Can Obama and Castro turn the page for US and Cuba relations?

[WWGD]

Do you not consider support for the regimes of Chile, South Africa to be state terrorism? What is your definition of reasonable sources? And what were the Contras in Nicaragua? A social club? Maybe you purposefully define them circularly as those who agree with you. Wow, that is what a _mentor_ does here in PF, accuse someone of "purposefully making distortions". Is mind-reading a req for becoming a mentor?

Interesting too, that you do not _seem_ ( I do make allowances for misunderstandings, misinterpretations; maybe should give that a try sometime) to make much of an effort to disprove the statements supporting your hard-right claims, but you do seek to disproof every statement that is not in agreement with it.

 

[256bits]

Cuba for years provided material support to the like of FARC in Columbia

Cuba provides some medical care and political consultation. Explosives management training for the FARC by the IRA, and possibly by other foreign-based terrorists suspected by the Colombians, such as Cubans, Iranians, ETA (the Spanish Basque terrorist group), among others, has markedly improved the FARC's proficiency in urban terrorism

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/farc.htm

On November 19, 2012 Colombia's leftist FARC rebels announced a two-month unilateral cease-fire as the rebel group and Colombian government resumed peace talks in Havana. FARC said it would halt all military operations and acts of sabotage through January 20. In November 2012 Colombia, at war with the FARC since 1964, launched a controversial bid to negotiate peace with the rebels during talks in Havana, Cuba

Seems like Cuba is no different than any other country, and that includes most, that want to stick their nose in other countries' "business", either for the good or the bad.

 

[WWGD]

<Snip>
Seems like Cuba is no different than any other country, and that includes most, that want to stick their nose in other countries' "business", either for the good or the bad.

Bingo.

 

[russ_watters]

Do you charge for your mind readings? Before accusing someone and guessing their intentions?

There is no mind reading at work here. I know the definitions of the words and I have a lot of experience with the specific cliche' butchering of it that you are doing. It is a cliche', it is so common.

Moreover, I don't claim to know your actual intent here, but there really are only a couple of choices: willful ignorance or purposeful misrepresentation and neither are acceptable, particularly now that I've demanded sources and backup for your argument: so if you are ignorant, learn.

What is your definition of reasonable sources?

As a starting point, one that doesn't explicitly state in its name that it is a non-mainstream source. And more to the point, I asked for definitions, not a list of examples. The examples are useless until you establish the definition.

Wikipedia is fine for this. You really should actually do some reading on it. The controversy is well established as-is the fact that the international community generally manages to burn-through it to a useful and consistent definition:

Since 1994, the United Nations General Assembly has repeatedly condemned terrorist acts using the following political description of terrorism:

Criminal acts intended or calculated to provoke a state of terror in the general public, a group of persons or particular persons for political purposes are in any circumstance unjustifiable, whatever the considerations of a political, philosophical, ideological, racial, ethnic, religious or any other nature that may be invoked to justify them

More specifically:

By distinguishing terrorists from other types of criminals and terrorism from other forms of crime, we come to appreciate that terrorism is :

• ineluctably political in aims and motives
• violent – or, equally important, threatens violence
• designed to have far-reaching psychological repercussions beyond the immediate victim or target
• conducted by an organization with an identifiable chain of command or conspiratorial cell structure (whose members wear no uniform or identifying insignia) and
• perpetrated by a subnational group or non-state entity.

A terrorist may be a freedom fighter and vice versa, but there is no actual link between the two terms and in general they are more different than similar, since a "freedom fighter" tends to be a citizen of a country fighting against an existing government, not foreigners attacking a civilian population. So, for example, we didn't generally call the people we were fighting in Iraq "terrorists" (we called them "insurgents") because they were fighting against the US military, not attacking US civilians (not that all of their tactics obeyed the laws of war...). Similarly, on 9/11, all the planes were civilian targets and thus terrorism, but an attack on the Pentagon would not otherwise have been considered terrorism because it is a military target. It also wouldn't have been "freedom fighting" since the perpetrators were not Americans.

 

[berkeman]

Thread closed temporarily for Moderation...