Claude -- you're confusing the issue of travel TO Cuba (which is the main issue discussed in the articles you link) with the issue of whether Cubans get visas to come here (which is what the original article was about). And on that latter point, one of the articles to which you linked said that one of Bush's initiatives was to "[i]ncrease the number of new migrants admitted from Cuba 'through a safe, legal, and orderly process.'" Note the word "increase." Whether that's happening or not, I don't know. But it makes it less plausible to complain that low-level bureaucrats at State are deliberately keeping out harmless Cuban musicians because that mean ole' Bush told them to.
Except that Ferrer is the wrong kind of Cuban. The Bush administration wants Cubans to flee from Castro's tyranny and enjoy capital-F Freedom in sunny Florida (where they can become grateful, Republican-voting citzens). Visiting musicians who will be returning to their homes in Cuba, on the other hand, are not welcome.
I love the IMDB's goofs page for Left Behind: The Movie:
Factual Errors: The flags flying outside the real United Nations building are of the member nations. The ones shown are of Canada's provinces.
They are not the same as diplomatic enclaves. The U.S. may run them, but bases overseas belong (technically, but it is a legal technicality we are discussing) to the host Gov't. In theory the same sort of trick could be done in Germany, Japan, etc., but the local Gov't might not be so willing to accomodate us.
US Air Force bases in Britain hide behind a legal figleaf of supposedly belonging to the RAF (RAF Lakenheath, RAF Fairford, etc.). And, as you say, a Guantanamo-style prison camp (detainees being neither prisoners of war nor criminal suspects, total lack of judicial oversight) would be illegal in Germany or Britain. That said, here in Britain we've revived internment, so we can't complain about the indefinite detention bit...
I just had a look at the Niger documents and noticed another error that doesn't seem to have been mentioned. The name of Iraq is spelt incorrectly -- in French, it's "Irak". So, for what it's worth, whoever wrote them was almost certainly not a native French-speaker, and therefore not likely to be a Nigerien diplomat or a French spy.
My inner pedant would like to point out that the name of that newspaper is 'The Times', not the 'London Times' or even the 'Times of London'. Thank you.
Lydia, do you perhaps mean Belgrade rather than Sarajevo? 'We' (meaning the US, NATO or the 'West') didn't bomb Sarajevo, but we did bomb Belgrade in a caring, freedom-loving way.
And another deadly sidebar: "U.S. Draws Up Plan For Post-War Transitional Dictatorship In Iraq".
Actually, the real name of the U.S.U.N. is the International Community, a nebuluous grouping consisting of the U.S. and a couple of allies invoked in grand phrases like "the will of the international community". In such cases, the stance of the "international community" often stands in opposition to that of a majority of U.N. member nations...
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 2 |
| 2003 | 7 |
Total: 9 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by David Frazer:
Show all comments by David Frazer.