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Frustrated Sheehan quits anti-war effort

alvaro | U.S. | Tuesday, May 29th, 2007

George W. Bush created his war. The republicans then ratified his wishes. The democrats recently voted to continue it.

Last week I wrote, in a previous blog entry, how a majority of the American public still favors funding the war in Iraq although it is, by a wide majority, against that same war. Based on the latest poll numbers, a Democratic Party led Congress voted last week to fund the war as long as Iraqis met certain benchmarks — please let me know if you understand what they are.

Today Cindy Sheehan, the face of the anti-war movement in the U.S. and around the world, hung up her cleats, rightfully frustrated with the hypocrisy of the whole thing. On Sunday, Ms. Sheehan had announced she had quit the Democratic Party because of their continuation of this illegal and scandalous war which claimed one of her sons, Casey.

Alvaro F. Fernandez

What follows is a report by Britain’s The Gardian about Ms. Sheehan’s actions.

Sheehan Quits as Face of US Anti-War Fight

By Dan Glaister

The Guardian UK

Tuesday 29 May 2007

Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son was killed in Iraq three years ago, said yesterday she was stepping down from her role as the figurehead of the US campaign against the war.

“This is my resignation letter as the ‘face’ of the American anti-war movement,” she wrote in a sometimes bitter diary entry on the website Daily Kos. “I am going to take whatever I have left, and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children, and try to regain some of what I have lost.”

Ms Sheehan, 49, rose to prominence when she voiced her discontent with President George Bush’s policies when he met her and other grieving members of military families.

Announcing her decision on Memorial Day, the anniversary on which the US remembers its war dead, she said that her announcement had been prompted by the recent hostility she had faced from Democrats.

“I was the darling of the so-called left as long as I limited my protests to George Bush and the Republican Party,” she wrote. “However, when I started to hold the Democratic party to the same standards that I held the Republican party, support for my cause started to erode, and the ‘left’ started labeling me with the same slurs that the right used.”

On Saturday, in an open letter to Democratic members of Congress, she announced that she was leaving the party because she felt its leaders had failed to change the country’s course in Iraq.

She said that the most devastating conclusion she had reached after three years of protest, which included a trip to Cuba and the setting up of a protest camp outside Mr Bush’s Texas ranch, was that her son had died for nothing.

“I have tried ever since he died to make his sacrifice meaningful,” she wrote. “Casey died for a country which cares more about who will be the next American Idol than how many people will be killed in the next few months.”

Governing by poll numbers

alvaro | U.S. | Thursday, May 24th, 2007

It’s called governing by polls. And we just saw a great example this past week when congressional Democrats on Capitol Hill, after weeks of back and forth bickering with the Administration on the funding of the war, relented and signed a bill which continues to spend taxpayer dollars in Iraq. Both sides gave-in somewhat when you consider that President Bush accepted benchmarks that must be met along the way for the funding to become available — a victory for Democrats on a stipulation that Bush had never ceded before.

Reading about it in The New York Times, my reaction was spontaneous: there go the Democrats again, legs all aquiver resulting in a caving in to pressure.

I was wrong. Today I found out the real reason: A new poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS shows that a majority of Americans “support continuing to fund the war as long as the Iraqi government meets specific goals,” as written by Dalia Sussman of the Times. The compromise, politically speaking, then turns out well for both sides: Bush gets his war dollars and the Demos get their benchmarks.

By the way, in case you have not already heard of or read the poll, the opposition to the war is now greater than ever. And a great majority of Americans think that President Bush is doing an incredibly shitty job – not only because of Iraq, but you can thrown in immigration, the economy, the campaign against terrorism and most everything else.In my case, I am one of those totally opposed to this war. Have been since day one. And now I oppose continued funding of it: Oh how many problems we could solve with those wasted hundreds of billions…

But if a majority of Americans support war funding…

It’s interesting to compare the two sides. Democrats took the safe route. They argued and waited. When poll numbers showed up, they took action. The safe bet: go with the majority.

If it had been the republicans in charge, well, not all republicans, let’s call them Bush republicans, they would have concocted some kind of crazy story based on lies, half truths and who knows what else, and tried selling the American public on it. A massive publicity campaign would have been waged until poll numbers gave them the public reaction they needed. And then they would have acted.

In the end, I think they’re both wrong.

Where’s the democratic “leadership”? I never had much faith in Senate President Harry Reid. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, sure let me down, though.

Alvaro F. Fernandez

Do you really think Miami’s Carnival Center won’t get funded?

alvaro | Miami | Wednesday, May 23rd, 2007

Miami-Dade County has spent to date almost one-half billion of our tax dollars to build the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts (let’s call it PAC) which sits elegantly on Biscayne Boulevard. Years late in completion and 100 percent over budget (that’s right, twice as much as it was supposed to cost) the PAC kicked off programming late last year. PAC CEO Michael Hardy recently went before the commissioners to ask for north of $4 million. Apparently PAC is already in the red and they want to keep the place open at least through September.

It’s all a charade. When Hardy first appeared before the commissioners last week they huffed and puffed through a session of “I can’t believe this is happening…” From what I understand even erudite (humph, I say this with a big sly smile on my face) Commissioner Javier Souto, known to wax not so eloquently about everything in Miami and how it’s all a Fidel Castro conspiracy plan, went on about the cost overruns. This week the issue went before a committee of commissioners who passed it on to the next stage (as in, it’s all an act) before the $4-plus million is approved.

Seriously, do you really think anything else would ever happen? After all this money was spent and some (well, a large chunk) wasted or used to line deep pockets, do you think our county leaders — I use this word with much trepidation when referring to our county commissioners — would let this beautiful, white elephant in front of a stretch of street named after deceased Cuban exile leader Jorge Mas Canosa sit idly come this fall?

Pulease! This is a town that depends more on appearances than anything else. South Beach, just over the causeway from the PAC, a symbol of what we’ve become: a lot of botox and silicone — all an attempt to make us look better than we really are. In the end, Miami leaders will spend the millions needed for the Carnival Center to give us that fake facelift which keeps us fresh and young looking, all the time trying to hide the dreaded wrinkles which are the neighborhoods where people live under dreadful conditions of poverty. But money for “those” places just doesn’t exist.

Speaking of spending taxpayer dollars on much-needed improvements: Anybody heard where the new baseball stadium deal stands today?

Let us not forget, even botox and facelifts turn out wrong. Or haven’t you seen some of these 50 year old wanna-be teenagers with tits pointing in strange directions and lips so full and pouty they could easily fit on a duck?

Alvaro F. Fernandez  

 

 

 

 

Can Iraqis sue the U.S. for its illegal war? Or is the $$ giveaway just a Cuba thing

alvaro | Cuba, U.S. | Friday, May 18th, 2007

In today’s The Miami Herald, Jane Bussey reports that Cuban funds, frozen and held at JP Morgan Chase Bank in New York since the 1960s, are running out. A couple of hundred million dollars of this money, cash that rightfully belongs to the Cuban people, has been disbursed to a small number of persons, in large quantities, who have sued the Cuban government for a host of reasons: They include members of the families of the 4 Brothers to the Rescue pilots who were shot down over the Florida Straits by the Cuban military after illegally entering Cuban territory in 1996. Also receiving a large chunk of dough was the spurned wife of a Cuban spy and the daughter of a CIA agent who was executed by the Fidel Castro government in the 1960s.

Interestingly, one of the persons complaining and worried about diminishing Cuban dollars is Nick Gutierrez, an attorney with connections to Bacardi, Big Sugar and other moneyed interests in Florida, who Bussey writes has created an “informal registry of 350 claims totaling $100 billion” of individuals and companies whose properties were seized after 1959. Worried Nick said that “he has been studying whether the group can try to obtain the frozen funds or even seize commodities being shipped to Cuba from a U.S. port.”

Jeez, and later they complain of dangerous sharks that swim and feed in the Florida Straits. It seems to me there are plenty of land sharks right here in Miami, and around the U.S., whose main interest is seizing money that rightfully belongs to the Cuban people — not Fidel Castro nor Nicholas Gutierrez, mind you — but more than 11 million Cubans who live inside and outside the island.How would the courts react if I was an Iraqi person (one of the hundreds and thousands) who has lost a family member because of the illegal war started under false pretenses by the U.S., and sued the U.S. government seeking compensation for their barbarous acts. 

Sounds like an idea… Are there any Iraqi readers out there? Or, do you know an Iraqi that might want to test this idea? There could be a windfall of dollars for some.

In my opinion, any Iraqi who were to challenge the U.S. government has a greater right to compensation than any person who has been paid (or would like to be paid) for reasons that are a result of the Cuban Revolution.

Alvaro F. Fernandez  

 

 

Noriega seems to imply Cubans are irresistible

alvaro | Cuba, U.S. | Thursday, May 17th, 2007

I found a comment made by Roger Noriega in today’s Miami Herald (May 17, Section A page 10) interesting. It begs for conclusions. Noriega served until 2005 as assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere.

Attributed to Noriega was the following comment: “… further contacts between the U.S. and Cuban military have long been resisted by the U.S. government in part because of fears that Cuban intelligence officers would take advantage of U.S. military officers…”

There is more than one conclusion that I have reached. A comment like the one made by Noriega implies that U.S. military officers are not very smart. At least not as smart as their Cuban counterparts. Or is it that the Cuban intelligence officers are just sexier than the U.S.’ and Noriega is afraid that they might fall under the spell of a Cuban mystique?

Whatever the reason, the Noriega comment made no sense to me.

Then again, when has almost anything the U.S. does when it comes to Cuba made any sense?

Alvaro F. Fernandez

Freedom fighters, terrorists (what’s in a title anyway?) … live freely in Miami

alvaro | Cuba, Miami, U.S. | Tuesday, May 15th, 2007

What follow are some of the comments regarding Posada Carriles’ release last week being written by newspapers and columnists from around the U.S. Posada is now resting comfortably in his family’s home here in Miami. Who knows, I will probably run into him one of these days at Versailles Restaurant, the Calle 8 Cuban restaurant where Posada is considered a hero by many.

In other parts of this great town of ours, Orlando Bosch also walks free, another alleged conspirator in the blowing up of the Cubana Airliner. This one set free by the first George Bush, W’s father.

But the war on terror continues, for everyone, that is, except those fighting Fidel. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s a plan to put all these Cuban terrorists (and there are others not mentioned) to suffer in Miami. And many do suffer, knowing that Fidel has outlasted most of them, and a year after a celebration outside of that same Versailles because of his “death”, the Cuban leader seems well on his way to recuperating…

These are excerpts from a May 14 Toledo Blade editorial:

“In the case of Luis Posada Carriles, the United States is once again transmitting to the world a hypocritical message: When it comes to terrorism, do as we say, not as we do…

… Why is such inexplicable deference being shown by the Bush Administration to a man our own Justice Department has branded “a dangerous criminal and an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots”? …

… The Los Angeles Times reports that declassified CIA communications shows Posada to have been part of the “operation” in which a Cubana airliner was blown up over Barbados 31 years ago. …

… Whoever is orchestrating Posada’s escape to freedom apparently is of a Cold War mind that extremism in defense of virtue is no vice, especially when Castro is the enemy.

But that view contrasts sharply with the U.S.’s hard line against terrorism elsewhere and can only expose this nation to a charge of hypocrisy that further erodes American credibility on the world stage.”

And Dewayne Wickham writes in a column for the Zanesville Times Recorder, also on May 14:

“…The most troubling charge against Posada is that he was part of a terrorist clique responsible for bombing a Havana-bound commercial airliner in 1976. The explosion killed 76 people - mostly Cuban citizens.

Posada was involved “up to his eyeballs” in that bloody act of terrorism, Carter Cornick, an FBI counterterrorism specialist who investigated the bombing, told The New York Times in 2005. That charge is supported by a declassified State Department report that quotes Posada as telling someone shortly before the plane was downed: “We are going to hit a Cuban airliner.” …

… So why has Posada been ordered into home detention instead of being hustled off to one of the cage-like cells at Guantanamo Bay?

It seems that some acts of terrorism, real or perceived, are acceptable to the Bush administration — if the target is Fidel Castro’s government. No one in the White House is going to say so publicly, but it’s hard to draw any other conclusion from the way Posada is being treated.

For all of the Bush administration’s righteous indignation about terrorism, it coddles Posada.” …

And a Sun Sentinel editorial was simply titled Terrorism. Here are excerpts:

… “The Posada case puts U.S. international credibility in question. The critical, underlying issue at hand is really not how Posada got into the United States. What is most important to all Americans is getting to the bottom of his past and determining whether he committed terrorist acts.

U.S. government agencies have been releasing documents on Posada’s past. A smoking gun tying him to the airline bombing hasn’t emerged, but there sure is a lot of smoke.

It’s past time to get to the bottom of this. U.S. law enforcement agencies and prosecutors must make the Posada inquiry a priority, and if evidence warrants it, bring charges against him. The United States must set an example in worldwide efforts to root out terrorists.

One thing’s for sure. Posada should not be treated as a hero in Miami, or anywhere else. Violence won’t bring freedom to Castro’s Cuba any more than it brought liberty after Fulgencio Batista’s rule.”

Alvaro F. Fernandez