The “accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”–James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 47 In blatant defiance of the Constitution’s guarantees of Habeas Corpus and separation of powers, the Senate on Thursday approved the Graham Amendment to the Department of Defense… Read more »
Last September, a Category 5 hurricane battered the small island of Cuba with 160-mile-per-hour winds. More than 1.5 million Cubans were evacuated to higher ground ahead of the storm. Although the hurricane destroyed 20,000 houses, no one died. What is Cuban President Fidel Castro’s secret? According to Dr. Nelson Valdes, a sociology professor at the… Read more »
Last month, in a little-noticed vote, the Senate rejected Democratic Senator Robert Byrd’s proposal to delete funding for the US prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The amendment to the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Tsunami Relief, 2005 would have stripped HR 1268 of $36 million earmarked for construction… Read more »
John Bolton refused to come clean at his confirmation hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday, playing down his contempt for the UN and for international law. Bolton, who claimed in 1994, “there is no such thing as the United Nations,” pledged to forge a “close partnership” with the UN if confirmed as US… Read more »
The Bush administration is gritting its collective teeth at the outcome of Sunday’s recall election in Venezuela, which overwhelmingly affirmed President Hugo Chavez’s tenure. If President Jimmy Carter had not lent his enormous credibility to the election results, Bush and his minions would surely be crying foul in unison with the opposition. Chavez was popularly… Read more »
Anyone who has traveled to Cuba or listened to mariachis sing in myriad Latin restaurants is familiar with the lovely song, Guantanamera – the little girl from Guantánamo. Based on a poem by Jose Marti, the father of Cuban independence, the song is narrated by “an honest man from where the palm tree grows,” who… Read more »
In a brazen move to solidify his electoral support among Cuban-Americans in Florida, George W. Bush is gunning for another “regime change.” Last week, Bush announced the formation of a commission to “plan” for a Cuban change in government. No country has the right to change the regime of another. The International Covenant on Civil… Read more »
The Bush administration is using former President Jimmy Carter’s historic trip to Cuba as an opportunity to escalate the anti-Cuba rhetoric. But Cubans suffer under the thumb of a vitriolic policy of economic isolation imposed on them by the United States, which has maintained a cruel economic embargo against Cuba for 42 years. The desperate… Read more »
None of the demonstrations I attended in the 60s prepared me for the experience of marching with one million Cubans last month to protest the United States’ blockade against Cuba. More than 100 U.S. lawyers from the National Lawyers Guild joined the march. Absent was the tension always present in U.S. marches, which usually protest… Read more »
Elian Gonzalez, a 6-year-old Cuban boy, was found floating on an inner tube off the coast of Florida on Nov. 25, 1999, his mother and 10 others from Cuba having perished in a boat accident. Elian was rescued and is staying in Florida with relatives of his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez, a hotel doorman in… Read more »