US Denies Visas to Top Cuban Athletes
HAVANA TIMES – The US Interests Section in Havana denied visas to Cuban Olympic medal athletes Yargelis Savigne and Yipsi Moreno, who were scheduled to participate today in the 4th Diamond League in Eugene, Oregon.
According to the statement of the Cuban Athletic Commission, the island will only be represented in this phase of the League by Orlando Ortega (110 hurdles), who is already in US territory.
Moreno specializes in the hammer throw and is a three times world champion and twice an Olympic silver medalist. For her part, Savigne was the triple jump world champion in 2007.
The Diamond League, which includes 14 stages of track and field events in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas, and held its first three rounds during the month of May in Doha, Shanghai, and New York.
Although this is getting off topic, I must point out the obvious:
Various US government agencies are quite susceptible to being subverted for partisan political purposes. Consider the facts of the IRS scandal as they are now emerging. Hundreds of conservative political groups and individual donors were targeted for extra scrutiny and harassment by political activists in the IRS. These activists were connected to the Democratic Party and the the public sector unions. It now appears to have involved as many as 80 IRS employees working in a coordinated program that ran for over 3 years and which was directed by somebody in the White House.
As for the Cuban athletes being denied visas, it is possible the officials who refused them were from either the left or the right, pro or anti regime. Both flavours of extremists would have reasons to undermine such exchanges.
it is likely even more insidious than that. Miami extremists have sons and cousins who believe exactly as they do and work in all branches of government in Washington. It is possible that no one even had to whisper this ‘advice’. The degree of hatred manifested by both sides of the Florida straits is amazing to me.
For once, try to keep this from being personal. In the US, there exists a bureaucracy that is virtually impossible to reform or replace due to ‘civil servant protections’ codified in law. As a result, this kind of illogical error can occur and no one will lose their job. On the other side of the Florida straits, there is no such protection. When similar ‘bureaucratic errors’ are made in Cuba it is more likely in furtherance of the Castros totalitarian agenda and not due to outside interference or simple numbskull behavior.
Yes that MAKES sense. You try so hard to NOT to blame the US on anything. This ‘bureaucratic error’ is an euphemism for everything you blame ‘on the Castros’ when the shit hits the fan ‘on the other side’. Give up that nonsense.
Recall the case a few
weeks ago, involving a conference on political reform in Cuba for which Cuban participants were refused visas. That snub was due to the whispered advice of pro-Castro “Cuba experts” in the US to gulliable officials in the State Dept. It is very likely a similar mechanism is at play in this sporting event and it reveals the malignant influence of these agents of influence.
This doesn’t make any sense. A few weeks ago, the daughter and niece of the beasts themselves was not only extended a visa but provided with Secret Service protection. I hope they appeal. There must be some sort of bureaucratic error to resolve.