Politics

Anti-war protesters block Whitehall

When it comes to politically influential Cubans, the Bush family likes terrorists.

I was reading a review of Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana in the Economist (subscribers only area unfortunately) and came across this, which I had forgotten:

She interviews Luis Posada Carriles, Mr Castro’s most persistent would-be assassin. She is surely right to criticise George Bush senior for his ill-considered pardon of Orlando Bosch, who with Mr Posada was responsible for placing a bomb on a Cubana airliner in 1976, killing 73 civilians.

Remember the outrage over Marc Rich’s pardon by Clinton? At the time of Bush’s pardon, the New York Times decided it wasn’t news fit to print. They didn’t write about it at all.

Since most of you don’t have Economist subscriptions, there is a longer review in The Guardian with additional juicy details.

The president’s younger brother [Jeb] was also on the payroll in the 80s of the prominent Cuban exile Miguel Recarey, who had earlier assisted the CIA in attempts to assassinate President Castro.

Recarey, who ran International Medical Centres (IMC), employed Jeb Bush as a real estate consultant and paid him a $75,000 fee for finding the company a new location, although the move never took place, which raised questions at the time. Jeb Bush did, however, lobby the Reagan/Bush administration vigorously and successfully on behalf of Recarey and IMC. “I want to be very wealthy,” Jeb Bush told the Miami News when questioned during that period.

In 1985, Jeb Bush acted as a conduit on behalf of supporters of the Nicaraguan contras with his father, then the vice-president, and helped arrange for IMC to provide free medical treatment for the contras.

Recarey was later charged with massive medicare fraud but fled the US before his trial and is now a fugitive.

…

Most controversially, at the request of Jeb, Mr Bush Sr intervened to release the convicted Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch from prison and then granted him US residency.

According to the justice department in George Bush Sr’s administration, Bosch had participated in more than 30 terrorist acts. He was convicted of firing a rocket into a Polish ship which was on passage to Cuba. He was also implicated in the 1976 blowing-up of a Cubana plane flying to Havana from Venezuela in which all 73 civilians on board were killed.

CIA memorandums strongly suggest, according to Bardach’s book, that Bosch was one of the conspirators, and quotes the then secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, as writing that the “US government had been planning to suggest Bosch’s deportation before Cubana airlines crash took place for his suspected involvement in other terrorist acts and violation of his parole”.

Bosch’s release, often referred to in the US media as a pardon, was the result of pressure brought by hardline Cubans in Miami, with Jeb Bush serving as their point man. Bosch now lives in Miami and remains unrepentant about his militant activities, according to Bardach.

In July this year, Jeb Bush nominated Raoul Cantero, the grandson of Batista, as a Florida supreme court judge despite his lack of experience. Mr Cantero had previously represented Bosch and acted as his spokesman, once describing Bosch on Miami radio as a “great Cuban patriot”.

I chose to highlight The Economist review first, since some of my less enlightened readers choose to see The Guardian as too left-wing to be reliable — the sort of people who quote Fox News on their web sites.

73 people died on that airplane. Where is the right-wing outrage over “coddling terrorists?”

… at least in a few papers, after today’s strip.

I love Aaron McGruder.

US wartime intelligence believed the Nazi salute may have been copied from American cheerleaders, rather than Mussolini’s fascists.

Arguing that this city faces a far more perilous world than once imagined, New York’s police commissioner wants to toss aside a decades-old federal court decree governing the limits on police spying and surveillance of its own citizenry.

…

To infiltrate lawful political and social organizations, police must establish a suspicion of criminal activity and gain the permission of a special three-person authority.

This three-person authority consists of two high-ranking police officials and a civilian appointed by the mayor. Civil libertarians argue this is hardly an onerous burden for law enforcement.

— from the Washington Post

There is also a small article in the NY Daily News on this today. I find it disturbing that there is no article on this in the NY Times.

Do you trust the NYPD to police itself?

Santorum has told the White House that, during the debate over welfare reform, he will fight for a provision to allow religious groups to discriminate against certain people — gays, for instance — when hiring if they don’t share their religious beliefs. “I will make that stand,” Santorum said.

James Ridgeway in the Nov. 13 Village Voice:

Power may be wielded to advance ideology, but more often, ideology is a front for the simple protection of power. Bush may pose as a Texas wildcatter, a Bible-thumping Christian zealot, a war-ready patriot, and a champion of the common man. But in reality, he’s a blue-blooded New England Methodist who dodged the draft by joining the National Guard and pledged for Skull and Bones at Yale. And he’s never had anything remotely like an ideology, with the possible exception of the 12-Step Program. If Bush succeeds in spite of an elitist pedigree, it’s because he heads—and epitomizes—today’s Republican Party. This is a party that wields the money and power of Big Business, shrewdly woven into a populist, patriotic ideology designed to appeal to a country so desperate for passionate ideals that in return it will give them the license to rob their pensions and send their children to war.

Those who fail to fall for all this are left feeling powerless and depressed, wondering where to go next. The answer is not terribly hopeful, but it is very simple—and it has nothing whatsoever to do with party politics. Take every opportunity to oppose the power structure: March on Washington, go on strike, organize a boycott, start a resistance radio station, take to the streets with the anarchists. If you are looking for models, they are all over the rest of the world: the East German Christian opposition to the Honecker police state that led to the toppling of the Berlin Wall, the massive Czech uprising, the South African overthrow of apartheid, the protests in Seattle. Don’t wait for the Democrats to do it. Do it yourself. Stand for something.

He gets extra points for the Mark Bingham remark at the end.

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I’m not sure if “admire” is the right word, but I’m impressed with what the Bush regime can get away with. They’ve appointed a man who orchestrated secret bombing during the Viet Nam War, and can’t travel freely overseas at the risk of being arrested or subpoenaed for his role in helping Pinochet’s Chile kill its opponents, even in the U.S.

Interestingly, the NY Times hasn’t mentioned Chile once in connection with Kissinger in yesterday’s article on his past or today’s editorial, which argues that he’s not a very good choice.

I’ve always felt that Haider’s popularity in Austria was more about frustration with the corruption of the decades-old Red-Black coalition/divide-up-the-spoils-system than a real desire for a neo-Nazi party. Well, his party’s popularity plummeted in the latest election.

I recently came across the weblog — in English! — of a lefty Austrian, living in Vienna, who is worth reading if you care about that part of the world. I know I do.

I’m glad to see Scott and Andy are pissed off about the joke our country has become.

I can’t decide how much I want to even write about politics at this point. The American people have had the right to vote for many years, a right for which many people have died, a right people in East Timor walked days to exercise, but they can’t even be bothered to vote or pay attention to what’s going on beyond the crap they see for 5 minutes on the 6 o’clock news. The last election’s turnout was 40% or less.

I’m not going to have children, so I’m not going to have to worry what the world looks like in 50 years. I’m in my mid-30s but I doubt I’ll live another fifty years. I don’t understand how people can vote for a party that stands only for 10,000 or so rich people, environmental degradation, and fundamentalist religion. As I said, people have the ability to vote or pay attention if they want, and they have relinquished that privilege. They would rather choose a president based on which one to have over for a visit than on self-interest. Were people really voting for those things? Half of the voters were, plus right-wing control of the courts for a generation.

A lot of my friends don’t seem to understand why I’m such a Europhile. They look at what happened during World War II and immediately decide that Europe isn’t for them, particularly Jewish friends. Grab a clue, people. We are gradually marching towards a fascism that combines religious fundamentalists (including those who advocate “conversion” of Jews) with corporate power, and with no significant protest from any quarter. The fascists of Italy, Spain and Germany had political prisoners — Dachau was built as soon as the Nazis came to power for political prisoners. Our leaders don’t have to bother. They don’t even have to suspend voting. They win anyway, and the fact that about 20% of the possible voters put them into power seems to convey some legitimacy. Why shouldn’t they act like they have a mandate? It’s obvious that not enough Americans are opposed to them to even bother voting.

My other argument regarding the USA vs. Europe is that the USA is giving up all of the things that are in its favor — our constitutional protections and our Bill of Rights. The right to privacy and freedom of speech have not always been priorities in the democracies of post-war Europe. Those restrictions, however, are combined with a social compact with the government to provide a welfare state that has made Europe one of the best places to live in the world, with good public services, nearly universal access to healthcare, and much lower levels of violence. The regime we have now is preparing to revoke one end of our country’s understanding of its citizens’ relationship to their government without giving us anything in return. They are proposing a police state — we should not be seeing the phrase “secret court” in headlines — combined with a Darwinian capitalism that cares nothing for anyone but those who are rich and powerful. We are rolling back the New Deal while shredding the Bill of Rights. Who will protect us from corporations that knowingly create defective products, or lie about the drugs they sell us, or abuse their employees? No one.

If New York didn’t exist, I would have left the USA long ago. It’s one of the few redeeming features of America at this point, and the fact that it’s the likely target for future terrorist attacks is depressing, when we represent what is good and diverse and pluralist in our society. I don’t think I can really turn off my desire for reading newspapers and watching what’s happening in politics, but a certain amount of inner emigration is attractive.

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See James for his take on this too.