On the streets of Miami, Luis Posada Carriles might look like just one of the dozens of nice, elderly Cuban gentlemen who gather outside the Versailles Restaurant for a strong cup of java. But there is nothing nice or gentle about Posada Carriles. For starters, he is responsible for the 1976 downing of a Cuban passenger plane with 73 people on board-the first act of aviation terrorism in the Western hemisphere. In 1997 he orchestrated the bombing of hotels in Havana that resulted in the death of Italian businessman Fabio Di Celmo. In 2000 he was arrested, and later convicted, in Panama for plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro by blowing up an auditorium full of students.
On a recent trip to Venezuela, I learned of his sordid history of torturing and assassinating suspected leftists when he worked for the Venezuelan secret police. Jesus Marrero, a student leader in 1973, painfully recounted how Posada Carriles supervised his torture, including electrodes to his penis. Brenda Esquivel, captured when she was 8-months pregnant, says Posada ordered his men to “destroy the seed before it was born”–kicking her so brutally that the baby died in her womb. Her sister Marlene, who was imprisoned with her 20-day-old baby, was forced to watch as Posada’s agents burned her baby with cigarettes.
The U.S. Justice Department has called Posada “an unrepentant criminal and admitted mastermind of terrorist plots and attacks. ” When he was being held in a U.S. immigration detention center in 2005 for having sneaked into the country with a false passport, the Department of Homeland Security said that due to his long history of criminal activity and violence, his release from detention would “pose a danger to both the community and the national security of the United States.”
So why, then, does Luis Posada Carriles live freely in Miami, eating lechón asado at the Versailles Restaurant, socializing at the Big Five Club, exhibiting his paintings at the Miami Art Museum? Why isn’t he behind bars?
That’s the question that was on our mind when six of us from the women’s peace group CODEPINK went to Miami on January 12 to launch a campaign calling for Posada’s arrest. Armed simply with postcards and a banner asking the FBI to put him on the most-wanted list, we were attacked by a violent mob of Posada supporters as our vehicle moved along Calle Ocho in the heart of Miami’s Little Havana. The next day we were pelted with eggs and water bottles. Appearing on a Spanish-language TV program, I was told by fellow panelist Enrique Encinosa that I was “an enemy of the Cuban-American community” and that I shouldn’t be surprised if someone cracked my head open like a coconut.
Posada Carriles and his violent followers who impose their views in Miami through fear and intimidation are relics of the sordid history of U.S. policy in Latin America. Just as in the anti-Soviet efforts in Afghanistan where the U.S. government nurtured the Mujahadeen “freedom fighters” who fought the Soviets, so it trained, financed and provided shelter to those fighting left-leaning governments in this hemisphere, even democratically elected ones. Posada was trained by the U.S. Army and worked as an operative and asset of the CIA from 1960 to 1976. “The C.I.A. taught us everything. They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb, trained us in acts of sabotage, ” Mr. Posada told New York Times reporter Ann Louise Bardach in 1998. “Now they call it terrorism,” he added.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous remark about Nicaraguan dictator Somoza-”he may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch”-seems to apply to Posada Carriles. Indeed, Posada Carriles may be “our terrorist,” but allowing him to live freely in Miami makes a mockery of the war on terror. On February 8-10, CODEPINK’s anti-terrorist team will return to Miami. We will distribute cards calling for Posada’s arrest, show a documentary film on this man’s violent history, and ask locally elected leaders to join us in calling for Posada to be extradited to Venezuela, where he is wanted on 73 counts of homicide, or detained and prosecuted here in the United States. Unlike our last visit when the Miami police failed to protect us, this time-having ample warning–we expect the police to guarantee our constitutional right to free speech and free assembly.
Vice President Dick Cheney said that “Any person or government that supports, protects, or harbors terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent.” President Bush has repeatedly stated that “we will not rest until we eliminate the terrorists and rout them out.”
We understand that some members of Miami’s Cuban-American community consider Posada Carriles a hero for his anti-communist actions. But no cause is so noble that it justifies killing civilians. There is no such thing as good terrorism.
It is time for some moral consistency in this war on terror. Whether Osama bin Laden or Posada Carriles, we must bring all terrorists to justice.
Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of CODEPINK: Women for Peace
Thank You
Another example for the world to see American hypocrisy in action. It’s no wonder the world hates us. Be careful down there Medea, you’re in Bush territory.
Hoa binh
We will…show a documentary film on this man’s violent history.
If you don’t have a chance to see this film (which I presume is the excellent Venezuelan production, Posada Carriles: Terrorism Made in USA) in person, it can be purchased here. One of the key points emphasized in the film, which can be overlooked by a focus on Posada himself, is the key role the U.S. government, including such “notables” as George H.W. Bush as head of the CIA, in these events.
Burning a baby with cigarettes, Waterboarding, what the hell.
Bush is drinking the blood of children in a culture where memory of wrongdoing spans several hundred years.
In the name of Democracy
Justice has left us.
Most of the world dreads our presence, and mocks our pious and hollow calls for democracy and justice. We have become our own worst enemy by evolving into everything we warned the world about since 1945.
When we all think we are about worn out - and many of us are - we must remember - and believe - that we are the only thing standing between our children’s future in a free and open society, and a total fascist take over of the United States. I am an old man and many times I have wanted just to stop and relax, but every time I convince myself I deserve a break, the government passes some law or makes some extra-legal announcement that forces me to get back up, find my cohorts in this search for peace and justice, and continue to do what we have always done - speak truth to power, even as the masses continue to deny the reality of the situation, or are even too apathetic to care.
Never in the history of this country have we been in such danger; not in WWII, not during the Cold War. The greatest threat we will ever face will come from within - Jefferson stated as much many, many times. Even in helping to create the nation over 200 years ago he foresaw the powers that would eventually destroy it.
Take heart, our numbers are growing, I see it everyday. Keep constant pressure on your elected representatives - stand brave and tall in your communities, social circles, and churches. And do not make the mistake of posing as an anti-religionist; there is a growing evangelical movement in this country that is ideologically neutral, but fervently believes in social justice and peace. Continue to visit with young people and lay a base of knowledge within them that will withstand the onslaught of lies that has come from this administration, and the powers that created it. Salvation can only come from the belief that we all are striving for something worth more than our individual existence - freedom and justice for all.
We (the USA government) have an inconvenient history of supporting a lot of the “wrong people” covertly. Perhaps our behind-the-scenes meddling that is always too secret until years later has been some of our own undoing. The Shah, Bin Laden, Saddam, Somoza, this guy, Carriles? Is there a pattern? Can we break it?
We can break the pattern! It is our choice to make.
Keep researching, writing, talking and organizing. Expose what is going on. Some people don’t want to hear it or believe it, but just keep talking about it and presenting accurate information. Sunshine is often the best disinfectant.
go code pink!
re 12:44pm
the poster asks two questions about the u.s.’s historical support of tyrants and terrorists.
Q1: is there a pattern?
A1: yes. it’s called bipartisanship.
Q2: can we break it?
A2: yes, but voting for more of the same isn’t the way.
HURRAY FOR CODE PINK!! HURRAY FOR MEDEA BENJAMIN!!! I admire and salute you for your courage, bravery, and sincere efforts to put this most revolting terrorist Luis Posada Carriles behind bars where he belongs. What an outrage it all is: here is a terrorist who has killed hundreds and viciously tortured who knows how many more: and he is walking, freely, in downtown Miami–with his artwork on display at the Miami Art Museum! What a grotesque perversion of justice. This situation is yet another outrageous example of the revolting hypocrisy of the Bush Administration. Carriles BLOWS UP a passenger plane killing 73 civilians on board. Especially after the tragedy of 9-11 you would think the Bush Administration (if only for the cynical self-serving reason of APPEARING to be against terrorist attacks everywhere regardless of the circumstances) would arrest and incarcerate this scumbag Carriles. BUT NOOOOOO! As long as you kill, torture, maim and murder Cubans, Iraqis, socialists, Muslims, Palestinians, or South Americans who are struggling for a living wage and decent housing, Bush/Cheney will faithfully act as your enabler, allowing you to freely live in the USA without risk of jail or deportation for your crimes against humanity.
I simply cannot believe this terrorist Carriles is lounging around Miami socializing and freely living after what he has done! What an egregious and outrageous perversion of law and order in the USA. This also speaks volumes of the slimebag Cuban oligarchs-in-exile who worship and defend Carriles. Miami SUCKS!!! Boycott Miami.
In 1986, I found myself at a birthday party in Washington D. C. Many Congressmen, both senators and representatives were there to pay homage to the celebratee. The majority of other attendees were Cubans.
Observing the obeisance of our elected reps, I asked who this important figure being feted was.
He wwas the former head of Bautista’s secret police.
Looking back, I’ll bet Carriles was somewhere in the audience
I wonder what the euphamism for burning a baby with cigarettes is in the Republican circles?
Just like waterboarding isn’t “controlled drowning”, it’s just plain drowning someone and then resusitating them so you can do it again, and it certainly isn’t protecting me.
Kill your TV
Yes, thank you- I was in Panama when he was released in what was seen by many as a nice little “bribe” put out by Bush et al. He was granted a presidential pardon by then Panamanian president Mireya Moscoso just before she left office. My uneducated and uniformed yet paranoid guess is that her prize was to keep her US visa that we should have taken away for her corruption like her precedessor Erensto Perez “El Toro” Balladeres (she was WAY worse than that guy). Anyway, we lock up “suspected” terrorists but let this guy walk free. My biggest complaint is that this article and the protests are 4 years too late. Where was the press when this guy was released and entered illegally into the US? It was just prior to the 2004 Presidential elections, yet nobody jumped on it. What a story it could have been- “Convicted terrorist released due to US pressure on Panama.” I personally sent several letters to newspapers, tv stations, as this should have been a big enough story to sink GW et al in 2004. Now it is really too little too late.
No patriots in Miami — none in Washington, D.C., either.
Actually, the story was in the ‘press,’ just not the ‘press’ that most Americans are addicted to.
Nation magazine did a very thorough story on this a few months ago - check it out for details.
Well, it makes sense. Fidel Castro headed a just revolution in Cuba. Batista was up to his eyeballs cavorting with the American Mafia, the Mafia controlled the Cuban gambling, luxury hotels, reasturants, prostitution and the drug trade. The vast majority of citizens of Cuba were dirt poor and had no fair health care, schools or any decent infastructure. Their government was as corrupt and evil as Saddam’s was.
Fidel Castro won the fight for freedom in Cuba in 1949 and drove the corrupt leaders out of town, most of the high roller Cuban businessmen and their families fled to Florida and were welcomed with open arms by our government. Castro asked for aid from the United States, to help Cuba develop a decent country. He was refused any aid and instead our democratic government placed trade sanctions on Cuba.
Several times, our presidents then backed covert actions to have Castro Assinated and even attempted an armed invasion of their land. Castro turned to The Soviet Union for help and he recieved it. Of course he had to become a full fledged Communist. So how did it eventually all turn out?
Cuba has a fairly well run country, not half bad. The people have ‘excellent’ health care, decent housing, decent living conditions and ‘excellent’ schools. It’s a Communist nation, ___ like our “good friends” China and Russia are. Castro is still the dictatorial leader, but he’s never been a Joseph Stalin or a Saddam. We still refuse to have trade relatins with Cuba, but we do run a “wonderful” prison for “convicted” terrorists on their island country.
What the F##k have (we the people) been doing here in America? __ Oh, almost forgot, Castro pissed off the Mafia and some American high rollers, maybe they still have some influence with our government?
If we have an election in November, our next president, __ either Obama or Hillary, should go visit Fidel Castro before he dies, beg forgiveness and ask what we Americans could do to help his people. Our president might even shut that rotten prison down, and or, use it for criminals like this Luis Posada fella and some of our Blackwater troops.
profound thanks for your work in this matter.
TROJAN AGENDA? –Burn, Baby, BURN…
“…who knew?
While overhearing guffaws & careless cheering
from the belly of the beast, that all about it now should
gather threats of patriotic fillibuster, lighting & passing torchfire…”
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/content/view/3354/81/
May his reckoning be @ Hand! and a POX on his grotesque enabler, Hou$e Bushelzebub!
Thanks for acting on courageous conviction, Code Pink!
He may be a terrorist, but he’s our terrorist - FDR or Hull or Dulles (paraphrased)
If only the rest of the country had the courage of Medea Benjamin and CodePink; what a different, different world this would be.
Thank-you, Medea. If only our congressional representatives were half as courageous about impeachment as you are about speaking truth to power.
Only the truth will set us free. We cannot continue as the so-called greatest democracy ever until all Americans are willing to open ourselves up to the truth. Then, and only then, will we be able to take our country back from the thugs that stole it decades ago, and return to our ideals.
Medea is one brave woman. Remember several months back when she was turned back from the Canadian border because she is on some FBI list? Even though she had been invited by Canadian government officials to speak on peace?
Stay safe Medea. You are going to Jeb Bush country. I’m not sure the local police are your best bet for protection. I really don’t want you to go down as a martyr.
By the way, how do we get publicity for Medea’s trip so people will be watching to help keep her safe?
If the US is fighting a “war” against terrorists, then why is it allowing them to live in its midst ? The article certainly raises a lot of valid issues.
I wish I could join you Code Pink. Be careful your up against the “Cuban Mafia” supported by the Bush’s and others that believe in there form of burtal terror.
ZeroPointField February 8th, 2008 12:38 pm Said: “Burning a baby with cigarettes, Waterboarding, what the hell.”
THAT is the american way! The Americans are the ones that taught these people how to torture… how to kill. THIS is what the United States has represented since the beginning. Death, Torture, Genocide.
double speak for burning child with cigarette:
pediatric dermal oxygenation
Why do we allow the demons to run amok?
We understand that some members of Miami’s Cuban-American community consider Posada Carriles a hero for his anti-communist actions.
The communist/capitalist contest is not even legitimate, so the agenda of the Cuban community in Miami, to achieve capitalist domination over Cuba, is rotten. The Cuban community can fix the rot by advocating a moderate balance of communism and capitalism in Cuba.
A moderate balance does not mean a capitalist mafia under a facade of social justice. We consider that just as rotten as raw capitalist domination. A moderate balance allows capitalism to provide some dynamics and efficiencies, but strongly limits its excesses, and smashes it back down when it gets uppity.
So this is the kind of society progressives want worldwide - one where the capitalists live in fear of the rabble. Of course, we are a civilized rabble - until the capitalists get uppity, then we have to perform our civic duty on their capitalist skulls.
Medea and all- My prayers go out to you. You are the new Ghandi
Medea for attorney general!
Keep in mind this is the country that was founded by an insurgent militia leader that attacked an international peacekeeping force on the early morning of a Holy day. ” The Christian Right is neither” (pass it on)
I wish I knew there was a Hell, I would buy them all a room.
Here’s my letter to the editor of the local newspaper; published over my name on June 6, 2005. This was in response to someone’s letter which decried the ‘brutality’ of Fidel Castro, after I’d written an initial letter of praise for Cuba following my visit to the island in 2003. The headline assigned to this commentary was: ‘Cuban terrorist proves an embarrassment to the Bush administration’ This is an extremely Republican area of the country, by the way:
“When considering asking the Cuban community in Miami about Fidel Castro’s brutality, perhaps we should first ask Mr. Orlando Bosch. He lives in Miami, and he’s been on the U.S. government’s list of international terrorists since the mid 1970s. Bosch got his “big break” in the terrorism business by firing a bazooka at a freighter bound for Havana in 1968. He’s also boasted on Miami television to having masterminded the bombing of a Cubana Airlines passenger plane which blew up just after take-off from Barbados in 1976, killing all 73 people on board, including the entire Cuban Youth Fencing Team. Former President George Bush granted him immunity and legal resident status when son ‘Jeb’ first considered becoming governor and sought the support of Miami’s wealthy Mafia thugs. Bush had been CIA Director back in 1976, and numerous FBI, CIA and State Department documents prove that Washington was well aware of the plan to blow up the Cuban airliner beforehand. Chew on that one–the world’s first terrorist bombing of a civilian airliner happened with the full knowledge of the U.S. government.
“Or perhaps we should ask Mr. Luis Posada Carriles about Fidel Castro’s brutality. Posada knows a few things about brutality because he’s been the Western Hemisphere’s worst international terrorist for decades. He cut his teeth in brutality at the Bay of Pigs, just before the CIA sent him to terrorism school and paid his salary as he assisted in the airliner bombing, planted bombs in hotels and nightclubs around Havana, attempted to blow up a university auditorium along with at least 1,000 students who were scheduled to hear Fidel Castro speak, and generally assisted in murdering over 3,500 Cuban nationals over the past four decades.
“Recently Posada sneaked into the United States. He’s probably been in Miami since early March, lounging poolside with Cuban Mafia bigwigs. I guess he figured our government owes him a little something for having murdered so many Cubans, Salvadorians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans, Chileans, and other Latin American leftists, so he decided to enjoy his retirement in Miami. George Bush’s other son finally had to arrest him, because it was becoming a little too embarrassing for him to continue to ignore the worst international terrorist in the western hemisphere, being the hard-working terrorist fighter that he is.
“In addition to asking the Miami Cubans about Fidel’s brutality, maybe we should also be asking Fidel about the brutality of the Miami Cubans. This is a subject he’s certainly an expert in. But then, Fidel has been standing on rooftops shouting all this for 40 years and nobody in the United States has heard him. All that’s required of us is to sit back and swallow all this stuff the U.S. government and the corporate media have been feeding since 1959 about the brutality of Fidel Castro.
“Fidel has imprisoned people for attempting to overthrow the Cuban government. Right-wing moralists seem always ready to point that out. What they fail to acknowledge (or simply don’t know) is that these people have, collectively, accepted millions of dollars from the CIA and the right-wing Miami Cubans in their efforts to turn the Cuban economy into just another hapless victim of the predatory World Bank and International Monetary Fund. They are paid agents of a foreign government, and that also happens to be a serious crime in the U.S. for which people are imprisoned.
“While attempting to find a moral justification for greed, right-wingers should note that the U.S. presently has over two million of its own citizens incarcerated. This 25 percent of all people incarcerated in the entire world, and seems a remarkable achievement since our population is only 6 percent of the total world population.
“I’m here to tell you in no uncertain terms that there are horrendous human rights abuses currently going on in Cuba. And they are occurring at the U.S. military detention center at Guantanamo Bay. This is where George W. Bush is torturing all those Afghani taxi drivers, chicken farmers and teenagers who were rounded up when the United States military invaded their country. But somehow I doubt that the worst international terrorist in this hemisphere will ever see the inside of that hellhole. Who knows? Posada Carriles may even find a second career traveling around the country and speaking at Christian fundamentalist churches.”
I’m sorry Medea, but you seem very naive. Do you really think that this administration is concerned about fighting terrorism? The U.S. is the biggest sponsor of terrorism on the planet bar none! The ‘War on Terror’ is nothing more than a propaganda slogan to justify the raping of the public treasury to finance weapon manufacturers. You won’t get coverage from the corporate main stream media because it contradicts the offical line. You may get beaten up and thrown in jail because most cops in Florida are hired only when they pass the Republican stooge test. Finally many of the Cuban bandits that got thrown out of Cuba for their allegiance to the vicious and corrupt Bautista, may very well interfere in your own ‘quiet enjoyment’.
Nevertheless I will attend the CODEPINK protest in Miami armed with a camera and pray for your safety. But keep in mind that our current ‘elected’ officials consider you and not Posada to be a danger to the status quo.
~MIFTIN~ I do wish your 9:34pm blog, could be printed as a Common Dreams article.
first husband was , I suppose remains a Cuban. His family was upper middle class, all asserts seized they left, they will do anything to screw Castro, hatehim with a passion ,they do.
As a member and thanking her she hadn’t enough civility, as well as they are censoring posts?
Hmm this world is starting to fade -away from pink for me.
Sorry ~O-Roe~ and I mean that. The upper and so called upper middle class of Cubans when Castro took over, were usually just as guilty as those in our country are, of taking all they can and screw the lower class “swine”. Castro did not do that to all of the wealthier, it depended entirely upon how they earned their status.
And most of the 9/11 terrorists were Arabs.
and who is GW Bush always kissing and holding hands with?
Hey Golddogs, Arabs aren’t the problem. Terrorists, Bush, the military and medical industrial complexes and the Rush Limbaughs of the world are the problems. Do you really think 9-11 would have happened if American corporations weren’t so entrenched in the Middle East?
There is a case at the moment, where the US want to extradite a British citizen, for “suspected” glorification or encouragement of terrorism charges. He has not actually carried out any terrorist event, or been involved in one. He is at the moment in prison in the UK.
Wouldn’t it be great and justified, if Venezuela’s Mr Chavez were to ask for the extradition of Luis Posada Carriles, back to the country where he carried out actual crimes, rather than perceived ones?
It’s quite obvious that the US and UK use a whole set of different rules, when it comes to dealing with terrorists which they have nurtured. It’s time that the World had a central criminal court, which had the balls to deal with cases like this, and not be manipulated by the superpowers.
Unless I missed it, but “Democracy Now”! still hasn’t touch this story. I emailed them about what what was going on with Media in Miami, but still no response. Hopefully, things will change this week.
All hail Medea Benjamin and Code Pink!
I have a picture of Medea running with the US flag along side Iraq Veterans Against the War with in an echoing sound chamber along the demonstration path in DC this past fall: I bow before Medea for all the inspiration and knowledge she has transferred to me…
…however…
Why on January 12 of 2008 is she and Code Pink in Miami rabble rousing in the name of Carriles when, as stated by other commentators, two of the biggest and arrogant terrorists of all time continue to issue their sadistic imperial dictates from the White House?
As Representative Wexler delivers his close to a 1/4 of a million signatures imploring impeachment to the Judiciary Committee this week: How do I stay on topic? - How do I culture the mindfulness needed to hold the line on helping to organize and bring about the greatest display and confrontation of human suicidal sadistic arrogant behavior in the history of humanity?
How do I stay focused on impeachment?
The terrorists in the white house and pentagon have the blood of over a million Iraqi people of all ages on their filthy hands. They prevent world peace with no remorse, and are ever thirsty for more blood. Deception is their trademark and they are very good at it. The bastards have half of the USA believing that their sadistic terrorist activities form a “war” on terror.
====
“Man must change or die. There is no other course.”
The World Teacher
http://www.Share-International.org
Behind this blindered injustice is the tiny “Cuban mafia” of Miami, with a major chapter in New Jersey. It has grown out of touch with the Florida Cuban-American population, 58% of whom disagree with the ban on trade with and travel to Cuba. But Congress, the White House, and presidential aspirants all take their cue on anything Cuban from this evil little oligarchy, lauding it as “pro-democratic” and “freedom-loving”, and ignoring the absurdity of its policy positions and the viciousness of its reaction to opposing voices. Incidentally7, Hillary’s position on all this is almost identical to Bush’s. Obama is a wee bit more flexible and open, but is hardly a proponent of fundamental change.
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Laughter is Sexy, yes?
Medea Benjamin rocks!
It’s funny, but most of the people I know in the non-cyber world are more educated than I am, having college degrees and whatnot (I don’t), and most of them keep telling me I’m way too pessimistic re the world of politics. I wish they were right.
Again, I thank you all for the thoughtful inspiring comments on Medea’s article. I march with the brave, couragous women of Code Pink and that heroic little woman who sets the example for all that is decent and wholesome in the world, the one and only, Medea Benjamin!
KEM PATRICK; Accurate history lesson on Cuba, before Castro. May I add something.
An older friend of mine, a WW2 Navy vet who was a genuine scholar and intellectual, went to Cuba on vacation ( Havana ) in the 50’s when the “jet set” flew there for the casino action and the nightclubs. He was more interested in learning about Cuba and it’s people than gambling and the shows in the club. He said the people were impoverished and Batista and his corrupt regime kept it that way.
In the mid-sixties, about five or six years after the 1959 Revolution, my friend went to Canada (as we in the U.S. were not allowed to go) and obtained a Visa and flew to Cuba to see what kind of change, for better or for worse, Fidel imposed on his fellow citizens. He was impressed! Food was rationed, Milk was for the young and elderly, and everything was tightly controlled, but Castro wanted his population educated and brought many educators in from the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations. But with endless attempts at trying to bump off Fidel since day one, what’s a person to do? JFK, (the myth aside) desperately wanted the Cuban leader killed, and the Mafia was contacted to see if they could perform the task where the CIA failed.
With 57 plus years of sanctions, and with the Soviet aid package ending when that government fell apart, the Cuban people are still poor, but not as bad as they were under Batista.
I served in the Army with one of those wealthy white Cubans whose family fled to Miami with their stolen loot. Patriotic, yeah, for oligarchy and despotism.
I LOVE YOU MEDEA, and ALL YOU OTHER WOMEN OF CODE PINK!
Medea Benjamin and her colleagues were threatened in Miami by agents of a foreign exile group. This is terrorism - plain and simple. It doesn’t take some ‘expert’ from Johns Hopkins to tell us this. It is well known that this Cuban exile group has supplied assassins who have operated freely both within the US and elsewhere. Posadas Carriles is only one example.
There are two very special groups who exercise this kind of violence and have very special political hold over American administrations both local and national - The Cuban Exile Right and the Israeli American Zionists. Both have had agents in numerous administrations going back quite a ways. But never have they been as powerful and influential (and deadly) as they have been in the Bush Regime. Their unique control of foreign policy in two key areas of the world - the Middle East and Latin America-Caribbean - is truly frightening and has had genocidal consequences. They both work against the interests of the broad masses of the American people (including most assimilated Cuban Americans and Jewish Americans). The results of their control is pretty clear: Miami is a lawless center of money laundering, drug cartels and Cuban thugs threatening the lives and safety of thousands of law-abiding Americans. Death squads in Central American and places like Venezuela have received major training and leadership, as well as funding, from these criminals. Shadowy elements in the US government fund these groups to do their dirty work with ‘plausible deniability’.
Zionists, acting in the interests of Israel, in the US administration and opinion-making bodies have been key to pushing this country into invading and occupying Iraq with over one million dead Iraqi citizens and 5 million refugees, and are now using their unique and unprecedented power within Bush’s inner circles to push for a pre-emptive attack on Iran.
These two small but powerful strategically situated groups - representing foreign interests - are the greatest threat facing our country in this time of economic and social crisis.
What Posada Carriles could do and could order done to captured ‘leftists’ (and their babies) under his control and what Israeli Zionists could do to thousands of Palestinians and Lebanese activists and civilians…their agents could do (without any qualms) to anyone of us who might threaten their unique grip on the balls of our political administrations.
Posada Carriles could only carry out his sadistic acts in the shadows and with CIA backing. His precious colleagues pissed in their uniforms when confronted with the Cuban defenders during the Bay of Pigs.
Israelis freely tortured their captives and dropped millions of cluster bomblets on Lebanese civilians - but folded before the organized united nationalist resistance of the Lebanese under Hezbollah.
The US misadventure into Iraq, a promised ‘cake walk’ by the Zionists, where ‘tribal, primitive Arabs’ would be unable to sustain a nationalist resistance - has been a disaster and is bankrupting and corrupting this huge country of ours.
These are the consequences of such foreign influence in our government and the inevitable heroic response.
Medea Benjamin is confronting the devil. She is in good company!