It is supposed that Cuban antiterrorist Rene Gonzalez is released from prison on Oct. 7, and this fact will prove Obama’s real willingness, Alarcon told press.

Rene Gonzalez, as well as Fernando Gonzalez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero and Gerardo Hernandez, was severely condemned for gathering information on anti-Castro actions organized in Florida.

“The least Obama can do is to send Rene to his home in Havana, and avoiding our every day question, whether he is with the terrorists or against terrorism,” said Alarcon by attending a vigil on occasion of the 35th anniversary of Barbados Crime at the Havana’s Jose Marti Anti-Imperialist Tribune’s Mount of Flags.

I hope that Rene Gonzalez’ release from prison is normal, with no incidents or provocations, the Cuban parliamentary leader said.

Most of people who participated in the vigil, held in front of the U.S. Interest Section (USINT) in Havana, “have not been born when on October 6, 1976, a Cubana de Aviacion airplane exploded in midair off the coast of Barbados, killing 73 people, Alarcon recalled.

Humanity should not forget this event, and one of the masterminds of this crime, Luis Posada Carriles, is walking freely in the United States. That northern country neither charged, not extradited him to Venezuela as it is required to do so, and nor tried as terrorist, Alarcon noted.

Orlando Bosch, who died this year and received all honors in Miami, said in front of cameras and microphones that he participated in that horrific crime, with prior knowledge of Washington, Alarcon said.

October 6 recalls us that after 35 years, the United States keeps on being guilty of international terrorism.

Members of the diplomatic staff accredited in Havana, youth leaders and students from different education centers attended the vigil.

(Prensa Latina)

Anwar al-Awlaki (AP)

We used to be afraid that President George W. Bush, pushed by his nefarious warmongering VP and a Department of Justice that justified medieval tortures, was going to expand executive branch powers to such levels as to threaten the very balance and foundation of our democracy.

That’s why so many of us voted for Barack Obama — because we wanted somebody who was anti-war, who would close Guantanamo; somebody who knew and understood the Constitution not as some sacred sentimental Old Testament but as a covenant of fairness, with inviolable safeguards, between the governed and the government.

One of those safeguards has always been due process — the idea that individuals are protected by a process of law from arbitrary action by the state. In other words, that the government must follow its own laws. In the U.S. Constitution, it’s so important that it’s stated twice, in the 5th and 14th amendments.

Today, however, the media tells us that the president of the United States in the person of Barack Obama has now extended the power of his office to order the assassination of fellow citizens without a shred of due process.

Anwar al-Awlaki, whose death has been announced by media all over the world, was born in New Mexico and lived for years in the U.S. Sabir Khan, a second U.S. citizen, was also killed in the attack aimed at al-Awlaki.

But for all the talk about al-Awlaki being Al Qaeda’s English-language propaganda mastermind, he was never actually indicted on anything. Yes, he was linked to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood, and to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian who tried charged to blow up a Detroit-bound plane.

But there were no charges. Zero. Nada.

Instead of closing Guantanamo — the black hole of justice that has allowed the U.S. government to skirt its own Constitution by arguing that, because it’s in a foreign country, the base is not subject to U.S. law — President Obama has actually broadened the mandate that allowed it in the first place.

According to the Washington Post, “he has embraced the notion that the most effective way to kill or capture members of al-Qaeda and its affiliates is to work closely with foreign partners, including those that have feeble democracies, shoddy human rights records and weak accountability over the vast sums of money Washington is giving them to win their continued participation in these efforts.”

Since taking office, Obama has actually defended — in court! — Bush-era warrantless wiretapping and the torture and rendition of CIA prisoners.

Now this precedent — the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen without a single charge against him. The targeted killing of a U.S. citizen simply because the president of the United States has determined that the man is dangerous.

Now imagine that power in the hands of a future President Perry, or President Bachman…

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition – except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence – which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”

Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden’s “confession,” but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.

There is also much media discussion of Washington’s anger that Pakistan didn’t turn over bin Laden, though surely elements of the military and security forces were aware of his presence in Abbottabad. Less is said about Pakistani anger that the US invaded their territory to carry out a political assassination. Anti-American fervor is already very high in Pakistan, and these events are likely to exacerbate it. The decision to dump the body at sea is already, predictably, provoking both anger and skepticism in much of the Muslim world.

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

There’s more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just died peacefully in Florida, including reference to the “Bush doctrine” that societies that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and should be treated accordingly. No one seemed to notice that Bush was calling for invasion and destruction of the US and murder of its criminal president.

Same with the name, Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders. It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk … It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

There is much more to say, but even the most obvious and elementary facts should provide us with a good deal to think about.