[Barry the Sprout]

This is a point that has been at the back of my mind for a while now so I thought I might try and see what you guys think about it. Just recently I have been doing a lot of reading about Cuba and some interesting facts have emerged.

At present Cuba has a claim at the World Court for 3800 people killed due to terrorism and 2400 permenantly disabled by it. The organisation committing the acts is called CANF. They are working to destroy the government in Cuba, which may or may not be to your liking. That is not my point, whether or not you like Castro has nothing to do with this argument really. I personally don't like the idea of any organisatin trying to destabilise governments, even less when their methods for doing so include (for example) blowing up passenger aircraft. IMO there is no excuse for killing innocents to bring down a government. But the classic point about is that it has been going on since the Bay of Pigs and Castro seems no closer to falling. Any argument that the ends justify the means is a little hampered by the lack of any ends to speak of. CANF's campaign has, for better or worse, failed miserably. So why do they keep doing it? Anyway, here is the really interesting thing about all of this:

CANF are based in Miami to the full knowldedge of the US government.

When Cuba went to the UN after the aircraft was destroyed in 1976 the US ambassador said "Cuba is wasting our time again" and walked out of the meeting.

CANF are funded by Bacardi who openly admit the fact. They also petitioned US govt to allow them to use the trademark of a Cuban company to drive it out of the market.

As I said; this is not America bashing and it does not depend on the level of support you give to Cuba. This is an issue of terrorism where the government concerned does nothing - what is the difference between CANF and Al-Queda apart from scale? And considering we have had posts all round this forum about human life being unquantifiable I think even the point of scale might be a bit cold. When I talked t an American at my University about it he said that the US wouldn't go after CANF as "They aren't killing Americans." (I am not kidding here, he actually said that). I know he might not represent American feeling in general but it suprised me nonethless.

My general feeling is that CANF gets away with killing people because they are only Cubans. In the war on terrorism will they be a target at any point? Will the IRA and the UVF? Also if we are talking about terrorism the Northern Alliance should be pretty high up the list. The general the Taliban assasinated the other day - before his death he was most famous for blowing up a junior school and killing 28 children. Why the double standard on stuff like this?

Not meant as flamebait, just thought I should toss it out there and see what response I get.