Left I on the News

I reported below about the outrageous party given in honor of renowned terrorist Luis Posada Carriles in Miami recently, and about the equally outrageous remarks he made at that meeting threatening further terrorist acts against Cuba (which, needless to say, have not brought any rebuke from any Presidential candidates, much less legal action). Now the ANSWER Coalition has re-energized its campaign to demand the extradition of Posada; I encourage readers to click the button above to join in that effort.

In other news of Cuba, the Council on Foreign Relations has just released a report (not online yet) calling for a major change in U.S.-Cuba relations. The report calls for, among other things, the repeal of the Helms-Burton law (but not, as far as I can tell from the summary, the entire embargo, contrary to the headline at the link), and for permitting more Americans, but not all, to travel to Cuba (only those falling into "thirteen categories of licensed people-to-people 'purposeful travel'"). Positions well to the left of all of the Presidential candidates; it remains to be seen if the report has any effect, either before or after the election. Clearly, the vast majority of Democrats acknowledge that the U.S. Cuba policy has "failed"; unfortunately, their definition of "failure" (as seen, for example, in Barack Obama's op-ed in the Miami Herald), is that the policy hasn't succeeded in overturning the Cuban Revolution. And as a result, most join in the approach expressed by Obama in his op-ed, that the cessation of the U.S. economic, political, and yes, physical warfare against Cuba should be relaxed bit by bit as a carrot to lure Cuba into gradually bending its knee before the U.S. empire (phrased of course in noble sounding language about "democracy"). Which means that any such changes are unlikely to come soon, if at all.