[lbo-talk] Re: Cuba petition (Chomsky, Zinn, Ariel Dorfman et. al.)

JBrown72073 at cs.com JBrown72073 at cs.com
Sat Apr 26 17:08:15 PDT 2003



>> Maybe I am thick, but isn't it odd that neither of these U.S. generated
>> petitions condemns our own government for pumping millions of dollars into
>> opposition groups in what no-one disagrees is a foreign attempt to
>> destabilize the Cuban government? And which it seems reasonable to
believe
>> is a provocation.
>
>> Jenny Brown
>
Dennis Perrin writes:
>Well, here's the CPD petition in full:

Yeah, I read it. In general terms it condemns U.S. attacks but doesn't speak of the issue at hand. I mean, do we think the U.S. gov't *didn't* pay people, or that they did but didn't *know* that was illegal, under Cuban law?

Or that they *never* thought the Cuban gov't would actually *enforce* the law? It's our job to deal with our government, which started this mess.

Also, on the issue of long prison sentences, almost two years ago the U.S. sentenced, for 'espionage,' five men who had infiltrated Cuban exile terrorist groups in Miami, keeping tabs on them in case they planned attacks against Cuba, and reporting to the Cuban government. The sentences for the five are as follows:

Antonio Guerrero: life Ramón Labañino: life Gerardo Hernández: 2 life sentences René González: 15 years Fernando González: 19 years

These were also for nonviolent offenses, arguably they were doing what at least some of the defendants in the current Cuba cases were doing--acting as (unregistered) agents of a foreign government. The comparison is not lost on Cubans, I'm sure, because 'the five' anti-terrorist prisoners are huge news in Cuba, I get the impression from radio Havana Cuba that they're folk heroes, with songs written about them, etc. etc. Maybe a prisoner swap is contemplated.

There's more info at www.freethefive.org , a website which used to be truly awful, both its layout and its information/rhetoric ratio. Now it seems to be a bit less hysterical and more informative. Amnesty and the NLG are both working on the cases. And of course, there's a petition.

Jenny Brown



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