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Odds and ends
- As the UN General Assembly debate on the U.S. embargo nears, Cuban media are getting to work, writing that American sanctions cause losses to agriculture, public health, and the phone system.
- The National Security Archive publishes documents on Luis Posada Carriles’ activities in 1965 and 1966, when he was a CIA informant and the agency saw him as a good candidate for a job in the Cuban government “should the present government fall.”
- From Penultimos Dias, a story in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo on Spanish shipwrecks in Cuban waters, and studies of them carried out by Havana’s Office of the Historian.
- Actor Alec Baldwin says the Obama Administration made a mistake in denying permission to the New York Philharmonic to travel to Cuba with donors.
24 comments:
The CIA documents prove that Jorge Mas Canosa and CANF group were the lead financiers of terrorism in the Americas during the 1960s (Posada had fingered Canosa before, but now we have it in black and white). We also know they went back to funding terror in the 80s and 90s. And to think this guy has a school named after him in Miami...
As far as the Cuban H1N1pronouncements, I am afraid Phil (based off Vecino's comments and a crappy AP piece) made a gross simplification in arguing there was some kind of policy shift from shunning vaccines alltogether to appealing from them. The first statements by Dr. Estruch on vaccines did not say anything about rejecting them alltogether. He simply said the new vaccine is untested and runs the risk of mutation if abused. WHO guidelines say much the same thing. His comments were a critique of the US policy to rely solely on vaccines and a recognition that such a plan could not work in Cuba. Relying on a shot to contain an epidemic is risky for anyone and that Cuba simply can not afford that strategy alone. They have to use what they are good at - prevention. This will save lives, save money and save people's health.
While the US expects 1/2 its population to contract the virus. Cuba hopes to keep levels roughly where they are at - miniscule. They are obviously doing something right up.
CANF was not created until the 1980s dumbass
I knew that CANF was created by Reagan's Administration, so I don't know why I wrote that...
Nonetheless it does not change a thing about Mas Canosa's and CANF's terrorist past.
Is there any Cuban-American, living or dead, who has a greater impact on US-Cuba policy that this terrorist?
what's so funny about leftside is that when he is ideologically opposed to an outcome he assiduously deconstructs every element of the chain of events in order to discredit it. Yet when the outcome supports what he wants to believe hearsay becomes gospel truth. Sorry, leftside, but those documents don't "prove" a thing.
chingon
Let's see Chingon. We have a direct admission from the bomber himself (Posada Carriles) saying where he got the money and direction from (Canosa) in 1997 interview. We had declassified FBI documents documenting the $5000 payment for the Veracruz bombing a couple years ago. Now we have a CIA document from the time period collaborating the same story. Sorry but these documents prove your friends Posada and Canosa are as guilty as they come. Are you really claiming they are innocent?
pidgen can no more admit posada et al are terrorists than he can understand the intricacies of a fork. Facts and realty have never made an impact on pidgen, why should they now. anyone who even attempts to defend posada, the bin laden of the Americans, just shows off his pure gusano creds. so all pidgen does is parrot what his handlers tell him, cashes his checks and sleeps the sleep of the blissfully ignorant. ahh, if we could all have his incredible sense of denial. must be the stuff he drinks
C'mon quiet down, boys! For a bonus question, can anyone elaborate on the role of "Mono" Morales in this whole Posada Carriles & Company story? It might be instructive to read the different takes on this character.
Leftside,
You must admit that the AP story and the Granma story appears to give two contradictory outlooks from the same individual, right? For my part I am just happy that Cuba decided to get the vaccine.
"Relying on a shot to contain an epidemic is risky for anyone..." The only way to contain a viral epidemic is with massive vaccination. It has worked for smallpox, polio, yellow fever, etc. As far as mutations are concerned, the influenza virus will mutate with or without a vaccine. The vaccine will only stop the current strain. I missed that statement from Vice-minister Estruch but if he said it Cuba needs someone else in that post.
Vecino de NF
I read the AP story. It's clear that Vice-minister Estruch dismissed the A H1N1 vaccine as ineffective. My guess is that the health personnel in Cuba got wind of these comments and they moved heaven and earth to make sure that the Cuban government would get the vaccine. This happened at the itme that an international health congress was taking place in Cuba so I guess some of the non-Cubans commented this to their Cuban colleagues and in typical Cuban fashion the latter characterized Vice-Minister Estruch digestive habits and went off to correct what appears to have been a shortsighted political hack decision of "Let's save some hard currency and quarantined everyone!" Heck that's the typical kneejerk reaction from the Cuban government for the last 50 years, come to think of it!
Thank God that smarter people appeared to have prevailed!
Vecino de NF
No leftside, what we have is hearsay -- someone told someone something about someone else. About his "admission"...he recanted days later. The fact is -- and I hate to bust up another Castro-generated myth that fulfills your lives -- that nothing that has ever appeared in the gullible press about Posada and the Cubana bombing or the Havana bombings would be touched with a 10 ft pole by any serious prosecutor. That's a fact and no amount of blather and hyperventilation by the Castro bootlicking legions changes that. Now, I can understand why a Latin American would be confused by this since they wouldn't know how a real court of law worked if one walked up and slapped them in the face, but what's your excuse?
chingon
Let's be honest Vecino. Dr. Estruch's public skepticism about the strategy of mass vaccination (vs Cuba's traditional focus on prevention) is based largely on lack of resources to buy the vaccine. At $6-$10 a pop, and 2 doses being recommended, the US strategy of vaccinating half the population, would cost Cuba upwards of $80 million. Not to mention having to pay up front and go through all the paperwork of buying from a US company. Cuba is in a unique position in that regard. All that for something that has not shown to be particularly deadly and for a vaccine that has not had time to show it is widely effective. Cuba has been successful up to this far at preventing the disease to take hold. It makes sense to continue on that path, rather than forgetting all that has worked and adopting a mass vaccination policy instead.
Now will Cuba accept donated vaccines? Of course it will. But I doubt Cuba is going to spend millions of dollars for this thing. That is all that is being said.
Leftside,
Cuban relying on prevention? If there is something that the Cuban health authorities have done over the year is universal and compulsory vaccination to the point of including some vaccines that are not usually administered in the US on a customary basis. Having said that if Cuba does not vaccinate, we will have a perfect experiment testing both approaches. A H1N1 will circulate in Cuba this winter if it circulates in Venezuela, in Europe, and in Mexico. It is surprising to see your detached scientific and cost-sensitive approach to something that entails significant human risks. Weren't you the humanist in this blog?
Vecino de NF
Vecino, few countries can do what Cuba can. By spending 1/10,000th of the dollars, Cuba can do a 10x better job than taking the US approach. I'll bet anything on that.
Vaccination is part of prevention - where it makes scientific sense. I believe in having the doses available to all people everywhere (capitalists do not) but there must be other equally important public health duties and responsibilities. People flying in from Mexico and the US are going to be screened in Cuba and tested if they show signs of flu. This just makes sense. Cuba would be idiotic not to emphasize this and other proven, effective tactics that rely on human capital - not stuffing money in glaxosmithkline's pockets. It is humanist to be thrifty with the people's money - particularly when the results are better.
Uh oh... I bet Vecino is going to do the math on 1/10,000. Let's see, if my head's math is right, that would be approx. $2.4B for the US (150 mil doses x 2 x $8ea.) and $200,000 for Cuba. That might be pretty close actually... And there is no doubt Cuba will have fewer deaths and infected people.
vecino -- you've thrown out 'Mono' again,, as some sort of red herring in regards to the Cubana Airlines bombing.
Are you talking about Ricardo Morales, well known informer for the FBI, CIA DEA, who once turned evidence against Bosch. He was well connected in the drug world.
The Mono who made his "confession" to Posada's lawyer, a confession so ridiculous no one believed it for one second.
The Mono who was then soon after gunned down in a hit by a drug gangster, to make sure he'd never had a chance to tell anything different. And then the lawyer was killed as well.
Not one government agency, not one serious person, has ever given his confession any credibility. So are you trying to make it look like this dead man was connected, or are you trying to deflect responsibility from the real terrorists, Bosch and Posada?
NO right thinking person would ever attempt to try and link Mono to the bombing of Cubana, where there is so much overwhelming and irrefutable evidence to prove Bosch and Posada were the masterminds.
Unless you have any other proof -- did Mono ever get charged, prosecuted, jailed for this confession of his?
So unless you have something no one else knows, quit trying to defend two of the world's worst terrorists living freely and openly in miami.
Read the 2006 Atlantic article on all this for more details. But unless this is a deliberate attempt to inject something that is meaningless, and to try and misdirect from the real terrorists, not sure why you continue to bring this up.
Unless you have absolutely no faith in any investigation ever done on the subject.
Bosch and Posada are terrorists living freely in Miami. How you reconcile that with your worldview is for you to decide, but the facts don't lie.
pidgen; you really need to get better handlers. if you think there is no evidence about posada and bosch's role in cubana airline, really what the hell is in the water your drink.
he recanted his admission, oh WELL that certainly means something.
go read pidgen, read something, read the documents from the American government, read the evidence. from the american side, don't you trust that?
oh right, nevermind, facts evidence truth, it just don't matter to pidgen. it's just beyond your intellectual capacity to acknowledge anything that challenges your deeply held view of reality. maybe it's better that way.
but for your own sake, stop it, ok, just kidding, keep doing it, it's great cabaret. i just wish you could understand how this denial of reality does nothing but promote the perception of ignorance, intolerance and goes such a long way for the moderates to determine how out of touch you really are. Maybe you're a Cuban agent, but they're usually not so unsophisticated. so you're just a gusano, or worse -- a pidgen.
Leftside,
"And there is no doubt Cuba will have fewer deaths and infected people." This is almost a certainty in numerical terms (Cuba has less than 4% of the USA population) but it remains to be seen how this pandemic evolves in proportional terms. BTW to compare USA and Cuba health expenditures in dollar terms is misleading because of the less than transparent price structure in Cuba.
Anonymous October 8, 2009 8:57 AM,
Yup, that's the character about whom I inquired. BTW when did I defended Posada Carriles or Bosch? Please quote me?
Anonymous October 8, 2009 9:10 AM,
What is a pidgen?
To all,
Thank you for the admonition to read! After all reading is fundamental, although D.H.Lawrence did not necessarily agree!
Vecino de NF
I was talking about proportionality Vecino.
No sooner than I write that I expect some Latin Americans will be confused about how a real court of law works than one blunders in to prove my point.
chingon
And now the US appears to be coming around to the Cuban position on H1N1 - of screening airline passengers and quarantine as needed to protect the population.
Leftside,
"And now the US appears to be coming around to the Cuban position on H1N1 - of screening airline passengers and quarantine as needed to protect the population."
Forget A H1N1 pandemic, stupidity is spreading even faster! First we had get rid of the nail clippers, then came off the shoes, then shampoo had to be left in trash bin, and now we are up to have some barely HS graduate evaluate our health status! I am looking forward to the full cavity search to prevent those pesky anal retentive suicide bombers! Next time I go flying I will cough, sneeze, and flick some buggers at the ceiling!
Maybe the next big idea to catch on will be bringing over la Libreta and Trabajo Voluntario to the USA!
Vecino de NF
Vecino
it seems like all governments having problem with the H1NI -- hopefully it won't be as bad as people think, but the tendency is to overreact -- not surprising really.
interested in your comment re Mono in light of his background information, do you think he was involved in Cubana bombing?
pidgen is what chingon is; for the background on the term go to the sept 14, 2009 post, Embargo alive and well.
Anonymous October 9, 2009 9:39 AM,
Disagree with the comment that "it seems like all governments having problem with the H1NI ...". We are having trouble with the A H1N1 virus and many government officials all over the world are aggravating the situation by creating panic and aprehension rather reassuring the public with real facts and solid science. In the case of Cuba there has been more than one instance that when confronted with a health crisis the first kneejerk reaction is to try to find the "hand of the enemy" in the natural ocurrence of disease (Optical and peripheral neuropathy in the early 1990s comes to mind).
On the Mono Morales question: I am no expert nor participated in the 1960s/1970s shenanigans of the War of the Worlds (what the Cold War was called by the more radical Cuban exiles) but Posada Carriles accuses Mono Morales of being involved if not in the Cubana bombimg in the aftermath that led to his arrest by Venezuelan authorities. It appears to me that the Posada Carriles' trial in Venezuela was extremely politicized to the point that acquitals were reversed in a way that would appear to violate double jeopardy prohibitions in the USA so until Posada Carriles is found guilty of the Cubana bombing by what I would consider due process (I'll use US judicial procedure as a yardstick), I am going to hold judgement on his guilt on this particular incidence. Having said that the Cubana bombing came at the end of a turbulent period where both the right and the left felt they were justified in using every means available to achieve their ends. If the exile community had their Posada Carriles and Bosh, the Cuban government side had their de la Guardia brothers et alles.
Unfortunately much of this history is going to the grave with the people who made it. In the end we are left looking back and concluding that it was largely a waste of humanity.
Vecino de NF
well said vecino
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