When Fidel Castro ceded power to his brother Raul last summer and crowds in Miami-Dade hit the streets in celebration, one group of people hit the phones.

The Cuban leader was ill, and because he disappeared from public view, some people thought he was dead. Members of a humanitarian task force coordinating a local response kept in touch by phone and waited for a “trigger point,” such as the activation of Miami-Dade’s Emergency Operations Center, to launch their efforts.

That never happened, and things returned to normal after photos and video footage showed Castro was still alive.

But the response in South Florida pointed to progress.

More at the Sun Sentinel

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP)

The U.S. military on Friday said it plans to build a $125 million compound at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base where it hopes to hold war-crimes trials for terror suspects by the middle of next year.

The compound, designed to accommodate as many as 1,200 people, would include dining areas, work spaces and sleeping accommodations for administrative personnel, lawyers, journalists and others involved in trials at the isolated detention center in southeast Cuba.

It would create a total of three courtrooms on the base to allow for simultaneous trials, and a separate high’security area to house the detainees on trial.

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I have posted once about this…here’s more:

Time/CNN:

A lawsuit in Germany will seek a criminal prosecution of the outgoing Defense Secretary and other U.S. officials for their alleged role in abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo.

…Along with Rumsfeld, Gonzales and Tenet, the other defendants in the case are Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; former deputy assisant attorney general John Yoo; General Counsel for the Department of Defense William James Haynes II; and David S. Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Senior military officers named in the filing are General Ricardo Sanchez, the former top Army official in Iraq; Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of Guantanamo; senior Iraq commander, Major General Walter Wojdakowski; and Col. Thomas Pappas, the one-time head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib.

you will want to continue reading cause it gets better ‘n better

By Doreen Hemlock
Havana Bureau
Posted November 9 2006

HAVANA · A record 183 countries of the United Nations voted Wednesday to condemn the U.S. embargo against communist-led Cuba, with one country abstaining and only three others joining the United States to endorse the tough economic sanctions.

Cuba called the vote a diplomatic triumph, marking 15 straight years that the U.N. General Assembly has rejected the embargo and urged Washington to lift it.

Indeed, Havana declared “double victory,” because an amendment proposed by Australia to condemn human rights violations in Cuba was rejected from the embargo resolution. Even so, Cuban leaders have said they expect no let-up in the sanctions, as long as George W. Bush remains in the White House.

Read more at the Sun Sentinel

Retired Federal Judges Join Detainees in Effort to Overturn Tribunal Law

Seven retired federal judges from both political parties have joined dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainees in urging an appeals court to declare key parts of President Bush’s new anti-terrorism law unconstitutional.

The judges, in a rare court filing Wednesday, said stripping courts of the right to question how the military handles terrorism suspects “challenges the integrity of our judicial system” and effectively sanctions the use of torture.

Bush signed a law this month allowing the military to arrest people overseas and detain them indefinitely without allowing them to use the U.S. courts to contest their detention. Bush hailed the law, which established a system of military trials, as a crucial tool in the war on terrorism and said it would allow prosecution of several high-level terror suspects.

For detainees challenging their imprisonment, the law locks them out of the civilian court system. Dozens of detainees argued Wednesday that the law is unconstitutional, and the retired judges echoed that in their own papers filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

“We believe that compelling this court to sanction executive detentions based on evidence that has been condemned in the American legal system since our nation’s founding erodes the vital role of the judiciary in safeguarding the rule of law,” the judges wrote.

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The U.S. Southern Command has been told to investigate alleged abuse by guards at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, stemming from an Oct. 6 complaint by a Marine officer, the Pentagon’s Inspector General’s office said Friday.

Marine Lt. Col. Colby Vokey, who represents a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison, filed the ”hot line” complaint to the Inspector Generalis office on Oct. 6.

In it, he attached a sworn statement from a Marine sergeant who works for him. The sergeant reported she listened as guards at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and described it as a common practice.

The Marine, a paralegal who was at the U.S. Navy station in Cuba last month, alleges that several guards she talked to at the base club said they routinely hit detainees.

”From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice,” the sergeant wrote. ”Everyone in the group laughed at the others’ stories of beating detainees.”

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Somebody explain to me why these sanctions are still in place. Why aren’t there sanctions against China? Why Cuba?

By Gary Marx
Chicago Tribune
(MCT)

SANTA CRUZ DEL NORTE, Cuba - Long after rum’swigging pirates terrorized the Caribbean, a different tale of alleged piracy is entangling two nations, two powerhouse liquor companies and a pair of families that fled Cuba after the 1959 revolution.

The treasure in the dispute is rights to the label of [tag]Havana Club[/tag], a rum famed for its smooth sipping pleasure. Produced at a distillery in this coastal town, sales have soared during the last decade even though the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba prevented rum connoisseurs from enjoying it on American soil.

Now a new rum with the same name has begun appearing on liquor store shelves and in upscale bars and eateries in the United States. But it’s not from Cuba.

In August, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office refused to renew the Havana Club trademark held by a Cuban government company that has partnered with the French liquor giant Pernod Ricard to produce and sell Havana Club everywhere but the United States.

That decision has allowed Bacardi Ltd., one of the world’s largest liquor companies, to begin marketing its own brand of Havana Club, which so far is being sold only in Florida but could reach other parts of the U.S.

Read more at the Miami Herald

Unfuckingbelievable

By JESSICA GRESKO
Associated Press
Posted September 15 2006, 1:40 PM EDT

CORAL GABLES — The Bush administration proposed Friday that Cubans hold a referendum to decide if they want to live in a democracy or under a dictatorship, a plan one expert called a “Disneyesque fantasy” that the Castro brothers would reject.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez suggested the referendum, but Cuban President Fidel Castro has long fiercely resisted any U.S. attempts to interfere with his government. As Castro recovers from surgery, brother and designated successor Raul is the acting leader of the communist nation.

Full article here