Left I on the News

The U.S. government is asking for a 5-year sentence for a Florida professor and his wife who were "spying for Cuba." The government says that "the Alvarezes were engaged in classic intelligence work." And what did that "classic intelligence work" consist of? Here's the best example the government could provide:

Monday's filing by government prosecutors discusses evidence gathered from one of the couple's home computers concerning Cuban-Americans and other prominent figures.

A written report cited by prosecutors stated that one of Carlos Alvarez's contacts met personally with Richard Nuccio, then-President Clinton's special adviser to Cuba, in 1996. The report said Nuccio was "very depressed" and "devastated" by the signing of the Helms-Burton Act, which strengthened U.S. sanctions against Cuba.

An interesting bit of gossip - Clinton's adviser allegedly "devastated" because the President - that's Clinton, if you aren't following along closly - signed the vindicative Helms-Burton Act. An interesting bit of reporting, but hardly the stuff of "espionage." As reported when the arrest first happened more than a year ago, another "target" of this "espionage" was the President of Florida International University, who the "spies" reported had received an invitation to the White House.

This is, of course, no joking matter, and not just because of the devastating effect it has already have, and will have in the future, on the lives of two people. The right-wing Cuban community in Miami, on which the Alvarezes were reportedly keeping an eye (just like the Cuban Five, now in their ninth year of unjust imprisonment in U.S. jails), have been a source of terrorist attacks against Cuba and supporters of Cuba for decades, causing more than three thousand deaths in that time. In a just world, anyone attempting to keep an eye on such terrorists would be a hero, and not someone whom the U.S. government was trying to send to jail for five years.

War on terror? Don't you believe it.