invites you to get involved in a week of Action in support of the Cuban Five locked up for 11 years in the US.
Sunday 6 Sept 2009
2pm - 4pm
film, 'Mission against Terror'
Percival Suite, Cross Street Chapel, Cross Street (near St. Ann's Aquare), Manchester
ALL WELCOME - donations on the door.
Saturday 12 September 2009
street event Piccadilly Gardens
12pm
speeches, music and protest against the incarceration of the Cuban Five, part of the war against socialism in Cuba.
Tel: 07940988203
Email:
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www.ratb.org.uk
see you there!
in solidarity
Manchester RCG.
Viva Cuba!
Viva 50 Years of Revolution!
Viva Socialism!
Comments
Hide the following 6 comments
pff fuck stalinism
02.09.2009 00:01
no one cares about cuba
its anti gay policeys are discusting
u need to get your prioriteyts straight
and fuck off with cuba
cuba is run under a dictarian state
its got a dictator in command
anarchist a
First free the Cuba 56
02.09.2009 14:04
According to information available to Amnesty International, at least 56 prisoners of conscience remain in detention, imprisoned solely for expressing their conscientiously held beliefs, among them:
Oscar Elías Biscet, a physician and President of the unofficial Lawton Foundation for Human Rights, arrested on 6 December 2002 and sentenced to 25 years in prison, and
Journalist Julio César Gálvez Rodríguez, arrested on 19 March 2003 and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Amnesty International takes this opportunity to call on Cuba to immediately and unconditionally release these individuals and others arrested solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression.
Totalitarian Apologists watch
First in - last out?
02.09.2009 14:24
Perhaps s/he is a apologist for the other set of totalitarians. Which might explain why s/he seems more concerned about the ones we can't do anything about .
Amnesty is a shoddy hierarchical organisation - not really within the guidelines here at all.
Totalitarian Apologists watch watch
50 years of oppression is nothing to celebrate!
03.09.2009 08:47
No Gods
No Masters
No Dictators
@narchist
Fuck Castro and Amnesty
04.09.2009 10:43
And what makes you think I have any love for dictator? Or that I ever suggest that Amnesty is ok? Neither is true.
However, there is definitely hypocrisy in suggesting that we focus on freeing the prisoners in Cuba, and ignore the Cuban prisoners in America, or the American prisoners in Cuba. Until we've acted to end our own regimes human rights abuses, we're not going to convince anyone that we're anything other than shills for Imperialism. We're already responsible for crippling sanctions on Cuba, why should that regime give a damn about our concerns for some human rights activist who has been presented with a Presidential Medal of Freedom by Bush?
Totalitarian Apologists watch watch
Indictment À La Carte - Untold Story of the Cuban Five
04.09.2009 10:49
The new indictment came after a public campaign in Miami actively promoted by “journalists” on the US Government payroll, including reports about meetings in public places attended by well-known Cuban exile leaders, US prosecutors and FBI officials, in which the accusation against Gerardo was openly discussed. It became a clear demand by the most violent groups in town and was a central focus of the local media.
The Government acquiesced to the demand and introduced the Second Superseding indictment whose essential new feature was adding this “crime” to Gerardo's list of charges.
This was a political concession to anti-Cuban terrorists, who were seeking revenge for the downing by Cuba’s Air Force, in February 24, 1996 of two airplanes (Model O2 used by the US Air Force first in Vietnam and later in El Salvador wars, as was concretely the case with these two planes) piloted by members of a violent anti-Cuban group, an event that had taken place two years before the Cuban Five were detained, when those airplanes were within Cuban airspace.
The timing was very suspicious, indeed. According to information provided by the Government at trial, the FBI had found the real nature of Gerardo’s revolutionary mission in Miami and was monitoring him and controlling his communications with Havana at least a couple of years before the downing of the planes. If that incident was a result of a “conspiracy,” in which Gerardo was a key participant, why wasn’t he arrested in 1996? Why wa this issue not even mentioned in September 1998 when he was first detained and indicted?
The planes belonged to a group led by José Basulto, a veteran CIA agent involved in many paramilitary actions since 1959, included the Bay of Pigs invasion and a number of assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. In the 20 months preceding the incident, this group had penetrated Cuban airspace 25 times, each one denounced by the Cuban government.
After so many diplomatic démarches the US Government wanted to appear responsive. It initiated an investigation about those flights, asked for Cuba’s help in providing details of previous provocations, acknowledged their receipt and thanked for them. On February 24, 1996 such administrative proceedings had not been completed, but later Mr. Basulto was deprived by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of his pilot license and he doesn’t fly anymore (at least legally).
The provocateurs had blatantly announced that they will continue making illegal flights into Cuba’s airspace and even proclaimed that the island, which was at the time suffering its worst crisis ever – worse in economic terms, that the Big Depression, according to a UN report – was not able to respond to their illegal incursions. In January, Mr. Basulto brought with him an NBC TV crew from Miami who filmed and broadcasted how they overflew downtown Havana throwing out propaganda and other materials. Cuba made it public that such provocations will not be tolerated anymore, made the proper notifications to all that may be concerned, including the US Government, the State Department and the FAA, which in turn warned Basulto and his group that they should refrain from such flights.
The alleged “conspiracy” was in itself a monumental stupidity, incomprehensible to any rational mind. It supposed that the Cuban government had decided provoke an all-out war with the United States, a military confrontation that obviously would have resulted in a terrible blow not only for the Cuban government, but for the entire nation and its people. In any crime motivation is always a key factor, a decisive cue. What could have been Cuba’s motivation to provoke such an event precisely at that moment, the most risky for the survival of our country without allies or friends in a world and a hemisphere under the full control of the United States in 1996?
Cuba did exactly the opposite. It denounced one by one, each provocation to the FAA and to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, the UN family institution dealing with these matters) and sent dozens of diplomatic notes to the State Department. But Cuba went farther. It did his best to reach out to the highest level of the US Administration, the White House, trying to prevent more incidents.
The New Yorker issue of January 1998 dedicated to Cuba on the occasion of the Pope’s visit included a serious article in which a fairly objective account of those efforts by Cuba can be found. (Carl Naguin, Annals of Diplomacy Backfire, The New Yorker, January 26, 1998,
Yes, there was a conspiracy to provoke the tragedy of February 24, 1996. But it was the entire and exclusive work of the same Miami groups that have launched a half-century terrorist campaign against Cuba, the same gang that will afterwards kidnap Elian Gonzalez, a six-year-old boy. Events from which they always came out with impunity.
Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada is president of the Cuban National Assembly.
RICARDO ALARCÓN de QUESADA
Homepage:
http://www.counterpunch.org/alarcon09032009.html