VENEZUELA AND OUR SILENCE

If Venezuela were ruled by a right wing dictatorship we would be hearing a lot from the left; marches would have been organized all over the country and the world would utter a high pitched cry of foul; being Maduro the puppet of the Havana Junta: thus, a left wing facilitator, the same persons that want to dismember America from within make no effort to change the course of events in that Latin American nation.

One would think however, that being our great nation the beacon of hope and a sworn enemy of communism and left extremism a sterner warning should have come out from Washington as we watch the graphic images of innocent people getting killed under precise instructions of the Cuban government. Then; as if out of the blue, a group of retirees from our military sends a letter to the Trump administration underscoring how strategically important is for us to have good relations with the  Cuban regime. I had hoped that the capture and sentencing of Ana Belen Montes, the highest ranking Castro spy ever incarcerated (that we know of since the cloak and dagger ways of espionage leave little room for credibility) had once and for all done away with such appeasing talking points; but as the convicted Puerto Rican is about to complete her sentence we still hear the same old same old.

As we all know; only a few insignificant individuals (that includes yours truly) are fool enough to trust the government and send spontaneous missives to presidents, senators and representatives; usually letters are mailed as per request from the addressee; which could lead us to believe that for all the Cuban American victory lapping in the right the Donald will not be as effusive as his predecessor; maybe he won't clumsily try to bear hug Raul Castro, but we are not to expect a distinct departure from Obama's policy. If this chain of conjectures is accurate the White House must be alarmed by the possibility of Maduro's downfall and Cuba's economic debacle.

The worst possible outcome for this administration is the improbable victory of the popular riots in Venezuela, Cuba's remake of the Periodo Especial and Washington as it has happened more often than not; perceived as siding with the wrong crowd and having to clean the mess just the same. In very simple words: the powers that be are not happy with a regime change in Venezuela, not because they like Maduro, but because they fear its catastrophic effect on Cuba. America bets on stability even if it makes us move to the wrong side of history. That principle is one of the pillars of our myopic foreign policy and one of the reasons why we are so unpopular. Kicking the can further down the road, avoiding to take the bull by the horns. Venezuela is on its own; Castro is flagrantly meddling in its internal affairs and America looks the other way.

For decades our government has accepted and at times even aided and abetted injustice in order to secure stability only to achieve neither. A quick look at today's world proves beyond any doubt that America is safe when it applies its overwhelming power. We must remain vigilant so that the industrial military complex won't drag us into useless conflicts, but abandoning the Venezuelan people is shamefully unAmerican.

SNOWDEN, OBAMA AND OLIVER STONE.

   

I would like the reader to think carefully about the above title for this article; none of the names is that of a right winger and yet; when you watch the whole movie a sense of helplessness remains in the viewer. 

What we know about Ed Snowden is what Mr Stone has decided to unveil about the controversial individual. According to Stone, Snowden is the classic case of the usual average right tilted ignorant American who needs the love of a liberal activist to wake up. In Oliver's world one is born a stupid conservative who won't question the power's judgement and drifts farther and farther away from the dark cave as life hits him or her with the real facts.

Contrary to some, I try not to mix professional skills and political views; I believe Stone is a dictator lover and left wing lunatic, but at the same time a fine film maker. His attempt at personalizing Snowden, whether we accept his version of facts or not, is artistically and psychologically plausible. He does a decent job and for the first time I was forced think that after all, the traitor, which Snowden undoubtedly is, may have undergone a process of radicalization in light of the negligence, the immobility and the useless waste that our government performs every year pushing the agenda of the industrial military complex not necessarily to the advantage of we the people.

But we have whistle blowers like James and Joanne Moriarty from Texas  who have seen their bank accounts seized; their earnings garnished and their lives destroyed but to my knowledge have never given their information to the enemy. To me, Snowden is a traitor who belongs in jail as well as the many liars in our government who once and again testify under oath that we are not being surveilled when we now know we all are FISA or no FISA.

What stroke me most about the movie is the naive hope and high expectations Snowden and his girlfriend place on Barrack Obama's election only to realize that the government under his watch kept spying on us; actually, according the Stone's script Snowden discovers at some point that our security agencies surveilled more Americans than Russians. Had the movie been shot by one of Bill O'Reilly's filmmakers that would have seemed normal; but it was the one and only Oliver Stone to claim that nothing changed under the former president. I'm afraid Stone will be disowned by the left or maybe suffer an untimely accident.

And this reasoning leads us to where we are now; and I reiterate once again that if Trump conspired with the Russians in any way he must pay for it. But I also reiterate that to use the power of the American government to spy, request the unmasking and/or leak the names of American citizens is a flagrant violation of our Constitution and our way of life. If the left does not accept the theory of the movie it has to reconcile with how Mr Stone accuses them directly of lying; if they do not, instead, destroy the filmmaker nor hurriedly find lawsuits for sexual harassment against him; then they must accept that as Snowden claims, Clapper lied his butt out when he testified UNDER OATH that Americans were not being surveilled.

In closing, I don't think the problem here is whether Clapper, Comey or any bureaucrat lies (which is already a tragedy in itself) but the political manipulation of it all and the one sided version both parties feed us banking on our short memory and inability to make a simple analysis. 

DANGEROUS INHERITANCES

Yesterday, our Commander in Chief ordered the launching of some fifty Tomahawks to strike two different Syrian airstrips. Some claim the targets were actually two locations where chemical weapons were allegedly stocked. Whilst it would have been very difficult to remain silent in view of the horrific images of small children killed with poisonous gas, the decision raises more questions than answers and allows for multiple angles for interpretation. I'm a Republican, but above all I'm a proud American citizen and I want the best for this country FIRST, and by extension for the rest of the world. I would like the reader to join me as my mind wanders though the maze of motives, reasons, goals, strategies and possible outcomes the complex international scenario shows us. No absolute truth is claimed and no single solution, if any, is invoked.

1- Barrack Obama inherited two wars; to my judgement he made the wrong decision pulling out and most of all emailing the enemy time and coordinates of said pull out (figuratively speaking). His decision to withdraw, especially in such humiliating fashion and low tail dog demeanor emboldened our enemies. But the original sin lies on the Bush administration and its naive (provided there were no other interests) notion of exporting our way of life to peoples with different heritages and historical avatars. It was ignorant and suicidal and it passed on to Mr Obama a very difficult situation.

2- Mr Obama, who is not responsible for the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, did worsen the situation in the region with his clumsy role in the overthrow of Gaddafi (who had already made peace with us and could be used to our advantage) and the consequent dismembering of Libya; his policies handed Egypt to the Muslim Brotherhood on a silver platter and had it not been for the traditional expeditiousness and omnipresence of the Egyptian military we would have a Muslim regime with a border with Israel. In an outrageous show if hypocrisy the Obama administration kept its distance from Egyptian strongman El Sissi while he even tried a bear hug on Raul Castro. Our enemy of fifty an odd years was removed from the list of nations that sponsor terrorism as we continued to denounce abuse of human rights in an old ally.

3- Bush responsible to some extent, Obama responsible to some extent. Despite his undeniable shortcomings; harsh demeanor, short fuse and lack of governing experience, Donald J Trump is NOT in any way, shape or form responsible for any of the conflicts he has inherited. But he is the president now; blaming his predecessors could set the record straight but won't straighten up anything.

4- As the situation in Syria deteriorates his relation with Vladimir Putin may become more and more strained. The honey moon (if ever there was one) could be over before we know it and that would make things ever more complicated. 

5- Let us not forget we have another madman breaking one rule after another in North Korea; not even his Chinese partners seem to be able to put a leash on him as he is most likely blackmailing his northern neighbors with millions of unwanted immigrants (the same extortion used by the Havana Junta, only there the two countries are only divided by a river). So El Loco, as half sarcastically half endearingly some Cuban Americans call the president, invites the Chinese president to a state dinner at his mansion in West Palm Beach and I envision him asking to be excused for a second only to reappear five minutes later; his lips u shaped lengthened in that sardonic smile of his and offhandedly dropping an explanatory remark on his guest: "sorry Mr Jinping, I had to go authorize my Navy to bomb the shit out of Assad; excuse me where were we?; oh yes, North Korea. As I was saying Mr President you have to help us with that crazy kid; do you like Dennis Rodman?"

6- I can't help noticing that for now the attack has been limited to two bases where Russians are unlikely to be embedded with their Syrian counterparts. It is my understanding that Russia and other key players were informed before the strike; so what now? . For Putin to change his position in Syria a lot of chess has to be played; so where does this leave us? Have we at least managed to scare the Chinese to a point where they order the Korean kid to go back to his video games and quit bothering the adults? Is the rest of the world convinced our president is bold enough to push the bottom? Or are the bad guys convinced he's just show and no substance?

THE TRAGEDY OF A MANIPULATED COMMUNITY.

        

I just saw Maxine Waters ramble about impeaching president Trump; she says it's her mission. I thought the mission for this Castro loving black woman was to secure a brighter future for her community and press, extort, blackmail or whatever she had to do to ANY president in order to reach that goal. NO!!! She says that's not her mission; she says her mission is to impeach the incumbent; so we're paying her not to legislate or to improve anything but to be the thug of the white elite that runs her party in shambles (not that the Republicans are an example of unity). How much Mrs Waters makes?; what kind of health insurance she has? What are her conditions when she wants to invest in the stock market? How has she impacted the lives of millions of African Americans in the many years she has been in Congress? We all say that a totalitarian regime can be identified by the longevity in power of those in high positions; isn't it time this lady retires and leaves her place to another African American less keen on pleasing the white masters and more interested in his or her own community?

By the way; she said that she had no time to respond to Bill O'Reilly or Bill Ayres (who left Fox months ago) because they had had to pay settlements for sexual harassment. Boy with so many Bills I thought for a moment she was talking about Bill (Bubba) Clinton; the womanizer in Chief. Someone must order her to do her homework. Mrs Waters went on to praise Hillary Clinton for her role as an advocate for black women; as if it hadn't been clear enough in the last election that the American people did not exactly view the former First Lady as the best example of a modern wife. Arrogance, character assassination of any woman who dared denounce her husband's advances and the demonizing of anyone who thought differently as well as enduring any humiliation as long as she could be president makes Mrs Clinton the farthest individual from what I would dream our black sisters to be. 

It is conspicuous how the Democrats use John Lewis, Elijah Cummings and particularly Maxine Waters to deviate our attention from any openings the current president makes to the African American community. They talk about bigotry but they show no scruples in putting their black fellow party members as shields. The so called black leaders waste precious time they could devote to press for real victories following the orders of the "man" within their party. The current state of affairs is by no stretch of imagination the dream MLK shared with all of us in his famous speech; hatred at all costs, a silent civil war and the vicious attack on anything alien to their agenda.

It seems unlikely that the left loonies manage to impeach the president; but whether they do or not is irrelevant for Jamal and Taisha. They will inevitably return every evening to their poor neighborhood; less hopeful than yesterday and burdened with debt and lack of alternatives while the money supposedly allocated to improve their lives is used elsewhere God knows with what purposes. Their false leaders instead will return to their comfortable mansions filled with huge flat screen television sets in which they replay over and over the same worn out videos of their incendiary speeches and undo brick by brick this magnificent castle they once swore to help defend. 

POLITICAL RELATIVITY

During commercials in a set yesterday, the anchorman (a good friend of mine), made a valid point: he claimed that the Democrats, labeled as the left in the US, would be to the right of the Spanish Partido Popular, the right wing party in that European nation. And the anchorman was right. It's all relative and our criteria depend on what we compare to what. Most people used to say that America was a nation with two right wing parties only that one outrighted the other one.

I personally don't have a problem with a strong Democratic Party; actually, I'm convinced it is healthier for our country to have two robust and agile political groups that alternate and "contain" one another; a predominance of one upon the other would inevitably lead to a weaker democracy. The devil, however, is in the fellow travelers the Democrats have chosen. In order to secure votes they have associated with trouble makers, people that put on a mask to attend a "peaceful" rally, and loonies who wave the flag of the former Soviet Union while their leaders try to impeach the president based precisely on his alleged association with a former KGB thug. 

Even more serious, African American elected officials like Maxine Waters waste time her constituents pay for doing the dirty job for the white elite of her party instead of focusing on genuine and tangible improvement of the African American community. The right path for them to follow would be to press the new president to the limit in order to put forth initiatives that instead of entitlement and food stamps, crime and disfranchisement, could finally create opportunities and make a difference in the lives of millions of black Americans. But they do not care about a more educated community since it could imply the end of their political careers.

This explosive mixture of opportunism, manipulation and prefabricated narrative is what makes possible the sordid dichotomy that places the Democratic Party to the right of a European right wing party in theory, but pushes it dangerously to the left of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) for all practical purposes. What honest Democrats fail to surmise is that somewhere along the journey their new fellow travelers will merciless and viciously kick them off the train.

ANONYMOUS VICTIM. NEXT !!!

Juan Francisco Tellechea Pulido arrived in Mexico City with his tourist visa in 1950. He married a Mexican national and shortly afterwards he had his first child. The family then traveled to Cuba where he tried to make ends meet for two years, but seeing no improvement to their situation they decided to pack their luggage and go back to Mexico. Upon arriving at the port of Veracruz with his pregnant wife and two children he was detained because he lacked a Mexican visa. He was swiftly sent to prison. After a few days he escaped and joined his family; then Mr Tellechea started his personal tragedy. Whenever he found employment the former DIP (Direccion de Investigaciones Policiales) caught him and sent him to prison. Even though he had two Mexican children he could never obtain a work permit or a residency.

In 1957 his wife gave birth to Ivonne Tellechea Pliego, whom I first met in the Christmas of 1980 when she traveled to Cuba as a tourist; Ivonne; though born in Mexico could not secure a passport until she was 25; she was issued a re-entry permit and was subject to lengthy interrogations whenever she returned to her own country. She vividly remembers one occasion when she was taken "hostage" by the Mexican authorities to force her father to turn himself in. The neighboring houses were covered with snipers as if it were an effort to capture a drug lord.

Juan Francisco Tellechea Pulido, a fellow Cuban, died on January 1st 1995. No public apology has been made by the Mexican government, no letter of regret has been mailed to his children; he is just a bundle of yellowish papers in some obscure Mexican office or probably just one more name in binary language that conveniently covers that other face of immigration that Mr Jorge Ramos and the bourgeois communists so zealously keep from the public opinion. No Cuban flags are waved in his honor nor in honor of so many unknown Cuban Franciscos, no demonstrations at El Zocalo and no media coverage; even martyrdom is biased these days. 

BOURGEOIS COMMUNISM IV

The collapse of the communist bloc proved to be a double edged sword; it was an overdue act of justice for millions of people but after a few victory laps and millions of uncorked champagne bottles it showed us its ugliest face: the world stability no longer depended on the communication between "two masters". One of them was dead and the other was too busy celebrating to realize what was coming. A tragedy like 9/11 wouldn't have been conceivable in the two bloc world. America could no longer rely on Moscow to maintain the equilibrium that, albeit precariously, had kept the monster of violence away from home. 

The reader must not be under the illusion that what we called the west was a handful of nuns gone on a picnic; whilst the alternative to democracy is chaos and poverty it would be suicidal to ignore how many times we have thrown down governments, plotted to assassinate foreign leaders, failed to foresee what was best for us in the long run, waged burdensome and useless wars and so many other unnameable sins. What is worst, more often than not our deeds have not even proved beneficial in the end. To make matters worse, with the enhancement of our world after the collapse of the USSR we have grown to be a sort of acephalous octopus with hundreds of uncontrollable tentacles with the most diverse objectives and goals. While the enemy is united despite its inherent discrepancies we are divided by a fake unity that exists only in theory. Such was the scenario when our powers that be decided to send an African American to the White House, but not just any African American; there was a uniqueness to this event: he had to seem a factor of change, of modernity, a product of the new technologies, of a united and racially mixed America. In a way, Barrack Hussein Obama had to be the Ronald Wilson Reagan of the left.

Much has been speculated as to which group of interests led to Obama's victory. My goal is to raise awareness among as many human beings as possible of the new guise worn by the old enemy. I won't risk the effectiveness of these articles on a history wild goose chase that remains way beyond my intellectual capabilities, but even my most naive readers know no human being gets the top job in the land without the blessing of a certain group or spectrum of groups.  In my view Obama marks the coronation of the new American and, hence, of the new western democracy:

1- Tolerance as a screen behind which our world kept being chipped away.

2- Diversity as long as the "diverse" toed the line.

3- Demonizing of the wealthy; conveniently hiding the fact that the whole attempt was financed by "some" wealthy; the kind of wealthy that wants the government to take charge once they have infiltrated it with their people; most wealthy will get busted but they hopefully won't: risky gambit but avarice has no limits. 

4- Intoxication of academia, the arts and the media with the "progressive" rhetoric so that the public opinion gradually prepares for a new order: more bureaucracy, less accountability, such a dense and viscous substance beyond which our perception is impaired

5- An incurable sense of guilt; a relentless bombardment with news and views of hardships and tragedies elsewhere, conveniently omitting our own; thus, the role of America becomes that of aiding the needy and sheltering the poor at such a pace that two decades would bring about the defacing of the nation and a shift on the values and goals that had kept us as the most powerful nation on earth for decades.

6- To comply with the objectives above the first African American president could not do the logical thing: start once and for all the conversation to close the gap that still remains between a large portion of his community and the rest of America. He could fiddle the issue; he could even mention the issue from time to time, but he could in no way, shape or form address the issue constructively, let alone use the prestige of his office to begin a forward motion. An isolated, disfranchised and even bitter African American community was paramount to the final goal of dismembering our nation from within.

7- Gramsci could not have dreamed a better scenario and Berlinguer would even wince at the sight of anarchists, communists, socialists, liberals, and honest center left individuals united and destroying the very foundations of the western society. The ingenuity of the tactic lies on the fact that no anti American slogans are chanted; all is done precisely in the name of OUR America; based on the principles stated once and again by our Founding Fathers; just take a comma out here and place it there, the very same phrase with a slight variation of punctuation means exactly the opposite. A revolution of semantics and equivocal lexicon as the sheath of a razor sharp dagger destined to sever the vital organs of the "capitalist beast". 

8- The first black American president became the point of fracture beyond which anyone became a bigot and and fascist; criticizing the president was an attack of America as a nation. The different elites of all walks of life rallied behind the president, but for all the complacency and self serving smiles in most quarters no love poured from the enemies of our nation. Weakened in the domestic front the USA showed no stamina to counter its foreign rivals; one could even think that we had lost the Cold War; while we picked funny flowers and sang tunes of peace and rivers that endlessly flowed into a sea of love our enemies felt emboldened and challenged us in no equivocal terms. TO BE CONTINUED...