Castro y Nixon [abril 1959]/ cubaninsider.blogspot.com |
CONTRA EL PINGALISMO CASTRISTA/ "Se que no existe el consuelo que no existe la anhelada tierrra de mis suenos ni la desgarrada vision de nuestros heroes. Pero te seguimos buscando, patria,..." - Reinaldo Arenas
miércoles, agosto 07, 2013
Los Castro frente a la historia y a once presidentes de EEUU (1)
martes, enero 22, 2013
jueves, enero 17, 2013
El pastor cubano de los presidentes de Estados Unidos
El próximo lunes, aquel joven que formó parte de la Operación Pedro Pan recitará la bendición en la ceremonia que investirá por segunda vez a Barack Obama como presidente de Estados Unidos. Y encarnará el espíritu de lo que significa ser un ciudadano de este país, así como de los valores de diversidad e inclusión que representa el presidente reelecto.
“Es un honor ser parte de un hito de la historia estadounidense, puesto que todas las investiduras presidenciales lo son, y es un honor especial por ser un inmigrante en este país, el único país donde un hecho como éste puede suceder”, afirmó León el miércoles en una entrevista telefónica con El Nuevo Herald desde la Iglesia Episcopal St. John’s, en Washington. “Siento que de cierta manera estoy representando a la comunidad hispana de Estados Unidos. Somos una parte importante de este país”.
El Día de las Elecciones, Obama cimentó su victoria en el fuerte respaldo de los latinos.
León no será el único representante de sangre cubana en la ceremonia de asunción, que tendrá lugar en el National Mall a partir de las 11:30 a.m. Obama también eligió personalmente al poeta Richard Blanco, criado en Miami de padres cubanos, quien declamará un poema original para el juramento. Blanco es el primer poeta hispano y el más joven que participa en la investidura de un presidente.
Como ministro de St. Jhon’s desde 1995, León ha aconsejado desde el púlpito a tres líderes de la nación que le abrió los brazos cuando el gobierno comunista de Cuba descarriló su vida: Bill Clinton, George W. Bush – quien organizó una fiesta en la Casa Blanca para celebrar el vigésimo quinto aniversario de su ordenación en la Iglesia Episcopal – , y Obama.
Fue en el 2005, durante la ceremonia de asunción del ex presidente Bush, que León ingresó a los anales de la historia nacional como el primer hispano en ofrecer la bendición inaugural. Y la semana próxima, la vida le concederá el privilegio por segunda vez.
Durante los tres minutos en que será el foco de atención de millones de ciudadanos alrededor del mundo, se centrará en el tema del diálogo y la reconciliación.
“Mi preocupación es que no estamos hablando unos con los otros”, explicó León, de 63 años. “Creo que cuando Dios nos bendice, Dios nos llama a dar lo mejor de nosotros; a conversar y relacionarnos unos con otros”.
El pastor nació en el área cubana de Guantánamo en 1949, hijo de Luis y Concepción “Concha” León, que profesaban la fe católica. La madre trabajaba en la única escuela episcopal de Guantánamo y se sintió atraída hacia esa denominación de origen anglicano. Su esposo siguió sus pasos y ambos fueron recibidos formalmente en la Iglesia Episcopal, cuya presencia en Cuba data del siglo XIX, cuando se fundó una capellanía para atender a los ingleses y norteamericanos que vivían en la isla en tiempos de la Colonia.
Read more here: http://www.elnuevoherald.com/2013/01/17/1386104/el-pastor-cubano-de-los-presidentes.html#storylink=cpy
lunes, enero 14, 2013
sábado, enero 12, 2013
NO LONE GUNMAN: JFK's Nephew Convinced Oswald Didn't Act Alone
Friday, Jan. 11, 2013: Journalist Charlie Rose, right, talks with Rory
Kennedy, center, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., left, at the AT&T
Performing Arts Center, in Dallas. (AP) |
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/12/rfk-jr-very-convinced-president-kennedy-not-killed-by-lone-gunman/#ixzz2Hn9rGtl
jueves, enero 10, 2013
Evangelical pastor withdraws from Obama inaugural
nbcchicago.com |
viernes, diciembre 21, 2012
Counting the Costs of Clintonism
We have come, at long last, to the end of the Clinton presidency. Whether he is removed from office or continues as a disdained and powerless figurehead, he is through. But the difference between impeachment and political impotence is crucial. It will be a test of the American people. If the head of the most corrupt and malign administration in our history is suffered to remain in office, however crippled, it will be a clear sign that we have turned a corner, that American morality, including but not limited to our political morality, is in free fall.
It is time to reckon the costs to America, so far, of this squalid and probably criminal administration. That the president has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” is indisputable but not the worst of the wounds he has inflicted upon his office and the nation. The damage is enormous, cuts deep, and may be irreversible.
This president has subverted our system of justice and the ideal of the rule of law, debased our politics, vulgarized our culture, and brought a totalitarian impulse to our government. The really bad news, however, is that unless we display in the future far more care and attention than we did in 1992 and 1996, we will repeat our mistakes and elect more unprincipled demagogues.
The rule of law is subverted when law itself, and the institutions that guard the law, are seen as no more than a means, or sometimes an obstacle, to power. The Department of Justice’s fate was virtually sealed at the outset when a complaisant Janet Reno was named attorney general but real power lodged in the president’s confidante, and now convicted felon, Webster Hubbell. Of the many partisan acts, the most outrageous is Ms. Reno’s refusals, in plain violation of the law, to seek an independent counsel to investigate various campaign finance scandals linked to Clinton and Al Gore. Both Louis Freeh, the FBI director, and Charles La Bella, Reno’s own designated investigator, say it is essential to appoint an independent counsel to probe the most serious of the suspected violations: the Asian and Chinese money that poured into Clinton’s reelection campaign. As the coils tighten around Clinton the department may recover more of its integrity and Reno may ask for an independent counsel, although she has stalled for so long that the trail is frozen over.
While he was en route to prison, the president’s aides and friends, largely at Clinton’s urging, procured well over $700,000 for Hubbell as fees for “consulting” he could not possibly perform. Hubbell (consequently?) did not give the cooperation he had promised to independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Then too there were the Travel Office firings to make room for Clinton cronies, the misuse of the FBI to suggest Travel Office staff criminality, the removal of Vincent Foster’s files from his office the night of his suicide, the transfer of at least goo, and possibly many more, raw FBI files (mostly about Republicans) to the White House, an FBI tipoff to the White House about an investigation, and Justice’s opposition in court to the independent counsel’s investigation.
Investigations have been frustrated by the shredding of documents, the withholding of files under subpoena, witnesses taking the Fifth Amendment or fleeing the country, and a spectacularly rapid spread of amnesia among administration personnel, a plague highly convenient to the White House. A journalist says witnesses recall matters very well when they talk to him, but then go before congressional committees and are unable to remember anything.
The processes of justice have been savaged by the “war” on Kenneth Starr conducted by Bill and Hillary, ignobly abetted by sundry White House lackeys. The object is to delegitimize Starr’s investigation and cast doubt upon his report. This is the moral, if not the legal, equivalent of an obstruction of justice. The war, despite its patent untruths, has partially succeeded. Starr, the mildest and most judicious of men, is now believed by a sizable number of Americans to be a rabid partisan. There are moments when one wishes he were.
Thanks to Starr, however, we now know the truth about Clinton’s sexual depravity and lies. Despite the eely writhings and Rube Goldberg arguments of his lawyers, it is now absolutely clear that Clinton lied under oath several times in the Paula Jones case and also before the grand jury, and lied to the American people both in denying sex in January and admitting an “improper relationship” in August. When a president lies under oath he subverts a core constitutional duty of seeing that the laws are faithfully executed—in fact, he attempts to ensure that the laws are not faithfully executed —and thereby commits a clearly impeachable offense. Evidence of witness tampering and obstruction of justice is abundant. To cite but one example, Clinton obviously coached Monica Lewinsky to deny sex and then sat by as his lawyer pressed upon the court an affidavit by her that Clinton knew to be a lie.
Clinton partisans blame Starr for diminishing the legal rights of the presidency. How Starr can be blamed for the courts’ rejections of claims put in play by the administration is a mystery. Clinton’s assertions of executive privilege had been rejected unanimously by the Supreme Court in the Nixon tapes case. The invention of a “protective function privilege” for the Secret Service was merely laughable. The president’s lawyers and the Department of Justice which supported those frivolous claims surely knew they hadn’t a legal leg beneath them. Their assertions were another example of disrespect for law and abuse of the judicial process for the sole purpose of delay. They were not defending presidential prerogatives; they were defending the person of Bill Clinton. The legal terrain has not changed: What the presidency had before, the presidency has now.
CLINTON HAS ALSO DEBASED our politics. Misguided party loyalty has required Democrats to defend a man they know to be indefensible: dishonest, sexually depraved, and an incorrigible liar. Such behavior might have been expected of old-time Chicago aldermen, even regarded as admirable by a mobster’s henchmen. For the men and women of Congress, however, loyalty to a corrupt and wicked leader can only destroy their personal and institutional honor. During the investigation of Richard Nixon, a great many Republicans turned on their president when the facts warranted it. Today’s Democrats should reflect that those Republicans who fought to the last ditch died in it.
Clinton has inflicted enormous injury to the nation’s character and culture. The president has established a mind-boggling record of adulteries. He is to infidelity what Cal Ripken is to baseball, except that Ripken ended his record streak voluntarily. American popular culture is already sex-drenched, and the example of the president reinforces the notion that sex has no moral overtones but is merely one more form of indoor recreation, akin to video games.
That is what makes so depressing the liberal mantra “it’s just about sex.” Quite aside from the fact that impeachment will not be “about sex” (but rather about perjury, obstruction of justice, etc.), sex is not irrelevant to the fitness of this man for the presidency. His sexual habits are a clue to his character and, according to the Starr report’s footnotes, the clues are damning. They reveal a man whose tastes are, to put it gently, very kinky, and whose entire philosophy of the subject is immediate and reckless self-gratification. Yet we are urged to emulate European sophistication about the matter. Acceptance of Clinton’s behavior is not sophisticated but decadent. Apparently sexual morality ought to flow east rather than west, though it must be acknowledged that decadence has already established a considerable beachhead here.
Nor should we accept the argument that sex is a “private” matter; the only persons legitimately concerned are Bill Clinton’s family. We countenance no such public-private distinction for anyone else. Imagine a Chief Justice of the United States (not the current one) sexually serviced in his chambers by a 22-year-old female law clerk. The man would be impeached and out of office in a flash. No one would suggest we draw a veil of “privacy” over that behavior. Such conduct tells us about the man’s lack of judgment and moral balance, and we would surely conclude that important affairs must not be left in his hands. When the offender is the president of the United States, all the greater should be our determination to be quit of him.
The president’s incessant lying (as Maly McCarthy said of Lillian Hellman, every word he utters is a lie, including “and” and “the”) inevitably diminishes respect for truth telling, even under oath. The tactic of delay, leaks of bits and pieces of the bad news, have had their intended effect. The public becomes bored with the topic of Clinton’s behavior, and hence inured to it. Lying and vice come to seem the normal practice of men. Clinton has numbed our moral sense. Whether, with his passing, that sense can be reawakened remains an open question.
miércoles, diciembre 12, 2012
martes, diciembre 11, 2012
Physicist: Obama Chosen By The Russians 20 Years Ago To Be POTUS
sábado, septiembre 15, 2012
Jimmy Carter's Controversial Nuclear Targeting Directive PD-59 Declassified
William Burr - 202/994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu
The National Security Archive obtained the virtually unexpurgated document in response to a mandatory declassification review request to the Jimmy Carter Library [See Document 12]. Highly classified for years, PD 59 was signed during a period of heightened Cold War tensions owing to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, greater instability in the Middle East, and earlier strains over China policy, human rights, the Horn of Africa, and Euromissiles.
In this context, the press coverage quickly generated controversy by raising apprehensions that alleged changes in U.S. strategy might lower the threshold of a decision by either side to go nuclear, which could inject dangerous uncertainty into the already fragile strategic balance. The press coverage elicited debate inside and outside the government, with some arguing that the PD would aggravate Cold War tensions by increasing Soviet fears about vulnerability and raising pressures for launch-on-warning in a crisis. Adding to the confusion was the fact that astonishingly, even senior government officials who had concerns about the directive did not have access to it.
With other recently declassified material related to PD-59, today's publication helps settle the mystery of what Jimmy Carter actually signed, [1] as well as shedding light on the origins of PD-59 and some of its consequences. Among the disclosures are a variety of fascinating insights about the thinking of key U.S. officials about the state of nuclear planning and the possible progression of events should war break out:
- PD-59 sought a nuclear force posture that ensured a "high high degree of flexibility, enduring survivability, and adequate performance in the face of enemy actions." If deterrence failed, the United States "must be capable of fighting successfully so that the adversary would not achieve his war aims and would suffer costs that are unacceptable." To make that feasible, PD-59 called for pre-planned nuclear strike options and capabilities for rapid development of target plans against such key target categories as "military and control targets," including nuclear forces, command-and-control, stationary and mobile military forces, and industrial facilities that supported the military. Moreover, the directive stipulated strengthened command-control-communications and intelligence (C3I) systems.
- President Carter's first instructions on the U.S. nuclear force posture, in PD-18, "U.S. National Strategy," supported "essential equivalence", which rejected a "strategic force posture inferior to the Soviet Union" or a "disarming first strike" capability, and also sought a capability to execute "limited strategic employment options."
- A key element of PD-59 was to use high-tech intelligence to find nuclear weapons targets in battlefield situations, strike the targets, and then assess the damage-a "look-shoot-look" capability. A memorandum from NSC military aide William Odom depicted Secretary of Defense Harold Brown doing exactly that in a recent military exercise where he was "chasing [enemy] general purpose forces in East Europe and Korea with strategic weapons."
- The architects of PD-59 envisioned the possibility of protracted nuclear war that avoided escalation to all-out conflict. According to Odom's memorandum, "rapid escalation" was not likely because national leaders would realize how "vulnerable we are and how scarce our nuclear weapons are." They would not want to "waste" them on non-military targets and "days and weeks will pass as we try to locate worthy targets."
- An element of PD-59 that never leaked to the press was a pre-planned option for launch-on-warning. It was included in spite of objections from NSC staffers, who saw it as "operationally a very dangerous thing."
- Secretary of State Edmund Muskie was uninformed about PD-59 until he read it about in the newspapers, according to a White House chronology. The State Department had been involved in early discussions of nuclear targeting policy, but National Security Adviser Brzezinski eventually cut out the Department on the grounds that targeting is "so closely related to military contingency planning, an activity that justly remains a close-hold prerogative and responsibility" of the Pentagon.
- The drafters of PD 59 accepted controversial ideas that the Soviets had a concept of victory in nuclear war and already had limited nuclear options. Marshall Shulman, the Secretary of State's top adviser on Soviet affairs, had not seen PD-59 but questioned these ideas in a memorandum to Secretary Muskie: "We may be placing more weight on the Soviet [military] literature than is warranted." If the Soviets perused U.S. military writing, it could "easily convince them that we have such options and such beliefs." Post-Cold War studies suggest that Shulman was correct because the Soviet leadership realized that neither side could win a nuclear war and had little confidence in the Soviet Union's ability to survive a nuclear conflict.
Background
When Jimmy Carter became president in January 1977, he inherited nuclear weapons targeting policies from his Republican predecessors, who had sought ways to give U.S. presidents alternatives to the terrifyingly massive and rigid pre-planned options of the Single Integrated Operational Plan [SIOP]. To make nuclear threats more plausible and to give presidents more choices than the SIOP attack options, in January 1974, Richard Nixon signed National Security Decision Memorandum [NSDM] 242. A few months later, in April 1974, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger signed Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy [NUWEP] which provided guidance for the creation of limited, selective, and regional attacks, with more detail for major attack options. Among the goals set for Major Attack Options in the NUWEP was the destruction of "selected economic and military resources of the enemy critical to post-war recovery," including political and military leadership targets. With respect to economic recovery targets, the NUWEP called for inflicting "moderate damage on facilities comprising approximately 70% of [the Soviet or Chinese] war-supporting economic base."The perception that the NSDM-242 exercise had not given the President more options for crisis-confrontation situations [see Document 1 below] led the Carter White House to initiate a nuclear targeting review that eventually produced PD-59. The Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff [JSTPS] had shown proficiency in creating massively destructive "pre-planned" nuclear strikes against Soviet military targets, but the Carter White House saw them as largely irrelevant. As Bzezinski explained, the "very likelihood of all out nuclear war is increased if all out spasm war is the only kind of nuclear war we can fight." Starting with the premise that conflict was more likely to start in Central Europe or Northeast Asia, the architects of PD-59 believed that high-tech reconnaissance systems could give the president and his advisers a "look-shoot-look" capability to improvise targeting during war. In this way, they could strike Warsaw Pact forces on the move with nuclear weapons instead of launching SIOP attacks against major military targets in the Soviet Union.
The JSTPS had responsibility for the SIOP, under the direction of an Air Force general who wore a second hat as Commander-in-Chief of the Strategic Air Command. In this capacity, he had a powerful influence in the military bureaucracy. Brzezinski aide William Odom saw little value to the massive SIOP attack options, believing that a flexible targeting system could help provide an adequate deterrent, but he could not wish SAC and the SIOP out existence because its leaders believed that those options were critical to the national defense. Thus, PD 59 was necessarily a bureaucratic compromise by providing for pre-planned attack options, including launch-on-warning but also flexibility to prepare war plans on "short notice" and strategic reserve forces for later stages of a conflict. War plans could range from massive attacks to "flexible sub-options" against broad classes of targets. To ensure that attack plans could be improvised, PD-59 mandated the creation of "staff capabilities" in the military and at the Pentagon that could "develop operational plans on short notice … based on the latest intelligence."
War plans developed under PD-59 were to "put the major weight of the initial response on military and control targets." Target systems would include tactical and strategic nuclear forces, military command centers, conventional military forces including armies in motion, and industrial facilities supporting military operations. Dropping "critical" recovery targets as a priority, pre-planned options would include "attacks on the political control system and on general industrial capability" either promptly or as "relatively prolonged withholds" that could be attacked later in a conflict. Yet the initial press coverage of PD-59 was slightly misleading by suggesting that targeting before the directive had focused on urban centers; the SIOP had always given priority to military targets and had provisions for excluding attacks on urban-industrial complexes unless Moscow had already attacked U.S. cities.
That the White House had initiated a major review of nuclear targeting remained largely secret until President Carter signed PD-59. [2] Nevertheless, the administration's interest in acquiring capabilities, such as the MX ICBM, for counterforce strikes against Soviet strategic targets had been in the news before the existence of the PD leaked. [3] In early August 1980 headline in national newspapers brought out the larger secret: the existence a new directive changing nuclear war planning, with the first story appearing in the Boston Globe on 3 August 1980. The news stories correctly emphasized key elements of PD-59, that it sought capabilities for "prolonged but limited nuclear war," and that it gave priority to military and leadership targets, and a capability to "find new targets and destroy them" once a war began. [4]
The press coverage cited "shudders" among former government officials such as Herbert Scoville who worried that the search for "less fearsome options for using nuclear weapons would reduce the inhibitions for employing them." Moreover, Federation of American Scientists Director Jeremy Stone asked "Who would be there to turn off the war if we nuked Soviet command centers?" Stone warned about pressures for "firing on warning", although the language on launch-on-warning was one element of the PD that stayed secret. [5] Those concerns dovetailed with private misgivings among State Department officials, such as Marshall Shulman who worried that the reported emphasis on the role of leadership and C3I targets could "only increase Soviet perceptions of vulnerability" and introduce "further instability in the strategic balance."
Newspaper stories about PD-59 raised questions whether President Carter and his advisers had adequately consulted Secretary of State Muskie and the State Department before or after signing the PD. Muskie first learned about the PD from the press coverage, which then noted his "unhappiness that he knew so little about the new doctrine." This became an issue at the State Department, which did not have a copy of the directive and where senior officials argued that the Department should be involved in the "formulation and assessment of national security decisions that have significant foreign policy implications." Muskie's top advisers recommended that he seek an understanding with President Carter that this should not have happened and should not happen again, but whether the two reached a meeting of the minds on this point is not clear.
One of the purposes of the PD was to influence more detailed guidance on nuclear targeting. Top-level officials at the Pentagon and the Joint Strategic Target Planning Staff would use the ideas codified in the directive to develop more detailed instructions for shaping the production of pre-planned options and for developing "look-shoot-look" capabilities. By October 1980, Secretary of Defense Brown had approved the latest Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy to provide guidance for targeting in a crisis [see Document 21] Yet the ink had hardly dried on Brown's NUWEP when Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter for the presidency; in October 1981 the new administration supplanted PD-59 with National Security Decision Directive 13, "Nuclear Weapons Employment Policy." NSDD-13 influenced NUWEP-82 which replaced Brown's guidance.
NSDD-13 remains largely classified, but years later, Odom wrote that it "carr[ied] the general thrust of PD-59, but with less comprehension of what was needed," and that "little or nothing of consequence was done to pursue this doctrinal change." [6] Future declassifications may test the accuracy of Odom's judgments. In any event, PD-59 (as well as NSDM-242) set the mold for target planning during the decades that followed, during and after the Cold War era. According to a recent Government Accountability Office report, "the process for developing nuclear targeting and employment guidance … has remained virtually unchanged since 1991." Presidential directives and secretary of defense guidance approved during the George W. Bush administration included familiar themes. They provided for a planning structure "designed to avoid an 'all-or-nothing' response to a nuclear attack," identified "potential adversaries" and "scenarios" requiring pre-planned options, and emphasized a "capability to rapidly develop new options." While President Obama has set a nuclear-free world as a policy goal, it is unlikely that nuclear planning arrangements will change significantly in the foreseeable future.
More: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
domingo, septiembre 02, 2012
jueves, agosto 30, 2012
viernes, mayo 25, 2012
lunes, mayo 21, 2012
lunes, mayo 14, 2012
What else you don't know about Obama boyhood
First Unitarian Church of Honolulu |
miércoles, mayo 02, 2012
Meet President Obama's Old Girlfriends... Read His Love Notes
Obama during his Harvard years |
I haven’t read “The Waste Land” for a year, and I never did bother to check all the footnotes. But I will hazard these statements—Eliot contains the same ecstatic vision which runs from Münzer to Yeats. However, he retains a grounding in the social reality/order of his time. Facing what he perceives as a choice between ecstatic chaos and lifeless mechanistic order, he accedes to maintaining a separation of asexual purity and brutal sexual reality. And he wears a stoical face before this. Read his essay on Tradition and the Individual Talent, as well as Four Quartets, when he’s less concerned with depicting moribund Europe, to catch a sense of what I speak. Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism—Eliot is of this type. Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance. (Counter him with Yeats or Pound, who, arising from the same milieu, opted to support Hitler and Mussolini.) And this fatalism is born out of the relation between fertility and death, which I touched on in my last letter—life feeds on itself. A fatalism I share with the western tradition at times. You seem surprised at Eliot’s irreconcilable ambivalence; don’t you share this ambivalence yourself, Alex? [Emphasis added]
“He was trying to find his place in the whirl of humanity, while at the same time refining the literary riffs that filled up page after page of his journals,” Maraniss adds, then delivers another passage from the same letter:
Moments trip gently along over here. Snow caps the bushes in unexpected ways, birds shoot and spin like balls of sound. My feet hum over the dry walks. A storm smoothes the sky, impounding the city lights, returning to us a dull yellow glow. I run every other day at the small indoor track [at Columbia] which slants slightly upward like a plate; I stretch long and slow, twist and shake, the fatigue, the inertia finding home in different parts of the body. I check the time and growl—aargh!—and tumble onto the wheel. And bodies crowd and give off heat, some people are in front and you can hear the patter or plod of the steps behind. You look down to watch your feet, neat unified steps, and you throw back your arms and run after people, and run from them and with them, and sometimes someone will shadow your pace, step for step, and you can hear the person puffing, a different puff than yours, and on a good day they’ll come up alongside and thank you for a good run, for keeping a good pace, and you nod and keep going on your way, but you’re pretty pleased, and your stride gets lighter, the slumber slipping off behind you, into the wake of the past.
Obama did not name this old girlfriend even with a pseudonym—she was just “a woman” or “my friend.” That she remained publicly unidentified throughout his rise to national prominence became part of the intrigue of his New York period’s “dark years” narrative. His physical description was imprecise but close. Genevieve is five-seven, lithe and graceful, with auburn-tinged brown hair and flecks of brown, not green, in her hazel eyes. Her voice was confident and soothing. Like many characters in the memoir, he introduced her to advance a theme, another thread of thought in his musings about race. To that end, he distorted her attitudes and some of their experiences, emphasizing his sense that they came from different worlds. Decades later, during an interview in the Oval Office, Obama acknowledged that, while Genevieve was his New York girlfriend, the description in his memoir was a “compression” of girlfriends, including one who followed Genevieve when he lived in Chicago. [Emphasis added]
Genevieve Cook (via Washington Post)
In Dreams from My Father, Obama chose to emphasize a racial chasm that unavoidably separated him from the woman he described as his New York girlfriend.
One night I took her to see a new play by a black playwright. It was a very angry play, but very funny. Typical black American humor. The audience was mostly black, and everybody was laughing and clapping and hollering like they were in church. After the play was over, my friend started talking about why black people were so angry all the time. I said it was a matter of remembering—nobody asks why Jews remember the Holocaust, I think I said—and she said that’s different, and I said it wasn’t, and she said that anger was just a dead end. We had a big fight, right in front of the theater. When we got back to the car she started crying. She couldn’t be black, she said. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. She could only be herself, and wasn’t that enough.None of this happened with Genevieve. She remembered going to the theater only once with Barack, and it was not to see a work by a black playwright.
Friday, March 9, 1984
It’s not a question of my wanting to probe ancient pools of emotional trauma … but more a sense of you [Barack] biding your time and drawing others’ cards out of their hands for careful inspection—without giving too much of your own away—played with a good poker face. And as you say, it’s not a question of intent on your part—or deliberate withholding—you feel accessible, and you are, in disarming ways. But I feel that you carefully filter everything in your mind and heart—legitimate, admirable, really—a strength, a necessity in terms of some kind of integrity. But there’s something also there of smoothed veneer, of guardedness … but I’m still left with this feeling of … a bit of a wall—the veil.
Thursday, March 22
Barack—still intrigues me, but so much going on beneath the surface, out of reach. Guarded, controlled.
Tuesday, April 3
He talked quite a lot about discontent in a quiet sort of way—balancing the tendency to be always the observer, how to effect change, wanting to get past his antipathy to working at B.I.
Monday, December 10
After a week of Barack and I adjusting to each others constant presence and his displacement, I expect that this week will make it hard to be alone again when he has gone [to Hawaii for Christmas]. We got very irritated w/ each other Fri. night and Saturday, talked about it.
Thursday, December 13
Induced a flare-up yesterday between Barack and me over a suddenly felt irritation at doing the breakfast dishes. Then I was less than honest when I broached my irritation w/ Barack in the vein of, I’m going to tell you I’m irritated, but only because I don’t want to be, and expected him to just let it roll off his back … living w/ someone, you inevitably turn your private frustrations out on that person, because that kind of projection is such a basic and pervasively influencing ego defense mechanism. And too, as one is so unaware of the other person’s living reality, I had not taken into account Barack’s feeling of being displaced and in the way. In the end he said I know it’s irritating to have me here, and I wanted to say and mean, no of course it isn’t, but I couldn’t. That has been the biggest surprise, that rather than enjoying his extended presence like a very long weekend, as I think I thought I would, and reveling in the comfort of reliably having someone to eat dinner with, and talk to and go to sleep with, I’ve been …resentful I suppose—no—as he said, impatient and domineering How beneath the surface things are after all.
Genevieve and Barack talked about race quite often, as part of his inner need to find a sense of belonging. She sympathized and encouraged his search for identity. If she felt like an outsider, he was a double outsider, racial and cross-cultural. He looked black, but was he? He confessed to her that at times “he felt like an imposter. Because he was so white. There was hardly a black bone in his body.” At some point that summer she realized that, “in his own quest to resolve his ambivalence about black and white, it became very, very clear to me that he needed to go black.
domingo, abril 29, 2012
jueves, abril 26, 2012
Vice President David Petraeus? | Shadow Government
viernes, abril 20, 2012
jueves, abril 19, 2012
Retratos de fusilados por el Castrismo - Juan Abreu
"Hablame"
"EN TIEMPOS DIFÍCILES" - Heberto Padilla
A aquel hombre le pidieron su tiempo
para que lo juntara al tiempo de la Historia.
Le pidieron las manos,
porque para una época difícil
nada hay mejor que un par de buenas manos.
Le pidieron los ojos
que alguna vez tuvieron lágrimas
para que contemplara el lado claro
(especialmente el lado claro de la vida)
porque para el horror basta un ojo de asombro.
Le pidieron sus labios
resecos y cuarteados para afirmar,
para erigir, con cada afirmación, un sueño
(el-alto-sueño);
le pidieron las piernas
duras y nudosas
(sus viejas piernas andariegas),
porque en tiempos difíciles
¿algo hay mejor que un par de piernas
para la construcción o la trinchera?
Le pidieron el bosque que lo nutrió de niño,
con su árbol obediente.
Le pidieron el pecho, el corazón, los hombros.
Le dijeron
que eso era estrictamente necesario.
Le explicaron después
que toda esta donación resultaria inútil.
sin entregar la lengua,
porque en tiempos difíciles
nada es tan útil para atajar el odio o la mentira.
Y finalmente le rogaron
que, por favor, echase a andar,
porque en tiempos difíciles
esta es, sin duda, la prueba decisiva.
Etiquetas
ANALISIS ESPECIALES SOBRE EL NEOKAXTRIZMO
- 89,000 razones para el cambio
- Análisis del neocastrismo entre huevos con jamón y tostadas
- Aproximación a Cuba desde la Teoría del Caos ( I )
- Biología y sucesión ( 2 ): La política económica de la subsistencia
- Biología y sucesión: El Pacto de los Comandantes y el Pacto de los Generales
- Biología y sucesión: ¿A quién mejor que a la familia?
- Cuba, entre la lógica y la incertidumbre
- Cuba, entre la lógica y la incertidumbre
- Cuba: Crisis del sistema bancario o crisis del pensamiento económico
- Cuba: Las reformas y la empresa pública del Neocastrismo I
- Cuba: Las reformas y la empresa pública del neocastrismo ( II )
- Cuba: Nudos Gordianos o ¿dónde dejaron el portaaviones?
- Del Castrismo a la castracion
- Economia Politica de la Transicion en Cuba [1]
- Economía política de la transición (2): La pobreza estructural como mecanismo de dominación
- Economía política de la transición (3): Las claves de la pobreza estructural
- El Neocastrismo posible
- El Síndrome del Neocastrismo
- El Zhuanda Fangxiao cubano: mantener lo grande, deshacerse de lo pequeño/
- El caos y la logica difusa en el Castrismo
- El estado de bienestar del Neocastrismo: “Lucha tu alpiste pichón”
- El menú del neocastrismo: pato pekinés y hallacas venezolanas/ Eugenio Yáñez
- El neocastrismo: “revolución” sin ideología
- El secuestro de la Ciencia Cubana por Fidel Castro
- El ¨sucre¨: fracaso anunciado de un golpe de estado
- Elecciones en Cuba: Control Político, Manipulación y Testosterona Biranica [II]
- Elecciones en Cuba: Control Político, Manipulación y Testosterona Biranica [I]
- Estrategias medievales en el siglo XXI
- La antesala del entierro político de Fidel Castro
- La caja de Pandora del castrismo: la sucesión
- La ¨Rana Hirviendo¨ del Castrismo
- Los caminos hacia la Cuba post-castrista
- Los funerales del hombre nuevo
- Los múltiples síndromes del "Papá Estado" cubano
- Neocastrismo y Vaticano: liturgias y Vía Crucis. El camino de Tarzán
- Neocastrismo, diplomacia "revolucionaria" y wikiboberías
- Por un puñado de dólares
- Raúl Castro en el año del Dragón ( I )
- TRES AÑOS DE RAULISMO ( I I I, FINAL): Sombras nada más
- Unificación Monetaria en Cuba: Un arroz con mango neocastrista [1]
- Unificación Monetaria en Cuba: Un arroz con mango neocastrista [2]
- Unificación Monetaria en Cuba: arroz con mango neocastrista [FINAL]
- Vivienda y Castrismo. La mezcla se endurece
- ¿Perestroika a la cubana?
GLOBAL
- ChartsBin
- DEBKAfile
- Daily Planet Map
- Economist Intelligence Unit
- Estadisticas mundiales en tiempo real
- Foreign Affairs
- Fox Nation
- Fragilecologies
- Global Incident Map
- Global Security
- Human Progress
- InfoWars
- New Zeal
- NewScientist
- Power Wall
- Pulitzer Center
- Ted Ideas
- The Albert Einstein Institution
- The Blaze
- The Daily Beast
- The Global Report
- The National Security Archive
- The Peak
- Trends Research Institute
- What does it mean
- World Audit
- ZeroHedge
- ipernity
Cuba
Seguidores
Carta desde la carcel de Fidel Castro Ruz
“…después de todo, para mí la cárcel es un buen descanso, que sólo tiene de malo el que es obligatorio. Leo mucho y estudio mucho. Parece increíble, las horas pasan como si fuesen minutos y yo, que soy de temperamento intranquilo, me paso el día leyendo, apenas sin moverme para nada. La correspondencia llega normalmente…”
“…En cuanto a fumar, en estos días pasados he estado rico: una caja de tabacos H. Upman del doctor Miró Cardona, dos cajas muy buenas de mi hermano Ramón….”.
“Me voy a cenar: spaghettis con calamares, bombones italianos de postre, café acabadito de colar y después un H. Upman #4. ¿No me envidias?”.
“…Me cuidan, me cuidan un poquito entre todos. No le hacen caso a uno, siempre estoy peleando para que no me manden nada. Cuando cojo el sol por la mañana en shorts y siento el aire de mar, me parece que estoy en una playa… ¡Me van a hacer creer que estoy de vacaciones! ¿Qué diría Carlos Marx de semejantes revolucionarios?”.
Quotes
"No temas ni a la prision, ni a la pobreza, ni a la muerte. Teme al miedo" - Giacomo Leopardi
¨Por eso es muy importante, Vicky, hijo mío, que recuerdes siempre para qué sirve la cabeza: para atravesar paredes¨– Halvar de Flake [El vikingo]
"Como no me he preocupado de nacer, no me preocupo de morir" - Lorca
"Al final, no os preguntarán qué habéis sabido, sino qué habéis hecho" - Jean de Gerson
"Si queremos que todo siga como está, es necesario que todo cambie" - Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
"Todo hombre paga su grandeza con muchas pequeñeces, su victoria con muchas derrotas, su riqueza con múltiples quiebras" - Giovanni Papini
"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans" - John Lennon
"Habla bajo, lleva siempre un gran palo y llegarás lejos" - Proverbio Africano
"No hay medicina para el miedo" - Proverbio escoces
"El supremo arte de la guerra es doblegar al enemigo sin luchar" - Sun Tzu
"You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother" - Albert Einstein
"It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office" - H. L. Menken
"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented" - Elie Wiesel
"Stay hungry, stay foolish" - Steve Jobs
"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert , in five years ther'ed be a shortage of sand" - Milton Friedman
"The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less" - Vaclav Havel
"No se puede controlar el resultado, pero si lo que uno haga para alcanzarlo" - Vitor Belfort [MMA Fighter]
Liborio
Para Raul Castro
Cuba ocupa el lugar 147 entre 153 paises evaluados en "Democracia, Mercado y Transparencia 2007"
Enlaces sobre Cuba:
- ALBERTO MÜLLER
- Abicu Liberal
- Agencia de Prensa Libre Oriental
- Asociation for the study of the Cuban Economy
- Babalu blog
- Bitacora Cubana
- Centro de Estudios de la Economia Cubana
- Cine Cuba
- Conexion Cubana
- Conexion Cubana/Osvaldo
- Cuba Futuro
- Cuba Independiente
- Cuba Matinal
- Cuba Net
- Cuba Standard
- Cuba Study Group
- Cuba al Pairo
- Cuba transition project
- Cuba/ Brookings Institution
- CubaDice
- Cubanalisis
- Cubano Libre blog
- Cubanology
- DAZIBAO-Ñ-.
- El Blog del Forista 'El Compañero'
- El Republicano Liberal
- El Tono de la Voz
- Emilio Ichikawa blog
- Enrisco
- Estancia Cubana
- Esteban Casañas Lostal/ La Isla
- Estudios Económicos Cubanos
- Exilio Cubano
- Fernando Gonzalez
- Freedom for Dr. Biscet!
- Fundacion Canadiense para las Americas: Cuba
- Fundacion Lawton de Derechos Humanos
- Gaspar, El Lugareño
- Global Security
- Granma
- Guaracabuya: Organo Oficial de la Sociedad Economica de Amigos del Pais
- Humanismo y Conectividad
- Humberto Fontova
- IRI: International Republic Institute
- Ideas Ocultas
- Jinetero,... y que?
- La Finca de Sosa
- La Nueva Cuba
- La Primavera de Cuba
- La pagina del Dr. Antonio de la Cova
- Lista de blogs cubanos
- Los Miquis
- Magazine Cubano
- Manuel Diaz Martinez
- Martha Beatriz Roque Info
- Martha Colmenares
- Medicina Cubana
- Movimiento HUmanista Evolucionario Cubano
- Neoliberalismo
- Net for Cuba International
- Nueva Europa - Nueva Arabia
- Oficina Nacional de Estadisticas de Cuba
- Penultimos Dias
- Pinceladas de Cuba
- Postal de Cuba
- Real Instituto Elcano
- Repensando la rebelión cubana de 1952-1959
- Revista Hispano Cubana
- Revista Voces Voces
- Secretos de Cuba
- Sociedad Civil Venezolana
- Spanish Pundit
- SrJacques Online: A Freedom Blog
- Stratfor Global Intelligence
- TV Cuba
- The Havana Note
- The Investigative Project on Terrorism
- The Real Cuba
- The Trilateral Commission
- Union Liberal Cubana/Seccion de Economia y Finanzas
- White House
- Yo Acuso al regimen de Castro
Cuando vinieron
Cuando vinieron a buscar a los sindicalistas, Callé: yo no soy sindicalista.
Cuando vinieron a buscar a los judíos, Callé: yo no soy judío. Cuando vinieron a buscar a los católicos, Callé: yo no soy “tan católico”.
Cuando vinieron a buscarme a mí, Callé: no había quien me escuchara.
Reverendo Martin Niemöller
Articulos especiales
- * Analisis del saldo migratorio externo cubano 2001-2007
- * Anatomía de un mito: la salud pública en Cuba antes y después de 1959
- * Cuba: Sistema de acueductos y alcantarillados
- * ELECCIONES: Un millon ciento cincuenta y dos mil personas setecientas quince personas muestran su oposicion al regimen
- * El Trinquenio Amargo y la ciudad distópica: autopsia de una utopía/ Conf. del Arq. Mario Coyula
- * Estructura del PIB de Cuba 2007
- * Las dudas de nuestras propias concepciones
- * Republica y rebelion
- Analisis de los resultados de la Sherrit en Cuba
- Circulacion Monetaria: Tienen dinero los cubanos para "hacerle" frente a las medidas "aperturistas" de Raul?
- Cuba-EEUU: Los círculos viciosos y virtuosos de la transición cubana [ 3] / Lazaro Gonzalez
- Cuba-EEUU: Los círculos viciosos y virtuosos de la transición cubana [ I ]/ Lazaro Gonzalez
- Cuba-Estados Unidos: Los Círculos Viciosos y Virtuosos de la transición cubana [ I I ]- Lazaro Gonzalez
- Cuba: Comercio Exterior 2007 y tasas de cambio
- Cuba: Reporte de turistas enero 2008
- Cuba: Sondeo de precios al Mercado Informal
- Estudio de las potencialidades de la produccion de etanol en Cuba
- Reforma de la agricultura en Cuba: Angel Castro observa orgulloso al Sub-Latifundista de Biran al Mando*
- Turismo en Cuba: Un proyecto insostenible. Analisis de los principales indicadores
- Unificación Monetaria en Cuba: Un arroz con mango neocastrista [1]
CUBA LLORA Y EL MUNDO Y NOSOTROS NO ESCUCHAMOS
Donde estan los Green, los Socialdemocratas, los Ricos y los Pobres, los Con Voz y Sin Voz? Cuba llora y nadie escucha.
Donde estan el Jet Set, los Reyes y Principes, Patricios y Plebeyos? Cuba desesperada clama por solidaridad.
Donde Bob Dylan, donde Martin Luther King, donde Hollywood y sus estrellas? Donde la Middle Class democrata y conservadora, o acaso tambien liberal a ratos? Y Gandhi? Y el Dios de Todos?
Donde los Santos y Virgenes; los Dioses de Cristianos, Protestantes, Musulmanes, Budistas, Testigos de Jehova y Adventistas del Septimo Dia. Donde estan Ochun y todas las deidades del Panteon Yoruba que no acuden a nuestro llanto? Donde Juan Pablo II que no exige mas que Cuba se abra al Mundo y que el Mundo se abra a Cuba?
Que hacen ahora mismo Alberto de Monaco y el Principe Felipe que no los escuchamos? Donde Madonna, donde Angelina Jolie y sus adoptados around de world; o nos hara falta un Brando erguido en un Oscar por Cuba? Donde Sean Penn?
Donde esta la Aristocracia Obrera y los Obreros menos Aristocraticos, donde los Working Class que no estan junto a un pueblo que lanquidece, sufre y llora por la ignominia?
Que hacen ahora mismo Zapatero y Rajoy que no los escuchamos, y Harper y Dion, e Hillary y Obama; donde McCain que no los escuchamos? Y los muertos? Y los que estan muriendo? Y los que van a morir? Y los que se lanzan desesperados al mar?
Donde estan el minero cantabrico o el pescador de percebes gijonese? Los Canarios donde estan? A los africanos no los oimos, y a los australianos con su acento de hombres duros tampoco. Y aquellos chinos milenarios de Canton que fundaron raices eternas en la Isla? Y que de la Queen Elizabeth y los Lords y Gentlemen? Que hace ahora mismo el combativo Principe Harry que no lo escuchamos?
Donde los Rockefellers? Donde los Duponts? Donde Kate Moss? Donde el Presidente de la ONU? Y Solana donde esta? Y los Generales y Doctores? Y los Lam y los Fabelo, y los Sivio y los Fito Paez?
Y que de Canseco y Miñoso? Y de los veteranos de Bahia de Cochinos y de los balseros y de los recien llegados? Y Carlos Otero y Susana Perez? Y el Bola, y Pancho Cespedes? Y YO y TU?
Y todos nosotros que estamos aqui y alla rumiando frustaciones y resquemores, envidias y sinsabores; autoelogios y nostalgias, en tanto Louis Michel comulga con Perez Roque mientras Biscet y una NACION lanquidecen?
Donde Maceo, donde Marti; donde aquel Villena con su carga para matar bribones?
Cuba llora y clama y el Mundo NO ESCUCHA!!!
Suscribirse Cuba Independiente
CIF: Cuba Independiente http://CubaIndependiente.blogspot.com Registro (c) Copyright: ® DIN 189297780000 Gerente By: www.copyrightwww.com