Cuban media: Boeing 737 crashes with 104 passengers aboard
Source: Yahoo News/AP
ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press•May 18, 2018
HAVANA (AP) — A Boeing 737 operated by state airline Cubana crashed on takeoff from Jose Marti International Airport in Havana on Friday with 104 passengers and nine crew aboard, coming to rest in a farm field where firefighters sprayed the charred fuselage with hoses. There was no immediate word on casualties.
Officials said the plane was headed to the eastern city of Holguin when it crashed between the airport in southern Havana and the nearby town of Santiago de Las Vegas.
The plane lay in a field of yuca-root plants and appeared heavily damaged and burnt. Firefighters were trying to extinguish its smoldering remains. Government officials including President Miguel Diaz-Canel rushed to the site, along with a large number of emergency medical workers and ambulances. Residents of the rural area said they had seen some survivors being taken away in ambulances.
A military officer who declined to provide his name to reporters said that there appeared to have been only three survivors in critical condition, but other officials declined to confirm that figure.
Read more: https://www.yahoo.com/news/cuban-media-boeing-737-crashes-104-passengers-aboard-173632644.html?soc_trk=gcm&soc_src=69f70237-124f-3ea9-acd0-fc922af945e2&.tsrc=notification-brknews
= new reply since forum marked as read
34 minutes ago
A Boeing 737 airliner from Cuba's state airline Cubana de Aviacion has crashed and exploded near Jose Marti International Airport in Havana, Cuban media report.
The plane came down shortly after take-off, Prensa Latina news agency said.
State TV said it was an internal flight from the Cuban capital to Holguin, in the east of the island.
The plane was carrying 104 passengers, local reports say. No information about casualties has yet been confirmed.
More:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-44176899
Luis Posada Carriles, widely considered responsible for the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, which killed 73 people. Living it up in Miami at U.S. taxpayer expense.
in Central America, recruited bomber "mules" from among impoverished people in Guatemala, etc. to carry in bombs to place at various tourist hot spots in Cuba, like hotels, restaurants, discos. Was able to, through his proxy bombers, to catapult an Italian tourist into the Void. That tourist's father, still in Italy, chose to permanently move to Cuba after his son was assassinated by a Miami Cuban "exile" terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles.
Luis Posada Carriles, when he was young,
participating in murderous raids against the
people of Cuba after the Revolution with
his terrorist brigade 2506.
Luis Posada Carriles, before getting
shot in his jaw during murderous nonsense.
With former pediatrician, Dr. Orlando Bosch, the other Cubana airline bomber architect in Miami, where they were both the toast of the town, together before god called his mass murdering servant back home to receive his just rewards, whatever that might be.
A note from the sane world to the government which has protected this mega-terrorist all these years.
Behind the sign, images of the very innocent people, including children, who were trying to get home,
each in one piece.
Would-be rescuers had to try to rescue their remains floating in the sea from boats.
Thanks for the reminder, sandensea. What a shame more people don't have any idea about the war which has been going on against the Cuban people since they opted to remove their US-backed bloody, treacherous, wildly corrupt dictator, and the thoroughly hideous, racist oligarchs who supported him since he first rose to power in the 1930's and ruled, one way or another, usually from behind the scenes, even from Miami, until the Revolution.
Response to sandensea (Reply #9)
LUIS POSADA CARRILES
THE DECLASSIFIED RECORD
CIA and FBI Documents Detail Career in International Terrorism; Connection to U.S.
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 153
For more information contact
Peter Kornbluh - 202/994-7116
May 10, 2005
Update - May 18, 2005 - Documents featured on May 17, 2005 edition of ABC's Nightline
Washington D.C. May 18, 2005 - The National Security Archive today posted additional documents that show that the CIA had concrete advance intelligence, as early as June 1976, on plans by Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb a Cubana airliner. The Archive also posted another document that shows that the FBI's attache in Caracas had multiple contacts with one of the Venezuelans who placed the bomb on the plane, and provided him with a visa to the U.S. five days before the bombing, despite suspicions that he was engaged in terrorist activities at the direction of Luis Posada Carriles.
Both documents were featured last night on ABC Nightline's program on Luis Posada Carriles, who was detained in Miami yesterday by Homeland Security.
In addition, the Archive posted the first report to Secretary of State Kissinger from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research on the bombing of Cubana flight 455. The report noted that a CIA source had overheard Posada prior to the bombing in late September 1976 stating that, "We are going to hit a Cuban airliner." This information was apparently not passed to the CIA until after the plane went down.
There is no indication in the declassified files that indicates that the CIA alerted Cuban government authorities to the terrorist threat against Cubana planes. Still classified CIA records indicate that the informant might actually have been Posada himself who at that time was in periodic contact with both CIA and FBI agents in Venezuela.
More:
https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The Terrorist List, and Terrorism as Practiced Against Cuba
April 22, 2013 COHA
Of all the components to the United States hostile strategy against Cuba, nothing raises the ire of the Castro government more than its inclusion on the State Department’s list of states that sponsor terrorism. The designation is seen by Havana as an impediment towards improving relations and as a cruel hypocrisy that provides political cover for Washington to justify the imposition of economic penalties along with the perpetuation of anti-revolutionary propaganda.
There is an opportunity to eliminate that stumbling block in the next few weeks, if newly appointed Secretary of State John Kerry decides to recommend Cuba’s deletion from the list to President Obama. Kerry has until the release of the State Department’s annual terror report on April 30 to make the determination of whether Cuba will remain on the terrorist list. High ranking Cuban officials are closely watching this development, indicating the removal could offer an opportunity to re-engage with the United States. [1]
The history of Cuba’s controversial inclusion goes back to 1982, the same year Iraq was taken off the list by the Reagan administration. Besides Cuba, only Sudan, Iran, and Syria continue to be labeled as state sponsors of terrorism. North Korea was dropped in 2008, while Pakistan, long the home of Osama Bin Laden and recognized as a haven for Islamic terrorists, has never been considered. Saudi Arabia, where the majority of the 9/11 terrorists came from, is looked upon as a staunch ally of the United States.
There are numerous reasons why the Castro government finds its insertion on the list so galling. First are the real economic consequences to the designation. By law the United States must oppose any loans to Cuba by the World Bank or other international lending institutions. Obama administration officials have been using Cuba’s inclusion to make it increasingly difficult for Havana to conduct normal banking transactions that involve U.S. financial establishments, regardless of which currency is being used. Furthermore, the United States has imposed an arms embargo against all parties placed on the list (which the Castro government has experienced since the triumph of the Revolution) as well as prohibiting sales of items that could be considered to have both military and non-military dual use, including hospital equipment. For example, the William Soler children’s hospital in Havana was labeled a ‘denied hospital’ in 2007 by the State Department, bringing with it serious ramifications. Various medicines and technology have become impossible to obtain, resulting in the deaths of children and the inability of staff to properly deal with a variety of treatable conditions. [2] For Cuba, these restrictions are additionally damaging as the island continues to suffer from the comprehensive embargo the United States has imposed since the early 1960s.
More:
http://www.coha.org/22355/
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
The Coddled ‘Terrorists’ of South Florida
Anti-Castro Cuban exiles linked to bombings and assassinations are living free – and conducting drills – in Miami. Does the U.S. have a double standard on terrorism?
JANUARY 14, 2008 By TRISTRAM KORTEN & KIRK NIELSEN
. . .
Plans to attack Cuba are constantly being hatched in South Florida. Over the years militant exiles have been linked to everything from downing airliners to hit-and-run commando raids on the Cuban coast to hotel bombings in Havana. They've killed Cuban diplomats and made numerous attempts on Castro's life.
But, other than an occasional federal gun charge, nothing much seems to happen to most of these would-be revolutionaries. They are allowed to train nearly unimpeded despite making explicit plans to violate the 70-year-old U.S. Neutrality Act and overthrow a sovereign country's government. Though separate anti-terror laws passed in 1994 and 1996 would seem to apply directly to their activities, no one has ever been charged for anti-Cuban terrorism under those laws. And 9/11 seems to have changed nothing. In the past few years in South Florida, a newly created local terrorism task force has investigated Jose Padilla and the hapless Seas of David cult, and juries have delivered mixed reviews, but no terrorism charges have been brought against anti-Castro militants. The federal government has even failed to extradite to other countries militants who are credibly accused of acts of murder. Among the most notorious is Luis Posada Carriles, wanted for bombing a Cuban jet in 1976 and Havana hotels in 1997. It is, perhaps, a testament to the power of South Florida's crucial Cuban-American voting bloc — and the political allegiances of the current president.
In Greater Miami, home to the majority of the nation's 1.5 million Cuban-Americans, the presence of what could credibly be described as a terrorist training camp has become an accepted norm during the half-century of the anti-Castro Cuban diaspora. Alpha 66 and numerous other paramilitary groups — Comandos F4, Brigade 2506, Accion Cubana — are so common they've taken on the benign patina of Rotary Clubs with weapons.
But Alpha 66 members are eager to remind you that even if they are graying and prosperous they are not toothless old tigers. Their Web site boasts that “in recent years” they've sabotaged Cuba's tourist economy by attacking hotels in the beach resort of Caya Coco. At the group's headquarters in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami, the walls are hung with the portraits of dozens of men who have died on Alpha 66 missions.
More:
https://www.theinvestigativefund.org/investigation/2008/01/14/coddled-terrorists-south-florida/
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Why the FBI Is Coming After Me
By Ann Louise Bardach
Sunday, November 12, 2006
As a rule, I don't believe in conspiracy theories. They tend to be tidy and selective, whereas life seems so random and messy. But the case of Cuban militant and would-be Fidel Castro assassin Luis Posada Carriles has sorely tested my convictions.
I've been writing about Posada for nearly a decade. I interviewed him in Aruba for a series of articles in the New York Times in 1998. He was a fugitive who had escaped from Venezuela in 1985 while awaiting trial in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban passenger plane that killed all 73 people aboard-- the first deadly act of airline terrorism in the Americas. Posada has maintained his innocence, but in a rare instance of unanimity, the CIA and the FBI, as well as Venezuelan, Trinidadian and Cuban intelligence, concluded that he and fellow militant Orlando Bosch had masterminded the bombing.
Last year, I wrote an Outlook article about Posada's surprise arrival in Miami, where he filed a claim for political asylum. Not only did this move strike many as brazen, but it also seemed incomprehensible that the Bush administration, so committed to what it calls the War on Terror, could have allowed someone of Posada's notoriety to slip into the country.
Soon after, Homeland Security Department officials got around to arresting Posada and charging him with illegal entry. I assumed that the Justice Department would act on his self-admitted history of paramilitary attacks and extradite him somewhere, and that I'd just continue to cover his case. Instead, the government has dithered for a year and a half while Posada languishes in an immigration jail in Texas.
More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/10/AR2006111001384.html
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Castro Enemy Said to Have Recounted Role in Attacks
By DAN FROSCH MARCH 16, 2011
EL PASO — A journalist called as a key prosecution witness in the perjury trial of an elderly anti-Castro militant testified on Wednesday that the defendant had described in detailed interviews his role in a wave of bombings that tore through Havana in 1997.
The witness, Ann Louise Bardach, was a contract writer for The New York Times when she interviewed the man, Luis Posada Carriles, in 1998. The interviews were the foundation for articles she wrote that year with Larry Rohter, a reporter for The Times, in which Mr. Posada spoke about coordinating the bombs at hotels and restaurants to frighten tourists.
Mr. Posada, 83, has been on trial in federal court here for two months, but not for the attacks in Havana that killed an Italian tourist, or in connection with the downing of a Cuban jet in 1976 that killed 73 people — both of which have made him a wanted man in Cuba and Venezuela.
. . .
Federal prosecutors say Mr. Posada, who was on the C.I.A.’s payroll during the 1960s and ’70s, lied during immigration hearings more than five years ago about how he had gotten into the United States and about his involvement in the Havana bombings.
More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/17/us/17posada.html
Pathetic and deranged sanctions against Cuba are emblematic of Trumpian policy.
Have a good time.
My dad and his family live in Havana.
He is old and has the symptoms of developing ALS. He gets good care there, which would be unaffordable here.
Thanks for the welcome.
I’m still figuring this place out. Lots of fora and good people.
OMG ... the horrors of the brutal areligious dictatorship!!! <--
Here, in America, our POTUSes send much more effective thoughts and prayers.
By Ernesto Londoño
Dec. 21, 2017
Cuba’s leader, Raúl Castro, will step down as president in April, roughly two months later than anticipated, the government announced on Thursday.
Cuban officials pushed back the highly anticipated transition because the government in September delayed legislative elections as a result of damage from Hurricane Irma.
Under the revised timeline, the National Assembly’s current term will end April 19, instead of Feb. 24.
More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/world/americas/cuba-raul-castro.html
I remember reading lotsa times over the years that Hurricane clean-up and repair of homes, etc. brings lots of people out to get things running again.
As you know, Cuba has a record of sustaining absolutely minimal human loss due to their incredible hurricane preparedness, developed and perfected over years, in which everyone already knows the drill, and they even are able to get farm animals and household pets to higher ground, as well as keeping the Cuban people themselves safe.
Have seen a couple of articles by US Americans stuck in Cuba during/after hurricanes, and their impressions of the fantastic spirit of shared involvement in making things livable again. Very impressive.
Hurricane Irma handi-work
Hurricanes don't kid around by the time they hit Cuba, do they? Yikes.
The wings on an airplane need to be bigger when you take off and when you land than they do when you're flying straight and level. That's what the flaps and slats are for, and this is a diagram of a wing:
Part of setting the plane up for departure is extending them into the airflow. If you try taking off with the flaps and slats extended, your airplane falls out of the sky and everyone on it gets killed.
This is a page of accident summaries that have one thing in common: the pilots failed to extend their flaps and slats, and the omission killed everyone aboard.
http://lessonslearned.faa.gov/ll_main.cfm?TabID=2&LLID=69&LLTypeID=14
