that were linked to nonviolence struggle inside Cuba. And not only that, as part of their work in the United States, these men were infiltrating U.S. military installations. They were supposed to spy on members of the U.S. Congress. They were instructed by their control agent in Havana to find drop points along the Florida coast so that arms and explosives could be brought into the United States from Cuba. These men were working against the security of the United States.
BLITZER: We're out of time but let me just let you just respond very quickly, Mr. Weinglass to that point. In addition to spying on Cuban exile groups in Miami and the south Florida area were they also spying on U.S. military installations in the area?
WEINGLASS: The charges in this case accused Antonio Guerrero, my client, of being on a navy training base, Boca Chica in southern Florida. He was there for five years and sent back 395 reports which the FBI did have. Not a single one of those reports dealt with classified, secret information. And so that's why we're asking a federal appeals court to set this aside.
BLITZER: When do you think we'll get that decision?
WEINGLASS: It should be probably by around the end of the year, but it's very difficult to say.
BLITZER: All right. Mr. Weinglass, we have to leave it there. Leonard Weinglass representing these Cuban five and Orlando Gutierrez, with a very different perspective, the co-founder and the Cuban director. Let me thank both of you for coming in.
WEINGLASS: Thanks, Wolf
World figures attend Cuban 5 hearing
by W. T. Whitney Jr.
Aug. 30, 2007
Reprinted from People's Weekly World
An international gathering of 75 jurists, attorneys and supporters was on hand in Atlanta Aug. 20 for the latest appeals hearing on behalf of Gerardo Hernández, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González.
On Sept. 12, the Cuban Five will begin their ninth year in prison. Convicted on June 8, 2001 — after 17 months in solitary confinement — for "conspiring to commit espionage," they are collectively serving four life sentences plus 75 years in widely separated federal jails. The Miami jury also convicted Gerardo Hernández for conspiring to murder pilots downed in an illegal Cuban American flight over Cuba.
Interviewed on Democracy Now, defense attorney Leonard Weinglass said this was the first time in U.S. history where the charge of conspiracy to commit espionage has been made against a defendant. Lawyers say that conspiracy charges open the door to hearsay and circumstantial evidence.
Prior to their arrest, the five men were in Florida to gather information on anti-Cuban, paramilitary terrorists in an effort to halt attacks that, according to the Cubans, have caused 3,478 deaths on the island over four decades.
Commenting on the appeal, Weinglass said, "The government admitted they could not prove espionage. ... There wasn't a single page of classified document involved in this case. That never happened before in an espionage case." He cited testimony from high U.S. officials that the accused never gained information detrimental to U.S. interests.
"This case is the first case in our collective memory that will be argued a third time on appeal," Weinglass said. In August 2006, the full 11th Circuit Court denied an appeal based on the prisoners' claim that a prejudicial climate in Miami had invalidated their trial. In doing so, the court reversed an earlier ruling by an appeals panel calling for a new trial.
On Aug. 20, defense lawyers were dealing with still unanswered concerns: neglect of due process, insufficient evidence for conspiracy and inappropriate sentencing.
The lawyers warned that the court's decision may not be known for months. They were encouraged by Judge Phyllis Kravitch's reaction to a defense report that the original trial judge sustained 28 of the 34 defense objections introduced during the prosecution's final summary. "I find that kind of troubling," she remarked.
Judge Stanley Birch suggested that in regard to the death of the Miami pilots and the murder-conspiracy conviction of Gerardo Hernández, "A shoot-down over sovereign airspace is not murder." In their first appeal, in 2005, both Birch and Kravitch ruled in favor of the Cuban Five.
Giving up on close reasoning, U.S. Attorney Carolyn Miller asked the court to "plunge into the record" where documents will be found "that show the defendants' hatred of the United States."
She accused the defense of concocting "a good tale ... of red-baiting and McCarthyism" on the part of the government. Referring to free legal services for indigent defendants, she suggested that the five were "bent on the destruction of the United States, paid for by the American taxpayer."
Judge Birch ordered prosecutors to produce a transcript of a meeting between the trial judge and government lawyers from which, crucially, defense lawyers had been excluded. The appeals panel required government lawyers also to submit supposedly classified documents viewed by that judge and presumably kept from the defense.
In 2005 the UN Human Rights Commission declared that the government's reliance upon secret evidence — possibly at issue now — made the prisoners' incarceration "arbitrary." Birch indicated that after reviewing the material, the appeals panel could require another hearing.
Attending the Aug. 20 hearing, Chilean Judge Juan Guzman — law school dean and former prosecutor of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet — had advice for U.S. judges. "If they really seek justice," he said, "they should make a ruling recognizing the innocence of [the Cuban Five]." He condemned political pressure on judges and jury at the hands of the Bush administration.
International support is a driving force in the political struggle for the five. Over 6,000 activists and intellectuals worldwide, including nine Nobel laureates, signed a letter in 2005 to the U.S. attorney general demanding their freedom. Earlier, Amnesty International reminded the U.S. government that restrictions on family visits to the prisoners — which remain in force to this day — were inhumane and contrary to international law.
"The system," according to Weinglass, "is having trouble digesting this particular injustice."
F Espinoza
WITH THE CUBAN PEOPLE AND AGAINST THE DICTATORSHIP OF FIDEL CASTRO
03.09.2007 15:26
________________________________________________
When a long-lasting and bloody dictatorship such as that of Fidel
Castro in Cuba is nowadays capable of imprisoning a large number of
dissidents for many long years and of executing by firing squad three
Black young men accused of unproved crimes by means of fallacious
evidence, it is impossible for any human being to remain in complicit
silence. We don’t believe that leaving such feats uncontested is
an honest attitude. An attitude we can’t assume, regardless of
how much simpathy one might feel for Castro’s fascism, on the
contrary, it is imperative to condemn and denounce this abuse of
power. State terrorism, capable of any crime, has shown with these
judicial aberrations its cowardice and hatred of its own people.
Castro’s national socialism demonstrates to what lows of
depravity it has sunk.
An indispensable prerequisite to maintain a dictatorship is the abuse
of power and the need to incarcerate and assassinate its opposition.
Condemnation of this totalitarian conduct is a necessary act of
integrity. Silence would be another betrayal to the Cuban people.
Faced with these sad events it is our inescapable duty to demand the
freedom of all political prisoners and to demand that all repressive
laws that uphold the regime, including the death penalty, be forever
abolished from the Cuban judicial system.
The Cuban Libertarian Movement, with over forty years of constant
struggle against Castro’s fascism, declares its most energetic
repudiation against the Cuban state and asks all anarchist comrades
all over the world to show their solidarity with our people’s
freedom and to put an end to the complicit silence some still maintain
in favor of the Castro dictatorship. A man alone does not exercise
power. Repressive thugs, intellectual eunuchs and silent collaborators
within and without Cuba are guilty accomplices of keeping a people on
its knees for over forty-three years. It is time that as anarchists we
demand and proclaim freedom and justice for the Cuban people.
We hope all our comrades of every country that have not yet done so
will unite with us in this collective protest against Castro’s
despotism and by doing so will take their place among the world’s
free human beings.
@narchist
still another link to an unattributed 2003 post
03.09.2007 15:45
Russia and East Europe are some of the most wonderful and glorious places in the world to live right now, I guess he would argue.
(1)
(2)
who is/are /this/these sad one-track trolls who pretend to be anarchists, and can only spew out old unattributed cut and pastes without any kind of substance?
Fidel's left bollock
Fidels left bollock
03.09.2007 16:11
Down with Capitalism, communism, dictators and their lovers!
Aunty Christ
"@narchists"???
03.09.2007 23:00
“@narchist” is nothing more than a little troll, but the CLM or MLC is another thing. This peculiar “movement” was founded not to continue Sacco and Vanzetti struggle against injustice around the world, but only as another form of the vast counterrevolutionary attempts that intends to destroy the revolutionary process following instructions of the imperial master: the US government.
The founders of this usamerican version of the MLC/CLM fighted early in the 60’s the dirty war inside Cuba -together with the batistian dictatorship’s remainders- as counterrevolutionary bandits and mercenaries inmediately after the cuban people revolution cames to power-, receiving arms and every logistics they needed and conmiting several brutal crimes. They were operational in the Sierra del Escambray also as a “avantgarde” for the Bay of Pigs invasion, but of course were defeated by the young revolutionaries.
After that defeat they fleed to New York and Miami (what a coincidence!, jajaja) where they changed their diapers and clothes, and began their movement under the name of MLC/CLM. I think they still have in english all this history in their own website… If you have some historical interest in knowing a little more about this specimens and want to have your own conclusions, please visit their website.
And they are at present “only by coincidence” together with… guess who? The venezuelan libertarian movement that pretends to help the counterrevolution in Venezuela confounding honest people around the world…
These stranges “@narchists” are only one more of the several “secret counterrevolutionary programs” of the usamerican government; and the shame of honest @narchists.
F Espinoza