Reuters: Raul Castro says hopes too high for Obama (as LGBTs have bitterly found out)

[IndianaGreen]

Rick Warren's invocation and the DADT repeal postponement to 2012 and beyond are bitter pills of reality to LGBT community. The rest of you will be next to experience the bitterness, anger, angst, and disappointment LGBTs had to endure since Waren was made the invocator.

Raul Castro says hopes too high for Obama

HAVANA (Reuters) - U.S. President-elect Barack Obama appears to be an honest and sincere man, but his election has awakened "excessive hopes" that the United States will change, Cuban President Raul Castro said in a television interview broadcast on Friday.

Castro repeated previous assertions that he is open to talks at any time with Obama, who takes office on January 20, but said he is not desperate to do so.

Obama has said he wants to ease the 46-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba and meet with Cuban leaders as first steps toward normalizing relations with the Communist-run island 90 miles off U.S. shores.

"Now there is a president who has raised hopes in many parts of the world -- I think excessive hopes," Castro said in an interview on state-run television.

"Because even if he's an honest man -- and I believe he is -- a sincere man -- and I believe he is -- one man alone cannot change the destiny of a country and much less the United States," said Castro, who replaced his ailing older brother Fidel Castro as president in February.

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE5020E020090103

[La Lioness Priyanka]

1. lets not blame ourselves for obama's choices

i dont have very high expectations of change from him. he said pretty much he would take the middle route.

however, if i disappointed in warren, i have every right to be. warren isnt the middle route.

obama's choices are his own, my disappointment in them have nada to do with high expectations.

[Lightning Jack]

2. oh no! the Communists don't like Obama. I guess his Admin is doomed.

Doomed I say!

[Mika]

3. "I hope I'm mistaken in my assessment. I hope Mr. Obama has success," he said.

"I hope I'm mistaken in my assessment. I hope Mr. Obama has success," he said.

"He can do much, he can take positive steps, he can put forth more just ideas, he can put a stop to the tendency of almost all U.S. presidents to have their war, or wars," he said.

The interview was taped on December 31, a day before Castro led celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the revolution that put his brother in power and turned Cuba to Communism at the height of the Cold War.

In a speech on Thursday, he spoke in harsh terms about U.S. treatment of Cuba and said the island can expect 50 years more of "incessant struggle" with an "enemy" that "will never cease to be aggressive, treacherous and dominant."

In the interview, he said Cuba would talk with the United States whenever the U.S. wants, but only as equals, "without the smallest shadow over our sovereignty."

"We're willing to do it when they say, without intermediaries, directly, but we're in no hurry, we're not desperate," Castro said.

Not a thing unreasonable about President Castro's assessment. As per usual.

[mitchtv]

10. I hope I'm mistaken, too

I expect nothing, any gain is a plus

[merh]

4. I'm curious

Where do you get that DADT repeal has been postponed until 2012?

[Creideiki]

8. At least 2010--but, but, but...that's an ELECTION YEAR!!!!11!!11

Oh, the horror! If the Democrats deliver on anything that will help the LGBT community, they'll LOSE THE ELECTION! :sarcasm:

[sniffa]

5. Isn't it enough you started your other thread on this?

Odd you posted it here too since it has nothing to do with Warren or GLBT's in general.

[IndianaGreen]

6. It has to do with LGBT hopes in Obama

Hopes that will continue to be dashed!

[sniffa]

7. No it doesn't

Absolutely nothing to do with that.

[Peace Patriot]

9. Thanks for this post, IndianaGreen! I think you make a good point.

The people of this country--nearly 60% of whom opposed the war on Iraq (Feb '03, all polls), 63% of whom oppose torture "under any circumstances" (May '04, NYT poll), and 60% to 90% of whom oppose virtually every Bushwhack policy, foreign and domestic--flocked to Barack Obama's campaign as the last candidate standing who opposed the Iraq War (however fitfully), and as the best choice offered to them for real representation of the American people in OUR White House. And the true leaders of the people--the grass roots activists around the country--worked hard, with great passion, intensity and devotion--to get him elected, and in particular to overwhelm the rigged voting system with GOTV. But, thus far, Obama is acting as if he owes the election to the rightwing fuckwads at Diebold, ES&S and co., who took over our election system during the 2002 to 2004 period, with 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines. And he does owe it to them, in a way--because they could have stopped him, and didn't. They merely significantly and fraudently shaved his mandate. Together with the Financial 9/11 that the Bushwhacks just pulled off--and their mind-boggling thievery and destruction over the last eight years--his hands are tied as to "change we can believe in." What is that, anyway? More corpo-fascist illusions of democracy?

I'm with Raul Castro. I think Obama is a good man--good heart, very intelligent--and maybe we will be surprised, in the end, as people were with FDR, at his political genius. I sometimes think that he sees Bushwack "divide and conquer" tactics as one of the chief ills that our country is suffering, and is determined to be president of ALL of the people, even the racial or sexual bigots, even the traitorous corpo/fascist CEOs and U.S.-based global corporate predators, even the war profiteers. He is Bush's president. He is Cheney's president. He is Jerry Falwell's president. He is Diebold's president. He is Halliburton's president. (Well, no--they've gone to Dubai.) And he is OUR president. I sometimes think that he sees himself as Abraham Lincoln--president of a bitterly divided nation that must--simply MUST--be held together. "Divide and conquer" is not an option. Unity MUST be re-created.

Just a guess, based on his speeches and behavior. That's how HE sees HIMSELF. And he started with the Democratic Party, pulling the Clintons in, and their supporters. The war profiteers? Well, they get to stay in clover by moving the Forever War to Afghanistan. The gays? They can wait. He won't permit a policy of bigotry, and may do things like rescind "don't ask/don't tell," but full rights can be delayed--much like they were for blacks in the 1950s, delayed to the 1960s--because he is president of the bigots as well as of the gays. Gay rights is a prime "divide and conquer" tool of the Bushwhacks.

Maybe this is genius. Maybe it is simply a reflection of the realities of corpo/fascist rule--one compromise after another, as the country falls over the fascist cliff. Or maybe it's something in between--how Obama sees himself, vs. the realities. Will how Obama sees himself help change the realities?

Example: Obama went into one of the worst dens of iniquity in the country--the Miami anti-Castro mafia convention--and said he wanted to open a dialogue with Castro. He couched this in a string of kneejerk statements about South America that had me in despair about him, early on. But he SAID it. Dialogue with our "enemies." He is the first U.S. politician, to my knowledge, who has ever said that about Cuba. (JFK had backchannels to Castro, but he could NOT say that publicly.) And he said it right to the faces of the very people who have been trying to re-install their murderous, fascist gangs in Havanna for forty years.

I think this is characteristic of Obama. And only time will tell what he can accomplish with this strategy.

Many of us are in the position of abolitionists prior to the Civil War, vis a vis Lincoln, who was ambivalent about slavery until much later. How could abolitionists compromise on this issue? They could not. How could they be expected to be "patient" on such an issue? It was emotionally and ethically impossible. The reality that tens of thousands of people would have to die--in the biggest bloodletting we have ever seen on our own soil--before it could be changed, didn't alter the fact that slavery was an abomination, and it couldn't be a consideration of the abolitionists. Should slavery have been abolished slowly, over time--as I think it would have been, eventually (50 years or so, maybe sooner), sans the Civil War? The dead--including many blacks--might say so. Were white politicians with progressive views, like Lincoln early on, wrong to gage their policy on slavery according to the political "realities" of the time? Did that make war more inevitable? Maybe.

I think that this is what is going on with Obama. He is Lincoln, early on--on many issues (not just gay rights). Or he thinks he is. We are NOT as divided a nation as he may think--living in the corpo/fascist 'news' bubble, as he does (pretty unavoidable, I suspect). On the other hand, it is VERY CLEAR that tearing us apart is one of the chief tactics of those who have robbed us blind and used our children for cannon fodder--in their treasonous, predatory, global corporate pursuit of money and power. His impulse is to not let us be torn apart further--but, in that, he may be underestimating corpo-fascist greed and viciousness, and their use of issues like gay rights and abortion for those purposes.

But where does this leave us? It leaves us with something like despair--on the Forever War, on the war of the rich against the poor, on corporate rule, on gay rights, on women's rights, on U.S. Latin American policy, and a host of vital issues on which we think compromise is WRONG and will make things worse. It leaves us with the reality that we have no say in a country with 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting, controlled by a handful of rightwing CEOs and investors. In a country that is subjected to 24/7 corpo/fascist psyops, via 'news' monopolies run by a handful of rightwing CEOs and investors. In a country run by war profiteers. They will be back with their "divide and conquer" program in 2012. And we will see then, I guess, if Obama's compromises with them prevent civil war, or have been able to restore our strength as a democracy of, by and for the People.