As a Cuban I have been following this incident closely as I do with all topics dealing with Cuba. The continued atrocities of the gangstas currently running things in Dee Cee is beyond belief. The Miami Herald is a conservative rag that sides with the current misadministration and has to deal with the few but powerful Miami Cubans with influence in Washington that dictate US foreign policy and even they had to speak out against the tactics of the fools of Pennsylvania Avenue.
After being forced to allow the Cuban national baseball team to play in the World Baseball Tournament which will have games in Puerto Rico(a US colony) and in San Diego, to appease and keep the Cubans at bay in Miami, the "homeland secuirity act" cops arrested a married couple who teach at Florida International University, 2 Cuban Americans because they had the "audacity" to visit their homeland a few times over the past few years calling them "unregistered spies".
Does anyone actually believe yesterday's announcement that a plot to bring down Los Angeles' tallest building was averted? No one here in the City of Angels does, not even the Mayor. Any time the bushies screw up, they bring out the t word and t plots to make amends, kinda like the boy who cried wolf.
The bad neighbor
Miami Herald
February 10, 2006
OUR OPINION: MEXICO INCIDENT RAISES SPECTER OF COLOSSUS OF THE NORTH
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/13835948.htmThe expulsion of Cuban officials from a U.S.-owned hotel in Mexico City at
the behest of the U.S. Treasury Department is an incident straight out of
the Three Stooges school of diplomacy. A friendly nation has been insulted,
U.S. businesses in Mexico are alarmed, and Cuba can once again paint itself
as the aggrieved party in its dispute with the United States.
With an arrogance that undoubtedly surprises no one in Mexico, U.S. Treasury
officials demanded that managers of the María Isabel Sheraton expel a
delegation of Cubans who were there to discuss oil drilling in Cuban waters
with U.S. oilmen. The hotel acquiesced, fearing punishment under laws
related to the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
The ensuing controversy was altogether predictable. The only thing that's
not clear is what U.S. officials thought they had to gain by acting in such
an overbearing and imperial manner.
Clearly, they did not like the fact of the meeting itself, but the threat
against the hotel resulted only in the minor inconvenience of having to move
the conference elsewhere. In Mexico, where this is seen as an infringement
of national sovereignty, there are laws against this sort of discrimination,
as well as a law neutralizing the foreign reach of the U.S. embargo.
U.S. diplomatic statements on Latin America consistently use words such as
''partnership,'' ''mutual respect'' and ''non-intervention.'' Such precepts
are the foundations of our hemispheric policy, but try telling that to
anyone in Mexico or any other country in the region familiar with the María
Isabel incident.
If U.S. officials cannot bring themselves to apologize for this blunder, the
least they can do is reassure U.S. companies and
regional governments that there will not be a repetition of this grievous
mistake.
