OVERVIEW
Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban born, Venezuelan citizen, is a terrorist and former CIA operative who, with his partner, Orlando Bosch, carried out the bombing of a Cuban passenger plane in 1976, killing all 73 persons on board. The plane exploded over Barbados, on its way to Venezuela. This took place when the CIA was under the directorship of George Bush, Sr. Venezuela is demanding that Posada, who escaped from a Venezuelan jail while on trial for the airliner bombing, be extradited to face trial there. Posada entered the United States illegally and is asking for asylum here. The Bush administration has refused to extradite him and he has been released from custody by an immigration judge. The Court of Appeals confirmed his release on bail. On May 11, in El Paso, Texas, Posada begins his trial on immigration charges. This trial is widely anticipated to be a farce, a "necessary" step toward erasing any legal obstacles to Posada's unimpeded residency in the United States.
STATEMENT BY THE VENUEZUELA SOLIDARITY NETWORK
The Venezuela Solidarity Network condemns the release on bail of Cuban exile terrorist Luis Posada Carriles pending his trial on immigration violations. Posada is a former CIA operative who has openly boasted about the terrorist acts he has committed against Cuba. He escaped jail while on trial in Venezuela for his role in planting a bomb that killed 73 passengers on a Cuban airliner. He is a naturalized Venezuela citizen and former member of State Security. The Venezuela Solidarity Network demands that the United States Government extradite Posada to Venezuela, as it is required to do under international law. The Venezuela Solidarity Network rejects claims by the Bush administration that Posada would be at risk of torture and abuse in Venezuela. Prisoners were tortured under US-supported Venezuelan governments during the period when Posada worked in State Security. The present government of Venezuela does not torture prisoners. The Venezuela Solidarity Network rejects the hypocrisy of the government of George W. Bush accusing another country of torture when he has authorized torture in the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Venezuela Solidarity Network rejects the hypocrisy of the government of George W. Bush, which claims to be fighting a war on terrorism when it is harboring Cuban exile terrorists such as Posada and Orlando Bosch, who has also bragged about bombing tourist hotels in Cuba. The Venezuela Solidarity Network demands that Posada and Bosch be punished for their crimes against humanity. In addition, we demand that the Cuban Five, five brave men who infiltrated the Miami terrorist cells and reported on their activities to both Cuban authorities and the U.S. Government, be freed from US prisons to which they were sent on trumped up espionage charges.
BASIC TALKING POINTS
Luis Posada Carriles is an international terrorist and mass murderer. Any talk about a "war on terrorism" is exposed as pure hypocrisy by the Bush Administration's refusal to extradite Posada to stand trial in Venezuela.
The Bush Administration has maintained that Posada would face torture if returned to Venezuela. This assertion is ridiculous, given that Bolivarian Venezuela has never been credibly shown to employ such techniques. Rather, the United States has been found to use torture in a variety of places, including the infamous prisons in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The US also regularly uses the practice of "extraordinary rendition" to send prisoners to other countries known to torture.
DEMONSTRATION MAY 11, 2007
Attend or organize a demonstration on May 11th, the date Posada's trial begins!
It is widely speculated that Posada's trial will be a farce, clearing way for him to be granted asylum in the United States. A major demonstration is being planned in El Paso, where the trial will take place, before the opening session on May 11th, beginning at noon. For more information, go to the following link:
http://www.freethefive.org/posadaprotest.htm#form
Other protests are being planned in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and information should be forthcoming about those at the above site.
HELP ORGANIZE A CONTINGENT FROM YOUR COMMUNITY TO GO TO THE EL PASO DEMONSTRATION!
ORGANIZE A SOLIDARITY DEMONSTRATION IN YOUR COMMUNITY IF YOU CANNOT GO TO EL PASO, OR A DEMONSTRATION IS NOT PLANNED WHERE YOU ARE!
If you are organizing to take people to El Paso, or are planning a solidarity demonstration in your town, please let us know, and we'll get the information up on the Venezuela Solidarity Network website ( www.vensolidarity.org). Write us at: vsn@afgj.org and let us know what you're planning.
RENEGADE EYE
23 comments:
Thank you for visiting and for your kind comment on my blog. Yours is an interesting and inspiring place. I'll be back.
Joice
I don't think many Americans are aware of the double standards in their foreign policies. That is quite amazing considering how much danger our FP puts us in.
Now let me get it straight: you simultaneously claim that Possada was a CIA operative acting on the orders of the US government AND that he was a terrorist. Those assertions are mutually exclusive. A terrorist, by definition, is someone acting AGAINST his government, not for it (otherwise he is known as a LOYAL HENCHMAN or an OBEDIENT EXECUTIONER).
So either Posada was a TERRORIST (meaning he wasn't working for the CIA) or he is a loyal and obedient CIA operative, in which case it is absurd to demand that US government extradite him.
Make up your mind and be consistent. US has never demanded that a Cuban secret agent be extradited from Cuba to United States. Even to make such a demand would be pure buffonry.
US and Cuba are at war. It was Castro who declared that war by expropriating US companies in 1959-60. CIA committed many acts of war against Cuba since then. You can call it terrorism, if you will, but it was state terrorism, otherwise known as 'loyal government service'. People performing it get medals, not extradition papers.
And don't bullshit me about 'War on Terror'. A more appropriate name would be 'War on America's Enemies'. This attempt to use stupid US propaganda against them is pathetic. Call a spade a spade.
I don't think many Americans are aware of the double standards in their foreign policies.
Maybe because what you call 'double standard' is otherwise known as 'national interest'. And every country (including Cuba) has it.
The US hates Castro because he took away what they regarded as a client state.
Sonia,
talk about being caught up in semantics. You can most certainly be a terrorist and work for a government. (if it was state terrorism, it wouldn't have been done in secret. The Iraq war is state terrorism, the Cuban project was more akin to plain old terrorism.)
There reason 'war on terror' was mentioned is that this episode exposes that it is not a war on terror and as you say a war on enemies of american capitalism's interests.
American capitalism is no victim of terrorism, it gave it a convenient excuse to try to exert its dominance over the middle east. The real victims are ordinary workers in the united states who did in the attack and are suffering clamp downs on civil liberties, as well as the thousands of innocents killed in the middle east during US and british imperialisms 'crusade' there.
capitalists don't really care about workers who get killed in terrorist attacks as this case shows.
i wish the protestors well
The US needs this man on our side! Who better to join the ranks of Blackwater than he? America needs as many killing machines as it can muster at the moment... Bunch of cowardly hypocrites!
State sponsored-CIA sponsored-other government sponsored-loyal henchman-obedient executioner-murderer-slayer-killer-bla bla bla! Whatever you want to pigeon hole him as this man should remain locked up. Anything less would be more of the same with this US regime of thugs.
Dear Sonia,
Let us see if I get you straight. “A terrorist, by definition, is someone acting AGAINST his government”, so by your definition Bin Ladin is not a terrorist, because he acted against thousands of innocent people, but not against HIS government (who would have been the Taliabans at that point of time), whereas a banker that does not pay all his taxes would be a terrorist, because he is acting AGAINST his government. Hey, you may have something to your argument after all; however I think I will stick to my definition of terrorism, which is a situation in which there is the use of extreme physical violence (or the threat of such) against a civilian population with the goal of making a political statement by sowing terror amongst the general population. So that would make Possada a terrorist, as well as the state that paid him to bomb an airplane of innocent people.
You should send your definition to the US government, we may see a new pack of cards produced (like the one with the top officials of the Saddam’s government), only this time with photographs of corporate tax evaders.
Cheers
Since when is expropriating US corporations "an act of war?" Why was Mexico not attacked by US-backed terrorists when it expropriated US oil companies in 1938?
Sontin,
by your definition Bin Ladin is not a terrorist
I think I will have to post an entire article on the definition of terrorism on my blog. It's so complex, it's impossible to resume in a simple comment. But essentially, a terrorist is a revolutionary who kills civilians. Bin Ladin definitely fits this definition. Either Carriles was a revolutionarty trying to overthrow Cuba's Communist government by killing civilians. Or he was a loyal CIA employee obeying Bush's father's orders. But in neither case US should be expected to extradite him to Cuba.
I responded to Sonia at her blog, where she posted on a similar topic. The post hardly clarified your ambivalence to terror.
Terrorism is the act of an individual, without faith that the masses will take up his cause, substitutes himself for mass political action.
Considering 9-11, it is especially ironic that he blew up a passenger plane.
And Cuba didn't even declare war on Washington, draw weak evidence citing the UK’s involvement, say they should have finished America off back in the Cold war, and demand we extradite him or they will search the caves of Washington for Bush Senior. Hey, If the people didn't buy it, Fidel could say he's spreading Communism to the savage West.
Somehow it sounds better when we do it. However, they most certainly would have found WMDs in both the US and Britain.
Ren,
I managed getting this thing working and read the matter you told me about. Not much of a case if you ask me. Not coherent and bearly stands on it's own ;)
Maybe sonia is correct and we are all kidding ourselves that any normative standards of justice exist anymore. Its all word games and "might makes right".Get a gun and join the fun! One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter, laws,courts, judges etc are just a way of getting excess workers (beyond the required number to keep wages depressed)behind bars so they won't cause trouble.
Troutsky,
It's the most lucid statemnt you've ever made. It applies to the life in any non-democratic country (right wing and left wing), as well as to relations between countries. But fortunately, it doesn't apply (not yet, anyway) to the life in a democracy...
I do not think I agree that terrorism substitutes for mass political action. Terrorism can be one tactic in an ongoing war between governments and the masses.
I enjoy this blog.
How does that explain US terrorism against Guatemala 1954, Iran, 1953, Brazil 1964, Chile 1973, Argentina 1976, El Salvador in the 1980s, Nicaragua in the 1980s etc and etc. I guess the US isn't a democracy then, or perhaps terrorism isn't terrorism when the US practices it, in the same hypocritical manner that government support for corporations is good (and is capitalism) but government social services are bad and are "socialism". Shame on you Sonia for suporting such lying, hypocritical, murderous scoundrels! A young perrson like you should have some ideals instead of apologizing for today's version of Ol' Massa.
I wonder how hard it is to kill your fellow human being. I somehow think that the less imagination you have, the easier that is. Some might disagree.
This is the declassified file on Posada.
See: Declassified File On Posada.
Bush stated that if sent to Venezuela, Possada might be tortured or worse. The Venezuela Solidarity Network states (with certainty)"The present government of Venezuela does not torture prisoners."
I would rather err on the side of caution and go with the Bush decision on this matter.
Roman: Chavez has offered any surveillance Bush would desire, to show Postada won't be tortured.
Don't you see the contradiction, in Bush projecting fear of torture? Pure projection.
Hey Renegade, what group are your Fargo comrades associated with? I know there is a
IWL branch here, but I am not real familar with them.
That is the group I mentioned. There is only one member left in Fargo.
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