Bill Ayers? No, Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, responsible for the mid-air bombing, 32 years ago today, of Cubana Flight 455, and the deaths of all 73 people on board. The first mid-air bombing in the Western Hemisphere. And the culprits? Orlando Bosch was pardoned by George Bush, Sr. Luis Posada Carriles snuck into the U.S. in 2005 after being illegally pardoned by outgoing Panamanian President Moscoso for the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro; the Bush Administration has resisted all attempts to extradite him to Venezuela, where he is still wanted on 73 counts of first-degree murder (Flight 455 originated in Venezuela). Like Bosch, he walks the streets of Miami today, a free man, a terrorist on the loose.
More about the bombing here and here.
Meanwhile, Sept. 12 marked the tenth anniversary of the unjust imprisonment of five counter-terrorists, the Cuban Five, five Cuban men who came to the U.S. to infiltrate the right-wing terrorist groups headed by Bosch, Posada, and their associates, and to attempt to stop (and to succeed in stopping) further acts of terrorism against Cuba, like the spate of hotel bombings in the 90's which killed Italian tourist Fabio di Celmo and injured scores more. Actions were held around the world on Sept. 12 to protest that grave injustice, including one at the White House in which five activists were arrested while trying to present George Bush with 102,000 signatures gathered around the world demanding freedom for the Five.
This is the video I made of the action that day:
Incidentally, I just discovered something about YouTube; I don't know how new it is. I've always been dissatisfied with the generally poor quality of many YouTube videos. It turns out that if you go to the YouTube site itself (instead of looking at an "embedded" video like the one above), sometimes right under the video (I think only when you have a high-speed connection to the Internet, but not always even in that case) there's a link that says "Show high-quality version" (or something like that). When you click on that, the quality is much better. If you want to try it with this video, here's the link. There are a half-dozen or so more videos I made of different aspects of the action here.
Reprinted from Left I on the News