Yesterday evening after presenting at the United Nations Summit on Climate Change, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro seized the opportunity to visit community leaders, local activists and grassroots groups in an event hosted by Hostos Community College of the South Bronx, in New York City.
Around 1,000 people attended the event, which was organized by Citgo, and many arrived early to wait outside for good seats and to hold signs welcoming Maduro as “president of the people.”
The Bronx community
The atmosphere was festive, Gabriela Sierra Alonso, a journalism student in attendance, told venezuelanalysis.com. “People were carrying messages of solidarity, chanting, and handing out fliers. Because it was at Hostos, a big part of the Puerto Rican community was there, particularly those fighting for the release of political prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera.”
The Homerus swallowtail, found only in two areas of Jamaica, is the Western Hemisphere’s largest butterfly, but scientists say that its numbers are so small that conservation and captive breeding efforts are needed to save the insect.
A University of Florida study was the first to estimate the population found in western Jamaica’s remote ‘Cockpit Country.’ Author Matt Lehnert, a graduate student at the University found about 50 adults in the area. The good news is the population was larger than expected, according to Tom Emmel, a UF entomology professor who has helped rescue the endangered Schaus swallowtail and Miami blue butterflies native to Florida.
The following is the reconstruction of Fidel’s four-hour speech made on 16 October 1953 in his own defense in court against the charges brought against him after he led the attack on the Moncada Barracks.
Never has a lawyer had to practice his profession under such difficult conditions; never has such a number of overwhelming irregularities been committed against an accused man. In this case, counsel and defendant are one and the same. As attorney he has not even been able to take a look at the indictment. As accused, for the past seventy-six days he has been locked away in solitary confinement, held totally and absolutely incommunicado, in violation of every human and legal right.
He who speaks to you hates vanity with all his being, nor are his temperament or frame of mind inclined towards courtroom poses or sensationalism of any kind. If I have had to assume my own defense before this Court it is for two reasons. First: because I have been denied legal aid almost entirely, and second: only one who has been so deeply wounded, who has seen his country so forsaken and its justice trampled so, can speak at a moment like this with words that spring from the blood of his heart and the truth of his very gut.
There was no lack of generous comrades who wished to defend me, and the Havana Bar Association appointed a courageous and competent jurist, Dr. Jorge Pagliery, Dean of the Bar in this city, to represent me in this case. However, he was not permitted to carry out Continue reading →