Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Fidel on C-SPAN
Last night, winding down from the demonstrations and changing channels during the Daily Show commercials, what do I find but a broadcast of Fidel Castro giving his May Day speech in Havana! If you missed it, it will be broadcast again today at 12:32 p.m. EDT (9:32 a.m. PDT) on C-SPAN2. While I was watching, Fidel was talking about Posada Carriles and the story I wrote about here -- the fact that Posada entered the U.S. on a boat directly into Miami, not on a bus through Texas, and the significance of that difference in terms of the complicity of the Mexican and U.S. governments. He also spoke about the case of the Alpha-66 member found in Los Angeles recently with 1500+ guns, something I haven't written about here. From what I heard (I couldn't handle the whole thing last night), Fidel sheds a lot more light on that subject than I have been able to glean reading the press, including (again) the involvement of the U.S. government.
I don't know how long the actual speech was, but the broadcast is only an hour. :-) Plus you can watch it in the comfort of your house, not standing in the blazing Cuban sun. Although, just like being at the demonstration yesterday, watching things on TV is not the same as being there. But in this case, you don't have a choice (unless you happen to be a Cuban reading this).
Update: Watching the start of the rebroadcast, I learn that this is just the first hour of a four-hour speech. The man can talk!
Second update: Here's the Los Angeles Times story of April 28 that Fidel refers to in his speech.