Destroying the Progress Between the United States and Cuba
Friday, 20 October 2017 14:21
Leahy writes: "Despite the objection of the American Foreign Service Association, the State Department has taken severe punitive measures against Cuba. Over the past few weeks, they have slashed personnel and cut off all consular services at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, expelled Cuban diplomats and severely limited consular services at the Cuban Embassy in Washington, and issued a Cuba Travel Warning for all Americans."
Woman holds Cuban and American flags. (photo: Reuters)
Destroying the Progress Between the United States and Cuba
By Senator Patrick Leahy, Reader Supported News
20 October 17
Whoever is responsible for attacks on U.S. Embassy personnel has a clear agenda. We can’t let them succeed.
s a former prosecutor, before I charged someone with a crime I wanted to see the evidence, and before I took a case to trial I wanted a motive. While criminal law and diplomacy are obviously different, taking action based on evidence should be a standard formula.
For almost a year, multiple U.S. government agencies have been trying to determine what caused at least 22 U.S. Embassy personnel in Cuba to suffer hearing loss, dizziness, cognitive difficulties and other illnesses while in their apartments or hotels. The FBI has sent investigators to Cuba three times – something unimaginable before the rapprochement between the United States and Cuba in December 2014. State Department officials have stated that the Cuban government has cooperated. Canadian Embassy personnel were also afflicted, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been to Cuba.
While the investigation is ongoing, at this point the White House has no idea what or who caused these incidents or why. While some speculate that the Cubans know more than they are saying, there is no evidence linking these attacks to the Cuban government and no definitive acoustical or other technological explanation.
Yet despite the objection of the American Foreign Service Association, the State Department has taken severe punitive measures. Over the past few weeks, they have slashed personnel and cut off all consular services at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, expelled Cuban diplomats and severely limited consular services at the Cuban Embassy in Washington, and issued a Cuba Travel Warning for all Americans.
These actions are not only counter-productive to solving this mystery, but will inevitably punish the Cuban people, separate Cuban-Americans from their loved ones on the island, hurt U.S. companies interested in doing business in Cuba, and disrupt further progress between our countries on academic and cultural exchanges, negotiations over fugitives and property claims, public health, and maritime security.
We have a duty to protect our diplomats. These diplomats and their families suffering from unexplained illnesses deserve answers. The perpetrators of these serious and inexcusable attacks against American diplomats must be apprehended and held accountable. But expelling Cuban diplomats in Washington won’t bring us any answers. Rather, it creates further distance between our two governments and may make this harder to solve.
Whoever is responsible for these attacks has a clear agenda: to sabotage the nascent rapprochement between the United States and Cuba. We can’t let them succeed.
While we don’t know who is responsible, we do know there is a clear motivation for our foreign adversaries, like Russia, to drive a wedge between the United States and Cuba to help achieve their geopolitical goals. And, as we are seeing increasingly around the world, when we disengage our adversaries rush in.
Unsurprisingly, the Canadians have not withdrawn their diplomats, nor have they issued a travel warning or ordered Cuban diplomats to leave Canada. Without a shred of evidence, nor a motive, linking the Cuban government to these incidents, it appears as though our actions were driven by political expediency, not diplomacy.
If whoever is responsible for this wants to destroy the détente between our country and Cuba, they are succeeding. If, on the other hand, the State Department wants to protect our diplomats and advance U.S. interests, it should do everything possible, including cooperate fully with the Cuban government and regional public health experts, to solve this mystery so our embassies can quickly resume normal operations.
Smith writes: "As someone who served five years in the United States Army, 14 months of that in combat, I've struggled over the past few years to understand Donald Trump's relationship to the military. Does this man love us, or does he hate us?"
President Trump speaks to Air Force personnel during a September 15th event celebrating the 70th birthday of the Air Force at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty)
Army Vet: Why Trump Disrespects the Military
By Richard Allen Smith, Rolling Stone
20 October 17
For all his wealth and power, there is one thing Trump lacks, and money can't buy it: respect
s someone who served five years in the United States Army, 14 months of that in combat, I've struggled over the past few years to understand Donald Trump's relationship to the military. Does this man love us, or does he hate us?
There's the side of Trump that was reared in a military boarding school – the man who wanted his inauguration to culminate in a scene ripped from Red Square, with long-range missiles paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue. There's the president who's surrounded himself with flag officers, retired and active, in any office he can find space for them, and one who – at least ostensibly – revels in the solemn responsibility of military strikes. And there's the Trump who repeatedly claimed on the campaign trail he would be "so good at the military, it will make your head spin," that no one loved the troops more than himself, and that the feeling was mutual.
But then there's the Trump who, just this week, engaged in a protracted back and forth over how he told the pregnant widow of a fallen Green Beret her late husband "knew what he signed up for." His administration also banned non-citizen legal permanent residents from joining the Army Reserve, a practice dating back to the Revolutionary War. And thanks to a report in The Washington Post, we learned the president promised a Gold Star father $25,000 from his personal account in June, but hadn't delivered on that promise. (The White House now says that check is in the mail.)
Looking back over the past two years, there's more: disrespecting the wartime POW service of John McCain, fantasizing about shooting an Army sergeant held captive by the Taliban for five years, repeated instances of military charities not receiving promised donations, smearing another Gold Star family of color, insulting uniformed leaders and pledging to fire them all, ridiculing combat veterans with PTSD, kicking uniformed personnel off the National Security Council, abdicating responsibility for troop strength in combat theaters, disrespecting the retired four-star general and Gold Star father who runs his White House, shaming the National Security Council on live television, pledging to kick transgender troops out of the armed services, blocking a prominent veterans' group on Twitter, attacking John McCain again, waiting nearly two weeks to remark on the death of four Special Forces soldiers in combat. Going back further still, we could note Trump's Vietnam draft-dodging, how he referred to sleeping with models as his "personal Vietnam" and his attempt to kick homeless veterans off 5th Avenue out of disgust.
At some point this week, as Trump was using the dead child of his chief of staff to shield himself from the criticism of the aforementioned Gold Star widow, it became clear to me that there's no ambiguity in how Trump views us. Trump does not love the military. Rather, he views the military as an entity he absorbed through a corporate acquisition. Just as has been the case with his Trump Organization employees or cabinet members or endorsers during the campaign, he feels he must have dominance over the military. It belongs to him now, along with the American forces' most valuable yet intangible assets: the honor, loyalty and respect Trump so desires.
Or at least that's what his words and deeds tell me he believes. Just as other wealthy men acquire priceless art or rare vintages because they are things that can't be bought with money alone, the military and the respect it enjoys appear to be fetish properties for Trump to now show off to the world.
And that's the point for Trump. For all his wealth and power, even after rising to the most powerful office in the world, there is one thing he lacks, and money can't buy it: respect. Whether he is negotiating with fellow heads of state, global business leaders or the Manhattan elite who shunned the trust-fund rube from Queens, Trump yearns for the kind of esteem enjoyed by the most respected institution of a country that increasingly lacks respect for institutions. The ridicule he chafes at from Twitter, cable news and even his own party gnaws at him. But, in his mind, if he surrounds himself with military men (and they are all men in Trump's orbit), their honor will become a part of him – like how a tech giant buys a startup just to integrate a single valued feature into its product.
Unfortunately for Trump, however, honor is not transferable. And what he views as "respect" or "loyalty" is what the rest of us know to be the demands for submission of a petty and insecure approximation of a man.
FOCUS: Half-Baked, Spurious Nationalism Is Unpatriotic
Friday, 20 October 2017 11:55
McCain writes: "To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain 'the last best hope of earth' for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history."
Senator John McCain. (photo: Reuters)
Half-Baked, Spurious Nationalism Is Unpatriotic
By John McCain, Guardian UK
20 October 17
At the 2017 Liberty Medal ceremony, Senator John McCain made powerful remarks about America’s place in the world. They are republished in full here
hank you, Joe, my old, dear friend, for those mostly undeserved kind words. Vice-President Biden and I have known each other for a lot of years now, more than 40, if you’re counting. We knew each other back when we were young and handsome and smarter than everyone else but were too modest to say so.
Joe was already a senator, and I was the navy’s liaison to the Senate. My duties included escorting Senate delegations on overseas trips, and in that capacity, I supervised the disposition of the delegation’s luggage, which could require – now and again – when no one of lower rank was available for the job – that I carry someone worthy’s bag. Once or twice that worthy turned out to be the young senator from Delaware. I’ve resented it ever since.
Joe has heard me joke about that before. I hope he has heard, too, my profession of gratitude for his friendship these many years. It has meant a lot to me. We served in the Senate together for over 20 years, during some eventful times, as we passed from young men to the fossils who appear before you this evening.
We didn’t always agree on the issues. We often argued – sometimes passionately. But we believed in each other’s patriotism and the sincerity of each other’s convictions. We believed in the institution we were privileged to serve in. We believed in our mutual responsibility to help make the place work and to cooperate in finding solutions to our country’s problems. We believed in our country and in our country’s indispensability to international peace and stability and to the progress of humanity. And through it all, whether we argued or agreed, Joe was good company. Thank you, old friend, for your company and your service to America.
Thank you, too, to the National Constitution Center, and everyone associated with it for this award. Thank you for that video, and for the all too generous compliments paid to me this evening. I’m aware of the prestigious company the Liberty Medal places me in. I’m humbled by it, and I’ll try my best not to prove too unworthy of it.
Some years ago, I was present at an event where an earlier Liberty Medal recipient spoke about America’s values and the sacrifices made for them. It was 1991, and I was attending the ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The World War Two veteran, estimable patriot and good man, President George H W Bush, gave a moving speech at the USS Arizona memorial. I remember it very well. His voice was thick with emotion as he neared the end of his address. I imagine he was thinking not only of the brave Americans who lost their lives on December 7, 1941, but of the friends he had served with and lost in the Pacific where he had been the navy’s youngest aviator.
“Look at the water here, clear and quiet …” he directed, “One day, in what now seems another lifetime, it wrapped its arms around the finest sons any nation could ever have, and it carried them to a better world.”
He could barely get out the last line, “May God bless them, and may God bless America, the most wondrous land on earth.”
The most wondrous land on earth, indeed. I’ve had the good fortune to spend 60 years in service to this wondrous land. It has not been perfect service, to be sure, and there were probably times when the country might have benefited from a little less of my help. But I’ve tried to deserve the privilege as best I can, and I’ve been repaid a thousand times over with adventures, with good company, and with the satisfaction of serving something more important than myself, of being a bit player in the extraordinary story of America. And I am so very grateful.
What a privilege it is to serve this big, boisterous, brawling, intemperate, striving, daring, beautiful, bountiful, brave, magnificent country. With all our flaws, all our mistakes, with all the frailties of human nature as much on display as our virtues, with all the rancor and anger of our politics, we are blessed.
We are living in the land of the free, the land where anything is possible, the land of the immigrant’s dream, the land with the storied past forgotten in the rush to the imagined future, the land that repairs and reinvents itself, the land where a person can escape the consequences of a self-centered youth and know the satisfaction of sacrificing for an ideal, the land where you can go from aimless rebellion to a noble cause, and from the bottom of your class to your party’s nomination for president.
We are blessed, and we have been a blessing to humanity in turn. The international order we helped build from the ashes of world war, and that we defend to this day, has liberated more people from tyranny and poverty than ever before in history. This wondrous land has shared its treasures and ideals and shed the blood of its finest patriots to help make another, better world. And as we did so, we made our own civilization more just, freer, more accomplished and prosperous than the America that existed when I watched my father go off to war on December 7, 1941.
To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain “the last best hope of earth” for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.
We live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil. We are the custodians of those ideals at home, and their champion abroad. We have done great good in the world. That leadership has had its costs, but we have become incomparably powerful and wealthy as we did. We have a moral obligation to continue in our just cause, and we would bring more than shame on ourselves if we don’t. We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent. We wouldn’t deserve to.
I am the luckiest guy on earth. I have served America’s cause – the cause of our security and the security of our friends, the cause of freedom and equal justice – all my adult life. I haven’t always served it well. I haven’t even always appreciated what I was serving. But among the few compensations of old age is the acuity of hindsight. I see now that I was part of something important that drew me along in its wake even when I was diverted by other interests. I was, knowingly or not, along for the ride as America made the future better than the past.
And I have enjoyed it, every single day of it, the good ones and the not so good ones. I’ve been inspired by the service of better patriots than me. I’ve seen Americans make sacrifices for our country and her causes and for people who were strangers to them but for our common humanity, sacrifices that were much harder than the service asked of me. And I’ve seen the good they have done, the lives they freed from tyranny and injustice, the hope they encouraged, the dreams they made achievable.
May God bless them. May God bless America, and give us the strength and wisdom, the generosity and compassion, to do our duty for this wondrous land, and for the world that counts on us. With all its suffering and dangers, the world still looks to the example and leadership of America to become, another, better place. What greater cause could anyone ever serve.
FOCUS: Do I Applaud This Speech From George W. Bush?
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
Friday, 20 October 2017 11:09
Pierce writes: "It's hard to digest the phrase 'degraded by casual cruelty' from a man on whose watch the United States formally became a nation that tortures people, and a man who willingly employed Karl Rove, and who accepted renomination in front of an audience wearing Purple Heart Band-Aids to mock John Kerry's service in Vietnam. Also, too - Swift Boats."
George W. Bush. (photo: Getty)
Do I Applaud This Speech From George W. Bush?
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
20 October 17
I really don't know. We're on dangerous ground.
watched C-Plus Augustus give a speech on Thursday morning that went off like a bit of a grenade in the national dialogue. A very long portion of it obviously was an attack on the current occupant of the office George W. Bush once held, and it was very effective speech, and I agreed with every diphthong, and I have no idea how to feel about that.
We have seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty. At times, it can seem like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. Argument turns too easily into animosity. Disagreement escalates into dehumanization. Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions – forgetting the image of God we should see in each other.
It’s hard to digest the phrase “degraded by casual cruelty” from a man on whose watch the United States formally became a nation that tortures people, and a man who willingly employed Karl Rove, and who accepted renomination in front of an audience wearing Purple Heart Band-Aids to mock John Kerry’s service in Vietnam. Also, too—Swift Boats.
America is experiencing the sustained attempt by a hostile power to feed and exploit our country’s divisions. According to our intelligence services, the Russian government has made a project of turning Americans against each other. This effort is broad, systematic and stealthy, it’s conducted across a range of social media platforms. Ultimately, this assault won’t succeed. But foreign aggressions – including cyber-attacks, disinformation and financial influence – should not be downplayed or tolerated. This is a clear case where the strength of our democracy begins at home. We must secure our electoral infrastructure and protect our electoral system from subversion.
Voter cadging. Purge lists. Florida, 2000 and Ohio, 2004.
Our identity as a nation – unlike many other nations – is not determined by geography or ethnicity, by soil or blood. Being an American involves the embrace of high ideals and civic responsibility. We become the heirs of Thomas Jefferson by accepting the ideal of human dignity found in the Declaration of Independence. We become the heirs of James Madison by understanding the genius and values of the U.S. Constitution. We become the heirs of Martin Luther King, Jr., by recognizing one another not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.
Warrantless wiretaps. Patriot Act. Military tribunals. Gitmo.
This speech is the sharpest point yet for those of us who have looked at big talkers like Bob Corker and Jeff Flake and Ben Sasse, who criticize the president* without actually opposing him on any significant issue. It is something of a dilemma for those of us who have been saying that the president* is not an aberration, but the inevitable result of conservative politics, and that the Republicans should not be allowed to pretend that he’s not. What Bush did today—give a speech—is pretty much all he can do at this point. But, still, what elected him twice were the same politics that elected the incumbent. All the latter did was turn up the volume by being more shameless, more incompetent, and infinitely more of an asshat.
So, do I applaud? Do I marinate in my cynicism and remember that this proud defender of American democracy lied the country into a foreign policy debacle that is still ongoing, and that is now overseen by someone who couldn’t find Iraq on a map…of Iraq? Of all the strange places that the last election has taken this country, this has to be one of the strangest. You have to watch every step. The past is clutching your feet here like poison vines camouflaged as the comforting tendrils of citizenship.
Keillor writes: "Other reporters handled crime, natural disasters, City Hall, sports, fatal accidents, high finance, visiting celebrities and what was called 'human interest,' meaning heartwarming stories, usually involving children. I was in charge of ordinary cold death."
Garrison Keillor. (photo: Washington Post)
The Old Obit Man Looks Around
By Garrison Keillor, The Washington Post
19 October 17
hen I was 20, I dropped out of college and got a job with a morning newspaper whose city editor, Mr. Walt Streightiff, put me to work writing obituaries of ordinary men and women whose deaths were not considered newsworthy. Other reporters handled crime, natural disasters, City Hall, sports, fatal accidents, high finance, visiting celebrities and what was called “human interest,” meaning heartwarming stories, usually involving children. I was in charge of ordinary cold death.
Mr. Streightiff liked his obituaries straight — basic facts, plus the deceased’s education, professional achievements, church and club memberships, survivors and funeral arrangements. I liked to add interesting detail — the man who, until he was 70, swam across White Bear Lake every summer, the woman whose potato salad was envied by others, the woman who could look at a sentence and speak it backward quickly and perfectly, the man with the enormous model-train layout filling his basement. Some of these Mr. Streightiff sniffed at but tolerated, others he crossed out.
That was 55 years ago and he was in his 50s and a chain smoker, so I suppose he is gone now. If I were writing his obit, I’d mention his short bristly hair, his starched white shirt and suspenders, his high-top leather shoes and armbands, and his commanding presence at the end of the horseshoe city desk, the way he barked out your last name, how he picked up a phone and said “YEAH?” into it. His breed is gone now, along with the cigarette smoke and the clatter of typewriters. And now I’m 75 and the people in the obits are pals of mine.
There were three of them in October, Bruce and Russ and Margaret, and the month is only half over.
Bruce was an organic farmer for 40 years, raising farm-to-table produce. His land had been in the family for more than a century and he made it as productive as it could be, taking on dozens of young interns who wanted to learn the ropes and find out if they had a vocation, too. He kept bees, and whenever he visited me, he brought a quart jar of honey. The farm was his life. We shared an ancestor, Elder John Crandall of the Rhode Island colony who came over from England in 1637 or so and who was arrested for preaching religious freedom among the Puritans. I am a Puritan myself and Bruce tolerated me pretty well.
Russ was an architect who took up the truck-driving life, played in a blues band, found romance, watched over his kids and cheered them on, and admired well-made things: motorcycles, guitars, old houses, barns, a song, a well-told tale. He once built a long twisting snow slide on a hillside with banked curves that he designed for maximum thrills. He made a habit of telling you a joke every time he met you. “Ole and Lena” jokes, light-bulb jokes, whatever. A man walks into the bar with a handful of fresh dog manure and says to the bartender, “Look what I almost stepped in.” A meaningful joke. His specialty.
Margaret was a college classmate who sat ahead of me in Miss Youngblood’s Shakespeare class. I once recited to her “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments” and meant it, but we stayed friends. She became a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst while raising three kids, and practiced for 30 years or so. I accused her of being a hired friend to people of privilege, a joke, and she laughed. I think that what her patients craved was not to be healed but to be understood and she gave them her keen attention. I miss her calm and inquisitive voice. I never heard her speak about anyone with contempt or derision. Not even Death, whom she saw coming a long way off and met with serenity.
They each had a clear vocation and made a mark and I miss them and hate to delete them from my phone. I grieve for each of them, and I also tell myself to buckle down. Pay attention. Do your job. Don’t kill time. Cherish your elders as they pass. My cousin Olive Darby died recently at 104, clear of mind, a steady star shining through the branches of the family tree. I’m sorry I didn’t go visit her, the last living person to have known my grandfather James, but there’s no time for regret now. November is coming, 2018 approaches. Onward.
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s a former prosecutor, before I charged someone with a crime I wanted to see the evidence, and before I took a case to trial I wanted a motive. While criminal law and diplomacy are obviously different, taking action based on evidence should be a standard formula.
hank you, Joe, my old, dear friend, for those mostly undeserved kind words. Vice-President Biden and I have known each other for a lot of years now, more than 40, if you’re counting. We knew each other back when we were young and handsome and smarter than everyone else but were too modest to say so.
watched C-Plus Augustus 
hen I was 20, I dropped out of college and got a job with a morning newspaper whose city editor, Mr. Walt Streightiff, put me to work writing obituaries of ordinary men and women whose deaths were not considered newsworthy. Other reporters handled crime, natural disasters, City Hall, sports, fatal accidents, high finance, visiting celebrities and what was called “human interest,” meaning heartwarming stories, usually involving children. I was in charge of ordinary cold death.
