While Miami burns... Obama and Cuban-American politics

[Judi Lynn]

While Miami burns... Obama and Cuban-American politics
Arturo Lopez-Levy , 12 September 2012

In this year's election, half of Cuban-Americans who are eligible to vote either came from Cuba after 1994 or grew up in the United States. Unfortunately, the White House is passing up the opportunity to hold a rational discussion of Washington’s policy towards Cuba.

US policy towards Latin America has paid a substantial price for President Obama’s kowtowing to the Miami hard-right wing. For example, Venezuela withdrew from the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights of the Organization of the Americas (OAS), and there is a chance that no Summit of the Americas will happen in 2015 unless the United States changes its position on Cuba’s participation. Several countries in the Americas, from Nicaragua to Ecuador, spent years without a US ambassador due to Senator Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) obstructionist caprice.

In a clear distortion of American values and presidential foreign policy prerogatives, the pro-embargo machine is taking the debate away from questions related to security threats and the constitutional right to travel theoretically enjoyed by Americans, to whether it is fine, or “ethical”, for an American traveler to smoke a cigar, drink a mojito, and dance salsa. Unfortunately, the Obama administration's Treasury and State Department have surrendered the constitutional and moral high ground. Could somebody in the administration ask Senator Rubio: what is the problem with Americans having a good time once they do their full share of religious, educational, and humanitarian work in Cuba? And exactly what threat does a mojito or a salsa dance pose to American national security?

According to Ellen Cragger from the Detroit Free Press, "the process of application for a people-to people-travel license grew up from six pages to more than a hundred. There has been also a massive slowdown on the responses of applications for new licenses and renewal of old ones for people-to people-travel."

More:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/arturo-lopez-levy/while-miami-burns-obama-and-cuban-american-politics

[Mika]

1. Blaming it on Miami ex Cubans is pure obfuscation.

Nope, not gonna do it any more.
While the Castrophobe ex Cubans may be cretinous, they're only the willing patsies.
Its about money. Campaign money for both sides of the issue (a mix of Rs and Ds).
Why on earth would the corrupt system (US campaign funding) kill a cash cow?
Status quo rules the day.




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[flamingdem]

2. Debbie Wasserman Schultz benefits

- it's not just the Republicans, though they seem to be the grand majority

I'm hoping for a meltdown with Rep Rivera and more light on corrupt Miami pols, but not holding my breath. Word is that it has disappeared from local news and TV already.

Meanwhile in an article on the people-to-people exchanges someone from Ofac actually says it's illegal for an American to walk around the Havana Vieja or dance salsa! They actually bought and repeated the drivel from Marco Rubio.

[Peace Patriot]

3. The 'national security" threat of Cuba is to transglobal corporations...

...not any 'security' threat to the U.S. (that is, to the people of the U.S.) And, yes, the transglobal corporations that run the U.S. government are 'nations' unto themselves--huge, floating 'countries' with no borders, no laws, no regulations, no ethics, no decency and no loyalty to any given people, country, land or region.

One threat to them is universal free medical care in Cuba--medical care severed from profit. Another is food, housing, education and other basic human rights to everyone. These are grave threats--'national security' threats--to the transglobal monsters who eat the poor for dinner and shit them out into their landfills. If they don't have the poor to rob and can't then jettison the poor, by eliminating social programs and labor rights, their super-rich owners, execs and big investors can't get richer.

Cuba is an EXAMPLE of another way to look at things. And that is not allowed by the transglobal corporate propaganda machine (including the so-called "news," and, alas, the U.S. State Department).

There is no reason whatever for the U.S. government to impose a heavy boycott and sanctions on Cuba, and to forbid travel to Cuba (or hypocritically to say that they are not, but really are). None! And I agree with Mika that it ain't the Miami Mafia that is the problem (well, they ARE A problem--and certainly their dirty cash flow to our political system is a problem) but the much bigger problem is WHO is USING them to, a) try to deny Cubans the basic human rights that their government has provided for them, and b) to deny us information about it and exposure to it (to deny us the right to form our own ideas about it).

Really and truly, THAT is the threat--ideas!