********Centrist? Hardly! *********
(April 22, 2001) HOUSTON (AP) - The former diplomat who housed Elian Gonzalez for the final five weeks of his stay in the United States announced the formation of a group Thursday to promote an end to the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.
Sally Grooms Cowal said her Cuba Policy Foundation believes resumption of trade is the best way to foster reforms on the communist-ruled island.
``The only chance we really have to grow this American economy is growth in our exports and growth in our markets,'' Cowal said.
Cowal served in various diplomatic posts from 1971 through 1994, including as ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago. She also was president of Youth for Understanding, an organization that promotes exchanges involving high school students from the United States and foreign countries. Elian and his father stayed at the organization's estate in Washington before they returned to Cuba.
The boy was the victim of a shipwreck off the Florida coast during a crossing from Cuba that claimed the life of his mother in November 1999. He was rescued and spent five months with relatives in Miami before federal agents seized him in a gunpoint raid in April 2000 and delivered him to his father.
The United States has maintained a trade embargo on Cuba for 40 years. Last year Congress approved a measure loosening the embargo for sales of U.S. agricultural products and medicines.
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Excerpt: Their new home is a tidy yellow clapboard house owned by the Youth for Understanding International Exchange, on rolling grounds with a view of the National Cathedral. A single police car and occasional camera crews sat outside the home yesterday afternoon, surely just a fraction of the disruption that the neighborhood will experience once the famous child arrives.
While some Cleveland Park residents are worried about the media and security entourage that has followed the boy on his American journey, it is not their style to be too impressed.
"I live next door to the secretary of the Air Force, and we have Marian Wright Edelman and Judith Viorst down the street," said resident Laine Kaufman, referring, respectively, to the child advocate and the writer. "And of course we have Gregory Craig."
That would be the attorney who represented President Clinton in his impeachment hearings and now is working for Elian's father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez.
Most interviewed said Elian and his family would love it here.
"It's a real community. People walk around. They sit on their front porches," said Kaufman, who was taking her two little boys and a playmate for frozen treats.
"It's a neighborhood of children and dogs," said Pam Korbel, walking one of the latter. "It's very friendly. If something happens, you have a meal on your doorstep. It's a village.
"My son had his first cigarette under that magnolia tree," she said, pointing toward the Youth for Understanding grounds, "and four neighbors called to tell me, before he even got home." [End Excerpt] ---[Sounds like Castro's neighborhood spies]
( UNDER THE GUISE OF RELIGION, NCC, UMC, PASTORS FOR PEACE)-- Another one of the most militant, fanatic and violent "religious" and "humanitarian" organizations part of this network in the U.S. appearing to be working for Castro's tyranny are the "interreligious" group Pastors for Peace. These "pastors" as well as the NCC have received grants from the ARCA FOUNDATION, which according to scholar Irving Louis Horowitz, is a "highly pro-Castro and partisan," grant-giving agency. From 1994 to1998, ARCA awarded about $3 million for pro-Castro projects.
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U.S. Embargo-Busters Aim to Import Cuba Rat Poison--- Pushed by Pastor of Peace
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Foreign Investment In Cuba.com--[Excerpt]-- The Cuba Policy Foundation, founded by several former State Department officials and academic and business leaders, will open a Washington office soon, according to its president, Sally Grooms Cowal. --(former president of Youth for Understanding that housed Elian in Washington D.C. before he was sent back to Cuba.)
``There's a real need for a new centrist group, not left-leaning activists, and not just business interests,'' said Cowal, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs under President George Bush in the late 1980s. She also served as ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago.
`NON-IDEOLOGICAL'
Cowal described the new group as ``non-ideological,'' devoted to examining all aspects of Cuba policy, and challenging the embargo as a failure that ``has hurt America's own economic and national interests.''
Cowal's group received its initial funding from the ARCA FOUNDATION, a wealthy organization devoted to more contact and fewer trade restrictions with Cuba. Its chairman is SMITH BAGLEY, a grandson of tobacco magnate R.J. Reynolds and a major Democratic donor. ******(Remember the two DNC fundraisers with Elian as their trophy?)*******
A leader of another group challenging Cuba policy, former Sen. Dennis DeConcini, said the new organization, with its financial backing, could become a Washington player on Cuba issues.
``A group like this tells me there really is support for changing our policy,'' DeConcini said. -[End Excerpt]
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(Orlando Sentinel- October 4, 2001) --Open your eyes - Cuba belongs on list-- The fact that Castro has harbored, and still harbors, individuals who have committed acts of terrorism in this country is irrelevant. Rep. Maxine Waters and others may romanticize them as " '60s radicals," but they committed despicable acts just the same.
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I'll venture a guess that everyone of these current 57 CONGRESSIONAL MEMBERS of the Progressive Caucus have made a pilgrimage to Havana.
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(September 21, 2001)--Pentagon Analyst Accused of spying for Cuba--Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-Fla, said Cuba shares intelligence information with terrorist states. ``It was critically important that the spy be stopped now as the United States embarks upon a worldwide war against terrorism,'' he said.
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Castro also has sought to turn attention to Cuba's case that it has been a victim of terrorism -- with U.S. complicity -- over the four decades since Castro's revolution.
I guess Castro's eager urging for the Soviet Union to lob a few missiles on the U.S. from Cuba was just a lapse of judgment.
(And maybe Canada while we're at it.)
The corrupt Mexicans, PANistas and PRIistas, are happy to allow some unknown cargo head north, to cross the border, for the same mordida that they get from the drug lords. Cuba AND Mexico represent the greatest risk to the US in the world today.
Elian's "hostess" in D.C., until he was shipped back to Castro, is calling in her chips.