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Odds and ends
- While Cuba has removed
restrictions on its citizens’ foreign travel, Cubans still have to get
visas from the countries that they intend to visit. Ecuador is one of the few countries that allows
Cubans to come without a visa, and as a result a Cuban community has grown
in Quito in recent years, and many Cubans go there as the first stop in a
journey to Mexico, and then the United States. But as of next Monday, there’s a new
requirement: for each Cuban who visits, a citizen or legal resident of
Ecuador must present a letter of invitation. The letter must be notarized, and the
signer must demonstrate “economic solvency” and commit to cover the Cuban’s
food, lodging, and medical expenses.
A host may “invite only one Cuban in a twelve-month period” and the
Cuban is limited to a 90-day visit.
(AFP)
- A Venezuelan government statement
says President Chavez is “conscious,” talking with visitors, and “his
general clinical evolution in the past few days has been favorable.”
- Reuters
on CIMEQ, the Havana hospital where President Chavez is being treated.
- The blog Punt
de Vista reports that “in parallel with the negotiations to free Angel
Carromero,” the Spanish government has provided 354,000 Euros in grants to
organizations in Spain that work in “solidarity” with the Cuban government.
- Rafters who were
intercepted and repatriated by the Coast Guard tell their story in this video from Hablemos
Press.
- Calling on Senator
Menendez to oppose the nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel for
Secretary of Defense, Washington Post blogger Jennifer
Rubin quotes Senator Rubio saying that Cuba has posed a “severe
security threat” to the United States for the “last half a century.” Actually, if Hagel were to enter the
Pentagon and spout that view, they would think he’s as crazy as Captain
Queeg.
- Tampa
Tribune: As of next month, there will be three weekly flights from
Cuba to Tampa instead of five.
- Tracey Eaton reports
that the U.S. government’s response to the $60 million lawsuit filed by
jailed USAID contractor Alan Gross is to claim immunity and to ask the
court to dismiss the suit.
- It’s fair to grant that
Spanish Partido Popular activist Angel Carromero may have something to say
in Spain that he would not say in Cuba regarding the accident that killed
Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero in his car last July. But it’s time to put up or shut up,
argues this editorial in Diario
de Cuba, and I agree.
2 comments:
So do I!
All he has to do is to answer a very simple question with a yes or no answer.
Was the car he was driven pushed off the road by another car or did he drive it off the road himself?
All this delay prolongs unnecessarily the suffering of the Paya family and makes one suspect that the leadership of the Popular Party is trying to get Carromero to make something up that could be used as political propaganda against the Cuban government.
All this is so stupid! The Cuban government has been guilty of human rights abuses in the past and will probably commit them again in the future.
What possible need is there in this instance to manufacture a human rights violation that did not
occur?
All this is totally counterproductive and will have the obvious result of reducing the credibility of future reports of real violations of human rights in Cuba when they occur.
It is a known fact that when a sheperd cries wolf falsely other sheperds will not believe his flock is being attacked when he yells for help.
Besides it is repulsive to seek to make political hay out of a human tragedy and also very poor politics.
Cantaclaro
About the Gross suit what the US government should do is investigate why Alan Gross was made to incurr in unnecessary danger by:
1- Ordering him to attempt to smuggle BGANs through Cuban customs when they could have been introduced into the island through diplomatic mail?
2- Set up this hardware in Cuban territory when they could have worked equally well without being confiscated from sites with diplomatic immunity?
The US government should also investigate who ordered these things and for what purpose this was done?
Asking the court for immunity is a very comfortable way of hiding your errors, protecting those responsible for them and ensuring that they will be repeated in the future.
It also does not render appropriate relief to the Gross family for the difficulties it is going through as a result of this whole imbroglio.
If the US government did not investigate the matter and is seeking to cover it up, the court should carry out a thorough investigation before rendering a verdict in order to provide Gross' family adequate relief in case he was unnecessarily emdangered for no reason at all.
Cantaclaro
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