The famous American filmmaker and activist Michael Moore asked Joe Biden on Saturday, in his last 100 days in office as president, to lift the embargo on Cuba and close the illegal torture base at Guantanamo.
The author of Bowling for Columbine documentary with which he won several renowned awards, including the Oscar in 2003, listed in his blog 13 wishes to happen during the last 100 days of President Biden in the White House.
In the fourth of these wishes is the closure of the U.S. military’s “Guantanamo Bay torture base”, which he called “a dark stain on America’s standing in the world”.
“It is time for GITMO to disappear,” demanded the director of Fahrenheit 9/11, a documentary in which he dissects the causes and consequences of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States and the subsequent invasion of Iraq.
Moore’s fifth petition is entitled Free Cuba, Free Our Souls, in which he made it clear that “it is time to normalize all relations with Cuba, end all sanctions against Cuba, end the embargo (blockade) and fully recognize the Cuban people’s right to self-determination,” according to Prensa Latina.
The filmmaker noted that “last November, an overwhelming 187 countries gathered at the United Nations General Assembly, for the 31st time! – to demand that the United States end our six-decade trade embargo against Cuba. The only country to vote with us was… wait for it… Israel! Oh, and one nation abstained: Ukraine.”
“The devout Catholic in you knows that what we are doing to Cuba is wrong. Joe, free our souls from this sinful burden, do the right thing,” Moore wrote, exercising the sharp irony with which he also approaches his film works that have made him a worldwide celebrity.
Other proposals for the list
In his petition, Moore included, among others, that Biden cancel all student and medical debt; release Native American rights advocate Leonard Peltier, confined 46 years ago; pardon intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, exiled in Russia; and stop Israel’s slaughter in Gaza.
“How many violations of red lines will it take until I’ve had enough (…) Mass slaughter, mass murder, mass destruction, all committed in the name of America, with America’s bombs, America’s weapons, America’s money,” he said as he urged ”to stop this madness.”
In the text (Bucket List Joe), published on his official website, Moore stressed to the Democratic president: “You have an extraordinary opportunity to make a lot of things happen. Great things. Important things. With one or two strokes of your presidential pen.”
Above all -insisted the director born in Michigan in 1954, – “you have immunity”, in reference to the Supreme Court’s decision in July which, in analyzing Trump’s outrages, granted the president of the United States “supreme powers with immunity and without political consequences. What would happen if he used them?”, wondered Michel Moore, highlighted Prensa Latina.
