Discussion of All Things Political

A Cuban man and transgender woman have married in what is being seen as the country's first "gay wedding".

Same sex marriage is illegal in Cuba, but bride Wendy Iriepa is legally a woman after undergoing one of the first state-sponsored sex changes in 2007.

Her fiance, Ignacio Estrada, is a noted dissident and gay rights activist in Cuba and is also HIV positive.

The couple said the wedding, timed to coincide with Fidel Castro's birthday, was a "gift" for the former leader.

The wedding in Havana was attended by prominent dissidents and members of the gay community.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people faced official discrimination for years in communist Cuba.

'Great injustice'
In the early days of the revolution many were sent to re-education camps to stamp out their "counter-revolutionary" values.

But homosexuality was made legal in 1970, and President Raul Castro has introduced a series of gay rights reforms since taking over from his brother Fidel in 2006.

Last year Fidel Castro himself apologised for the persecution of homosexuals under his rule, calling it a "great injustice".


Ms Iriepa, 37, had her sex-change treatment at the National Centre for Sex Education, which is headed by Raul Castro's daughter, Mariela.

"I dedicate my wedding to all those who want to have their own," she said after the ceremony.

"This is the first wedding between a transsexual woman and a gay man," Mr Estrada, 31, said.

"We celebrate it at the top of our voices and affirm that this is a step forward for the gay community in Cuba."

Dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez, who acted as a godmother at the ceremony, said that while the marriage was not technically a gay wedding "it is the closest we have come".

"We are very happy with what happened today," she wrote on Twitter.

"It was a big step in a small Cuba".MORE

April 03, 2010 — Wikileaks has obtained and decrypted this previously unreleased video footage from a US Apache helicopter in 2007. It shows Reuters journalist Namir Noor-Eldeen, driver Saeed Chmagh, and several others as the Apache shoots and kills them in a public square in Eastern Baghdad. They are apparently assumed to be insurgents. After the initial shooting, an unarmed group of adults and children in a minivan arrives on the scene and attempts to transport the wounded. They are fired upon as well. The official statement on this incident initially listed all adults as insurgents and claimed the US military did not know how the deaths ocurred. Wikileaks released this video with transcripts and a package of supporting documents on April 5th 2010 on http://collateralmurder.com

The roots of the present revolution are various: South vs. North clash (Bakiev is from the South, the rebels are from the North), corruption and suppressive government (in recent years Kyrgyz people witnessed all forms of oppression from closings of the newspapers [ENG] to independent journalists' murders [EN]), Russia's Great Game interest, Ortega-y-Gasset'ian “revolt of the masses” etc). Whatever the real reasons of the Kyrgyz revolution of 2010 are it is important to note that it was overwhelmingly immediate, furious, bloody and… well-documented.

The role of the new media changed slightly this time compared to other dramatic events (like the protests in Moldova or Iran). Blogs and Twitter didn't serve as serious means of public mobilization since the Internet penetration rate is relatively small in Kyrgyzstan ( just 15 percent in 2009). However, new media were agile enough to cover all the main events giving detailed footage of initial protests in Talas, rampage in Bishkek and looting that followed. At the same time, new media were efficiently used by the opposition attracting the attention of international community and shifting public opinion to the side of the protesters. The opposition leader Roza Otunbaeva (@otunbaeva), for instance, registered her account as soon as she became the head of the provisional government. On the other day, son of president Bakiev, Maxim opened a LiveJournal account to express the pro-government point of view.

As Gregory Asmolov concluded [RUS], it was not “journalists 2.0″ who were the most efficient in covering Kyrgyz events but the “editors 2.0″. Bloggers who both knew the region and were outside the country to see the big picture and collected the photographs, videos and Twitter confessions. Two most informed bloggers in this situation were people outside the country: US-based Yelena Skochilo (a.k.a. LJ user morrire) and Kazakhstan-based Vyacheslav Firsov (a.k.a. lord_fame). They managed to assemble the most complete collections of photos, videos and timelines

With one action, the prorogation of Parliament, Trinidad and Tobago's Prime Minister thrust the country into election mode. (The constitution of the twin island republic states that from the moment Parliament is dissolved, a general election must be held in no fewer than 35 days and no more than 90). As the news broke, the blogosphere was rife with speculation that the move was made to pre-empt a no-confidence motion against Manning that had been scheduled for debate today in the House of Representatives, as well as to avoid the fallout over the report of the Uff Commission of Enquiry into the Construction Sector, which was critical of the modus operandi of the state-owned Urban Development Corporation of T&T (UDeCOTT) - which is not to say that bloggers are not asking other critical questions, some even as basic as “When?

Why now? Why would the Prime Minister risk losing Government with not even 3 years of his five-year term behind him?
Why? Why when the country can still call on record revenue and a commanding majority in Parliament?

The analysts are pinning it on the no-confidence motion; or Calder Hart. But as Chris Rock asked when speaking on the Columbine shootings, “Whatever happened to crazy?”
It's quite possible Manning is just a nut. A lunatic.

MORE

The decision by a Miami court on Tuesday October 13 to reduce Antonio Guererro's life sentence to 22 years imprisonment is the latest chapter in the ongoing legal battle to free a group of men known as the Cuban Five. Largely anonymous in the United States yet celebrities in their native Cuba, their conviction symbolizes the fraught relationship that exists between the two countries. The re-sentencing is the result of a decision taken last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which stated that the court in Miami, where the original trial was held, may have erred when it imposed sentences on three of the five men. The hearing takes place at a time when many Cubans and Americans have high hopes for improved diplomacy between their nations.


The case of the Cuban Five is inextricably linked to the ongoing standoff between Havana and Washington. In the early 1990s, the Cuban government sent a group of men known as The Wasp Network to the United States to infiltrate anti-Castro organizations, which had been operating from Miami with apparent impunity since the 1960s. After these anti-Castro organizations orchestrated the bombings of Cuban hotels and the shooting down of a Cuban passenger aircraft near Barbados in 1976, the Cuban government decided to take covert actions, believing that the United States was not interested in helping prevent more attacks.

One of the groups targeted by The Wasp Network was Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR). The group was made up of Cuban exiles whose initial goal was rescuing Cuban rafters who were emigrating from the country, but whose focus changed after new U.S. immigration policy mandated that rescued rafters be sent back to Cuba, rather than taken to the United States. The group then began chartering planes to drop anti-Castro leaflets in Cuba, making repeated illegal incursions into Cuban airspace. Cuban authorities made numerous complaints to U.S. aviation authorities, but this failed to put a stop to the flights. On February 24, 1996, two BTTR planes were shot down by the Cuban Air Force, resulting in the death of the four pilots on board. The deaths provoked outrage in the United States, and led directly to the strengthening of the U.S. embargo on Cuba via the controversial Helms-Burton Act.But George Bush's government was secretly paying the Miami Herald to inflame opinion agianst them during the trial. And that was just the start of the irregularities.