So long, Kyran

WITH FRIENDS on a Hebridean holiday, above, white-haired KYRAN CONNOLLY (right) was always good company and cheerful even when he became seriously ill.  An erudite, cultured and good-natured Dubliner with a good sense of humour, he was also a thoughtful and principled fighter for all the oppressed - as below speaking at a demonstration across the road from the West London premises of Presss TV,  in solidarity with Iranian students and trade unionists.    

LIKE a lot of people, it seemed, at his funeral the other day, I found it hard to remember when I first met Kyran Connolly. It must have been at least 20 years ago, because that's about when a bunch of us assembled by a mutual friend set off for a holiday on the island of Cana, in the Hebrides.

With no pub, no shops and no  telly, just long walks in changeable weather, and our own company for entertainment around the log fire of an evening, we had a great time, and for much of the congenial atmosphere and good humour that lasted us we must thank Kyran. (and only to a lesser extent the shopkeeper back in Mallaig who sent over a supply of booze when our stock was running low, trusting us to pay him when we returned to the mainland).

But behind his lightheartedness, Kyran Connolly was no lightweight. A man of broad interests and knowledge, his job when I first met him was with an encyclopedia publisher, researching and writing up bespoke notes for international subscribers. A stalwart of the National Union of Journalists' Book branch, he served on the NUJ executive and was elected president of the union for a time, without ever becoming a bureaucrat in either manner or outlook.

At Kyran's funeral last week his twin brother recalled how the young lad had learned to speak fluent Irish and put this to use when taken to court on some cycling offence, by requesting as was his right to have the proceedings conducted in the national language. The judge agreed and asked the garda due to give evidence whether he could do so in Irish. The officer confessed he could not, whereupon the judge ordered the case dismissed.

A Dubliner, proud and knowledgable of his city's literary figures as well as its labour movement, which this year commemorates the heroic sreuggle during the 1913 lockout, Kyran kept touch with his home town in frequent visits, not only to family but to fellow trade unionists. I think it was Kyran that drew my attention to the rediscovery and publication of socialist James Connolly's address to Jewish immigrant workers, in a 1902 council election leaflet, in Yiddish.

  http://comeheretome.com/2010/03/01/james-connolly-yiddish-election-leaflet-1902/.

Never narrow in his love for Ireland and above all, its people, Kyran also became committed to the cause of another island, whether rolling up his sleeves as a volunteer for the sugar harvest, or campaigning for the "Miami Five" jailed by the United States for counter-terrorism, as a speaker from the Cuba Solidarity Campaign reminded us at his funeral. He learned Spanish, well enough to enjoy conversations with the locals on his trips to the island, as well as the poetry especially of Federico Garcia Lorca.

Kyran's concern for human rights was genuine, and with it went the intelligence to cut through prejudice and recognise issues. In a quick search yesterday I came across the following, from a report on an NUJ conference, which I think illustrates this ability:

Finally some controversy and it comes in the familiar form of Judith Miller, the New York Times journalist jailed for 85 days for refusing to reveal a confidential source to a US grand jury about her reporting on Iraq before the US invasion.
Kyran Connolly, a books delegate, speaks in favour of motion 43, which condemns the jailing of Miller.  But the Irish Executive council doesn't like Miller, seeing her reporting as having pushed the US government case for invading Iraq, which caused so many deaths.  "We can't present her as Joan of Arc on this issue," says Rohan Brady of the Industrial Council. "We are not making a hero out of someone for opposing someone," another delegate points out.
An amendment is proposed to strike out Miller's name from the motion.The vote is called on the amendment. Twice delegates vote with a show of hands, but result is unclear. I think those against the amendment have it, but a but a count is needed. Enter the scrutineers!
Time passes.
Those in favour of striking out Miller's name - 51 delegates.
Against striking out her name - 64 delegates.
The motion condemning the jailing of Miller passes.


Good night, and good luck.
Stephen Brook  24 March 2006 11.32 GMT guardian.co.uk  

http://www.nuj.org.uk/innerPagenuj.html?docid=2816

Since becoming a delegate to the Brent trades union council for my union branch, I got used to seeing Kyran who attended for his NUJ Book branch, when he wasn't otherwise occupied through his duties to his housing co-op in Kilburn. Often as not we'd go over the road for a pint together after the meeting, and we'd enjoy what proved all too short a time discussing all sorts of issues. 

It was the same after weekend meetings of the Southern and Eastern Region Trades Union Congress (SERTUC). I remember the enthusiasm of Kyran just back from a stay in Cuba.

When I went to see him in St.Mary's hospital in Paddington, where he underwent cancer treatment, he managed to convince me by his apparent cheerfulness and optimism that after a period of convalescence he would be back again, if understandably not quite as active as before. Only recently, I was meaning to ask somebody if they had seen Kyran lately, and wondering whether he might make the trades council's AGM, when I heard the sad news that he had died.

Maybe he had known better than he was letting on, not wishing to share his pain or make us miserable. All too often though, we don't make the most of our friendships, and miss the opportunity to tell ourselves, let alone our friends, how much we appreciate them, until it is too late.    

Kyran Connolly 23 June 1946 -16 February 2013..

From the NUJ

US justice leaves terrorist laughing - but then he was one of theirs.

'War on Terror'? You must be having a laugh. Luis Posadas Carriles.

THE man who is believed to have organised the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner off Barbados, killing all on board, walked free from a Texas court last week, after a four-year attempt to prosecute him for lying to the immigration authorities ended with his acquittal.

Luis Posada Carriles, now 83, was a veteran right-wing terrorist and former CIA agent. His part in the bombing of the Cubana Airlines DC8, killing 73 people, had been known for years. Indeed declassified US documents show the American authorities had advance intelligence that an airline bombing was being planned by Cuban emigres with whom Posada Carriles was working.

Cuba and Venezuela, which held the accused in its jail at one time, have condemned the US court's decision to acquit him. A Cuban official called the outcome a "shameful farce"; Venezuela said the US was protecting a known terrorist.

Besides his alleged involvement in plotting bomb attacks in Cuba, Posada Carriles was engaged by the CIA for gun running to right-wing Contra rebels operating against Nicaragua. At least one American citizen, working on a rural aid project, was killed by them.

His trial in Texas was on charges of lying to immigration officials about how he entered the US and about his alleged involvement in bomb attacks in Havana in 1997 in which an Italian tourist was killed.But it ended with his acquittal on Friday.

The head of Cuba's parliament, Ricardo Alarcon, told the Associated Press the federal judge in Texas had prevented jurors from seeing evidence that would have convinced them of his guilt.

"The US government is as much a liar as he is because it converted a killer who has been sought for decades into a simple old liar," he said.

The Venezuelan government expressed "indignation" at "an act of theatre" designed to "protect the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles".It said it would renew its request to have Posada Carriles extradited for his alleged role in the bombing of the Cuban airliner, which was organised from Venezuelan soil.

Posada Cariles was imprisoned in Venezuela in 1976 for his part in the airline bombing. He escaped in 1985. Then in 2000 he was jailed in Panama for plotting to assassinate Fidel Castro. But he was pardoned and released four years later.

The US has previously refused to send Posada Carriles to Cuba or Venezuela, saying he might face torture.This from the land that remains famous for its 'humane' treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo! They're all heart sometimes!

Declassified US documents show that the accused airline bomber worked for the CIA between 1965 and 1976, thus he was in its employ when he allegedly arranged the airline bombing. He is also said to have worked for other intelligence agencies, including those of Pinochet's Chile and the military junta in Argentina.

Together with his co-conspirator Orlando Bosch, Posada Carilles allegedly helped Chile's DINA secret police plan the car bomb murder in Washington of Cuban dissident Orlando Letelier and his American secretary.

See also, on knowledge of airline plot:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/index.htm

on Letelier case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letelier_case

Buddies in Arms (and bomb conspiracies)

IT'S a happy picture, the two old friends and comrades in arms meeting in Miami. The man on the left is Orlando Bosch Avila, his buddy is Luis Posada Carriles, and if those names don't ring a bell straight away, because they have not been in the news much here, they will mean something to a lot of people in Cuba and other countries.

On October 6, 1976 Cubana airlines Flight 455 was destroyed, plunging into the sea soon after takeoff from Barbados. Two time bombs had exploded in the aircraft. All 73 people on board the plane were killed, , including young members of the Cuban national fencing team, and five North Koreans.

Earlier that year Orlando Letelier, former Chilean Foreign Minister driven into exile by Pinochet, was murdered by a car bombing in Washington. In 1978 a former CIA agent, Michael Townley, was convicted of carrying out the bombing on behalf of the Chilean secret police, DINA, but he eventually walked free, under the US Federal Witness Protection Programme, having testified against his Chilean associates.

Luis Posada Cariles , and perhaps Orlando Bosch Avila, had attended a meeting with Townley where the Letelier killing was planned. Bosch entered Venezuela in mid-September 1976 under the protection of the then Venezuelan president Carlos Andres Perez. A CIA document described a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser in Caracas, to support Bosch's activities. The informant quoted Bosch as making an offer to Venezuelan officials to avoid acts of violence in the United States when President Carlos Andres Perez visited the United Nations in November, in return for "a substantial cash contribution to [Bosch's] organization."

Bosch was also overheard stating: "Now that our organization has come out of the Letelier job looking good, we are going to try something else." Several days later, Posada was reported to have stated that "we are going to hit a Cuban airplane" and "Orlando has the details."

Bosch was arrested in Caracas on 8 October 1976, and held for nearly four years while awaiting trial for his role concerning the Cubana Flight 455 bombing. He was acquitted along with three-codefendants (one of them Luis Posada Carriles) of these charges in September 1980, with the court finding that the flight had been brought down by a bomb but that there was insufficient evidence to prove the defendants were responsible.] Bosch was convicted of possessing false identification papers, and sentenced to 4.5 months, set against time already served. Defending himself, he would later say, infamously, "All of Castro's planes are warplanes."

“ Guys such as Bosch make it easy for the Cuban government to claim that the United States harbors, or at least tolerates, anti-Castro terrorists. ”

— Miami New Times

Miami area law enforcement officials linked Bosch to several dynamite bombings, including a blast in the offices of Mackey Airlines in 1977, after the airline announced plans to resume flights to Cuba.

In 1987, Bosch was freed from Venezuelan charges and went to the United States, assisted by US Ambassador to Venezuela Otto Reich; there, he was ultimately arrested for a parole violation. Bosch was detained in the United States for six months until all charges were dropped and he was able to live in the United States freely. It has been alleged that Bosch was pardoned by President Bush, and protected by the Bush family. Bush senior had been head of the CIA when Bosch's crimes had been committed and Cuban emigres in Miami lobbied Florida governor Jeb Bush to have his father intervene.

Luis Posada Cariles was involved in the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban emigres. After its failure the CIA took him to Fort Benning for training in sabotage and explosives, then set him to work with the Cubans in Miami. But after some problems with the US backers which led to him being questioned about his "unreported association with gangster elements", Posada relocated to Venezuela, in 1968, taking with him CIA supplied weapons including grenades and fuses.

Becoming a naturalised Venezuelan citizen, Posada became chief of operations of the Venezuelan DISIP, tasked with suppressing leftwing guerrillas. He was joined in Venezuela by fellow Cuban Bosch. The CIA became concerned that their former protege was combining his security work with cocaine trafficking, and in 1974 Posada was dismissed from his Venezuelan post. There were suspicions that he was involved in a plot to assassinate Kissinger, then seen as too soft on Cuba. The CIA was already under pressure at home to clean up its act, and needed to distance itself from rogue operators.

Posada formed a private detective agency in Caracas. Two of its men, Freddy Lugo and Herman Ricardo Lozano, were implicated in the Cuban airliner bombing, and confessed. A declassified FBI report says: "Our confidential source ascertained (...) that the bombing of the Cubana Airlines DC-8 was planned, in part, in Caracas, Venezuela, at two meetings attended by Morales Navarrete, Luis Posada Carriles and Frank Castro". Posada and Bosch were arrested. Bosch was to be held four years before his trial and acquittal, but Posada had already escaped, to start a second career with his old bosses, under the Reagan administration.

Based in in El Salvador, Posada worked with Felix Rodriguez, a CIA operative who had overseen the capture of Che Guevera. They coordinated arms supplies to the Contras, right-wing gangs financed by the Reagan administration to carry out raids and murder in Nicaragua. Posada was paid $3,000 per month plus expenses from U.S. Major General Richard Secord, who was directing operations for Oliver North. The subsequent Iran-Contra investigations shed light into this major US operation. Several of Posada's connections, including Félix Rodríguez were asked to testify. But Posada remained in El Salvador, and signed up as a security adviser to the notoriously brutal Guatemalan regime.

In February 1990 Posada was shot while sitting in his car in Guatemala City by unknown assailants, but unfortunately he survived, and his medical bills were looked after by the Cuban emigres and the Americans.
In 1997, Posada was implicated in a further series of terrorist bombings in Cuba aimed at tourist hotels and restaurants. An Italian-Canadian, Fabio di Celmo, was killed and 11 people wounded as a result. In a taped interview with The New York Times, Posada said: "It is sad that someone is dead, but we can't stop." Aiming to frighten tourists from going to Cuba, Posada was reportedly disappointed with the reluctance of American news organisations to report the bombing attacks, saying "If there is no publicity, the job is useless".

Loose tongue and keenness on publicity may prove Posada's undoing, as poor attention to tax returns did for Al Capone. In 2000 he was caught with explosives in Panama, accused of plotting to kill Castro during the Cuban leader's visit. A pro-US president let him get off in 2004, and once again the Bush connection is said to have helped. But arriving in Texas to claim asylum, Posada was detained by US immigration authorities, and then the Department of Homeland Security, though the US authorities refused an extradition request for him from Venezuela, on the grounds that he might be tortured there. No 'extraordinary rendition' there then!

The Venezuelan government has understandably accused the US of having a "double standard in its so-called war on terrorism" , harbouring terrorists and attributing methods to others which it has itself practised at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. The US government sought to deport Posada elsewhere, but at least seven friendly nations refused to accept him. Under the 1971 Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Civil Aviation the US is obligated to prosecute Posada for the alleged acts of terror.

Luis Posada Carriles was released from jail after paying bond on April 19, 2007. The US Fifth District Court of Appeals in New Orleans rejected a Justice Department request Posada be refused bail for entering the U.S. illegally and he was escorted by Federal agents to Miami where Cuban emigres welcomed him as a hero. patriot. Posada was required to remain under 24-hour house arrest at his wife's apartment in Miami until trial, with permission to leave only to meet with attorneys or for doctor's appointments. On May 8, 2007 U.S. district judge Kathleen Cardone dismissed seven counts of immigration fraud and ordered Posada's electronic bracelet removed.

The photo of Bosch and Posada was taken by reporter and researcher Tracey Eaton from the Along the Malecon website during the launch of a book by Bosch on December 9. The launch took place in the University of Miami's Institute of Cuban American Studies, which is subsidised by USAID (US official agency which uses foreign aid to promote US aims) and run by a former CIA analyst.

In 2009, a federal grand jury issued an indictment, the first US reference to the 1997 bombings in Cuba. On April 9, 2009 The Miami Herald reported:

"The superseding indictment from the grand jury in El Paso does not charge Posada, 81, with planting the bombs or plotting the bombings but with lying in an immigration court about his role in the attacks at hotels, bars and restaurants in the Havana area. The perjury counts were added to the previous indictment that accused Posada of lying in his citizenship application about how he got into the United States. Another new charge is obstruction of a U.S. investigation into "international terrorism.""

Posada is being accused of lying to U.S. authorities and is due to go on trial next month in El Paso, Texas. It will be the first time evidence from the Cuban authorities and the FBI will be presented linking the former CIA operative with the Havana bombings. A judge has also ruled that taped evidence can be heard, including Posada's interview with a New York Times freelance journalist boasting about the Havana hotel bombings.

But there are still powerful interests and lobby groups in America who support Luis Posada Cariles, and enough old co-workers in the intelligence establishment, who would sooner this case was closed.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/04/1957771/posada-trial-marked-by-firsts.html#ixzz18OB0kiTp

Seeking fair play for the Miami Five

Below, OLGA SALANUEVO and daughter IVETTE, who would like to see her dad, RENE GONZALEZ, again.












NEXT year it will be half a century since we saw the pictures of a bearded man in fatigues riding into Havana and wondered what sort of revolution this was. I don't think Fidel Castro and his compadres knew themselves, until US hostility pushed them into the path they took.

For those concerned with Marxist theory, the Cuban example is still hard to categorise. Attempts to follow it by pitting small guerrilla bands against imperialism's goons proved disastrous, the best-known turning the martyred Che Guevera into a harmless icon for the manufacturers of tee shirts.

But Cuba's revolution has survived the Bay of Pigs and the Missile Crisis, and outlasted the Soviet Union. Whatever the problems of Cuban society and whether or not its workers, writers and artists enjoy freedom, or our idea of socialism, they have achieved standards of health care, literacy and education that shine like a light for impoverished Latin America and the Caribbean. All this in the face of a US-imposed embargo. Indeed, when it comes to providing services for all, Cuba does arguably better than its rich, big bullying neighbour to the north.

Fidel Castro himself survived several CIA-backed assassination plots, which is more than Bay of Pigs patron John F.Kennedy did. But since 1959, some 3,500 Cubans have been killed as a result of violent actions organised by counter-revolutionaries, right-wing Cuban emigres based in the United States.

Perhaps the most notorious attack was the bombing of a Cuban airliner on October 6, 1976, in which 73 people were killed.

I thought about this when I read today that the US government is concerned that the Yemeni authorities are not hard enough on "terrorists". "American officials were also alarmed when Yemeni courts commuted a death sentence for Jamal al Badawi, convicted of masterminding the USS Cole attack, giving him instead 15 years in prison".
(Ian Black, Guardian, September 18)

The USS Cole was a naval vessel, a missile carrier, that had put into Aden. Seventeen sailors were killed in the attack. That is regrettable, but they were not in the Middle east for a holiday cruise. The US authorities are holding a Saudi national in Guantanamo whom they also accuse of planning the USS Cole attack, and US courts even blamed the Sudanese government. Whoever did it, it was an act of war. British heroes (played by John Mills et al), did the same thing to German battleships, and with much better equipment.

The men who planted a bomb that blew a Cuban civilian airliner up off the coast of Barbados were not suicide bombers. They lived to carry on further actions in the employ of the American CIA which looked after them. Theirs was what Washington regards as a legitimate act of war, even as it proclaims itself leader of the "war on terror".

In the late 1990s there were a spate of bombings against Cuba, and evidence that emigres in the United States, including one of the men responsible for the 1976 airliner attack were behind them.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188/is_20070506/ai_n19060443/print?tag=artBody;col1


Five Cubans went to Miami to try and infiltrate the right-wing emigre circles and gain information about their plans, and what backing they had from US forces. As well as communicating back warnings to the Cuban authorities so that attacks could be thwarted, they passed what evidence they had gathered over to the US government.

The FBI acted promptly. In 1998 it arrested the five Cubans. They were held until brought to trial in 2001, when they were accused of spying, passing secrets to a foreign power, even plotting killings. They have been jailed for long sentences, and the US authorities refused visas to wives and family members to visit the men. Amnesty International has expressed concern over the case, and over the way the men have been treated.

Ten years after the 'Cubans were seized, for trying to defend their people against terrorism, and one day after the anniversary of the bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455, there is to be a vigil outside the US embassy in London for the Miami Five and their families. It has been called by the Cuban Solidarity Campaign, with support from some trade unions, including my own, Unite.

That's on Tuesday, October 7, from 6.-7.30pm, outside the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, W1, (nearest tube Bond Street), if one can get near the embassy with all the concrete fortifications outside these days. I see that Olga Salanueva and Adriana Perez, whose husbands are among the five, are expected to join us for this protest, so I hope there's a decent turn-out..

Hilton's Fawlty Towers - do mention the Cold War

ONE thing I've noticed in arguments about boycott tactics is how more effective the other side - governments and big companies -are, compared with us amateurs. I mean they don't have to worry about having resolutions adopted by union conferences (and then rescinded by recall conferences), nor about union members incurring penalties under anti-union legislation such as Britain's Labour government has inherited and kept unchanged from Tory times.

As for pickets, fair play to those who protested outside Carmel Agrexco's UK depot at the weekend, but it's not like having an army checkpoint blocking the road all week. Even if they arouse more outrage.

Still, to help get a bigger picture, I'm turning away from Israel's conflict with the Palestinians to look at another battlefront. One that's seldom in headlines here, but has been part of the political landscape for almost half a century. That's how long the plucky little United States has been standing up to the might of Cuba, by waging an economic blockade as well as backing right-wing terrorists.

In 1992, the year the former Soviet Union was standing down its ICBMs and losing some of its republics, Yugoslavia was breaking up, and white South Africans voted to end Apartheid, the US congress and George Bush brought in the Torricelli law, strengthening its blockade by making it illegal for US-owned subsidiaries in other countries to trade with Cuba. In 1996 this was followed by the Helms Burton Act which made foreign companies that invested in Cuba liable to prosecution in the United States. I wonder how many legislatures apart from the US are so confident laying down the law to people and companies in other lands?

Writing in the Morning Star (Monday, February 12) Rob Miller draws attention to some of the ways this has worked out. Under questioning from journalists the Hilton Hotel Group announced last week that due to US laws, Cuban nationals would be barred from its hotels. In March last year there was a row in Mexico over the Sheraton Maria Isabel hotel in Mexico expelling 16 Cuban guests. The hotel was fined £60,000 by the Mexican authorities, under a law passed soon after the Helms Burton Act, to protect trade and investment from external interference.

Miller says the European Union and Britain also have such "antidote" legislation. But it has not been invoked.

Last month a Cuban trade delegation coming to Oslo for a trade fair found its booking at a Hilton-owned hotel refused. "In response, the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees is boycotting Scandic hotels. Union leader Anne Grethe Skaardal declared:
'For us, it is unacceptable for the US to dictate to to the whole world. In addition, we strongly oppose the US boycott of Cuba'.
(Blockading Cuba: How the US is attempting to crush its socialist neighbour).

Besides the union campaign, Oslo's Anti-Racist centre has filed a complaint against Scandic and a Hilton managing director under anti-racism laws which prohibit denying anyone access to facilities on account of their citizenship or ethnic origin. But it seems that while the United States confidently legislates for people in other countries, some governments - Norway perhaps among them, though Britain is probably another - hesitate to apply their laws to US companies operating on their soil.

Still, since the Hilton Group announced it was barring Cubans from its hotels around the world for fear of being prosecuted under US law, some 54 British MPs, including Tories and Liberals, have signed Early Day Motion 828 stating that such a ban "would violate domestic UK anti-discrimination laws and EU safeguards against the use of extra-territorial legislation and would be tantamount to a breach of UK sovereignty as well as being an act of racial discrimination".

The Scottish Affairs committee cancelled a booking at a Hilton hotel in Dundee. Questions were asked of Tony Blair in the House, and the Commission for Racial Equality has written reminding Hilton of its obligations under the Race Relations Act, which prohibits discrimination in the provision of goods and services. Hilton has pointed out that it is only following a similar policy to the Sheraton and Marriott chains owned by US conglomerate Starwood.

Rob Miller, who is director of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, says EU countries have maintained diplomatic relations with Cuba, and increasingly not gone along with the US blockade. At the UN last year Britain was among 183 member states voting against the US position, which was only supported by Israel, the Marshall Islands (still recovering from US bomb tests but still hosting US missiles) and Palau (former US Pacific colony and holiday resort). However, Miller is concerned that Cuba will face "a new onslaught" within the EU this year, led by newer members like the Czech Republic, Poland, Lithuania etc.
http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/

In this new Cold War crusade are they still celebrating and trying to complete "the defeat of communism", or just acknowledging that their "freedom" has amounted to a change of master? Has the EU's expansion helped dilute its aspirations to independence from the US super-power?

30 years ago: US-backed terrorists killed 73 in airline bombing

CUBANA DC8 and right, memorial unveiled during Castro visit to Barbados

ON October 6, 1976, Cubana airlines Flight 455 took off from Seawell airport, Barbados, at 17.15hrs on the penultimate leg of a scheduled journey Guyana, Trinidad, Barbados, Kingston Jamaica to Cuba. Less than ten minutes after take off a timebomb exploded on board the Douglas DC8, at 18,000 feet above the Caribbean.

The captain, Wilfredo Pérez Pérez, radioed to the control tower: "We have an explosion aboard, we are descending immediately! ... We have fire on board! We are requesting immediate landing! We have a total emergency!"

As the pilots struggled to stop the plane's fall and return it to Seawell a second bomb exploded. Realising a successful landing would now be impossible it seems the pilot turned back to the ocean rather than endanger tourists on the beach.

All 48 passengers and 25 crew aboard the plane were killed - 57 Cubans, 11 Guyanese, and five North Koreans. Among them were all 24 members of the Cuban fencing team that had just won gold medals in the Central American and Caribbean Championship. Many were teenagers. Several officials of the Cuban government were also aboard. The 11 Guyanese passengers included 18 and 19-year-old medical students, and the young wife of a Guyanese diplomat.]

Hours after the explosions, police in Trinidad arrested Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo Lozano, two Venezuelans who had boarded the plane in Trinidad and checked their baggage to Cuba but alighted in Barbados and flown back to Trinidad. Ricardo had been travelling with a false identity under the name of José Vázquez García.

The two men confessed, saying they had been acting under orders from Luis Posada Carriles. Their testimony and other evidence implicated Carriles and another Venezuelan, Orlando Bosch. On 14 October, Posada and Bosch were arrested in Caracas. The offices of Investigaciones Comerciales e Industriales C.A. (ICICA), a private detective company owned by Posada, were raided, and weapons, explosives and a radio transmitter found. Ricardo was an employee of ICICA at the time of the attack.

By agreement among the governments involved, the four accused were to go on trial in Venezuela, since they were citizens of that country. On August 25 1977 the case was referred to a military tribunal. The men were charged with treason. In September 1980, a Venezuelan military judge acquitted all four of them. the prosecutor appealed, arguing that the crime was homicide and the men were civilians, and the four were then charged with aggravated homicide and treason before a civilian court.

Lugo and Ricardo were each sentenced to 20 years in prison, but this ws reduced "due to the extenuating circumstance of no prior criminal records." Orlando Bosch was acquitted, because the evidence gathered by the Barbados authorities during the investigation could not be used in the Venezuela trial, as it was presented too late and had not been translated into Spanish.

On the eve of sentence Posada fled from the San Juan de los Morros penitentiary where he had been confined following two previous failed escape attempts. Allegations were made that Venezuelan authorities were bribed to help him escape. No verdict was entered against Posada because, according to the Venezuelan Penal Code, judicial proceedings cannot continue without the presence of the accused.

A different judge then ordered the case reviewed by a higher court. The Venezuelan government declined to appeal the case any further, and in November 1987 Bosch was freed. Lugo and Lozano were released in 1993 and continue to reside in Venezuela. Posada fled to Panama, then to the United States. Hugo Chavez' government wants him returned for trial, but in September of 2005, a US immigration judge ruled that Posada should not be deported to either Cuba or Venezuela because he could be subject to torture.

This touching regard for the airline bomber's rights stands out impressively against the background of Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, extradition and "extraordinary rendition", in America's "War on Terror". But then Posada is different. He is one of America's own terrorists. Official documents obtained in the United States show the links between the United States and the plane bombers.
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/

Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born naturalized Venezuelan, was the Director of Counterintelligence at Venezuela's FBI equivalent, the DISIP, from 1967 to 1974. But he also had a long relationship with the CIA. In February 1961, he joined Brigade 2506 to invade Cuba, although the ship to which he was assigned never landed at the Bay of Pigs. While in the U.S. military between 1963 and 1965 the CIA recruited and trained him in explosives and demolitions; he subsequently became a trainer of others. Although his service officially terminated in July 1967 he was reinstated, and remained in contact with the CIA until June 1976, just three months before the plane bombing.

A U.S. Government document released through the Freedom of Information Act also refers to "Luis Posada, in whom CIA has an operational interest - Posada is receiving approximately $300 per month from CIA". Posada was heavily involved with right-wing anti-Castro groups like the Cuban-American National Foundation and the Coordinadora de Organizaciones Revolucionarias Unidas - CORU), led at the time by Orlando Bosch.

A declassified CIA document dated October 12, 1976 quotes Posada as saying, a few days after a plate fund-raising meeting for CORU held around September 15th, "We are going to hit a Cuban airliner... Orlando has the details"

A declassified FBI document dated October 21, 1976 quotes a CORU member stating that CORU "was responsible for the bombing of the Cubana Airlines DC-8 ... this bombing and the resulting deaths were fully justified because CORU was at war with the Fidel Castro regime."

After bribing his way out of prison in Venezuela, Posada went to El Salvador to work for Lt. Col. Oliver North, supplying right-wing contras in Nicaragua with arms, without the official knowledge of the US Congress. Assuming the name "Ramon Medina," he worked as a deputy to another anti-Castro Cuban exile, Felix Rodriguez, who was in charge of a small airlift of arms and supplies to the contras in Southern Nicaragua. Rodriguez used the code name, Max Gomez. A document, released during the Congressional investigation into the Iran-Contra operations, records both Posada and Rodriguez obtaining supplies for the contras from a warehouse at Illopango airbase in San Salvador. Posada is also accused of involvement in plans to overthrow a government in Guatemala.

A Rum Business

AMERICAN business, at least the section closest to George W.Bush's heart, is hotting up the competition in the world chutzpah stakes. What do you do when you come up against a successful competing product? Simple - pinch the competitor's brand name.
It helps if you have an understanding legislature. On October 21, 1998 at the request of the Senator Connie Mack of Florida, the US Congress passed a federal budget bill with a little amendment tagged on, known as Section 211.
It is also being called the Bacardi Law.

What it says is that the US authorities can deny the right to renew a trade mark in the United States. So any US company would theoretically be free to appropriate a brand name that has proved a winner and use for its own inferior product. That sounds to me like the counterfeiting we hear about, when trading standards officers descend on Delboy down the market selling dubious designer-label gear and Brut after-shave just before Christmas. Only this time, it's all legal, officer.

The World Trade Organisation(WTO) has a Dispute Settlement Board which decided a few years ago that Section 211 was incompatible with WTO principles. But it seems it's one thing laying down the law to poor countries turning out cheapo goods or otherwise infringing WTO rules, another when a poor nation protests at what American business is doing. Cuba's UN ambassador has complained to the WTO's Dispute Settlement Board over the actions of the Bacardi company.

On July 28 the US Office of Foreign Assets Control denied a request for a specific license to renew the registration of the trademark Havana Club at the US Patent and Trademark Office. Havana Club is the Cuban rum which has been doing well in European and other markets.

Bacardi likes to use its Latin image in sales here, but even before the Cuban revolution it had transferred its distillery operations from Havana to Puerto Rico, in order to secure tariff benefits on US territory. The move allowed the firm to obtain a ruling in its favor to maintain the brand name when it left Cuba, registering its headquarters first in the Bermuda tax haven and then Miami.

Cuba had started to produce Bacardi rum again, but had to comply with international rules and stop using the name. Then about ten years ago, Havana Club overtook Bacardi sales in Italy, and became a serious competitor elsewhere. Claiming it had paid the Arechabala family for the rights to the Havana Club brand name, Bacardi began selling rum produced in the Bahamas by Galleon SA under the Havana Club name. Cubans say the Arechabalas went out of business long before and hadn't the name to sell. The company ceased production when Havana Club International, a joint venture between the Cuban Havana Ron y Licores company and Pernod Ricard of France took legal action to prevent the false use of its name.

I'm no connoisseur of rum. I rarely drink the stuff. But back in 1972 I spent a season working in what must be one of the country's biggest fish and chip restaurants, on the seafront at Morecambe. (Those familiar with my political background and the dramatis personae of post-war Trotskyism will be amused to hear it was the branch of the Blackpool-based Pablo's). Towards the end of the season as nights drew in and queues dwindled the manager would shut up shop and pour the Bacardi, in paper cups that we topped up with Coke or Limeade from the taps on the counter. Bacardi and Coke I found too sickly, so I preferred it with Lime. Even so, it didn't become my tipple of choice, but since it was buckshee, I wasn't complaining.

In 1992 I went on holiday with friends in the Czech Republic. Our little hotel in the sticks of Moravia had a limited range of bevvies, but Plazdroz (that's Pilsner Urquell to you, and what British pubs call a "Premium Lager") on draught at something like 20p a pint was fine. Only after my evening meal I fancied a "short" with my black coffee, and took to the local dark Tuczinska rum, which was cheap and cheerful, a bit like the sort of flavour you used to get in rum-and-butter toffee and similar confectionary.

"That is very bad", a relief barmaid called Renate said one evening when I was on my fourth or so. "Oh, it's not that bad," I assured her, feeling she was being unduly critical of her nation's product "No, all that coffee you are drinking, it is not good for you," Renate explained. At this I ventured to suggest she might like to accompany me back to England as a personal health carer, but she frowned that she did not understand my English and turned to another customer. My drunken leer has been known to have this sudden effect on comprehension.

Anyway, by way of a change, my drinking companions suggested we try the more expensive Havana Club which had pride of place on the top shelf. It was a clear, white rum. I can tell you it is definitely not confectioners' rum, and definitely not Bacardi. I'd say it was for the serious drinker. Even though, if I had to choose a rum it would be Cockspur, which I sampled at a party once, a friend having brought some back from Barbados (unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, he had only brought along one bottle, or I could have developed a taste for the stuff). But like I say, I'm no rum expert.

In the case of Budweiser, the US company kept the Czech Budweiser-Budvar beer from being sold under its name for years (well, since 1939, which was a conveniant date for stopping Czechs doing business. Hitler had taken his prize from Munich, and the Bank of England was about to hand over the Czech gold reserve entrusted to its safe keeping to the Germans). After the fall of "communism" the US Budweiser company tried to buy the Czech breweries, but alerted by the Campaign for Real Ale the Czechs resisted, and now Czech Budweis-Budvar is sold in the US and Canada - but as "Czechvar".

Bacardi have mounted numerous court actions to get their hands on the Havana Club trademark, before taking advantage of the "Bacardi Bill". Meanwhile the European Union, which might conceivably have some brand names of its own to protect has let the United States keep setting new dates to comply with the DSB recommendations and regulations.
In 1999 Bacardi’s lawyers won a case in New York state using Section 211, but in in January 2004, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) of the U.S. Patent and Trademark decided in favor of Havana Club International, which now sells its well-known rum in 80 countries., and against Bacardi-Martini's efforts to sell its own, non-Cuban version of Havana Club in the United States.

Meanwhile the Washington Post reported in 2002 how Florida Governor Jeb Bush was taking up Bacardi's case with the Patent and Trademark Office. The rum producer reportedly donated huge sums of money to the Republican Party. Senator Mel Martinez has been accused by the CREW anti-corruption group in Washington of accepting over $60,000 from Bacardi. The Post also reported on December 4 that Rodríguez-Marquez belatedly presented the necessary federal report showing that he had spent $500 million on "lobbying" since 1998. Besides that, Bacardi spent another $2.2 million contracting "lobbyists".

The president’s brother then wrote to James Rogan, director of the Patent and Trademark Office on Bacardi-Martini's behalf. asking that the expired patent (from Cubaexport) should be cancelled immediately." Rogan, appointed by President George W. Bush, met secretly with individuals from the governor’s office. Rodríguez-Márquez himself has acknowledged that he met with State Department authorities, contacts of Vice President Dick Cheney and White House political advisors.
HCI demonstrated that Havana Club was not confiscated, but the Arechabala family simply failed to renew the trademark and gave up the business when it faced financial difficulties in 1955. The Cuban firm took control of a company that was bankrupt.

The TTAB ruled last January that Bacardi’s attempt to invalidate HCI’s registration of the trademark had no legal basis because Cubaexport had registered the trademark in the correct way in Cuba and had transferred registration to the United States in 1976, three years after the Arechabala family had permitted its expiration. In 1993, Cubaexport and Pernod-Ricard formed HCI and renewed the trademark name.

Democrat Charles Rangel – who together with 14 other Congress members from both parties endorsed the bill – stated at the time how "Cuba and the United States have respected one another’s trademarks for the last 75 years. It is shameful to think that Congress can liquidate this area of cooperation in order to benefit one particular interest (that of Bacardi), at the expense of hundreds of U.S. citizens with trademark names."

The U.S.-based National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), founded in 1914 by a group of US companies, and serving some 350 firms, is concerned that the Bacardi privilege could boomerang. NFTC president, Bill Reinshi has stated that more than 5,000 U.S. trademarks that have been registered in Cuba since 1918 and a further 400 registered since 1959 were at risk thanks to Section 211, "which infringes on the commitments reached with Cuba."

He added that U.S. trademarks that are registered in Cuba — including McDonalds, Pepsi, Coca-Cola and Nike — and global recognition of the same "are vitally important for the economy of the United States." For the first time in 40 years, these trademarks are appearing in Cuban warehouses, he said, but they are at risk because of 211, given that it gives the Cuban government the option of not respecting international treaties that protect trademarks registered by the Untied States in Cuba. President Fidel Castro said in 2001 that Cuba could sell Coca-Cola, Bacardi rum and Cuban anti-AIDS medicines patented by U.S. companies.

But the Bush administration is looking after Bacardi. Under orders from the State Department, J. Robert McBrien, director of its Patent Office, refused the Havana Club International joint venture the necessary license to renew ownership of the trademark on its patent and trademarks register, despite the fact that the company has owned the right to do so since 1974, when it paid the $500 fee required on time. The decision was based on laws surrounding the so-called "embargo" of Cuba. In this way, last August 8 the rum manufacturer was then able to announce that it would once again bring a rum called Havana Club onto the U.S. market.

And now for some more on the authentic Cuban product. With sound:
http://www.embacubalebanon.com/havanaclub.html