• Submitted by: admin
• United States
• Personalities
• Politics and Government
• 05 / 13 / 2010

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The Obama Administration has been veering slightly progressive when it comes to easy and non-controversial, superficial reforms to the hostile-- even horrendous-- U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba.

Just today we learned that the U.S. government has granted a visa to Silvio Rodríguez, a Cuban musical icon and founding member of Cuban Nueva Trova, so that he can perform here.

Rodríguez was persona non-grata in the U.S. for decades and was prevented from attending a tribute to folk legend Pete Seeger last summer.

To its credit, the Obama Administration has been much better about granting visas to artists and intellectuals from Cuba-- like Carlos Varela, Cuban academic Rafael Hernández, who taught at the University of Texas, Omara Portuondo, who became first Cuban national on stage at the Latin Grammys, Cuban meteorologist José Rubiera, who attended a conference on environmental cooperation in New Orleans, and several other Cubans who were allowed to visit the United States for the first time in a decade.

And the Obama administration also helped make it possible for Juanes to host his Paz sin Fronteras (Peace without Borders) concert in Havana.

That said, when it comes to the overall policies towards Cuba, Obama isn't much different from George W. Bush.

I voted for Obama-- eyes wide open that he was no progressive in any way, shape or form-- and now I find myself having to face the reality of enhanced war in Afghanistan, a barely defensible corporate-oriented Supreme Court nominee, an overly friendly orientation toward the worst of the corporate predators who made Rahm Emanuel a multimillionaire, a tendency to compromise on everything from the git-go and, with very few people noticing or caring, a failure to do anything to fix our
misguided Cuba policy.

 The unpleasant reality is that the Obama Administration, and the Democratic controlled Congress, will do nothing to lift the embargo nor to allow Americans the right to travel freely to Cuba in the foreseeable future.

It defies logic that Congressman Jeff Flake (R-AZ), as a freshman member of Congress in 2000, was able to pass the travel-ban amendment in a Republican-controlled Congress and with a Republican President, yet in four years a Democratic-controlled Congress has not been able to do anything.

Why? Easy-- the same cheap political money that used to go to the Tom Delays, the Newt Gingrichs and other Republican leaders now gets spread around to the Democratic leadership as well.

We have got to come to the realization that the problem isn't just that the notorious Diaz-Balart brothers and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen are in control of America's anti-Cuba policies.

The fact is that Kendrick Meek, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Bob Menendez, Bill Nelson and other panderers and supporters of the embargo are preventing progress on an issue that means very little to most people-- but a great deal to some very wealthy ones!

Who could imagine that we would have a senior White House staff official more harmful to U.S.-Cuba relations then Karl Rove?

Trust me when I tell you Rama Manual has been bought and sold by right-wing Cuban-American extremists in Miami.

Look at the Cuban-American appointments that the President has made: Almost every supports the Diaz-Balart position on Cuba.

The President does not have one adviser who is knowledgeable about U.S.-Cuba policy supporting the lifting of the embargo and the travel ban. Not one!

Jorge Fajardo, Gloria Estefan's pop, a former Batista thug

What better example do we need than the President's recent visit to Gloria Estefan's Star Island home for a fundraiser? Not one person in attendance supports a progressive approach to U.S.-Cuba policy-- and I doubt there were many who voted for Obama in 2008.

While Gloria Estefan said her father would be proud of her that she had the President of the United State in her home, she did not tell the President that her father was chief of security for right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista and that he had
direct knowledge of the execution of 20,000 Cuban citizens from 1953 to 1958.

Don't be fooled or even encouraged by statements made by "progressives" in Congress who bluster that Radio Marti and TV Marti are a waste of taxpayers' money.

Everybody knows that, and has for many years. And no one should be encouraged by any self-serving hearings our friends in Congress hold.

It's just a way to placate people eager for real change, cheap and insulting. We don't need any more Congressional hearings; we just need the leadership to bring the travel bill to a vote. It will pass overwhelmingly.

The difference is that in a Republican-controlled Congress the Republican leadership would kill it in conference or the President would threaten a veto.

Those tactics cannot work with a Democratic-controlled Congress and a Democratic President, because that would be too blatantly obvious an act by the "the good guys."

How can Debbie Wasserman Shultz and her crooked congressional cronies be in lockstep with the Diaz-Balart brothers on the issue of Cuba?

Glad you asked, and there's a simple answer: political money. One need only look at Kendrick Meeks' position on Cuba as against our policy toward Haitian immigration.

Congressman Meeks as a black man ought to be ashamed of himself. Wasserman Schultz is the congressional bagman for crooked money from far right Cuban interests and from the sugar lobby.

She hands it out to unsuspecting freshman Democrats-- particularly corrupt Blue Dogs like Jason Altmire, John Barrow, Chris Carney, Joe Donnelly, Brad Ellsworth, Harry Mitchell, Heath Shuler and Zach Space-- and then "owns" them, as we've shown before.

U.S.-Cuba policy is a sad commentary on our political system. Our anti-Cuba foreign policy has nothing to do with political prisoners, communism or human-rights violations.

It has everything to do with vengeance, pride, hatred and retribution. America is better than squeezing a small sovereign island nation that posses no threat to us in any way shape or form.

The travel ban remains in place because "our friends" are betraying us.
 
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