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Mika (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Sun Mar-16-08 11:21 AM Original message |
Getting Smart About Cuba |
Getting Smart About Cuba
http://www.alternet.org/audits/79264/ The announcement of Fidel Castro's retirement and the subsequent election of his brother Raul Castro as Cuba's new president came as no surprise to Cuba experts and certainly not to the Cuban people themselves. Most Americans, though, seemed to expect that the passing of Castro -- however it should happen -- would be a convulsive event for Cuba. Instead, the changes happened peacefully and quietly, illustrating how U.S. perceptions of Cuba are, in general, painfully ignorant. It's time we recognized why. - |
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Judi Lynn (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Sun Mar-16-08 12:23 PM Response to Original message |
1. The article sheds some light on the brutal choke-hold the South Florida extremists have on the U.S. |
population's perception of Cuba, as in this snip:
In the plan, $5 million was earmarked for a public diplomacy effort to "illuminate the reality of Castro's Cuba." The wider community around those affiliated with these government-supported groups make political contributions individually and through political action committees meant to support the hardline, pro-embargo status-quo. Part of the strategy is preventing other Americans from traveling to Cuba to see for themselves what's happening there.Thanks for posting this, Mika. I am happy to save it for future use. |
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Mika (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Sun Mar-16-08 01:38 PM Response to Reply #1 |
2. Sad thing is that Dems peddle the same swill. |
I don't place blame on the radical exiles only.
Its a problem with America's "democracy". Two words - campaign funding. Both sides with an interest (pro & anti embargo) pour lots of money into campaigns of the mixed bag of dems and repugs on both sides of the issue. Just why would politicians on either side want to end the campaign cash cow? Status quo rules. Its where the money is. Again, two words - campaign funding. - |
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Peace Patriot (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore | Sun Mar-16-08 07:13 PM Response to Original message |
3. Excellent article! Thanks for posting! The Bushites and some of these same |
Miami welfare recipients have cranked up their "Big Lie" machine with regard to Venezuela--a democratic country, with stronger democratic institutions than our own, which they paint as being run by a "dictator." And they'll no doubt soon start (or have started already) on Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Evo Morales (Bolivia), and any democracy, with social justice and regional independence goals that doesn't follow our insane policy on Cuba. And we know that the Bush-CIA black op about the "suitcase full of money" was intended to embarrass the president of Argentina, and to "divide and conquer" Venezuela-Argentina. (It didn't work.)
I didn't know that the Miami mafia started the NED, nor that their propaganda machine gets most of the USAID money (OUR tax money!). Good grief! These funds have also paid for the recall election in Venezuela (which Chavez won handily) and other rightwing political activity and thuggery, in Venezuela, as well as funding the white separatist movement in Bolivia, that may turn "hot" this year, and provide Donald Rumsfeld some strategic ground (the gas/oil rich eastern provinces) from which to launch his next Oil War, as well as potentially involving Bush/U.S. military intervention (in support of the bad guys, of course). The Miami lobby reminds me of the spoiled rich oil elite in Venezuela, which mismanaged the economy for decades, giving away 90% of Venezuela's oil profits to the multinationals, and enriching themselves, while utterly neglecting the poor of Venezuela, and the basic decencies of their own society (education, medical care, housing, flood control), as well as failing to develop infrastructure and manufacturing, and losing Venezuela's food-self-sufficiency with land policy from the Middle Ages (the rich own all the land, they've bullied and pushed the good peasant farmers--the best food producers--off the land into urban squalor, and much of the land lay fallow, producing nothing for anybody). The Miami anti-Castro lobby is similar--their parents and grandparents ran Cuba like a brothel, and their excessive greed and brutality brought on the Cuban revolution. The current generation doesn't seem much different than their forebears. They are not interested in the common good of all Cubans--or all Americans, for that matter. Their goal is their own enrichment and feeding their egocentric view that they were "born to rule." And this is how we are permitting them to manage U.S./Cuba relations--for their own enrichment, and to feed their egos--literally at our expense, in billions of dollars to subsidize their propaganda machine, and at our expense in terms of good will in our hemisphere and in the world. Most of South America--which is into GOOD government--views our Cuban policy as nuts. While THEY benefit from Cuba's excellent medical system, and its famous literacy program, the mean-minded U.S., in the grip of fanatical Miami fascists, and oil and war profiteers, use USAID-NED funds to sponsor coups and toppling of democratic governments, pour five billion dollars into military aid to Colombia--the worst government in the hemisphere--and are losing one friend after another in Latin America. Our name is mud in South America. And it is not much better in Central America. Spoiled, murderous oil brats. Bush. The Venezuelan rightwing minority. And their allies, the Miami lobby, the white supremacist Bolivians, and the thugs and drug traffickers running Colombia. What a crew! Well, nothing much is going to change--or can change--until we got rid of the electronic voting machines, run by rightwing Bushite corporations (who used the excuse of Florida's stinko election system to gain that power over us), and restore transparent vote counting, like they have in Venezuela, and most of South America. Fascists can only gain power by force or by stolen elections. And that is true of every member of this fascist coalition that I named above. They cannot win power fairly, because they are only out for themselves. |
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