AI declares to be in favor of Five Cubans

Amnesty International (AI) issued a report which reflects serious concerns about the fairness of the trial of the five Cubans unjustly imprisoned in U.S. jails.

There are fears about serious injustices and a real concern that the Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal, which violates Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, reads the report cited by Mexican news outlets.

AI questions how much access the defense lawyers had to evidence, and even the validity and soundness of these, so it calls on Washington to reconsider the case and take appropriate action to remedy such arbitrariness.

After discussing the matter in detail, the report concluded that the process was surrounded by anomalies and considered punishment that was imposed disproportionate.

Cuba's National Assembly of People's Power Convened

Cuba's National Assembly of People's Power (Parliament) will hold the seventh ordinary session of its seventh legislature on August 1.

Parliament President Ricardo Alarcon convened the meeting at 10 a.m. at Havana's International Conference Center, Granma newspaper reported Tuesday.

During the closing of the sixth...

Read more at: www.ahora.cu/english

Cuban Adaptation to Climate Change to Cost Millions

The adaptation to climate change will cost Cuba several millions of dollars a year, according to data published in the opening session of the International Environmental and Development Convention in Havana.

The information is based in a developed model, by experts from the British University of Southerton, presented here on Tuesday by Asher Minns, a scientist from the Tyndal Center, who explained that this model contains data from 2005 to 2095 on the amount of land that will be lost, the effects on swamps by square kilometers and the number of people who will be put at risk because of floods.

The name of the simulation tool is DIVA, and shows the cost of the adaptation to sea level increase in the world, said the British investigator to Prensa Latina.

The studies cover the Caribbean Sea, to evaluate the impact of the effects of the increase of the global temperature and the costs to take measures to adapt to the phenomena, said Minns.

In the inauguration of the 2nd Congress on Climatic Change, one of the events being celebrated at the 8th International Convention, Minns said there are 18 models to predict the physical impact of climate change.

However, he considered human dimension is the challenge to understand to draw the guidelines for adaptation to the global temperature's increase.

On technological disparity, since it is the rich countries that have the advanced technology to study climate change, Minns said there is a lot of paradox in this aspect, since the people of the poor countries know more about adaptation, while in the rich countries it is seen as an engineering problem.

However, he said there is no doubt the industrialized world is responsible for climate change and the poor countries are the ones suffering the worst consequences.

"Richer countries should facilitate the underdeveloped countries the necessary resources and technologies to adapt to the effects of the global temperature's increase," he concluded. / PL

Corrupt ex-director of Radio-TV Martí offers cheap course on Cuban regime

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD

The Institute of Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at the University of Miami, headed by a former CIA analyst and funded by USAID, is announcing a special course: Fidel Castro and the Political Process in Cuba, taught by Pedro Roig, Mafiosi ex-director of Radio-TV Martí.

It is a fact that Roig has a MA in Arts from the University of Miami and a degree in Law from Saint Thomas University. His credentials as a supporter of terrorism and an annexationist are also equivalent to a doctorate.

Roig was a hard-line buddy of the deceased Jorge Mas Canosa, CIA agent and creator of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), the organization whose secret paramilitary committee directed and financed international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles. Mas Canosa and Roig share the dubious honor of having been together in CIA terrorist training camps with this "star" of the local mafia, the old killer who was Commissar Basilio with the DISIP, the secret police of Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez, and then became a trafficker of drugs and arms in Central America, before acting as security advisor to a number of repressive regimes in the hemisphere.

Pedro Roig is a big buddy of Herminio San Román, another ex-director of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) who, with Roberto Rodríguez-Tejera, Julio Estorino, Frank Díaz-Pou and other disinformation mercenaries, initiated the station’s conversion into a den of obsessive conspirators and other extremist capos.

The aim of the ICCAS course, according to its publicity, is to analyze – among other things – "the cult of violence, the pedagogical and political training of Fidel Castro, his arrival in power and the destruction of Cuban institutions." This was stated by a man who trained for Operation 40, a plot to exterminate Castro supporters, which was to have gone ahead in parallel with the 1961 mercenary Bay of Pigs invasion.

The cost of Roig’s course is $50 for the two classes. Free with the lectures comes Pedro Roig’s book The Death of a Dream: A History of Cuba (unavailable in Spanish) and an ICCAS diploma. The ICCAS is managed by former CIA analyst Jaime Suchlicki who, incidentally, was Roig’s professor – in what circumstances it is not exactly known.

According to Carlos Alberto Montaner, the CIA intellectual, "Pedro Roig is a prime source of the history of Cuba, not only as a historian and spending his life reflecting on the problem of this country, but also because of his revolutionary efforts as an adolescent." On expressing this opinion, Montaner did not specify that, in his youth, Roig placed explosive devices in Havana movie theaters and stores, which he did.

Radio and TV Martí are nothing less than a den of nepotism and favoritism, where only the privileged members of the executive’s circle of friends survive, according to a wide-ranging report on the English-language website of Poder 360°, an important business magazine circulating in various Latin American countries.

A report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations revealed that Alberto Mascaró, the nephew of Pedro Roig’s wife, was appointed director of the Latin American service of Voice of America – thanks to Roig.

The report also details how in February of 2007, the former program director of TV Martí, jointly confessed in a federal court, with a (non-identified) relative of a Congress member, to having received close to $112,000 in legal commissions on the part of an OCB contractor.

To enroll for the course, call the Institute. "Capacity is limited," they are saying.

Taken from Granma International