Estefans want to get Obama's ear on Cuba

[Mika]

This story is a blivit.
(blivit = 10 lbs of shit in a 5 lb bag)

Estefans want to get Obama's ear on Cuba
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/04/10/1573603/estefans-want-to-get-obamas-ear.html#ixzz0kneS1oCH
BY MYRIAM MARQUEZ
[e-mail]

They have visited with six American presidents. Traveled from China to England to speak to ambassadors and heads of state. Seen the pope.
At each stop, they have talked about their pain. About growing up without his mom for eight years because she was forced to stay behind in their homeland. About having her dad give all for his country and be imprisoned.
Now Emilio and Gloria Estefan want to share the story of Cuba's 51-year dictatorship with President Barack Obama, put human rights at the top, give the island's 11 million people hope.
The Republicans who marched with the Estefans in solidarity with the Ladies in White two weeks ago in Miami read about the couple hosting an eye-popping $30,400-per-couple fundraiser and feel used. The nation's political divisions -- the tea partyers who call Obama a communist, the birthers who insist he was born in Kenya -- become magnified in older exiles' hearts into irreconcilable differences with the Democrats.
Yet when Jorge Mas Canosa was alive his Cuban American National Foundation had the gumption to go to the Soviet Union -- the USSR for heaven's sake! -- when Mikhail Gorbachev was talking glasnost. And CANF always gave money to Democratic and Republican candidates. All in an effort to help end Cuba's dictatorship.
It hurts the Estefans to hear some question their integrity now. Emilio agreed to host Obama about a month ago, when the White House asked, he says. The Estefans seized on a chance to get Obama's ear on Cuba. The Miami march sprang from the attacks on the Ladies in Cuba, not from some Machiavellian plot to help the Democrats.
``We don't win anything with this,'' Emilio told me last week. ``We're independent, always have been. . . . I voted for Obama, but I also voted for Bush. There are people with good intentions in both parties.''
``People should know by now that we have dignity.''
There's this window, you see, this window of opportunity now that the European Union and Latin America are paying attention, now that hunger-striking prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo has died and the Ladies in White carrying flowers for their imprisoned men have been pummeled on the streets of Havana and blogger Yoani Sánchez has been beaten and harassed by state security.
There's this window into Cuba's ugliness for all the world to see, and only a day before the Estefans' Miami march the president pried it open a little when he denounced Zapata's death and the Ladies' beatings.
Raúl Castro attempted to slam it shut last week with his diatribe to communist youth, railing about U.S. and international criticism, dismissing another dissident hunger striker, Guillermo Fariñas, as a common criminal and vowing that Cuba will ``never cede to blackmail.''
``Gloria and I feel a responsibility to do something. For Zapata and Fariñas and the Ladies and the younger generation now speaking up there,'' Emilio said. ``They have to see we're united behind them.''
There will always be those who see political conspiracies where only goodwill exists. Yet the generational shift is undeniable here and there. Change lies in Cuba, and what we do here to help those there can precipitate change or deny another generation any chance at freedom.
At the epicenter of this shift are Emilio and Gloria trying to bridge the hurt feelings and broken hearts, to honor their parents and their cubanía, their humanity. Heads held high and at peace, they are trying to push that window wide open.
They need us to join.

---

[Peace Patriot]

1. "...but I also voted for Bush. There are people with good intentions in both parties."

I'm willing to believe that Obama had good intentions, although I think that Hugo Chavez had it pretty right when he said that Obama is "the prisoner of the Pentagon." But Junior? Good intentions? Chavez had it right about him, too.

How did El Diablo "honor their parents and their 'cubanía', their humanity"? By torturing prisoners on the other end of the island of Cuba and at torture dungeons around the world?

The Miami Hairball has outdone itself.

:puke:

[protocol rv]

9. The article doesn't say what you claim

It doesn't say Bush honored their parents and their 'cubanía', it says the Estefans try to do it - and it has nothing to do with Bush. The Miami Herald is written for its audience. When you have the purchasing power of the Cuban community in Miami, then they'll change their editorial content.

But I'm curious, why do you think Obama is the prisoner of the Pentagon? If Chavez said it (I don't recall), then the statement is wrong. The Pentagon is a subset of the military industrial complex. And the US politicians are beholden to a series of powerful lobbies, some of which influence foreign policy to a large extent, and some do not.

For example, in the case of Cuba, the Ohio corn lobby (the one pushing the dumb ethanol industry Castro and I criticize) wants trade with Cuba -they want to sell corn. The Cuban lobby in Miami wants the embargo, but I heard younger Cubans are starting to change their minds. The military industrial complex just wants a big fat US military using bullets. Since there's no real possibility of a war with Cuba, the "Pentagon" doesn't really give a hoot about Cuba policy. What about the Israel lobby? This can be complicated. To them what happens in Latin America is a non-issue, as long as Latin Americans don't back Palestine or nations which support the Palestinian cause.

Patriot, and this is where Chavez goofed, because he started flirting with the Iranians. I should clarify, as an individual I'm pro-Palestinian, but one has to be extremely careful when leading a nation like Venezuela to time when and how one upsets the Israel lobby. And by siding with Iran (for no apaparent real benefit), Chavez just put himself, and indirectly the Castro regime, right in the crosshairs of this powerful lobby. The lobby knows Cuba is now Venezuela's client state, but Castro is also Chavez' Svengali, his Yoda, one may say. So the lobby, wanting to teach Chavez a lesson, will definitely be putting Castro in its crosshairs.

Which means the comment you quote is off the mark. Obama is the captive, in this case, of the military industrial complex and the israel lobby. The agricultural lobby is pulling the other way, the Cuban lobby is weakening and it's divided.

The others really couldn't care less. Go ask the Armenian lobby what they think. Or the big pharma. They don't really care. There aren't enough Cubans with cash to buy their drugs, the Cubans don't compete, and therefore they're a non issue in the pharmaceutical field.

[Meshuga]

2. Obama must have his hands tied. I don't think the Estefans can influence the president

I give Obama more credit than that. I don't think he would be swayed by people like them.

He is the President of the US (and a very bright guy) so it is hard to believe he is not aware of the historical pattern in regards to the relationship between the US and Latin America. And I mean a knowledge based on historians and scholars with expertice in Latin American issues as opposed to propagandist neocons. I'm sure he knows all the cause and effect and what worked and what didn't work. When putting all ideologies aside we can all conclude that good neighbor policies helped empower people in Latin America and helped in creating good partnerships in the past for the US.

For example, a person would have to be blind not to see the different results in what was good for both Latin America and the US when the differences between how the US handled Sandino in Nicaragua and how it handled the Bolivian revolution in the 1950's are contrasted. The former was considered a dangerous Marxist in the wake of the Cold War and the latter spoused Marxism but actually got US aid.

Anyway, it should be no surprise to Obama or to anyone who has ever studied Latin American history without using any ideological goggles that given the history, stemming back to the neocolonial period, that two of the most successful revolutions in the region are Cuba and Nicaragua - the two nations that were perhaps the most deeply enmeshed with US imperialist policies way back in the day.

[Mika]

3. I'm just hoping he doesn't wear or hold up a Cuba B.C. shirt for photos.

Never mind that Posada was celebrated as a freedom fighter and showed up in photos at her recent march in Miami.

Its a PR disaster if the Obama admin's goal is to change US/Cuba relations into a new and less hostile era. Of course, if campaign contributions are the goal, we all know what's up re:the tit-for-tat of US campaigns/politics.

Al Gore did the same thing (as in: attempted appeasing of RW exiles) by hemming and hawing over the Elain debacle and sending Joe Lieberman down to Miami to kiss Jorge Mas Canosa's headstone (and CANF ass).

The new generation of hard liners (the Cuba B.C. crowd) are equally as cretinous and just as able to secure power and privilege here in Miami (meaning: profiteering off of the taxpayer funded anti Castro industry) as the old generation - but are just a little more media savvy in using the coat tails of professional exile music and movie stars.

Just like they did during the Elian drama.

---

[Meshuga]

6. I thought Posada was actually there...

...marching with Gloria as opposed to only showing up in photos. It baffles me that this mass murderer not in jail.

[Mika]

11. LOL

Oops. :spank: Should have typed.....

"He was there in person, as photos of the event revealed."

---

[Judi Lynn]

8. Didn't know the mad dog bomber went to a recent march. Not surprised.

He's the one who had the nerve to throw a media event in Miami for himself not long after he had the terrorist Santiago Alvarez bring him back in his bogus shrimp boat, La Santrina, after he got released from prison in Panama for his part in the planned bombing of the large auditorium where Fidel Castro was scheduled to speak. The President of Panama, Mireya Moscoso, turned him and his companions loose the day before she also ended her Presidency and instantly moved to Miami, after calling ahead to the "exile" hardliners to tell them Posada had been freed.

Mireya Moscoso, as people know, was a _Bush puppet, even attending events in Washington with them which were NOT considered events normally officially open to heads of state, but for domestic consumption.

I'll bet there are far fewer people involved in all this radical, violent plotting and execution than we can easily imagine. Posada, as we all know, even discussed in his interview with the New York Times reporters, Ann Louise Bardach, and Larry Rohter, the fact he was deeply, pivotally involved in Ronald Reagan's (and Vice President George H. W. Bush's) immoral, unethical war on Nicaragua.

These "exile" hardliner monstrosities have been emminently useful to our covert wars of agression, and assassinations for decades, and they even brag about U.S. support: they EXPECT to be protected even when they are doing hideous things, claiming the F.B.I., etc. will simply "look the other way."

Truly, why WOULDN'T Posada be a close friend to little Gloria, when her own dad was a Batista thug, himself?

[EFerrari]

4. The Estafans don't need to try to influence Obama, he will go to them

just as he went to CANF and gave his first major LatAm policy speech.

He doesn't seem very interested in neighborliness but more in opening wallets in Miami. Those are the same wallets which, presumably, will hand the Democrats Florida now that they've pissed off the FL teachers, too.

It's not so much a matter of being blind but more of focusing on what is important to you or, that's how it looks in any case.

[Meshuga]

7. ...

"It's not so much a matter of being blind but more of focusing on what is important to you or, that's how it looks in any case."

Yep. I think he knows better but bullshit wins.

[protocol rv]

10. But E, there's the issue of consistency

And I know consistency is hard to achieve for Obama as long as he has those prisoners in Guantanamo and is bombing the hell out of people in the Middle East, East Africa, and Central Asia. But he has to show a semblance of consistency. And since he's a Nobel Peace Prize winner and has to somehow earn that prize, then his approach is going to be to keep the clamps on Castro's regime as long as those prisoners are in jail. Can't do otherwise. He'll just point out politically it's very hard to change horses when all the Castro regime has to do is sign the Interamerican letter of human rights, and get out of the doghouse with the UN, Human Rights Watch and the other NGO's issuing those scathing reports about Cuba's human rights situation.

So what if the US has its own dossier? He's going to claim he's trying to clean that up to, even if he's doing it so slowly. And there's also the issue of realpolitiks in the USA. He has that Fox News bunch and the Republicans issuing false statement after false statement, raising the pitch, and creating a real danger that USA will see the rise of white right wing terrorism a la Oklahoma City. So this isn't a simple checkers game for him, it's more like 3D chess.

My guess is he's going to let Chavez stew in his own juice. They may even encourage him to buy more weapons, because those weapons make the Chavez regime weaker and weaker (each tank and fighter bomber means less money for police, hospitals, education, jobs growth, and the things which would endear Chavez to the people in the barrios). And for Castro he'll just keep sending signals: just let your people out of jail, and start improving your human rights situation with the NGO's, and we're sending you all the tourists and the food you need.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Hope Gloria Estefan doesn't forget to tell the President her father was a Batista henchman.

Small detail, but it has a lot of meaning.

Surely she wouldn't want to conceal her true political leanings.

[Mika]

12. Small detail indeed.

In Cuba, Papa would come home after work, like the butcher he was, in a blood stained uniform. :puke:

---

[Judi Lynn]

13. I remember she claimed sometimes he went on "secret missions."

What a shame she never explained how many went ON those secret missions, and how many came back.

By the way, I just ran across the story again which the Miami Herald ran in 1999 concerning 3 young American men who fought FOR the Revolution in Cuba.

Long before I saw this story, I saw a televised report on these guys on CBS, a sizeable program in prime time with interviews, etc.

Very, very interesting. I would bet you remember them, and the Herald story.

America's Yanqui Fidelistas
Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit
source - Paul Wolf <[e-mail]>

Miami Herald - January 10, 1999
America's Yanqui Fidelistas
by paul Brinkley-Rogers

No one honors them.

Four decades ago, a handful of naive American boys ran off to Cuba in
search of adventure and an ideal worth dying for. They certainly
found adventure, and some believe they found an ideal. But what they
also acquired was a label, a brand, they wear now and for the rest of
their lives -- yanqui fidelistas.

There is no rum-and-rumba version of the American Legion, no Vietnam
memorial for these veterans of the Fidel Castro's revolution. Many of
them kept their exploits secret even from family members, or enlisted
in the U.S. military and never mentioned their rebel past to their
fellow GIs.

Even Cuba -- which in 1997 buried the newly recovered bones of
Argentine Che Guevara with full military honors -- officially ignores
them. Che was immortalized. These old gringos are another matter.

Don Soldini of Fort Lauderdale was a kid in search of a good cause
who is now a millionaire with a cream-colored Rolls-Royce. Two other
Florida men -- Mike Garvey and Chuck Ryan -- were teenagers when they
ran away from home at Guantanamo naval base to join Fidel at the
birth of the revolution. Neill Macaulay, a retired University of
Florida professor, became a rebel lieutenant and trained a firing
squad.

Nowadays, they are middle-aged grandfathers who mostly vote
Republican. But they still believe they did the right thing.

Who would call these aging yanqui fidelistas heroes, especially in
South Florida where this month's celebrations in Havana of the
triumph of Fidel's revolution are bitterly resented by most of the
Cuban exile community?

Read their stories, and decide for yourselves.

THE GITMO RUNAWAYS

The letter to the president of the United States signed by three
teenagers was from the heart, and it did not apologize for the fact
that they had run away to join a revolution.

"We respectfully let you know," the young Americans told Dwight D.
Eisenhower, "that we have enrolled in the Cuban Liberation Army
which, in the mountains of Cuba, is fighting for the same ideals of
Liberty and Democracy that were taught to us in home and school."

For most men their age, driving their dad's Bel Air on a hot summer's
night might be the cherished memory of their youth. For this handful
of volunteers, however, the high point was that year when they puffed
an endless supply of Partagas cigars and carried guns in the name of
freedom.

The year was 1957. The place was Oriente province in east Cuba, where
the kids -- sons of Navy personnel -- were high school students at
sleepy Guantanamo naval base.

More:
http://www.blythe.org/nytransfer-subs/Radical_Politics/America's_Yanqui_Fidelistas