Bush Cuba policy up for test at polls

[AlphaCentauri]

Source: Miami Herald

George W. Bush makes one of his last trips as president to Miami. He'll meet with Cuban-American leaders who support his efforts to oust Fidel Castro.

With his popularity flagging, President Bush will bask Friday in the warm embrace of Cuban-American leaders in Miami.

After eight years in office, Bush remains perennially popular among hard-line exiles for his steadfast refusal to blink when it comes to relaxing U.S. policy toward Cuba -- and his championing of the island's dissidents.

''The fact that today you have the most active, widespread civil society in Cuba in the last 50 years is a testament to his commitment to Cuba,'' said Mauricio Claver-Carone, a leading pro-embargo lobbyist referring to what he said was the flowering of dissident groups. ``He has sought to make their plight known to the world.''

Yet Democrats suggest it was Bush's decision in 2004 to further tighten sanctions against the island that has given them what may be their best shot ever at unseating Miami's three Cuban-American members of Congress. For the first time, they say, there is an opportunity to compete for votes among an electorate once considered diehard Republican.



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics/campaign-2008/story/720272.html

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In other events

The Freedom Tower in Miami is now a National Historic Landmark.
U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez announced the designation Friday in Washington. The Florida Republican says many Cubans have come to recognize the tower as a symbol of their freedom in the U.S.

Mel Martinez: Ex Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

[EFerrari]

1. Wtf, Cuban civil society is thanks to BUSH?!

:wtf:

These people are truly insane.

[Billy Burnett]

2. No. Thanks to America.

Without the gringos, Cubans would be nothing, and would have nothing.

Same shit. Different day.

The Breckenridge Memorandum

we must clean up the country, even if this means using the methods Divine Providence used on the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.

We must destroy everything within our cannons’ range of fire. We must impose a harsh blockade so that hunger and its constant companion, disease, undermine the peaceful population and decimate the Cuban army. The allied army must be constantly engaged in reconnaissance and vanguard actions so that the Cuban army is irreparably caught between two fronts and is forced to undertake dangerous and desperate measures.

-
To sum up, our policy must always be to support the weaker against the stronger, until we have obtained the extermination of them both, in order to annex the Pearl of the Antilles {Cuba}.

J.C. Breckenridge, U.S. Undersecretary of War in 1897

[Sharkfin]

3. Castro Out

Bush is as insane as the Miami Cubans. Are they so stupid that they havent heard by now that Castro is out and Raul is in. Castro has been gone for quit a while now yet they still wasnt Fidel out.

Man, it seems like only halfwits fill the Whitehous any more.

[Billy Burnett]

5. BREAKING: Raul is a Castro also.

:eyes:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

4. Bush did upset the Miami Cubans by limiting family visits to once

every three years.

Previously, they used to travel back and forth quite a bit for people who had supposedly "escaped." (In contrast to people who escaped from the Baltic States after the Soviet annexation of 1944 and settled in Western Europe and North America. Almost none of them went back, even if they could afford to.)

[Billy Burnett]

6. Especially since the two recent hurricanes have put families in Cuba in great need.

All other immigrant groups can send remittances to their families back in their homeland - except Cuban immigrants and Cuban-Americans are severely restricted by how much and how often.

Plus, they can only visit direct relatives once every three years (no matter what - even a parent or child's illness, imminent death, or death in Cuba are not exceptions).

Plus, Bushco nixed all travel visas for Cubans wanting to visit family in the US and return home.

Bush created those new wrinkles just for them.

[Judi Lynn]

7. That contradiction never seemed to dawn on most people. What a pity.

They've simply swallowed that gibberish about people having to "flee," and never even noticed, or tuned out awareness that Cuban Americans used to (before _Bush) come and go freely, even though they pretended to observe a rule about once a year or some such nonsense. They never let it bother them, however, and went there, often bearing gifts for their Cuban relatives and friends.

Even Elián Gonzalez' Miami drunken great uncle, Lázaro, went there on vacation, and took the bedroom of Elián's father, while Juan Miguel himself slept in his car at night to allow the Miami American "exile" a good vacation experience, while he spent his days fishing, and the evenings in the hotel bars. (What a strange guest! He bought the family a goat as a token of his gratitude.)

As late as the beginning of the _Bush pResidency, there were Cubans who lived in Miami some of the time, and in Cuba some of the time, and even some Cubans who simply lived here for a while and returned to live in Cuba permanently, not being able to adjust to the culture here.

You may remember a case in Miami last year of a little Cuban girl who was the subject of another tug-of-war in a Miami court between her father, in Cuba, and people in Miami who wanted to keep her. They did everything in the world to try to control the kid permanently who had been a ward of the state temporarily when her immigrant mother tried to kill herself. Her mother expressed intention to return to Cuba herself, and wanted her daughter to return, but a temporary foster familiy, a prominent "exile" won the right to keep her for a while, and possibly will be able to keep her permently if they pull enough dirty tricks. The mother publicly testified she wants the child to return to live with the father, yet Florida (through hysterical pressure by the right-wing Cuban faction) claims the right to prevent it.

Once again, THAT father has been offered huge amounts of money to stay here, just like Elián's father, but he wants nothing more than to go right back home to his farm and relatives and friends.

The very people the Cubans overthrew in the Revolution have been able to get control of U.S. policy toward Cuba, and exert hellish punishment on the island every day since they were driven out. That power needs to be broken PERMANENTLY. These idiots refuse to admit the fact the Cuban people DID NOT WANT THEM running their government, hated it, hated them, will fight like the devil to prevent their ever gaining power there again. Their only hope has been to get the U.S. to invade the island and put them back in power, against the will of the people.

Cuba needs to be free of their deadly influence, and FLORIDA needs to be free of their vicious, dirty politics.

[Peace Patriot]

8. Amen!

"Cuba needs to be free of their deadly influence, and FLORIDA needs to be free of their vicious, dirty politics."

And WE need to be freed of their vicious, dirty politics--the rest of us in this country. They have been a corrosive and destructive influence in this country going way back to JFK's first months in office and their scurrilous effort to force him into a war on Cuba with the "Bay of Pigs" invasion. And it has never stopped. ALL Latin American policy is now dictated by the fascist brutes who used to torture and kill leftists and the poor in Cuba, and who dare to call what they did there--and why the Cuban people threw them out--"freedom."

Although some of the worst of them are now dying off, their untoward influence remains. You can read its lies and disinformation and twistings of the truth every day in the Miami Herald. You can hear it in the crazy, unfactual statements about the South American left from virtually all of our leaders, Democratic and Republican: the absolutely insane--upside down, backwards, inside-out, Alice in Wonderlandish--notion that the Batista dictatorship in Cuba was somehow equivalent to democracy and freedom! We are supposed to believe that the spawn of that dictatorship, who ended up on our shores, and who receive special federal subsidies and all sorts of boondoggles, are freedom-loving patriots--"the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers."

Nothing could be further from the truth.

And the same crap they have fed us about Cuba, they are now feeding us about every other government in Latin America that dares to challenge Miami mafia/U.S. Corpo policy--governments that run far, far more transparent elections, and far, far more just and democratic governments, that our own.

The lies about Cuba have translated into lies about EVERYTHING in Latin America--through the filter of the hatred, greed and violence of the Miami Cubans.

Caveat: As with all fascist political movements, beware of equating victims with leaders. Fascist leaders tend to misrepresent their support. For instance, it is by no means true that all Evangelical Christians are Bushites. But a few loudmouth preachers make it seem so. And, currently, in Bolivia, for instance, the fascist leaders of the white secession movement there have far less support than they pretend, and routinely use fear and intimidation and other vote suppression tactics (including, recently, rioting and murder) to steal or inflate elections. I am not condemning all Miami Cubans--or Cuban Miamians. I am condemning their leaders, and our national leaders, for extremely wrongful policy toward Cuba and toward the rest of Latin America. I recently saw the results of a poll that 70% to 80% of the people in the U.S. want a change in these policies--a liberalization of policy toward Cuba, and improved relations with Venezuela. And I imagine that that 70% to 80%--a very big number--includes perhaps quite a lot of Cuban Miamians.

It's time for Cuban Miamians--as it came time for the Irish, the Vietnamese, and so many others--to stop fighting the wars they left behind. Perhaps if they start counting all the votes in Florida--and if we start doing that nationwide as well--stupid, evil policies of the past can be jettisoned.