Keeping academics out of Cuba (From former head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana)

[Judi Lynn]

Keeping academics out of Cuba
By Wayne S. Smith
Originally published April 30, 2007

The Bush administration's restrictions on academic travel to Cuba are so harsh that they have brought such travel virtually to a halt. Now, about 450 professors and academics from colleges and universities across the nation have banded together to take the federal government to court and challenge their legality.

The stated purpose of these restrictions was to deny hard currency to Cuban government coffers. But visiting professors and students are not exactly known as big spenders. The pittance they might have left behind would have had little impact on a Cuban economy registering strong growth rates.

Most of the restrictions are simply inexplicable. One says that courses in Cuba can be taught only by full-time, permanent members of the faculty. I have taught every semester at the Johns Hopkins University for 24 years and am the director of the Cuba Exchange Program. But because I am an adjunct professor, the new regulations ban me from teaching courses in Cuba - even were it possible to organize such courses.

How does that deny hard currency to Cuba? Did I, and other adjunct professors who may have been involved, have such reputations as high rollers that U.S. officials believed keeping us off the island was a good way to bring down the Cuban economy? Absurd. So what was the purpose?

More:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.cuba30apr30,0,4747509.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines

[peacetalksforall]

1. This story is one example of the United States being held hostage.

By whom - CANF and many similar orgainization of Cuban-Americans - facilitated by Democratic and Republican leaders in Washington who are very concerned about votes. And by well organized, BUT STUCK, people who demand, who stomp their feet, and who write the legislation for Congress to vote on, and by the services of NED - who acts to pass-through money going to many of the leaders in COngress.

There are many who call the United States the biggest and the strongest nation in the world. But, they bend to everything Cuban-Americans want. Good people - but, horrible politics.

The Berlin wall came down when? That was the last possible day they could have held us hostage as they have for decades.

Oh yes, when did their terroist, Posada Carriles, get realeased from prison for a minor offense while being wanted for trial in connection with his (alledged) terrorism - blowing up a Cuban airline carrying a sports team to Venezuela - and who is being protected by this administration and COngress?

[Judi Lynn]

2. Just last week the fiend walked out, and went back to Miami to await his mock trial.

Don't think it takes a psychic to sense who will be found "not guilty" there! Here's more food for thought on the subject:

Killer Lives Happily Ever After, In Miami

Index | RSS Bio by 04.27.2007 Vivien Lesnik Weisman

READ MORE: Miami, Luis Posada Carriles, Panama, Fidel Castro, Cuba
Killer lives happily ever after, in Miami of course

In my documentary film, The Man of Two Havanas, my father, Max Lesnik, says, "Miami is like a hell where everything is inverted, murder is characterized as heroic, acts of terrorism as acts of heroism..."

He is referring to Luis Posada Carriles, who is not in the news today. He was not in the news today, nor was he in the news last Thursday when he was released from jail and whisked to Miami. However, he was in the news in Cuba because he masterminded the downing of a Cuban jetliner killing 72 innocents including the entire Cuban fencing team. This was the first act of airline terrorism in our hemisphere. The very first, I promise. Check it out...

So why was Luis Posada released rather than held under the provisions of the Patriot Act? Isn't that what is for? If you sneeze in Kabul, you might just find yourself in Guantanamo, if you're lucky... If not, in an underground cell in the outskirts of Cairo. But if you are Luis Posada, the darling of the right wing Cuban-American Congresspersons from Florida, trained and coddled by the CIA, then perhaps 72 dead way back in 1976 is just not enough to invoke The Patriot Act.

Well then, how about his most recent charge? Luis Posada waltzed into Miami after having been pardoned by the outgoing president of Panama, who coincidentally, summers in Key Biscayne; where the Cuban-American right wing elite meet and greet presidents and skillfully broker deals on behalf of their own.

But wait, what was the charge in Panama? Wasn't he just trying to kill Fidel Castro, communist anti-American thorn in our side for 47 years and counting? Well, yes, kind of... in fact, he was attempting to blow up a University auditorium where Castro was scheduled to speak to a packed house. Authorities confiscated 200 pounds of C-4 plastic explosives. For those of you not in the know, 200 pounds of C-4 would have blown the auditorium to smithereens and sent hundreds of Panamanian students to their deaths.

But this too, is not enough for the Bush administration to invoke the provisions of The Patriot Act. After all, its not like they were American college students, right?

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vivien-lesnik-weisman/killer-lives-happily-ever_b_46834.html

[Mika]

3. We are held hostage by special interest campaign funding.

Can't have positions to grant persons of interest* to without creating some foundations or commissions for them to work at.



* - persons of interest to certain campaign contributors.