Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalThey risked everything to open a door to Cuba. They were shunned for it.
They risked everything to open a door to Cuba. They were shunned for it.
Tina Griego • January 5, 2015
In the complicated, sometimes violent, always emotional history of relations between the United States and Cuba, resides an obscure chapter about 55 young exiles. All were still children when they left Cuba in the early 1960s, after Fidel Castro took power. In 1977, they returned.
“Los Cincuenta y Cinco Hermanos.” The 55 brothers and sisters. Better known as the Antonio Maceo Brigade, named for a revered general in the Cuban war for independence against the Spanish. Decades before President Obama and Cuban leader Raul Castro announced the restoration of diplomatic relations, the brigade was the standard bearer of an equal relationship between the two countries. Its youth risked everything to become a post-revolution bridge between Cuba and its exiles, shattering the persistent myth that all exiles were of the same mind, bent on the destruction of the Castro regime.
In Cuba, they would come to be welcomed as the brave heart of the revolutionary movement among youth throughout the world.
In the United States, they were called traitors, and one of their founders would be assassinated.
The young men and women of the Antonio Maceo Brigade brimmed with the zeal of the politically awakened and the anguish of childhoods interrupted. And they wanted to judge the results of the Cuban revolution for themselves. You could say they have been working and waiting 37 years for this new chapter to be written. And, true to their roots, you also could say they will believe its authenticity only when they see it.
More:
http://progresoweekly.us/risked-everything-open-door-cuba-shunned/
Ecuador Adopts Resolution Condemning US Sanctions Against Venezuela
Ecuador Adopts Resolution Condemning US Sanctions Against Venezuela
Latin America
14:25 30.12.2014 (updated 16:22 30.12.2014)
Ecuador's National Assembly passed a resolution expressing solidarity with Venezuela. The resolution was adopted Monday with 66 votes in favor of it, 16 votes against and eight abstentions.
MOSCOW, December 30 (Sputnik) – Ecuador's National Assembly has passed a resolution expressing solidarity with Venezuela and condemned the imposition of sanctions on the country by the United States, Venezuelan network TeleSur reported.
The resolution was adopted Monday with 66 votes in favor of it, 16 votes against and eight abstentions.
Assembly member Diego Vintimilla denounced the United States' imposition of sanctions against Venezuela, saying that the US legislators should not interfere in the internal affairs of Latin American countries. Vintimilla also accused the United States of double standards in its foreign policy and stressed the importance of respect for international legal obligations.
"If we are so determined to defend our principles let us comply with those specifying noninterference and respect of international law," Vintimilla was quoted as saying by TeleSur.
Earlier in December, US President Barack Obama approved sanctions on Venezuela. The sanctions target individuals who are allegedly responsible for human rights violations during February protests against President Nicolas Maduro's government.
More:
http://sputniknews.com/latam/20141230/1016396609.html
Pinochet's 'soundtrack to torture' made available to the public
Pinochet's 'soundtrack to torture' made available to the public
18 hours ago by Kath Paddison
A digital archive documenting music from the torture chambers, concentration camps and prisons of the former Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet is available to the public for the first time.
The online 'torture soundtrack', launching on 8 January 2015, is called Cantos Cautivos (Captive Songs) and includes songs written, sung and listened to in political detention – and the stories behind them.
It is the brainchild of Dr Katia Chornik - who herself is from Chile - a researcher at The University of Manchester's Music Department and the first scholar to investigate music under political detention in Chile.
When Pinochet seized power in 1973, the majority of the almost 40,000 political opponents imprisoned in over 1,000 detention centres suffered gruesome physical and psychological torture. Some of Pinochet's torture practices employed music and relate to CIA techniques.
Prisoners often used music as a means to cope with the harsh conditions and the uncertainty of not knowing if they would live or die. Survivors are being encouraged to upload their stories and songs to the Captive Songs website.
Some of the material on the archive are songs penned by the prisoners themselves, and in some cases recorded clandestinely in a concentration camp, like El puntúo (Cheeky Devil) and El suertúo (Lucky Devil) – all of the recordings are available to listen to.
More:
http://phys.org/news/2015-01-pinochet-soundtrack-torture.html
Brutal death of bull in festival angers Colombians
Source: Associated Press
Brutal death of bull in festival angers Colombians
Jan 5, 7:49 PM EST
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) -- The brutal killing of a bull in a popular festival in a town in northern Colombia has sparked indignation and calls for a public debate on traditions involving animal cruelty.
Animal rights activists and even some government officials are demanding legal action after a video appeared in Colombia showing dozens of people in Turbaco chasing the bull and killing it with machetes, rocks, knives and kicks. The killing took place during a "corraleja," or amateur bullfighting event held in some towns in the South American country.
Public Defender Jorge Otarola called the images "Dante-esque, painful and inhumane."
"The state's intervention is needed because, even though traditions should be respected, they must be updated to reduce the suffering of animals," he told The Associated Press.
Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/L/LT_COLOMBIA_BULL_KILLING?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2015-01-05-19-49-44
Guatemala ex-dictator forced to appear at genocide trial
Source: Agence France-Presse
Guatemala ex-dictator forced to appear at genocide trial
By AFP 1 hour ago.
Guatemala's former dictator Efrain Rios Montt was hauled to court on a stretcher Monday to attend his retrial on genocide charges after the judge rejected his request for sick leave.
Judge Jeannette Valdez ordered police to fetch the 88-year-old former ruler, who is accused of ordering the army to massacre 1,771 Ixil Maya Indians during Guatemala's brutal civil war.
Rios Montt, who ruled Guatemala with an iron fist in the early 1980s, was sentenced in 2013 to 80 years in prison for genocide and war crimes, but the country's Constitutional Court threw out the conviction on procedural grounds and ordered a retrial.
After Valdez rejected his request to be tried in absentia, saying medical documents did not indicate his health problems were high-risk, Rios Montt was brought into court on a stretcher with his face covered.
Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/guatemala-ex-dictator-forced-to-appear-at-genocide-trial/article/422673
(Efrain Rios-Montt has been supported throughout his reign by the U.S. American right-wing, Ronald Reagan, and the U.S. televangelists.)
Understanding the causes of Colombia’s conflict: political exclusion
Understanding the causes of Colombia’s conflict: political exclusion
Jan 5, 2015 posted by Joel Gillin
With Colombia’s peace talks back on track, the country is looking at what has caused the 50 years of violence that according to the government has left almost a million dead. One of the recognized causes is a political exclusion that is older than the country itself.
According to Father Fernan Gonzalez, a well-known academic and conflict analyst, “Colombian society has not established a consensus on the nature and origins of the armed conflict.”
Many believe that the conflict with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (the FARC), along with the handful of other armed leftist insurgencies that have existed throughout the last 50 years, can be attributed to the individual choices and actions of these groups seeking wealth and power.
Most historians and conflict analysts, however, would posit that there exist structural factors – for complex historical reasons – that have created an environment which is conducive to violence and armed conflict.
More:
http://colombiareports.co/understanding-causes-colombias-conflict-political-exclusion/
The “Selfless Friendship” of Cuba’s Solidarity Groups
January 05, 2015
The Release of the Cuban Five
The “Selfless Friendship” of Cuba’s Solidarity Groups
by STEPHEN KIMBER
In the sweet afterglow of last month’s historic rapprochement between the United States and Cuba, much has been made of the pivotal roles played by Pope Francis, the Canadian government, New York Times editorialists, various American politicians and their aides, even “sperm diplomacy.”
All that is true, of course, but there are many other narratives in this larger tale too, perhaps none more compelling than the against-all-odds, never-say-never global campaign to “free the Cuban Five.” For a decade and a half, small, dedicated, disparate, sometimes competing groups of political activists in the United States and around the world have demonstrated, lobbied, lettered, conferenced, tribunaled, cajoled and hectored in a seemingly quixotic quest to win the release of five imprisoned Cuban men.
The Five were members of a Cuban intelligence network dispatched to South Florida in the 1990s to infiltrate and report back to Havana on Miami exile groups that were plotting — and carrying out — deadly terrorist attacks against their homeland. In June 1998, Cuban State Security shared the fruits of its intelligence on some of those plots — including one to blow up an airplane filled with beach-bound tourists — with American authorities. Three months later, the FBI swooped in and arrested… not the terrorists but the Cuban agents. Charged in hostile-to-all-things-Castro Miami and tried against the backdrop of an emotional child custody tug-of-war between Havana and Miami over the fate of rescued rafter child Elian Gonzàlez, the Five were summarily convicted and sentenced to unconscionably long terms in American prisons. The network’s leader, Gerardo Hernandez, received a double-life-plus-15-year sentence.
For the Cuban government, winning the release of the three members of the Five still in American prisons — each of them a certifiable, first-name-basis hero at home — was the sine qua non for everything else that happened Dec. 17: freeing American USAID contractor Alan Gross, handing over a Cuban national convicted of spying for the United States, agreeing to re-establish diplomatic relations with Washington and all the possibilities and perils that will inevitably flow from that…
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/05/the-selfless-friendship-of-cubas-solidarity-groups/
Is Fusion Doing The U.S. Government’s Bidding On Cuba?
January 05, 2015
The Groundwork for Future Intervention
Is Fusion Doing The U.S. Government’s Bidding On Cuba?
by MATT PEPPE
Journalist Jorge Ramos recently leveled some serious accusations against former Cuban President Fidel Castro, accusing him of amassing a fortune stolen from Cuban taxpayers and engaging in widespread drug trafficking. Ramos, a hugely popular news personality on the Spanish language network Univision and new sister cable network Fusion, eagerly parrots the hearsay of a former Castro bodyguard who is – coincidentally – promoting a new book. With the U.S. government still bent on regime change in Cuba despite the recent announcement of the normalization of relations between the two countries, they must be pleased. The narrative Ramos creates could help lay the groundwork for future U.S. intervention in Cuba, or at least help to discredit a revolutionary hero who remains staunchly opposed to U.S. foreign policy and imperialism.
The source for Ramos’s Dec. 23, 2014 column is Reinaldo Sánchez, who allegedly served for 17 years as Castro’s bodyguard from 1977-1994. According to Ramos, Sánchez arrived in the United States in 2008 but had not gone public with his accusations until he released his book “Fidel Castro’s Hidden Life.” One could speculate that without guaranteed housing, food allowance, and health care, as Sánchez enjoyed while he was in Cuba, he may have been under financial pressure once in the States. Cuban dissident Yoani Sánchez (no relation) was under similar pressure while living abroad in Switzerland in 2004. Her inability to find work and earn a living forced her to return home in desperation, crying as she begged Cuban immigration officials to let her back into the country.
If Castro’s former bodyguard did indeed find himself in need of money in his new country with its large, rabid anti-Castro exile population, a tell-all story would be an easy way to raise cash. If you are going to write a book, you need some juicy details. No publisher would be very interested in a book about Castro immersed in reading at his desk or penning his Reflections columns. If Sánchez’s motivation was truly to expose the truth, why not speak with journalists and go public right away?
Whatever his motivations, one should be skeptical about the word of one person who may have political and financial motivations telling tales without any corroborating evidence or documentation. Ramos decides not to be. Instead takes everything Sánchez says at face value. He fails to even mention the possibility that one man’s unsubstantiated word might be exaggerated or outright false.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/01/05/is-fusion-doing-the-u-s-governments-bidding-on-cuba/
Living the high life: Stone tools reveal presence of Ice Age settlement in the Peruvian Andes
Living the high life: Stone tools reveal presence of Ice Age settlement in the Peruvian AndesStone tools reveal presence of Ice Age settlement in the Peruvian Andes
By Amina Khan
Los Angeles Times
on January 4, 2015 - 12:01 AM
Archaeologists say they’ve found the highest-known remains of Ice Age human settlements in the southern Peruvian Andes, dated to more than 12,000 years old.
The two sites, described in the journal Science, sit higher than 4,000 meters above sea level and indicate that humans may have adapted to the extremely harsh climate far sooner than many researchers had expected.
“These sites extend the residence time of humans above 4,000 (meters above sea level) by nearly a millennium,” the study authors wrote, “implying more moderate late-glacial Andean environments and greater physiological capabilities for Pleistocene humans than previously assumed.”
The two sites in the Pucuncho Basin lie nearly 3,000 feet above other settlements from around the same time period. One, called Pucuncho, is a workshop site filled with 260 formal tools such as stone scrapers and projectile points; it sits 14,288 feet above sea level and has been dated to 12,800 to 11,500 years ago. The second, Cuncaicha, hosts a rock shelter sitting 14,698 feet above sea level that dates back to 12,400 years and a workshop site 14,583 feet above sea level. The shelter is filled with soot-marked ceilings from campfires, rock art and sediments on the ground that include charred plant remains.
More:
http://www.buffalonews.com/opinion/nature-science/living-the-high-life-stone-tools-reveal-presence-of-ice-age-settlement-in-the-peruvian-andes-20150104
Victims of Colombia's civil conflict exceeds 7 million: Media yawns
Victims of Colombia's civil conflict exceeds 7 million: Media yawns
By Daniel Kovalik, teleSUR
teleSUR
Tuesday, Dec 2, 2014
A tragic milestone went virtually unreported in the English-speaking press last week, as Colombia's Victims Unit released its report indicating that the number of victims of Colombia's civil war has now surpassed 7 million. This number includes those who have been killed, disappeared or displaced since 1956. For a country of under 50 million citizens, these numbers are staggering, and certainly newsworthy, but apparently not for our mainstream media.
Of course, the violence and human rights abuses in Colombia have constituted inconvenient truths for the Western media as the U.S. has been a major sponsor of the violence and abuses in that country.
Indeed, a notable fact in the Victims Unit report is that "that the majority of victimization occurred after 2000, peaking in 2002 at 744,799 victims." It is not coincidental that "Plan Colombia," or "Plan Washington" as many Colombians have called it, was inaugurated by President Bill Clinton in 2000, thus escalating the conflict to new heights and new levels of barbarity. Plan Colombia is the plan pursuant to which the U.S. has given Colombia over $8 billion of mostly military and police assistance.
As Amnesty International has explained, these monies have only fueled the human rights crisis in Colombia:
Amnesty International USA has been calling for a complete cut off of US military aid to Colombia for over a decade due to the continued collaboration between the Colombian Armed Forces and their paramilitary allies as well the failure of the Colombian government to improve human rights conditions.
More:
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_68386.shtml
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